Veracious

I recently started watching "How I Met Your Mother" on Netflix Instant, making up for the last seven years I spent ignoring it. (Eventually, I'll get around to "Friday Night Lights." Don't rush me.)

I loved the way the show played with time, moving forwards and backwards and kaleidoscoping narratives (think Memento or Pulp Fiction) in a way that is my second-favorite storytelling trick. (First favorite: body swap.) Also, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris are pretty reliably hilarious, even before HIMYM started.

But it wasn't that long before I realized that Ted Mosby, the ostensible lead, is really the weak link in the show. For someone who's supposed to be searching for the love of his life, someone who's supposed to be the lynchpin of the show and hold on to our sympathies as relationship after relationship reveals itself as not being the one... he's kind of a douche.

And then I saw the Season 5 episode "Robots vs. Wrestlers," in which Ted owns up to his douchier qualities, even, if I'm not misremembering, describing himself as a "douche." And what was the catalyst for this realization?

He walks into a party and gets super-excited because there are celebrities in the room, namely Peter Bogdanovich and Will Shortz. Will Shortz! Otherwise known as the only celebrity I've ever asked for a picture.

Archive photo
(American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, 2011)

Being excited to see Will Shortz is definitely not douche-y. It is the normal reaction of a human being (who is maybe a little too into crosswords).

(To be honest, I would be pretty excited to see Peter Bogdanovich at a party, too. And I know just what I would say, too: "The Cat's Meow—I liked it!" Which is a very oblique "Sopranos" reference. Also, the word "oblique" is an oblique "Sopranos" reference. (I am also maybe a little too into "The Sopranos."))

That episode is when I started to feel for poor douche-y Ted. Can a guy who tries to make small talk with Will Shortz be unlikable? That is, besides the guy I overheard buttonholing him at the ACPT about developing "Dogme '95, but for crosswords."

ANYWAY, Veracious. I got Veracious at a stoop sale in Brooklyn, along with a similar shirt — they are both from the designer Vera Neumann.

You can tell because she wrote her name on it. Obviously nothing about Veracious is not adorable.

Fancy print that must be lined up just so!

Pockets!

Intriguing neckline!

Fabric-covered buttons! AND fabric-covered buttonholes!

Además, I inherited a beautiful Vera silk scarf from my grandmother.

For when it's got to be all Vera, all over.

Pattern-mixing: yet another enthusiasm I take perhaps too far.

I was going to go into my brilliant idea for a crossword theme, but a) no one I've told about it has seemed inclined to pick up what I am laying down, and b) maybe someday I will actually come up with the fill, and wouldn't Will Shortz be so sad if he got this great crossword and the answers were already on the Internet? So instead, I leave you with this: if you walked into a party and saw Will Shortz and Peter Bogdanovich...

...what would you say?


All photos by Claire Loeb! Except the one that clearly isn't.