Endless Hobby

Hi, my name is Mark and I’m a professional hobbiest. 

Well, I do it for a living. I just do hobbies. Like model airplanes and drawing other people’s sneakers.

Nope. Nobody pays me.

My Mom sort of does with food because she loves me.

And a bed. A bunk bed.

Yeah, I read that post. I didn’t like the marketing slash business aspect of it. I think that some people try to sell out too early and end up just selling out their personal brand, right? So cashing in is really hard.

Yeah, well that always drives me nuts about some of these guys, like, shouldn’t they be concerned with telling us what is important and creating content that is authentic rather than creating content for someone else under their own name?

Well, they could always eat cold ravioli. That’s what I do. No, you don’t need money.

I think they should separate job from blog and hobby, y’know? Like, if you can be self-sufficient then you could spend free time creating content without having to sell your personal brand, right?

Well, I figure you could do like 1 post every two weeks working 40 hours a week. I guess you couldn’t have a family. Hobbies are your family, right?

You could work part-time, I think, and just live meagerly. Don’t get a hobby that requires significant funds or significant apartment space.

If you don’t have time for a post of anything just have your friends take pictures of you doing your hobby. That’s basically content.

Well cameras are cheap, right?

That much for a camera? No way.

Well, cold ravioli man. It’s what I do.

Yeah, it is spartan and generally unhappy but you gotta’ sacrifice for the good of the hobby and the authenticity of the content.

Whatever, man. No, I can’t give you the employee discount, that’s against the rules. Just get the blue-light special, it saves you like the same amount. 

I’d probably get fired if I did that. 

At least I’m authentic, right?

Sombreros

EDITOR’S NOTE: SAM AND JOHN DISCUSS “HOT TRENDZ” FOR LATE THIS SUMMER OVER EMAIL.

SF: I’ve been doin alot of reserch about cool clothes for summer what do you think r cool clothes

JL: I don’t know. Like a t-shirt, I guess.

SF: what tshirts arent cool at all u know what is cool? 

JL: This is a rhetorical question. I’m not answering this.

SF: somberos

JL: What? That’s idiotic.

SF: nop i did reserch and i know what is the coolest

cool clothes are somberos

thes photos are from the Sartorialist

JL: That’s not real.

SF: no its real i know because i asked schuman and schuman said that every1 is wering somberos on the streets i even asked bill cuninghamm and i asked jackjillblogguy and i asked tommy aton and gurrism even thugh i didnt no what he was saying becuse he has funny assent

JL: You don’t know those people.

SF: schuman knows everybody he will tell you cuse he is so smart

hes the smartest man in menwear he is even smurter than wooster ask him

JL: Whatever.

SF: John.

SF: Jon i did a product rund upt of all the best somberos you can wear in public

JL: It’s “sombrero”.

SF:

“loook at this sombero it is soo cool 

it is fur peple with lots of $

look at this sombero is soo cool

it is fur people with some $

look at this sombero is soooooo cooooollll!!!!!

is if fur ppl with very little $”

SF: see i did diffnt $ points arent you glad

TSB does ddiffnt $ points i am bes blogger along with them

SF: Was tat a good prodct rite up

JL: Sure, I’ll post it right away.

You heard it here first. Sombreros are fucking huge.

Book Review: Lost Cat

GTBT isn’t a clothing blog. It’s a terrible clothing blog. And terrible clothing blogs also happen to think they influence your lifestyle.

I’m going to tell you what to read.

You don’t like to read?

Well, I did some reading of clothing blogs that also happen to make lifestyle suggestions and guess what?

They tell me reading makes you cooler or something.

They tell you to read things like The Economist, Jonathan Franzen, Junot Diaz, and, I dunno, Ann Coulter. 

And magazines. Read a buttload of magazines.

These are all relevant things.

I think you should read comic books because they’re awesome.

Specifically, I picked up Jason’s (he apparently needs no last name) latest work, Lost Cat.

I’ve been following Jason and his work for about 8 years now. Stripping story-telling bare, he relies on no impressionism that some artists rely on. He’s almost Herge in his pacing and paneling. However, where Herge is a borderline travel novel comic book (no character development, lots of regional/issue development), who the hell knows where Jason’s stories take place. 

Jason’s stories are always black, black, horrible, hilarious jokes. Existential crisis are farces as Jason plays his minimalist art in on itself. He embraces Hemingway’s zero-ending stories and lets you fill in the blanks. 

Lost Cat is a return for Jason to the clean palette. For his past few volumes, he has used color. The color sits in his books, not doing much of anything. Whereas when he uses black and white, he simplifies the story around his characters and allows your imagination to fill in the blank -- sort of like Eisner does with his impressionism but assuming a lot more capability within the reader’s mind. I like this as it allows more assumption to take place. His anthropomorphic, and apparently clavicless, characters blank expressions convey more than you or I could get out of a couple drawings. Lost Cat, by utilizing dabs of melancholy yellow, allows Jason access to visual depth that he did not have with just a black and white palette. 

Lost Cat tells the story of an idealistic detective, sort of like whatever Owen Wilson’s character in Midnight In Paris, but less curmudgeony and backward looking. The detective gets caught up in a number different storylines which are hilarious yet probably commonplace. Jason is pretty obviously influenced by old films in this work, as always but it’s more obvious here, as he picks out old film lines and names to use for his characters. Like in an old film, a cigarette is a useful tooling for skipping words but conveying meaning.

Jason claims that he intends no hidden meaning in each story. Which is probably true but I think there are certain inexplicable things he tries to get at in each story he tells.

Lost Cat won’t make you cooler. When you’re sitting in a living room and somebody asks you what you’ve been reading and you say, “I just read Lost Cat by Jason,” they will look at you and say, “Oh.” Awkward silence will be cued and then someone will hopefully get you both a drink. "Have you listened to the new Mumford and Sons albums?" you ask. She, regretting saying "no" the first time, says "yes" and then you'll both talk about shitty music that you both hate for the next 30 minutes.

Books in general won’t make you cooler. I don’t know where people got that idea. But neither will dicking around on the internet.

What will make you “EFFORTLESSLY COOL”?

I dunno, keep doing stuff and get back to me.

Cat-Piss

Sartorial rules tend to be subjective things that one creates for oneself to make things easier in the morning when a big pile of clothes lie in front of you. They also tend to be pretty useless when espoused to others.

For example, he's a rule question.

Should you always wear clothes?

The Traditionalist: Yes. Button-downs, blazers, and chinos, please.

The Part-Time Nudist: Not when you're at the nudist beach.

The Full-Time Nudist: Clothes are an abomination and should never be touched.

These are all rules.

Take what you will from them.

But here's a rule I like: "Don't wear lots of exciting things because too much excitement causes stress for everyone. And stress isn't fun or happy."

So, I generally limit myself to one exciting thing.

Here's an amendment I made a while back.

"Don't wear exciting things on your feet because exciting things on your feet will stress everyone out including your cat and nobody likes a stressed out cat because they piss on your carpet."

Want your cat to piss on your carpet?

Here's a collaboration between Clarks and Woolrich.

Here was the marketing rule that somebody laid out during the meeting between Clarks and Woolrich:

"Let's do exciting things because we don't know what we're doing."

They're sticking to it.

And I think that's brave.

But just a little smelly.