I’d Rather Own 153 Ties [Friday Thoughts With TeeCoZee]

Good afternoon. Ah crap, it’s the afternoon already. I gotta make this quick. It’s Friday, June 19, Two Thousand and Fifteen. The weather in Brooklyn is 84˚ & partly cloudy and somewhere, somebody is standing in the middle of a field, yadda yadda yadda, you all know the drill, he dies two days later and I have some things on my mind.

– Because I’m really good at time management, I decided to count all of my ties today. Not because I was aching in curiosity, but because the coat hanger concoction that they resided on broke and now they’re all sitting in a pile on my bed. So I divided them into 3 categories, “Ones I would Probably Never Wear”, “Ones That I Should Wear More Often” and “Ones That I Wear Too Much”. If I had time, I would make a pie chart and submit it to USA Today dot biz or something. The tally goes: 41 ties that I would never wear, 73 that I should wear more often and 38 that I wear too much. Not a bad ratio. I invite anyone to come over and pull some more metrics on my collection. Color, material, overall quality, clashability, et cetera. Or maybe I’ll just do it myself someday.

It’s been a little over 7 years that I started collecting them. I was going through yet another identity crisis and I reflected back on my high school days. In the same position, I made the conscious decision to wear Hawaiian shirts Every. Freakin. Day. But the gaudy fashion choice helped me become T-Roy, the outspoken, hyper-energetic overweight party animal that my colleagues knew/loved/feared. I made friends doing that shit and abandoned everything I knew about it when I got to College. After a few years, I realized that I needed a new thing. I was finally starting to make friends and for some reason, I required a trademark of sorts. So I wore a tie. I had a few in my closet from old band recitals and stage productions. They were ill-fitting, filthy and clashed horrendously with the shirts I owned. But that didn’t stop me. I went to Salvation Army and started cleaning house. I would treat myself to a few ties every Thursday morning and started to collect Arrow shirts to accompany them. People would travel all over the world and bring back ties that somehow fit one of my shirts wonderfully. It became an art that I was curating daily. All of a sudden, it was a filthy habit and from it, TeeCoZee was born. And then we launched Baseball For Dinner. All of this happened because I started wearing ties.

Clocking in at 152 ties and 38 Arrow plaid shirts, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be done. I don’t think it’s a phase anymore. I can’t see myself any other way. At the moment, I’m wearing a T-Shirt and I feel like a goddamned fraud. There’s some innate fear that if I stop wearing ties, I’ll suddenly stop writing and eating cheese and all of my friends would hate me and my apartment would burn down and I’d come down with the shingles and I’d get fired from my job and everyone I know would suddenly forget me like that scene in Flight Of The Navigator and pizza would no longer exist and the C train would start running frequently and this whole chain reaction would be because of my selfish decision to fuck up the universe I know and love and have no beef with. Plus, I know THAT tie is still out there. The 153rd tie. The tie that’s going to put all the others to shame. The lucky tie. The one that gets everyone to turn their heads and do horrible Chris Tucker impersonations. That tie is still out there and if you ever meet him, let me know. I will spend mad coin on him. But until that day comes, I wait in longing.

I need to put a tie on. Right. Now.

– One of my lazy workers was pissing me off yesterday, so I went into a rant that went like this:

Every time I come into the break room, you in the break room. Near the goddamned refrigerators. Wasting up all your time. All your pack-out time. All your filling time. All your cleaning time. All your fronting time. I’d like some time to kill! I’d like to put up MY feet!

It was then that I realized that I’ve seen Friday too many times…

– This weeks Letter From Coze went out to J, a girl that [for some reason, I guess I was really depressed at the time] ripped my heart out years ago and then changed her OKCupz name and decided to “like” me:

Hah. Whoops. Sweet potatoes are the suck. The new name is infinitely better. Syndergaard killed it today. I was close to leaving work early to catch it, but going to 3 games in a week felt like overkill. A minute ago, I learned to not eat Taleggio rind. I hope stuff’s well. Smell you later or something.

She replied with some non-topic-starters and then fell off the face of the earth after I suggested catching up. I don’t remember why I liked her in the first place. Could it only be because she was a Mets fan? That wouldn’t surprise me. I’m quite shallow…

– I don’t know what makes my eyes roll harder: the fact that they brought a ton of ivory to Times Square to crush it [Nobody should ever bring a ton of anything to Times Square], the fact that Chelsea Clinton is talking about it on Facebook or the fact that Chelsea Clinton’s profile picture is still the red equality sign that was popular/gave up on in 2013. My eyes hurt.

– If you’re stuck in a room with another dude and have nothing to talk about, just remember that you’ve both played NBA Jam. You’re welcome.

Try this trick over the weekend: Slam dunk from half-court with Muggsy Bogues.

Have a slamming weekend, everyone!

-TeeCoZee