Reds Don't Surf !

Filly-in-Charge

Do you work under a female boss? I am not referring only to the bedroom, but to the office. Women managers, I have found over the years, are easily influenced and manipulated. They are highly susceptible to flattery, and easily swayed.

Female bosses are unfocused. It is a result, I think, of multi-tasking. In one bank where I worked, I knew a group of male analysts who, on being approached by the female department head with some large task in hand, would immediately ask about her weekend, or ask about her daughter who was away at boarding school, or compliment her on her hair. After a while she would leave, flattered and flustered, apparently having forgotten why she wanted to talk to the analysts in the first place. I have seen this technique work time and again.

In the past, when I had a female boss, I was usually able to use my charm and good looks to get my own way, or to obtain preferential treatment of some kind, including office sex. The trick with a female manager is, never make her forget that she is a woman first and foremost--even if she looks like your Aunt Phyllis.

Jean Raspail Collection

Jean Raspail (1925-): Frenchman, writer, traveller, explorer, thinker, King of Patagonia, prophet of demographic disaster. This (above) is how a man of the West should dress. The Beast, by contrast, is identified by his t-shirt, hoodie, white sneakers, and baggy denim trousers. As the world around us continues to slide into the muck--like a fat chick on Spring Break in Baja entering a jacuzzi with beer and nachos-with-extra-cheese in hand and a lascivious grin on her distorted face--it is a duty incumbent upon us to hold the sartorial line. For it is later than you think.

Hemingway on Mackinaw Coats

The Three-Day Blow (1925)
"Nick stopped and picked up a Wagner apple from beside the road, shiny in the brown grass from the rain. He put the apple in the pocket of his Mackinaw coat.”

“Nick put on his Mackinaw coat and his shoes. His shoes were stiff from the drying. He was still quite drunk but his head was clear.”

Islands in the Stream (1970)
“He got up from the floor and put on moccasins and an old Mackinaw coat…”

The Last Good Country (1972)
“He kissed her but she did not wake and he put on his old Mackinaw coat and felt in the packsack until he found the pint bottle of whiskey.”

“In the night he was cold and he spread his Mackinaw coat over his sister…”

Dreamhome

Parlez Nous a Boires (Dewey Balfa)

Legacy (Mansun)

New York Stock Exchange 1963

Léo Malet

Still Life: The Afternoon Of

la virilité d’un peuple

"Affaiblissement des valeurs de courage et de virilité, au profit de valeurs féminisantes, xénophiles, homophiles et humanitaires.

L’idéologie occidentale hégémonique accomplit cette dévirilisation des Européens, à laquelle ne succombent pas les colons allogènes appelés “immigrés”. L’homophilie actuelle, comme la vague féministe de la fausse émancipation de la femme, le rejet idéologique de la famille nombreuse au profit du couple nucléaire instable, la chute de la natalité, la valorisation spectaculaire du Noir ou de l’Arabe, l’apologie constante du métissage, le refus de la valeur guerrière, la haine de toute esthétique de la force et de la puissance, ainsi que la lâcheté généralisée sont quelques-uns des traits de cette dévirilisation.

Confrontés à l’islam qui prône par-dessus tout des valeurs de virilité conquérante, les Européens se trouvent moralement désarmés et complexés. Toute la conception du monde contemporaine, qu’elle provienne du législateur, de l’éducation publique, de l’épiscopat ou des médias, s’emploie à culpabiliser la notion de virilité, assimilée à une “brutalité fasciste”. La dévirilisation serait un signe de civilité, de mœurs raffinées, ce qui est un discours paradoxal de la part d’une société qui sombre par ailleurs dans le primitivisme et la violence.

La dévirilisation, qui est également liée à l’individualisme narcissique et à la perte du sens communautaire, paralyse toute réaction envers les menées des colonisateurs issus de l’immigration et du parti collaborationniste. Elle explique la faiblesse de la répression envers la délinquance immigrée, l’absence de solidarité ethnique des Européens face aux allogènes et la “peur” pathologique qu’ils éprouvent devant eux.

De surcroît, la notion de “virilité” ne doit en aucun cas se confondre avec celle de “machisme” ni avec la revendication stupide d’un quelconque “privilège social masculin”. Dans leur comportement quotidien, beaucoup de femmes se montrent plus “viriles” que bien des hommes. La virilité d’un peuple est la condition de son maintien dans l’histoire."

Pourquoi nous combattons: manifeste de la résistance européenne, Guillaume Faye, 2001

Les Nouveaux Dandys

© 2009 Monsieur

Love Plus One (Haircut 100)

Mensur

Hackett, Boulevard des Capucines, Paris

Mouthful of Rocks (Christian Jennings)

Christian Jennings attended Downside School. In 1984 he started a military career as a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion. In this memoir, he recalls the training, the vicious routine beatings, the boozing and whoring during off-duty hours--and the scathing xenophobic views freely expressed by the various nationalities with which he soldiered. Posted to the African Republic of Djibouti, Jennings was mercilessly bullied by his immediate superior, a Spanish corporal, and went over the hill. Captured by bounty hunters while wandering across the East African desert, he found life in jail preferable to active duty in the 2nd Parachute Regiment. Given a second chance, he accompanied the regiment to France on field maneuvers and took advantage of another opportunity to desert. Successful this time, he was subsequently arrested on forgery charges and served a nine-month sentence. For the last ten years, Jennings has been a foreign correspondent covering military interventions, Special Forces operations and world conflicts in thirteen different countries. From 1999-2003 he was based in Kosovo and the Balkans and from 1994-1998 in Central Africa, where he reported on genocide, civil war, and humanitarian disasters from Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Congo. Currently, Christian Jennings works and lives in Sarajevo.

Corvus Corax

Bespoke-England

Dreamhome

Harmony in My Head (Buzzcocks)

Striped Tie Solid Shirt

There is something about the traditional regimental or club tie that precludes it from office wear. It does not appear sufficiently formal. In my position, I would not dream of wearing a regimental or club tie to the office. And yet, I do not want to give up the stripes. After all, there are only so many foulard and solid ties a man can include in his neckwear collection. With that in mind, I am quite taken with the look portrayed in the photos (above): clean, mature, professional, sharp, elegant. I have a few understated narrow-striped ties, mostly, I think, from Brooks Brothers, and I pair them with spread-collared shirts in solid white, blue, and pink. What kind of striped ties do you prefer?

فيروز‎

Tintin: One of Us

Marinetti Style

Broken Nose Confession

I have a thrice-broken nose. The first time I broke it was playing rugby at school at age sixteen. A few years later, in a pub next to Hammersmith Bridge, I insulted a long-haired Irishman and was set upon by his chums, who inflicted heavy damage to my face.

In 1993, walking home along Sloane Street after a night drinking in Chelsea with an ex-girlfriend and her extremely attractive uni friends, I decided to carry one of the girls home, piggy-back style, and when she climbed upon me it pitched me face-forward on to the pavement. The impact of face on concrete was quite audible. Blood stained my Boden shirt.

Soon after I consulted a plastic surgeon who explained that in order to straighten my crooked nose, he would have to use a large hammer to knock it back into place. I declined.

I learned to live with it. In fact, in some ways it has proved to be an asset. True, I can not breathe out of the right side and my sense of smell is imperfect. But it gives my face a 'hard,' craggy look. It adds a flaw, a bit of character, to an otherwise typically masculine visage. It is a conversation piece and presents an opportunity to tell a story. Finally, women seem to like it. On more than one occasion, when I am out drinking or having dinner with pals, women have used it as an excuse to start a conversation. One drunk blonde stroked it with tears in her eyes, telling me it reminded her of her father, an ex-boxer.

If we meet, you will notice my broken nose. Long and narrow, it is aquiline in a Roman way; you might even call it aggressive. It stands out in its imperfections. But, it fits my face and my large physique. Long ago I made my peace with it.

Dreamhome

Gieves & Hawkes On Moustaches

In homage to Movember
By Gieves & Hawkes
3 November, 2009

Gieves & Hawkes are proud to support Movember – prostate cancer awareness month, in which gentlemen are encouraged to cultivate a fine moustache all November long. In homage to this special cause, we are delighted to bring you a brief history of moustaches though the ages.

Moustaches have been sported throughout the ages in a myriad of different styles. Early records show Egyptians did not grow facial hair, considering it unclean, while in Greece they grew beards but not moustaches. Elaborately curled and anointed with costly essences, the beard denoted gravitas and rank.

Under the kingship of Alexander the Great, the hirsute Macedonians went to war with the Persians. During these skirmishes, the Macedonians were grabbed by their beards and many killed. Alexander decreed that henceforth they should all be clean-shaven to avoid disaster in this way.The Romans perfected the art of men’s grooming and the barbershop became one of the places to meet, exchange gossip and be pampered in the process. These early spas provided hair-cutting, shaving, manicure and massage services to keep the man about Rome looking fabulous.

Then came the Roman emperor Hadrian, who allegedly grew facial hair to conceal imperfections. This started a fashion and suddenly all the Roman nobility followed suit.

As men start to grow facial hair after the onset of puberty, throughout the ages it has been regarded as a sign of virility and manhood. In the British army young men were encouraged to foster the growth of facial hair, culminating in the luxuriant moustaches seen in engravings and sepia pictures of dashing majors and crusty brigadiers. One of the most famous examples being the conscription posters around the time of the First World War, with Lord Kitchener exhorting that “your country needs you”.

Moustaches in some areas of military life were obligatory. The European Hussars traditionally wore long moustaches but not beards. These gentlemen were the apogee of the swash-buckling male — a dashing, conceited amorous figure of whom it was said that men fled from and woman ran towards.


Text ©2009 Gieves and Hawkes

A Boy Ten Feet Tall / Sammy Going South (1963)

I first watched this film in the mid-1980s at the South Kensington Squash Club off the Fulham Road. Following a squash match or two, my chums and I would repair to the upper level above the courts, eat packets of salt 'n vinegar crisps, watch television, and drink pints of bitter. Some of us played the casino machines, others made fun of the kids from the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle still playing below. The attractive girl behind the bar, we convinced ourselves, was featured in the latest porno magazines.

A young boy living in Port Said, Egypt, narrowly escapes a bomb blast that destroys the apartment block where he lives. After discovering that both his parents were killed in the explosion, he decides to travel (on foot) to Durban, South Africa, to be with his only living relative, an aunt. During his 4500 mile journey across africa he has many adventures including a first hand experience with the slave trade and living for a time with a band of poachers and criminals. After several months of travel he finally arrives at his destination.

I'm Not Sayin' (Nico)

Zulu (1964)