Hey, big-ass spender

Friday, you get nada. Today, you get pants.

Friday, I won't be adding a blog entry because I'll be traveling to Cleveland for Friday Night with Frazz at Century Cycles in Rocky River. I cannot wait. This is going to be good.

Come to think of it, next Friday I'm traveling to the Seattle Bicycle Expo -- I cannot wait, Part II -- where I'll be through Monday, so I'm ditching you all left and right temporarily.

But at least I'll be wearing nice pants.

In Monday's entry full of 6-word memoirs, mission statements and mostly comments on turning 48, one such tome went,

I bought some khaki pants voluntarily.

There's something very middle-aged about khakis. I don't know if there's anything middle-aged about reading Esquire magazine or not, but I think that's what brought it on more than middle age itself. When I was younger, I used to read Esquire once a year for its Dubious Achievement Awards. Now I subscribe to it because it is, in my opinion, the best-written, best-designed, most forward-thinking magazine out there, on any topic. The fact that the topic is so often overpriced clothing is but a minor distraction and easy to ignore; the fact that another prevailing topic is beautiful women wearing somewhat little of it is a less minor distraction, one I don't bother trying to ignore. But apparently I don't always ignore the fashion stuff so well, either, because I decided I needed some khakis.

I don't buy pants often - I work at home and haven't gained weight - but when I do, I tend to buy them from one of two places. Either I go to this one department store where I can spend a perfectly good afternoon sifting through piles of attractively priced Levis that mostly don't fit, or I can go to a Lansing menswear store called Kositchek's and ask for Mark, who will have me in expensive but perfect-fitting pants in just a few minutes.

It's not like Mark is the only guy there who can do that; he's just been my go-to guy ever since I set foot in there 15 years ago and he had the guts to acknowledge that I had a cyclist's build (without, in fact, using the words "big" or "ass") and the talent to outfit me in pants that allowed for that build, and not the mega-pleated bloomers I'd been wearing around looking like an extra on the set of "Chariots of Fire."

I always blanch a little when I see the bill, because it doesn't look like the bill from the department store where nothing fits. But that doesn't last long, while the pants do. I believe I still own and wear every item of clothing I've purchased from Kositchek's, while none of my pants from the department store are more than a year old.

Food researcher and writer and hero Michael Pollan recommends that you buy expensive food because it's expensive for a reason, and that you end up eating less of it because it's more satisfying. Turns out expensive pants are expensive for a reason and you buy them less often. And if it's a stretch to thank Pollan for economic insight into trousers, I know we can thank him in part for the fact that Mark is finding me a whole lot easier to fit than I was back when Esquire still ran Dubious Achievements.