The Baboon Congress

hats

92 Comments

today’s post comes from tim.

hats are my love 

i have even given it the true test and i still am a hat guy. i made it a business.

i buy and sell hats on ebay

when i was a kid i liked hats. then i grew up to be an adolescent and i liked hats still but i was lucky to grow up in hippy days so me and arlo guthrie got to wear hats together, then hair dryers came into vogue and hat hair was not cool. i had big hair and was wearing suits with creases on the pant legs and crisp white shirts and then as styles changed and casual fridays became casual lifestyle in general, my bald spot turned into a baloney ring as all my hair went away. my hair length went einstein to mr clean over this time frame and hats came back. about 15 years ago i started buying stuff on ebay and the end result was that i fell back in love with hats and i started in on a mission to become the hat guy and today i am the hat guy. i am primarily a fedora guy. a fedora is the humphrey bogart kind of hat, but there are variations in fedoras,  pork pies is the jazz mans hat ala charlie parker, snap brim is the tom landry rob petrie kind of hat, homburg is the winston churchill, class act kind of hat, straw optima is charlie chan

then there are specialty hats… bowler from laurel and hardy and charlie chaplin,

boater from maurice chevalier or gene kelly, caps like a british racing guy, smokey the bear has a campaign hat just like teddy roosevelt, and then we go to western, lbj’s cattleman’s crease, hopalong cassidy and his gus style, roy rogers and the marlboro man offering that cowboys classic look…

today i see a movie and the hats are just there for most people. i am distracted by them. i go to a play at the guthrie or the musical at the different venues around town and i see hats that are not the right hats. they are close but this play took place in the fifties and the brim size on a hat in the 50’s was 2 ½ inch to 2 ⅝ inch and they are wearing a 2 ‘ that didn’t come into fashion until the 60’s. or why would a classy guy like that wear a cheesy hat to go with the nice suit?  

i love the westerns where the hats are a dead giveaway as to the true identity of the character. every now and again they have a hat that doesn’t fit at all but usually the hat tells all.

do you have any in depth knowledge that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world?

92 thoughts on “hats”

  1. Thankfully no. I know a little about a lot of stuff, but not enough about any particular thing to consider myself an expert on anything. I’m a big pictures person, and though I know details are important, I usually leave the details to other people to worry about.

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  2. I know more about gardening and about insects than the average person. I do occasionally catch people providing incorrect information in about gardening and about insects. Due to my big interest in these two areas I am more interested in encouraging a positive attitude toward gardening and toward insects than I am in correcting mistaken information.

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  3. Having done a fair amount of research back when we were reenacting, Robin and I (especially Robin) are discriminating critics of mid-nineteenth century fashion as it’s portrayed in movies and television. As with Tim, the costuming when it’s especially good or bad garners more of our attention than the story itself. Hair styles are almost always wrong, sometimes absurdly so, and probably for the simple reason that correct hair is unflattering to 21st century eyes and especially to a Hollywood sensibility.
    I also tend to notice anachronistic speech when it occurs in dialog in representations of that period.

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      2. tim, it would take too long to say how hair styles have evolved, but Bill is surely right when he says modern moviegoers would be disgusted if historical dramas showed hair styles as they should be for earlier periods. Men’s hair in earlier times was heavily oiled (or waxed) and combed in ways that seem goofy now (like the straight line hair part going right up the middle). Men’s hair styles have changed in many ways over the decades, generally evolving to become more “natural” and less rigidly controlled.

        Similarly, women’s hair used to be imprisoned and forcibly shaped, almost as if loose hair would foster loose morals. When women of some earlier times “let their hair down,” the act was almost as intimate as disrobing. Many films have made creative use of the act of a woman releasing her hair from restraints. I especially remember Lee Remick removing hairpins and shaking out her hair in a courtroom scene from Anatomy of a Murder.

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        2. And then extend it to the future–how will people interpret our hairstyles in 150 years? Try to explain Donald Trump’s hair to posterity!

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  4. dale picked out maurice and desi in boaters. i have a couple of those old classics. they are and artform in woven reeds. its a hat that requires the absolute correct size. soem hats are forgiving and adjust if its too tight or too loose. not a boater. it has to be right on or its wrong. but when its right its right

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  5. I know far too much about wine for my own good, and can bore you to tears with minutiae about grapes, wine glasses, wine regions, and anything else us oenophiles find absolutely fascinating while the vast majority of Americans say, “Gimme a Bud Light.”

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. You should come to Oregon, Chris. Wine here costs about two-thirds what it costs in Minnesota. The wine used to buy for $11 is $7 here. The history of wine production (especially Pinot Noir) in this state is fascinating. But you probably knew that already.

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    2. i think you could have some fun with the wine glass knowledge. the world knows nothing about how a white differs form a red and how a chardonanay glass differes from another white. those big globelike glasses vs the fluted calla lily shape. i understand it makes the wine hit your tongue in a different and the swirl desired is affected by the shape of the vessel but i think an inclusive presentation on the hows and whys and an offering of anything less that 10 bucks a stem is a market to consider. the ease of getting in fornt of wine nobs and wanna bes should be fairly easy. sell a fistfull a day and pay for retirement.

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      1. LOL. That’s the only problem, tim> Wine snobs as a rule are an insufferable lot of pretentious fops. But the glass design is fascinating, albeit esoteric. To me, a great wine will taste great in a jelly jar. But certainly, maximum enjoyment can be obtained by matching the wine with the proper glass.

        Chris

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        1. if you are interested i think it can be monitized
          i would buy a coffee and see about a possible biz venture on amazon etc. after setting up a shopify site.

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    2. i got involved in houses a while back and was surprised to discover the asbestos that had been spoken of in such carcinogenic terms was the stuff o n the walls and ceilings i grew up with. i went to sell one house and was told the like int he basement was a problem. i got a popper and pulled it all out only to find out that wa snot the way is twas supposed to be handled. i was supposed to get an asbestos abatement team in to do it so the death surrounding the tile would not leap out and get me.
      sale with some sheetrock int he furnace closet. i think i may have put on a mask but ill bet i did it with a shrug.
      sheet flooring is an art. how you cut that stuff upsidedown and make it fit when you flip it over is pure magic

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  7. My bizarre career (I use the word ironically) left me knowing things I think few or no other people know.

    For example, I think I know things about pheasants (specifically about the ways they monitor the presence of predators) that are not known to anyone else. That is actually easy, for nobody is doing research on this topic. Research is expensive. Nobody with deep pockets is interested in pheasant research right now). I could be totally wrong in my thinking, but nobody cares what I think.

    Similarly, I know things not generally known about the intellectual history of of fishing in lakes and reservoirs. (I am excluding theories of stream trout fishing.) Once again, it isn’t surprising that my original thoughts about fishing theories are not widely known. My college education made me a historian with a special interest in the evolution of intellectual history. But fishing is a recreation, a happy and simple sport that doesn’t especially attract deep thinkers. People who consume media about fishing in lakes mainly want to know how to catch fish a few bass or perch. They have little interest in how theories about fishing have evolved. I briefly had an audience for my thoughts on that topic, but I lost that audience a very long time ago. 🙂

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  8. Yes, little pockets of way too much knowledge that is really not all that useful in life: King Henry and his six wives; FLDS, Robert Redford movies, Sherlock Holmes. Sad.

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      1. Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. And I do have to say that Bill has encouraged this w/ titles about Joseph Smith and the early Mormons.

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      1. I like the ones where he DOESN’T play the hero. He plays an awful cad in Daisy Clover with Natalie Wood. A more recent film that didn’t get much marketing is Spy Game with Brad Pitt. Redford plays an older spy training the younger Pitt and eventually has to come to grips with the fact that his profession (and by extension he) is not a very nice person.

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        4. Did you see that there is a relatively new (2006) book about the Strangites available at the library? Just sayin’…

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        7. VS, if you’re at your limit for requests, put it on your list, and then you can look at the list sometime in the future, and request it then.

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  9. Some quick, random thoughts about hats.

    In the 1940s hats were the main way women made personal statements about fashion. There was a strong stereotype about shallow women sneaking the purchases of expensive hats past their husbands. Another stereotype was that a woman could cure “the blues” by buying a wild, stylish hat.

    Hats mean something to African-American women in the South that they don’t mean elsewhere. Or that is a point made in the book The Secret Life of Bees.

    Popular history usually blames JFK for killing the popularity of hats when he chose to go hatless for his inaugural parade. That has been challenged by some historians.

    I helped my father make a deeply emotional return to the little Iowa town where he lived in the 1920s. We visited the church he attended. Each seat had a big wire hoop attached on the back, for men in church needed a place to park their hats during the service.

    Bars and restaurants used to have “hat check girls.”

    For both men and (especially) women, hats were special in earlier times because they were the clothing item that best allowed folks to express an individual sense of style. Men used to have limited fashion options, but at least they could say something about their social and economic identity with their hat. As noted above, hats let women display their personal flair for fashion.

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    1. Have you seen the book “Crowns”? It is a wonderful collection of photographs of the most marvelous hats that African American women wear to church.

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  10. I read so much material either written in the nineteenth century or written about the nineteenth century that I understand a lot of the references made that I think most readers would miss. For example, in the recent release of Mark Twain’s two volume autobiography, he frequently made reference to other persons in his sphere and for me, each of those references conjured up a back story and a chain of references. It made me wonder what reading those narratives without the associations would be like. Less rich, I’m sure.

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  11. I don’t have in-depth knowledge that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world, but in the last few months, I’ve had the experience of talking about what I thought was basic photography stuff. Then I would notice the glazed eyes of the listeners and when they said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” then I realized it was better to keep my thoughts to myself. This is an unusual experience for me, because I’m not used to knowing more than anyone about anything.

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    2. back in the day the difference between a fast and slow film made the choices of what you shot predetermined almost. i had one colleague who would keep trac\k of his developing notes and would shoot 400 asa as a 1600 and stuff like that. the fstop shutter speed and iso ratings are lost on automatic camera aperators. the size of the hole effecting the amount of time the shutter stays open and the clarity of the focus should be obvious but i dont think the rain works that way for most. i love camera stuff. have fun with it.

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  12. Husband says he is an expert at choosing varieties of plants and seeds that work the best for our area for the garden. I know lots about the biographies of classical composers. When I was on bed rest before my son was born i read a biographical encyclopedia of composers by an author who liked to dish the dirt. It was fun. Did you know that Dvorak kept pigeons?

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    2. I didn’t, but I have visited the small apartment where he and his family lived in Spillvile, Iowa. The apartment is located above the Bily Clock Museum. Both worth seeing if you’re ever in that neck of the woods.

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        1. OT – Bill, we (Hans and I) may have to go to Chicago tomorrow or Sunday for a funeral. Are you available to take care of Bernie? We’ll be two days.

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  13. I can hear when a piano is out of tune, when a section of the choir is not on track with their part, when a guitar player is playing the chords out of sequence… Uffda, I can be a real pain in the neck at choral rehearsals.

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        2. Speaking of politicians with an adversarial relationship with the truth, did you see this tweet from when she dropped out?
          “Carly Fiorina has dropped out of the presidential race to pursue kidnapping Dalmations to use fur for coats.”

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      2. No – If I had perfect pitch, you could ask me to sing, say, middle C and I could pull it out of thin air. I could probably get close, but not exact. I do have relative pitch, meaning if I hear one note, I know what the one right next to it is supposed to sound like.

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  14. you can leave your hat on
    put on your old gray bonnet
    Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet
    I’m puttin’ on my Top Hat
    My hat, it has 3 corners

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  16. An often repeated reference to those on the far left wing is they’re wearing a “tin foil hat”. It is, or course, an insult.

    O/T my 13-year old cat appears to not have a fatal cancer. The mass at the back of his mouth has shrunk down to 1/4 its size in two week after antibiotics. Vet said she’s never in her career see a cat who didn’t have cancer having a mass like his.

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  19. tim said,
    “if you are interested i think it can be monitized
    i would buy a coffee and see about a possible biz venture on amazon etc. after setting up a shopify site.”

    An intriguing suggestion, tim, but I’ve got too much on my plate right now. The last thing my current life’s juggling act needs is another ball in the rotation.

    Chris in O-town

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