New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

A bootpal reminds me that most don’t want a prolix philosopher’s ramble but a get-to-the-point review.     Most are looking for help with the hard stuff, especially fit and quality.     The meaning of life is not usually on the list even when there is interest in matters of history and provenance. I might lose you but I’m going here anyway. The readers of the great Patrick O’Brian have long commented that his first novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series, 1969’s  Master and Commander  is perhaps too much action, too strapping and overly masculine.  His follow up,  Post Captain , develops the principal characters, introduces their love interests and a host of interesting female characters, but as some critics would have it, too internalized, too much psychological study and not enough action.  Arguably, O’Brian arrives at near perfection in his third novel,  H.M.S. Surprise  where both compelling action and the deeper examinatio...

I started this blogspot with some trepidations and admittedly some feeling of embarrassment.  I still have those feelings.  What does it mean when a grown man wants to share his obsession with boots and leather and jeans and all the places those things take him in his memories and even to the store?  In the real world anyone who knows my so-called real self also knows that the things I write about here are but the tip of my iceberg of obsessions ---and yes, that is the right word, because obsessions are not always bad things.   What are the alternatives?  Superficiality?  Not caring?   Indifference?  Mere hobby?  We like to think that there are "more important things in life" but what's more important than the things you love?  Sure, the people, the places things take you, to cite a good pal.  But since we can't take it with us when we finally go, we might well go with the good stuff.  Each of us defines the "good stuff" t...

Your everlasting summer and you can see it fading fast,  So you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last… I’ve spent a lifetime trying to live over my paygrade and staying outta’ trouble with debt and the taxman.  I knew when I turned down that law school admission that I’d stepped in it, that I’d chosen my heart over my head.  I was at least smart enough not to attempt to make a life working with my hands, unless that means with ink and paper. Voltaire proves there is value in a life of words.    Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste templedédié à la discorde .   I try not to forget this though it’s important we don’t get too grumpy, self-important, or assertive even when life's done it's job and tempered, burnt, and otherwise chasten us into believing that we know better.  No one likes to pay more than they have to but too many of us are looking for a bargain when we'd be far better off if we sucked it up to pay retail ...

Wanting to be at ease with yourself means you have to learn how to enjoy an effortless effort.     As Spinoza said, perhaps with prescience for the experience of wearing a fine leather jacket, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”     Fine things also tell good stories.     So let’s roll the tape. I’ve always been keen on leather jackets ‘cause where I grew up you got beat up a lot whether or not you were cool.  So you might as well be cool.  My first real jacket was a Schott Perfecto that I, umm, stole from my elder brother.  He had mistakenly left it behind at home while he was having a Born to Run episode in the summer of ’75.  I ran off with it and forever pretended that I didn’t know what happened to the thing. Ironically, such said  perfection  was stolen from me in a bar not long afterwards and this might be the first time I publicly admit to having stolen from my own brother one o...