The London Lounge

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 1:18 am**

Posting and fencing here is as addictive as Blackjack - and much cheaper - or is it? Please discuss.
NJS

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:17 am**

Good question. Reading in the Lounge, I hunger for more shirts (Budd!), suits (Buenos Aires, London, New York), shoes, boots, neckties -- and who knows what else: a loss of more than I'd likely lose at blackjack. But at least I'd have more to show for it.

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:28 am**

The London Lounge has proven to be very expensive for me. But many good things are.

I, for one, am glad of your recent addition.

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:49 am**

If a lady plays Bacarrat at the casino, it makes one wonder why her husband gives her money to lose it since the desire of ladies is money.

If a gentleman plays Bacarrat at the casino, one can understand why. He's probably trying to make more money with his money so that he can give more money to a lady, since his ultimate objective is the lady.

I just want to impress ladies by appearing properly dressed, or, rather, better dressed than the competition. Some of us may express an opinion about the price of some thing; according to my principle, such comments simply reflect the opportunity cost of money: that it could spent on something else, but the end objective remains the same. The ultimate prize is the lady.

LL is a great place where like-minded gentlemen help fellow members on our journey in life. Thanks, Alden, and all the members whose contribution and participation make LL such a great place. And also those who every now and then give a helping hand in enlightening the sartorially-challenged.

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:09 pm**

Thank you, Dopey (I am sure that that is neither your name, nor an accurate denotation of your character!) and, if I may say so, interesting input from Happy Stroller who makes a very good point: that dressing well facilitates living well but it is really incidental - none the less interesting because of that.

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:12 pm**

storeynicholas wrote:Posting and fencing here is as addictive as Blackjack - and much cheaper - or is it? Please discuss.
NJS

Quite so indeed. And it is quite addictive. I have found that it is only cheaper when one does not choose to act upon the information which can be found here, in which I do fail miserably.

Regards,
Don

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:20 pm**

HappyStroller wrote:If a lady plays Bacarrat at the casino, it makes one wonder why her husband gives her money to lose it since the desire of ladies is money..

Can I share this with my fiancee? We could use a laugh.

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:09 pm**

If we could borrow Oscar Wilde for a minute from the drifting "Pocket square" thread, he could tell us that (paraphrasing from memory) the cigarette is the prototype of the perfect pleasure: it is delightful, yet leaves one unsatisfied. Any wonder it is addictive?...

Posted: **Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:29 pm**

There was one cigarette, which the fictional 'Gentleman Thief' Raffles claimed was the 'royal road to a cigar' - Sullivan Powell's sub rosa Oriental cigarette -they used to have a shop in the Burlington Arcade where Pencraft is now - a whole shop given over to one brand of cigarette (of course there had been similar - such as Ian Fleming's Morlands) - all now gone, the last of them wiped out by the EU and its dictats to make us all live far into crippled senility, draining the pension funds for the next generation down..... Anyone else remember these cigarettes because they nearly defied Wilde's observation? I find that a decent pipe or an excellent cigar do render satisfaction - or is it just satiety? Anymore on Blackjack and the analogy?

Posted: **Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:51 pm**

HappyStroller wrote:If a lady plays Bacarrat at the casino, it makes one wonder why her husband gives her money to lose it since the desire of ladies is money.

If a gentleman plays Bacarrat at the casino, one can understand why. He's probably trying to make more money with his money so that he can give more money to a lady, since his ultimate objective is the lady.

I just want to impress ladies by appearing properly dressed, or, rather, better dressed than the competition. Some of us may express an opinion about the price of some thing; according to my principle, such comments simply reflect the opportunity cost of money: that it could spent on something else, but the end objective remains the same. The ultimate prize is the lady.

LL is a great place where like-minded gentlemen help fellow members on our journey in life. Thanks, Alden, and all the members whose contribution and participation make LL such a great place. And also those who every now and then give a helping hand in enlightening the sartorially-challenged.

I have thought about the paragraph here beginning 'I just want to impress the ladies...' a great deal because I am not sure that we always understand what does impress them. However, I am fairly sure that no aspect of our mere appearance is that important to them (within certain obvious limits of cleanliness). The more we know about them, we are none the wiser - even if (theoretically), a great deal better informed, in each individual case; very often, after the event or after the opportunity has vanished. I do though believe that a woman seeing us for the first time makes a swift overall assessment. She will look at our faces, our hands and our shoes. In our faces, she will want to find humour and generosity; in our hands, cleanliness without evidence of vanity and in our shoes she will look for almost everything else: quality and age and care and fitness for the occasion. Everything else will need to be quiet and well made but not too neat and tidy: no one, male or female, wants a prospective mate who is likely to arrange the bottles on the shelf with the labels all facing the same way (which is the possible fate of the lady who marries the man who spends £30,000 on a perfectly ordinary blue serge suit). Neither does either sex want to find that, with the stays or padding removed, they have on their hands a total fraud and a dog.

I cite as evidence that women don't want us superlatively well dressed (at least all the time), the following: Duff Cooper was one of the most dapper men of his generation but his wife's favouite photograph of him was of him in a lounge-suit coat, collar turned up, firing a shotgun - totally inappropriate dress but impulsive, raffish and piratical. Then we have Ava Gardner and Howard Hughes (who was a total scruff) or even Katharine Hepburn and the same chap or Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (a fairly lumpen dresser): there are many other examples that I could give from the public arena and closer to home. I suggest, therefore, that when we say that being the best-dressed man around is for the ladies, we are misleading ourselves. In fact we are doing it to compete with the other chaps largely because we are competitive with each other. Moreover, the lady in a casino is going to be more impressed if you sit down at an appropriate moment and play a shoe of blackjack superlatively well and walk away with the winnings (that day anyway) than with any amount of cash that you give her to lose on her own. Any views? - especially from lady members of the Lounge....
NJS

Posted: **Fri Jan 25, 2008 11:03 pm**

With all of its strengths, the LL is awfully weak at stroll detection.

Posted: **Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:50 am**

Of course you can, Sir, since it was written with a sense of humour anyway. But do women have any sense of humour? So, please go ahead at your own risk!

rjman wrote:
HappyStroller wrote:If a lady plays Bacarrat at the casino, it makes one wonder why her husband gives her money to lose it since the desire of ladies is money..
Can I share this with my fiancee? We could use a laugh.

Posted: **Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:13 am**

You do have a point, Sir, that I do not disagree with. In fact, some girls may actually prefer a cad (sic, not cat) or a dog at the time when they're most fertile.

I totally agree with you, Sir, also about impressing a lady by walking away with the winnings at a casino. Here would be a case which the lady interpretes that person is able to take home (to her, preferably) the bacon, and at the same looks like a cad capable of impregnating her.

But then, it wasn't me who used the qualitative word "superlatively" as I don't subscribe to the sharp-looking Boston Brahmin dress style.

Still, I believe ladies will probably feel a properly well-dressed guy is probably a man of substance who will be able to provide for her maintenance. A good objective would be closer to achieving a well-dressed look that does not need to shout.

storeynicholas wrote:

I have thought about the paragraph here beginning 'I just want to impress the ladies...' a great deal because I am not sure that we always understand what does impress them. However, I am fairly sure that no aspect of our mere appearance is that important to them (within certain obvious limits of cleanliness). The more we know about them, we are none the wiser - even if (theoretically), a great deal better informed, in each individual case; very often, after the event or after the opportunity has vanished. I do though believe that a woman seeing us for the first time makes a swift overall assessment. She will look at our faces, our hands and our shoes. In our faces, she will want to find humour and generosity; in our hands, cleanliness without evidence of vanity and in our shoes she will look for almost everything else: quality and age and care and fitness for the occasion. Everything else will need to be quiet and well made but not too neat and tidy: no one, male or female, wants a prospective mate who is likely to arrange the bottles on the shelf with the labels all facing the same way (which is the possible fate of the lady who marries the man who spends £30,000 on a perfectly ordinary blue serge suit). Neither does either sex want to find that, with the stays or padding removed, they have on their hands a total fraud and a dog.

I cite as evidence that women don't want us superlatively well dressed (at least all the time), the following: Duff Cooper was one of the most dapper men of his generation but his wife's favouite photograph of him was of him in a lounge-suit coat, collar turned up, firing a shotgun - totally inappropriate dress but impulsive, raffish and piratical. Then we have Ava Gardner and Howard Hughes (who was a total scruff) or even Katharine Hepburn and the same chap or Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (a fairly lumpen dresser): there are many other examples that I could give from the public arena and closer to home. I suggest, therefore, that when we say that being the best-dressed man around is for the ladies, we are misleading ourselves. In fact we are doing it to compete with the other chaps largely because we are competitive with each other. Moreover, the lady in a casino is going to be more impressed if you sit down at an appropriate moment and play a shoe of blackjack superlatively well and walk away with the winnings (that day anyway) than with any amount of cash that you give her to lose on her own. Any views? - especially from lady members of the Lounge....
NJS

Posted: **Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:50 pm**

Sometimes I wonder if certain posters on these forums have actually met a woman.

Posted: **Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:55 am**

rjman wrote:Sometimes I wonder if certain posters on these forums have actually met a woman.

it could be phonetic chinese (ping yin) WoMen meaning us

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