Me and Billy the Kid
Well, me and Billy the KidSwitbo and I like to watch a show called White Collar on television. It's basically a caper show, for which I'm kind of a sucker. The general premise is the main guy is a very successful and well-heeled con man who finally gets caught and is trying to redeem himself and earn back his freedom by helping the FBI catch other con men. The other principal is his FBI handler who's also the guy who caught him. It's the relationship between these characters that is the show's main attraction in my opinion. It's complicated and evolving, being at various times adversarial, fraternal, untrusting, and friendly.
Never got along
I didn't like the way he cocked his hat
And he wore his gun all wrong.
Anyway it's a good show, but one thing I don't like is the way the main character wears his hat.
The dude wears various fedoras, homburgs, and panamas as a sort of signature. Most episodes he'll break out a new one and have some flashy overwrought way of putting it on or taking it off. It's part the show trying to establish that his success at the grift has made him into a man of fine and expensive tastes, including a fondness for '40s era headwear. Okay, that's all well and good, but I just hate the way he wears them. He has them tilted down slightly over his forehead and slightly cocked to one side. It's overly preening. It looks like he's auditioning for a Bob Fosse musical and he's about to break out in a dance. It's just so wrong.
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| Wrong, I Tell You! |
So I regularly make some snide remark about it to my infinitely patient wife when we watch the show, which is probably off-putting not only because that sort of thing is generally off-putting but also because she likes his hats and probably the way he wears them, I suspect.
Last night while watching the show on DVR with Switbo, I remember the quote at the top of this post. Its from a song called Me and Billy the Kid by Joe Ely. It's a really great song -- funny, evocative, romantic. Joe Ely is an amazing songwriter. Anyway, I recite the quote above to her and say, "That's why I don't like the way he wears his hat." as though it should explain everything.
She says, very sensibly, "Sure, but I don't see why it bothers you so much."
Inside, I'm thinking Yeah, she's right, let it go.
But I just shrug my shoulders, smile, and reply, "Me and Billy the Kid never got along, babe."
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| That's better |
Ha! great post. I actually like the way BtK wears his hat in that one famous B&W photo, but I'm with you on the tool above.
ReplyDeleteWe aren't supposed to have USA on our cable tier, but for years the inline filter (out in that cylinder in the front yard) let us have it for somoe reason. I got addicted to Burn Notice and watched a bit of White Collar but didn't get swept up like you. I was really starting to get into Covert Affairs when the cable van swooped in one day and 'repaired' the inline filter. All gone.
Netflix has BN on streaming, but they haven't yet added a season I hadn't already seen. And CA is only on physical discs, not streaming.
We also started Psyche years ago at the same time we started Monk. But Psyche wore thin after a while. Monk was awesome and it is sorely missed.
BTW, my captcha is 'sabioso' - isn't that cool sounding?! When you wear your hat right, you look oh so sabioso!
Lets see if this cut'n'paste works...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lolriot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Fedora-What-you-think-you-look-like-570x303.jpg
The photo is perfect! (I did have to go thru some gyrations to see it tho.)
ReplyDeleteYou should change your Internet name to sabioso!