The vast MinnPost public has spoken, and has anointed Jill Field the winner in the Verse or Worse country-and-its-car competition.
Here is the entry that drove readers to award Field a stunningly moving MinnPost T-shirt:
The Beijing taxicab: The Chinese Checker
And speaking of stunning apparel, your genial host recently got a note from a Minneapolis friend, Tillie, that read in part:
Why is it that during the work week my sartorially aware husband goes to his office wearing handsomely tailored, color-coordinated clothing, but each weekend he manages to look as though he’s raided the Salvation Army drop-off box?
She continued at some length, touching also on the “odd beige shoes” that her husband recently wore to the movies.
Why, you might ask, did she communicate any of this to your genial host? Because she had seen your genial host’s unfailingly stylish habiliment and assumed she would find in him someone sympathetic to her complaint?
Clearly not.
No, in fact, her purpose was to suggest that MinnPost’s Verse or Worseifiers might enjoy coming up with names for the “shoppes that sell this weekend wear to older men.”
And that is your challenge: Give us names for retailers or designers of dreadful men’s wear. Spin them off of established names, or come up with them out of whole cloth. For example: Coldwater Geek. Or maybe Yves Saint Abhorrent. Or Bad Vibrations.
Please submit no more than three. Email them to asicherman [at] minnpost [dot] com by 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 13.
As soon as the clock strikes 5:01, your genial host will don solar-eclipse glasses and begin the painful process of sorting through the entries for originality, sincerity and blindingly inappropriate color choice. Using no standards he can defend, he will ultimately select what he deems to be the five best.
On Monday, March 17, he will dry-clean those five entries and post them on the MinnPost website. You’ll have until Thursday, March 20, to vote for the best, which will win that indescribably satisfactory MinnPost T-shirt.
The winning name will be posted on Monday, March 24, along with a new challenge.
OK, let’s begin. Wait: Is that what you’re wearing?
