My friend Katherine Taylor — libertarian, fiction writer, beauty, fashionplate, and recovering slouchy person — has an article in the September issue of Allure (I always figured I’d be in that venue before her, but life is full of surprises) about her battle with bad posture (she looked fine already but is improving nonetheless).
As it happens, my ex-girlfriend Marilynn Larkin — competitive bodybuilder, personal trainer, and now freelance science writer (not to mention de facto beatnik, since she’s just old enough to have been a black-clad, jazz-listening Paris-dweller a few decades ago but doesn’t look it) is (or was) a posture-improvement expert on top of everything else she does, and I probably should have introduced her and Katherine at some point. Ah, well.
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On a vaguely posture-related note, Katherine has been giving me advice on buying new shoes, since my ostensibly hip Vans sneakers (there was a massive, hip-looking display for Vans in the little Harvard Square mall with the Newbury Comics in it when I was there two weekends ago) started disintegrating within about a month of purchase — apparently a common problem with this secretly-crappy brand (Katherine’s main advice: you get what you pay for, and pricier shoes tend to last longer, as I think proved to be true once before when I took her shoe-purchasing advice, though I resisted pressure from her to buy a $300 pair with alarmingly frictionless soles and ludicrous pointy toes back when those were in).
I see from the Wikipedia entry on Vans that the company that makes them co-sponsored the original Warped Tour, which featured various punk bands, some of them Vans fans. The Warped Tour also featured my leftist friend Sander Hicks’ band White Collar Crime, as I recall, so I think communism may be indirectly to blame for my shoddy footwear (actually, since the Green Party rejected Sander’s bid to be their Senate candidate for NY a couple years ago, in part perhaps due to his emphasis on the importance of small businesses, I should probably stop calling him “my communist friend,” fun though that his, and start calling him “my leftist-entrepreneur friend,” though that just doesn’t seem to do him radical justice). Punk may also be part of the problem, I concede.
In any case, due to attrition in my always-small shoe collection (I recently discarded a fairly-new plain black pair that developed an actual hole and a pair that had previously belonged to Katherine’s talented and funny singer/actor brother Russel Taylor — not because they were a bit flashy and maroon but simply because they were ever so slightly too small), the dilapidated Vans are currently the only thing standing between me and wandering the streets of Manhattan barefoot, dodging omnipresent broken crack vials (just kidding! that hasn’t been the case since before Giuliani!).
I promise to go shopping tonight, with or without further guidance.
NOTE: Keep reading ToddSeavey.com to learn more about beatniks later this month!
TRIVIA: Russel was in Sea Biscuit, Zombie Prom (with Ru Paul), and many other projects, including the stage version of Disney’s Aladdin, in which he played the parrot, no small feat (no pun intended).
2 comments:
Consider buying some of the retro sneakers that New Balance is selling. They are some of the comfiest shoes you’ll ever wear this side of Merrell’s, look cool, and are very well made – they’ll last a lot longer than a month. I just bought my third pair a week ago.
That’s the same brand Katherine recommended! New Balance it is.
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