Earlier today I saw someone wearing a plaid flannel shirt tied around his waist. Remember that fashion non-statement from about ten or fifteen years ago? It seemed to disappear leaving as little trace as coordinating neons, scrunchies, and Doc Martens. The picture’s not quite so accurate with the mesh, but the color of the jeans, the clashing primary blue and red plaid, the careless knot which is off center just-so—it’s all so meticulously careless.

Chunky sneakers, powder-blue jeans, a billowy concert t-shirt, and Dad’s flannel tied around the waist or hanging off the shoulders like a cape was the only sartorial context in which boys my age lived our lives. I dressed like that every day for most of elementary and middle school, and seeing it again right in front of me triggered the involuntary wince I get when I see old pictures of myself.

Luckily I don’t dress like a crazy person anymore.

Yesterday, [President Obama] headed up a meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Meanwhile, in Arizona, John McCain called a waitress “Toots.”

–David Letterman

Reminds me of this*.

I like David Letterman a lot. His show is the progenitor of any sort of comedy that The Spencer Howard Show (see above link) might have; his belligerent crank schtick informed humor for me in the same way Thomas the Tank Engine informed class struggle. You’d have an entertaining product whether you took the irony or left it. Let’s take it!

On Tuesday David Letterman brought everything together for me. All my life, all the things I obsess over, the details of existence that are superfluous yet transcendent, were finally brought full-circle. David Letterman wore suspenders.

Shooting hoops with LeBron and Dave

Dave (I feel like I can call him Dave after all these years) never wears suspenders. A dark pinstriped suit– almost always double-breasted– a white shirt, and a discreetly patterned tie, but never something ornamental and ostentatious like suspenders. He doesn’t talk about himself or the details of what life is like on CBS’s $32 million salary, but from what the teeming masses have been able to gather, he doesn’t wear his paycheck. He’s said he knows next to nothing about how he dresses on the show, so this collaboration between him and Susan Hum, the show’s costume designer, was serendipitous.

It’s wonderfully put together. The incredibly vibrant suspenders compliment the tie. They bring his waist so far up, it becomes clear the trousers could never have been tailored to be worn with a belt. Put this alongside the light gray socks and loafers that have received much comment over the years, and he’s got a style that is wholly unique on television.

Paul Shaffer, on the other hand, dresses like a crazy person.

* Via Superpoop.