Listening to Azure Ray right now--- something I haven't done in rather a while. Lovely voices on an autumn evening.

Reading Pico Iyer's "Abandon"--- his main character ends up looking for lost editions of Rumi. I should get a good edition of Rumi. I've always liked Persian poetry--- the only problem is that so many editions of Rumi and Sa'adi are New Age-y blathering. I want something with annotations and a good introductory essay. I'm such a grad school snob: if it doesn't have footnotes and a serious bibliography, it's no good. I do wonder if Miss Ginny ever feels the same...

I need to buy jeans. I haven't bought new jeans in years. I spent my years in academia teaching in jeans and buttondowns. Sometimes a tie, once in a while a blazer. But always jeans. Not allowed as a Rechtsanwalt, alas, except on Fridays. Trousers--- just in case I have to grab a tie and a jacket and dash to the courthouse. But I do need new jeans. Classic-fit straight-leg 505s, mind you. Always traditional. Though maybe a pair or two in black. Lacey always liked me in black jeans--- black jeans, white buttondown, blazer. A Wm. Gibson look, she always said, or maybe a Chelsea gallery opening look. I always like blazers--- like that interior pocket. A place for an old-guard billfold, or a passport case. Or a set of lock-picks. Or an iPod, these days. I'm never anywhere without the Small Psyduck iPod.

Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo sent me off to NYC last October with a strict charge to report back on what hip girls on the UWS or the A train were wearing. I had to tell her that the W.80s seemed to be filled with willowy Asian girls in skinny jeans tucked into expensive spike-heeled black kneeboots, long scarves, and short black leather jackets. I must ask Miss Ginny if the undergraduate girls at McGill have transitioned from short shorts and flannel shirts into cold-weather wear. And I must ask her about male fashion, too.

I've usually had a good eye for dressing the girls in my life. But I really have no idea how to move my own look from what it was in grad school. Lissy at emigree once wrote me to say that I needed to dress like someone who'd been born in Vienna, educated at Cambridge, and lived on the UWS or in London. I liked the idea--- that's a hell of a good biography ---but never let her walk me through what the look should entail. Lissy worked at Banana Republic for a couple of years, and she was always a fashion-conscious girl. I'd have trusted her eye. I'd trust Miss Ginny, too. It's not just a fashion eye, mind you. A girl dressing me has to have that, of course. But she also has to have a literary sense. After all, I'm dressing to be a character in the films-in-my-head.

So...yes: a few pairs of new jeans. After all, they go with the Minimalist Living/Expat List. But I will ask Miss Ginny for her own suggestions as to how I should be dressing these days. Now--- buttondowns. Always buttondown collars. I've never liked spread collars. And I am a Yalie: buttondowns are my birthright. I did read a throwaway line in some travel guide that said that the French adopted the buttondown collar as hip for the same unfathomable reasons they like Mickey Rourke. Is that true? What is the status of the buttondown collar on the Continent? Peregrine Hodson mocked the younger British expats at his Tokyo bank for wearing them, back at the end of the 1980s...

Anyway--- I will ask Miss Ginny for fashion suggestions. After all--- she is my Obsession en titre.

A good tweed blazer... Yes. I'll assume I need one. But I'll ask Miss Ginny for colour suggestions. Herringbone or Harris? Is it a bit much to try to find a pattern Lord Peter Wimsey might've worn?

I've always taken it as a given that everyone needs a classic Levi's denim jacket, that it works at beach cottages and in hipster galleries both. Is that true? I wonder if Miss Ginny ever wore a faded denim jacket over a thin sundress for long drives on her friend Evelyn on summer nights in the Quebec countryside...

I'm always open to book recommendations--- and always open to new music. Fashion suggestions, too. Mind you--- I do exist in genteel poverty. I'm no more able to do designer labels now than I was in grad school. But I will take suggestions and advice. Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo and Liz V. at nightmareteeth and Umi at ivich and the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt have all seen my photos. Umi has even sat and had retro-cocktails with me in a bar on E. 17th. They're all girls with a good eye. I will take suggestions and advice...

A re-make of "The Prisoner" begins next month on AMC. I'm...suspicious. The original series was brilliant--- and forty years later, it still holds up. Sir Ian McKellen will be the key Nr. 2 in the new version--- he'll have Leo McKern's part. Well, I'm a great admirer of Sir Ian. But I can't imagine anyone other than Patrick McGoohan as Nr. 6. He had that perfect Sixties sang-froid, cool that might just become ice. Well, we'll see. I'm just not...sanguine about it.

I need to play backgammon again. After all--- if Miss Ginny and I run away to Marrakech or Tbilisi, backgammon will be a key cafe skill.

And I will be looking for a good tweed jacket--- all the better for autumn nights in Stockholm or Tallinn or Sapporo.