Winter Olympics: Gold At Albertville, '92

Thankfully, I have only taken one police-administered breath-a-lizer test in my life. This happened in France in January 1992. I had driven up to Courcheval 1650 from Albertville, and toured what would become our group's Olympic home one month later, the Hotel du Golf. Naturellement, I lunched outside in the sun with Henri, the hotel's owner. It is my recollection that we sampled some local beaujulais, which Henri cooled in the snow.  The yellow scarf pictured above witnessed the whole thing.

I wanted to return to Albertville before dark, because I was inexperienced at driving those vertical roads with their constant twists and turns. I had only begun to learn the art of alpine driving, having negotiated sleet and fog coming up to Albertville from Lyons.

I remember little about that first descent, except that it was wonderful to come down through the pretty towns, like Moutiers, below Courcheval. But, exiting one of the the last sharp turns I ran into du lineup gendarmes: a surprise alcohol level test.  This is great, I remember thinking: big time corporate events leader arrested in France on a DWI. That would make a nice pre-Olympic headline.

But, Friends, this was pre- Olympic France. I do not know what my score was that day, but they did not retain me or even scold me. I had a gold in my first Albertville event.

Later, my Olympic job became Chief Driver, since all of the Renault Espace vans had standard shifts located on the column. I was one of very few who could drive them, making many trips to and from the airport in Lyons and the train station in Moutiers, not to mention Albertville itself.

One sunny afternoon, my colleague John and I watched hockey in Meribel. Afterwards, we stationed ourselves at a bistro, where we could watch the ski-jumpers high above us across the road and sip our wine. 

When we got back up to Courcheval, I realized that I had left my yellow scarf in the bistro, and John wanted me to go right back and retrieve it. Instead, I said we'd try the next day. This was typical of our respective working styles. John, a former army Colonel and MP never left anything undone or unplanned. My somewhat looser system could annoy him, but he had slowly come to trust me anyway.

Late the next day, on our way to watch the ski-jump finals in Meribel, I stopped by the bistro, made my way through the crowded tables filled with attractive brightly-clad skiers and spectators. There, hanging on its peg, exactly where I had left it, was my scarf.

As we crossed the road, John just gave me one of his looks and a slight shake of his head, amazed that  nobody had walked off with the scarf. 

I had won my second gold at Albertville.

Note: for a look at the trois valees area above Albertville, please go to:  http://www.courchevel.com/img/plans/plan_pistes3v.pdf

Little Black Dress

Before making light,

God cut

a piece

out of the charcoal night.

held it

in one hand

and waited.

When the sun

had grown

white hot,

God shook the 

dark form,

and beheld:

the little

black dress.

Then God 

looked about

for tan shoulders

on which to

perfectly drape it.

The rest

is herstory.

For Ingrid Michaelson

Copyright 2009/TW McDermott

Five Do's

RareBurghers have been known to:

....Wear one brown shoe and one black for informal wear or business casual, provided that they are the same shoe, just different colors. Subtilely done, others may not even notice, but it will still feel just right.

....Also wear laces that are a complimentary color to a pair of shoes: black/brown and brown/black are the most obvious combinations, but some of us could do blue on black as well.

....Always wear a dark trouser shade for business settings, even when going casual. They know that charcoal grey or dark wash blue jeans are best (when the latter are appropriate). Khakis or "suntans" are for weekends and/or the country. Pre-faded blue jeans are not for business, unless you are Mr. Lauren or work for him. Actually, pre-faded jeans are not for anything; fade your own.

....Have a black and or navy knitted tie in the closet or rolled and kept in a round tin or box. They will have been made in Italy, and, very often, come to a point at the wide end.

....Always pack a blazer or similar coat and at least one tie (that black or navy knit is a good bet), when traveling for a week or longer. This is true no matter what the destination or purpose of the trip. You may be invited to a special place, because you're the type that naturally packs these essentials .

Five Never Do's

RareBurghers never:

.... Allow either a bright or dingy white tee-shirt to show at the collar. If you must leave a tee-shirt collar showing, make it black, grey or navy.

....Chew gum. The only possible exceptions would be: while wearing a uniform in a dugout, on a long road trip with children, or during take-off or landing.

....Wear a white broadcloth straight-collared shirt with a tweed sport-coat. Also, never wear gold or silver cufflinks with that coat: cuff knots will work better.

....Try wearing short pant cuffs and suit coat, with no socks and oxford shoes; that is for Thom Browne  school days, not for men.

.... Ditto baseball caps. The only possible exceptions would be: in the same dugout as the gum, on the beach, on the course or court. Maybe.

Shoes To Be Wounded For

Some of us are shirt men, others may have a particular thing for ties. I am a shoe man.

I look for the perfect pair of shoes like a poet looks for the right word, and, just like that poet, I fail most of the time.

I bought the shoes shown above at Prada's shop on Fifth Avenue during a lunchtime stroll. No, I am not a "Prada Guy;" I had never purchased anything there before and have never done so since. Some men of a certain age have their Harleys, I had these shoes.

To be honest, I bought two pairs of shoes that day: one brown, one black. Same cap-toe on both, but the black pair was a more formal shoe, almost patent-shiny, with beautifully sculpted lines. But, we are not speaking of that black shoe today.

The leather used to make my brown cap-toe shoe is glove-soft, as long as that glove had been made in Italy and sold in a tiny shop in a narrow alley in Milan. The softness of this leather would make men weep as they might over Gisele's thigh, Kate's pout or Federer's backhand.

I had spied these shoes on a previous stroll and thought about them in the same way that Proust must have thought about his madeleine. This happens frequently to me when I see certain shoes.

But, as with many love affairs, this one was troubled almost from the start, since these are not comfortable shoes, at least not for me. To begin with, I have a high arch and a short, wide foot, usually size 42 or 8.5-9 E. Also, my left foot is slightly shorter than my right to match my left leg which is a touch shorter than my right.

You can see my shoe problem immediately, particularly since I am not in a Lobb tax bracket. 

I have tried various inserts in these shoes. I have tried wearing them with no socks as if they were moccasins, but I cannot pull off the Thom Browne look (few, if any, can). When I wear the shoes into the city for a whole day, my feet (especially my left) ache by day's end. The shoe is so flat, accommodating the special Prada rubber sole, that it is almost completely impractical for me to wear.

You might think that I'm sorry to have ever bought the shoes. You would be wrong. I look at these shoes in my closet with the same eyes with which I look at a Rothko painting or a Noguchi sculpture in a museum. I feel certain that one day Paola Antonelli will display them in her MOMA collection.

There are inexplicable things we do in life and,  no matter how hard we try to correct certain tendencies, we seem incapable of doing so. We fall for the wrong girl, take the wrong job and leave home without our umbrella. 

There are more beautiful shoes like these in my future that will hurt me for wearing them.

I do not care. 

How Do you Know You're a RareBurgher?

You know that you're a RareBurgher, when you:

• Think that a Cougar is a large cat or was a mediocre type of Mercury sedan.
• You have Gen/Digital kids, but you are Gen/Gidgetal.
• Believe that you will see a World Series day game on Fox some day.
• Tried wearing jeans with your shirttail hanging out and running shoes to the office, but you just looked like your son on his way to high school.
• Remember when you didn't know the name of a single model in the Vogues you secretly borrowed from your sister, but liked them anyway.
• Were so insulted when they carded you at a ballgame that you entirely forgot to be insulted by having to pay $9 for a small cup of watery beer.
• Realize that Ronald Reagan has finally become a centrist moderate Republican, while dead, compared to most living Republicans.
• Bumped into a young guy who used to work for you, who thought you were dressed as Madmen character for Halloween, because you wore your favorite 15 year-old Italian black knit tie that comes to a point at its end.
• Actually found old duck feathers in the zippered hip pouch of your Barbour Beaufort coat.
• Consider that Brooks Brothers might have become JCrew, if it had been run by a guy named Mickey, but that they can't even really be Brooks Brothers anymore.
• Think Vineyard Vines is where you shared a joint with Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks in Valley of the Moon, Sonoma, 1969.
• Your style is original, not flash, and certainly not eccentric, and you're okay with being taken for a grown man and not a man trying to look like a boy.
• Understand that a baseball cap and its cousins belong only at a ballgame.
• Ditto for the chewing gum.
• Have read to this point, understand, and still think you'll be okay.

The Greatest Game III: Imperfection

We gather here to discuss a part of baseball that is essential to the game, but troubling: the Umpire. The founders and developers of baseball brilliantly designed the rules of play and the dimensions of the field. Then came the human element: players, managers, coaches, owners and The Umpire. The Umpire was and is given a special place in the game; some of that is by design and some is by practice, or, perhaps more accurately, ritual. The Home Plate Umpire is at the center of each game in the same way that the Medicine Man/High Priest is at the center of a sacrificial ceremony.

The most important job of the Umpire is to call balls and strikes. In order to do this properly, he (someday she) must have a familiarity with something called the Strike Zone. Viewers of the contemporary game may be surprised to know that baseball's rules bother to define this Strike Zone. For the record, here it is:

"....area over home base the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap....determinned by the batter's stance."

If you watch a lot of games, as I do, you will be immediately struck by this "over the home base" rule. Replay after replay, disbelieving batter after disbelieving batter, demonstrate that home base or plate is wider for Umpires than for other mortals. Some nights, the Strike Zone easily reaches into the opposite batter's box, as it did in the recent Yankees-Red Sox series, or a few inches inside the active batter's box.

In the same series, batters and pitchers also seemed completely confused as to what would constitute a low strike. More than one Umpire seemed to think that this "hollow beneath the kneecap" had been kidnapped by the Ankle Gang. Tiger Woods would have been hard-pressed to reach down and hit some of those strikes. But, then a couple of batters later, these had become balls.

Let's face facts: Umpires are allowed, indeed encouraged, to "establish" a Strike Zone of their own making for each game. Home plate, to most Umps, pitchers and batters, has become a mere trail-marker, a guide. Surely batters' shoulders vary in height, and uniform pants change, but shouldn't the plate be the plate? Some nights it seems as though the Umpire is making it up each inning or making up for obvious bad calls by making another one for the other team.

You might think that this is a serious problem. You might think that players, managers, coaches, agents, journalists and announcers might mention this as a serious problem.

You would be wrong. Even the slightest hint of criticism of Umpires results in a serious fine by the League. Umpires "strike" fear in the hearts of all, just like the Medicine Man. Anger the Umpires and they might conspire to move the Strike Zone even more than they currently do. A complaining batter might be tossed or might not have another ball called for days. A complaining pitcher can fume all he wants, but he will be throwing only balls until he repents. Instead of righting a wrong, everyone extols the wonders of Money Ball and its central feature: the walk. The walk, not so incidentally, places the Umpire in an even more central role.

We exaggerate, of course, but this is a serious problem. The Strike Zone is taking supplements and is able to shrink and expand in the same game, yet it gets no asterisk. I'd like to make a bold and creative suggestion: don't allow every Umpire to get behind the plate; let them earn it. Make Umpires stick to the Strike Zone as written in the rules.

Who knows, if the umpires can actually agree on a single Strike Zone, maybe we can give them the right to force batters to stay in the batter's box and not leave it after every single pitch to tighten the stupid gloves, scratch an itch or gaze in wonder about where the hell the Strike Zone might be tonight!

Just saying.