Sunday Stylin': The David Colman edition

In this week's desperately pathetic attempt to fills space and build advertising revenue, the Styles Section gives us two articles by David Colman. After Thursday's fiasco, I'm happy to see the Styles Section return to its specialty: the recklessly shallow. Or, to try out a little pretentious metaphor, Styles-style, Sunday Styles increasingly seems like Daisy Buchanan, while Thursday Styles is Benjy Compson.

Gay or Straight? Hard to Tell. This article is sort of offensive, if you're predisposed to getting pissed off at generalizations levied toward large groups of people. The premise is that gay dudes used to dress nice, but now they don't dress as nice, whereas more straight dudes are dressing better. Uh-huh. David Colman writes:

Well, how about that guy you see in the locker room, changing out of his Prada lace-ups, Hugo Boss flat-front pants and Paul Smith dress shirt and cuff links into a muscle T-shirt and Adidas soccer shorts. Does he wear that wedding ring because he was married in New York - or in Massachusetts?

This shit is meant to be cute, but it gets obnoxious pretty quickly. The article lists behavioral and sartorial attributes that used to trigger people's "gaydar," and observes that gay dudes and straight dudes increasingly resist easy stereotyping. This might be interesting/enlightening if handled well, but David Colman uses the article to make the alleged phenomenon sound like a Frasier plot. Obviously, Colman cares more about wordplay and enforcing stereotypes than writing an informative article. I'd muster more indignation if I gave a shit.

Anyway, as of about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, this is the second-most e-mailed article on the Times website, which probably means that there will be plenty more articles like this.

Just Step on the Gas and Say Om. This is David Colman's other contribution to American journalism, and it's about a Belgian guy who likes to mow his lawn. We learn late in the article that the Belgian guy is "one of fashion's most cerebral designers" (I should have guessed) and, predictably, Colman overwrites the shit out of a mundane subject. This salvages nothing. Key example:

For Mr. van Noten mowing is a kind of meditation, complete with its own lotus position (seated upright, hands on wheel), New Age soundtrack (the infernal racket that drowns out all other noise) and aromatherapy (the smell of new-mown grass mixed with trace notes of motor oil and engine exhaust). "It's not artistic," he noted. "You don't have to think about what you're doing very much."

Translation: a Belgian guy is calm while he mows his lawn.

Ball in Flight and Other Jock Art. Judging from the headline and the recent behavior of the Styles Section writers, you might expect this to be an article about kinetic testicles and the trendy straps that support them. Good guess, but wrong.

Warren St. John writes about how more artists are influenced by sports. I like a few sports, and I like a little art, but nothing in the article catches my interest, and it actually makes me a little concerned, because sports don't need to be overintellectualized any more than they already are. The Navarre era and Michigan's kicking game are bad enough without being memorialized in a fresco.

Special thanks to St. John for again writing a Styles Section article that doesn't piss me off.

Who's That Lady in the Bedroom, Daddy? The woes of a divorced man who must explain his new conquests to the children. Cringe-inducing for a dad? Perhaps. But not as uncomfortable as it will be when the kids read this paragraph a few years from now:

My bed is a vast California king made of Swedish memory foam developed by NASA. Both my son and daughter were conceived on this space-age polymer, and their first pushes from the womb took place here before the urgency of the situation hurried us to the hospital.

The "vast California king" and "Swedish memory foam" make the whole thing sound dirty and pretentious at the same time -- just the way the Styles Section likes it. Sizzle sizzle, ladies ... sizzle, sizzle.

Sherif May Like It. A bar named Kush used to be on Orchard Street, and is now on Chrystie Street. If I'm not mistaken, Kush was a bar you could go to smoke after the cigarette ban went into effect; based on the article, it's now an extremely lame lounge.

This article is theoretically about Kush. Mostly, it's undisciplined rambling by an undisciplined writer, who may have just finished reading Naked Lunch and smoking opium before he wrote this article. How else to explain the following? "Outside, on the improbable boulevard of trees that is Chrystie Street, more like a street in Tangier than on the Lower East Side, a cavalcade of off-duty police officers went by on motorcycles."

I walk down Chrystie Street at least twice every weekday. It has no resemblence to Tangier, fuckhead.

Then comes this gem: "If you visit Kush's casbah, try Mr. Harriott's martini, a cold glass of milky tea with chai spices and vanilla vodka in it. It's a kind of plate-of-cookies cocktail that might have a hash brownie in mind."

I have no objection to hash brownies, or even to giving them out as Father's Day presents. I do have an objection to a showy reference to hash brownies in The New York Times, a publication that has enough content problems without a Styles Section nerd trying to make himself sound like a pothead. The Times mentioning hash brownies is about as credible as your elderly great aunt asking you about the new 50 Cent album. Stop it, assholes.