The Dumbest Comment I Ever Heard

[Torpedo]

And you have to take into the equation common people's tremendous unfamiliarity with hat varieties and styles. Today I wore a 50's coffee brown fedora, diamond creased crown, 2'' snap brim. I got a "Michael Jackson" comment, a "bowler" comment and a **** Tracy comment; all good natured, from co-workers. At least, the last one I would consider fairly on the mark...

 

[jamespowers]

And you have to take into the equation common people's tremendous unfamiliarity with hat varieties and styles. Today I wore a 50's coffee brown fedora, diamond creased crown, 2'' snap brim. I got a "Michael Jackson" comment, a "bowler" comment and a **** Tracy comment; all good natured, from co-workers. At least, the last one I would consider fairly on the mark...

Did you ask if they were Pruneface?

 

[jamespowers]

I took a huge exam two Mondays ago and I always dress up for those events even though I'm alone in a room with a pencil and blank paper for three hours. I had on a vintage 1930s (I think) hat, a Stetson "Head Ease" (Powers, you've seen it -- the brown one), an early 1940s gray nailhead DB, brown wingtips, and an early 1940s tie.

I had a burger after the exam at Triple Rock Brewery on Shattuck in Berkeley. Two really really dumb girls working at a bar were mumbling at me .... then I noticed the mumbling was lilted, and furtive ... and then I realized one was whistling the Inspector Gadget theme song.

Was I not supposed to hear it? I considered confronting them with something like "Do you expect your customers to put up with ridicule? Where's the manager?" Then I realized that I'd only had 5 hours of sleep and I shouldn't trust my own emotions. I paid my bill and got the heck out of there.

Very annoying, though.

Go, Go Gadget Idiot eradicator.

 

[Dr Doran]

Go, Go Gadget Idiot eradicator.

Someone give me a flyswatter full of dead fly parts to hit them with.

 

[CaddyKid21]

And you have to take into the equation common people's tremendous unfamiliarity with hat varieties and styles. Today I wore a 50's coffee brown fedora, diamond creased crown, 2'' snap brim. I got a "Michael Jackson" comment, a "bowler" comment and a **** Tracy comment; all good natured, from co-workers. At least, the last one I would consider fairly on the mark...

I guess the second one grew up thinking Charlie Chaplin wore a fedora!

 

[jamespowers]

Someone give me a flyswatter full of dead fly parts to hit them with.

About the head and ears or just across the face?

 

[jamespowers]

I guess the second one grew up thinking Charlie Chaplin wore a fedora!

Nah, he thinks Chaplin wore a beanie, man.

 

[Jerekson]

Yeah, he had a handlebar mustache, too.

 

[Delthayre]

Oy!

Tonight whilst on a short trip to a local Italian hole-in-the-wall, I was asked by another patron, one of the loud college students who infect the part of Albany where I dwell, is I were a, "real Hasidic Jew." I could only reply, "no." I might have been slightly terse as I was not distracted and unprepared to meet him with better humor.

Whilst walking back to my apartment, one of a passing mob of them shouted out, "Amish! Good, good!"

To tell the truth, given the stark colors and large dimensions of the hat that I was wearing, I'm surprised that such things have not happened oftener.

 

[Down2BDapper]

After seeing the picture I can kinda see the Amish thing. No offense.

 

[John in Covina]

College, which is supposed to stand for higher learning, tends to be more of a place for sophmoric humor, poor taste, excess and conformity in the name of individuality. The opinoins of college students tend to count for little in the way of classy and chances are they were in a drunken stupor anyway.

 

[handlebar bart]

I have actually been surprised by the lack of negative or deragatory comments about my fedoras. [huh] I have only recieved two bad comments in the last year or longer. Well, one was a not intended to be negative, to be fair. Maybe fedoras, or other brimmed hats, are really making a comeback. Even if slowly.

 

[Daoud]

On a drippy winter day a number of years ago, I was wearing a great old Army trenchcoat, a navy Kangol cap-back before Kangol got all hip-hop and cheesy--, and a scarf of some sort. I was at the Tulsa Central Library, and as I passed a gaggle of teenaged girls, one of them said quite loudly, "That m.....f..... look just like Frankenstein!" I thought that was about the funniest thing I ever heard, and it still makes me chuckle. I don't think I've ever looked like "Frankenstein" before or since, but on that day I apparently looked JUST like him!

 

[Belegnole]

while not stupid..


Halloween night whilst trick or treating with my daughter I was passed by a few people going in the other direction. First a man with a stroller and then two women; parents and none in costume. After the man passed by one of the women looked up at me and then past me and said " Ah GOD now he has his hat on" and looked at me again. I wasn't in costume either but had my cover so I turned and looked. The gent who had passed me "without a hat on" now wore a stingy brim fedora .....his walk looked like he was much happier, and I smiled thinking that I may have been his excuse..

 

[Lefty]

I'm not sure if that's for me, but none taken. However, it's important to note that Akron is less than 30 minutes from what's commonly called Amish country: an area of Ohio that takes over an hour to cross in any direction that is just filled with Amish homes and businesses. Many of the Amish travel through nearby cities, like Akron to do business (mainly construction).

Two things become very obvious about the Amish from the first time you see them. First, they're plain, generally wearing just black and white. Second, while the men have beards, not one has a mustache. Mustaches are warlike and Amish don't wear them - ever.

I own almost no black clothing, and I have a pretty big mustache. If someone from Texas mistakes me for Amish, that's one thing. When someone from Akron came to my office (in a bank building, on the 20th floor) and asked if I was Amish, I told her (and she believed it), that my buggy was down in the parking garage, that they let me keep it there if I went down to shovel every couple of hours, and that the bangin' system in the buggy sounded great as I thumped down the street.

After seeing the picture I can kinda see the Amish thing. No offense.

 

[John in Covina]

People have trouble with critical thinking and have been taught to think in sound bite sized information. They can rarely put together facts and connect them in a meaninful way. This is why they connect things incorrectly. They know it is different and they grasp at straws trying to come up with any connection that will allow them to put an answer to the question of "what or who."

You have to question their powers of observation. Some people connect fedoras with cowboy hats, they don't have enough information to differenciate properly or they don't gather enough info either. A fedoa means Orthodox Jew or Amish or Gangster. They don't filter the related facts like how your are dressed or the importance of color of clothes, but jump to some type of conclusion.

Yet they can program their cell phone with out a problem and text while blindfolded. It all is dependent on their focus, and sometimes the focus is pretty narrow.

 

[Down2BDapper]

Actually, I was commenting on Delthayre's picture.

 

[LordBest]

Yesterday I was visiting an enormous vintage & antique centre, and I had a woman come up to me and this ensued:

Woman: "You have no right to wear that hat."
LB: "Excuse me, madam?"
Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

Then I walked away. To my knowledge I had done nothing to provoke this, I was hardly being loud or obnoxious, speaking only in a low voice with my mother regarding antiques. I have to say I took offense, many of my friends are working 50 hours weeks IN ADDITION to a full time batchelor degree at university, which clocks in at another 50 hours with study time (what the guides recommend). I am lucky enough not to be, but I would hardly classify the generation as lazy. And all this because I wore a fedora?

 

[John in Covina]

LB,
Some interesting preconceptions going on there. Rights and responsibilities or the lack there of, civility, even concepts of social contracts, and merit.

Her diatribe was all based on because you wore a hat, that really must have pushed her buttons something fierce.

 

[carldelo]

Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

Wow, she dumped quite the load of pent-up anger on you - I can only assume that you happen to look like her oafish and feckless son (or son-in-law). I think you could reasonably send her an invoice for one-on-one, in-the-field anger release therapy. I hope if the same thing happens to me I can hold my tongue as you did - you must be a patient guy...