So your man thinks he can wear a black leather jacket ?

If you’re going to wear a leather jacket, you gotta be worthy of it. Or so Marco, singer of long forgotten French punk band Wunderbar, once said to me.

He was of course trying  to justify the fact that he had just robbed some poor unfortunate "mummy-irons-my-jeans-with-designer-holes" punk rocker.

This was of course long after Edith Piaf, inspired by  Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots immortalised this item of clothing in L'Homme à la moto
.
Il portait des culottes des bottes de moto, un blouson de cuir noir avec un aigle sur le dos... 
Sa moto qui partait comme un boulet de canon 
Semait la terreur dans toute la région.....
He wore motorbike pants and boots,
A black leather jacket with an eagle on the back.
His motorbike went like a cannonball
Spreading terror in the entire region.

The music spells danger, the guy sports an Eagle on the back of his black leather jacket, there is the essential  sense of impending doom...

A black leather jacket (BLJ) - and it HAS to be black - spells, youth, rebellion, rock and roll, bad boys, Altamont, even drugs. A BLJ oozes masculinity and freedom, it oozes danger and desire, hence, I guess, its ridiculously frequent recurrence in the world of fashion.

But boys beware! Because of its iconic associations, the BLJ is tough to wear. Despite its simplicity pulling off a BLJ is tricky, and if I may, here some useful tips from the very best.

Exhibit 1 - Marlo Brando in The Wild One

Very tough to wear. Observe the cap. You may not just attract the ladies in this gear!

Exhibit 2 - Jimmy Dean

Begin with the smoking The cigarette is not optional. So you may want to weigh the health implications...

The T-shirt is white, It can only be a regular undershirt –crew cut- t-shirt. In Grease,  Travolta wears it in tucked into his pants, another difficult one it pull off, if you dont have a six pack.

Exhibit 3 - The rock guys

Elvis

and Jim

This time, there is the requirement of the matching leather pants... and I believe right next to his skin... ROAARRRRRR (sadly I'll have to skip The Ramones for the purpose of this ditty).

Exhibit 5 - Peter Fonda in Easy Rider

The most elegant, the most sophisticated, the most iconic, and the most natural, in my mind.

The "Captain America' is a very different type of BLJ and is reported to have been designed by Peter Fonda and made by "two little old ladies" in Los Angeles. Ms. Amberg was reportedly the first person to mix colorful leathers to produce distinct jackets. Back then, the motorcycle jackets were predominantly black and it would probably be confusing to figure out who was who during a race. She was also the first woman owner of a motorcycle jacket company.

Fonda is reported to have worn that jacket until it wore out. Yes guys a BLJ isn't just for Chritsmas!

Most importantly watch carefully how Fonda mixes a psychedlic shirt, a neck tie and  killer shades.

Essentially behind its mask of harshness, the BLJ is an über-romantic item of clothing to pick. It is a brave choice, one which reveals in fact much femininity in a guy, since flashing a BLJ is actually a strong stylistic choice that not all males are prepared to do. Let's just say that the BLJ is to men what the LBD is to women, deceptively simple, It is an essential item of clothing for the guy who can wear it.

So has your man been a bad boy lately?

Oh, and one last credibility test. If your guy cannot say the following convincingly:
- We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! ... - Heavenly Blues, aka Peter Fonda, The Wild Angels
He just isn't cut for the BLJ.
Yes life is unfair, and then you die!

Ready for take off!

- Danièle, you should write a blog.....That’s Becky for ya!
- Sure why not.
- Woman, write a blog!
- Alright, alright,! * sigh *
 
Yeah right, Miss Becky. How the heck do I do this thing. Like I don’t have anything else to do. Grrr... Like English was my native tongue…seeeeee…Like I don't have family to take care of…seeeeee…. I also have a job….. oh wait… maybe not.

These days, unbusy is the word, recession, an’all…and because I am self employed, and I love my job as a translator, I am very reluctant calling it a day, and go back out in the scary world to look for a job in a "real" company. Plus, really at my age, I should be entitled to keep working in a job I am good at, and a business I have developed over 22 years, right?

Retail therapy? My patience with shopping is very limited.

Coffee with my sisters? Well one of them lives in Ireland, miles away from me, the other three live in France

Visit my mum? She left this Earth 23 years ago, and my dad is in France.

Take care of my kids? They are grown now, and provide their own entertainment, and sometimes mine.

I have no dog, just myself to walk, and I don’t do city walking, BUT I do hiking, so you might hear about that here.

Dreaming awake, hell yeah! I may even write about this, you know… if you don’t dream awake, you end up never doing anything of value to yourself. Some folks call this having projects, like a project car or something, I call this dreaming; maybe I should have been an Inuit.

Talk to myself? Yeah I do that a lot, so why not blog and share? I once wrote a whole thingy about the importance of internal speech and language development, ah the good old days of learning… Yeah I think I’ll talk about learning too. Suddenly I find myself thinking about my primary school days, and the wonderful pictures that adorned my schools books.

And hey my house is full already; this place could be a new hideout, a little house in the tree, a treasure trove, a playground, or maybe even a junkyard.

See, I also talk to my fish a lot, and they are there with me.... See them swim? There is Galipette, Pirouette, Feu brillant, Boulotte and Josette, they love music and movies, that’s why the video bar at the bottom of this page !
Means they are less bored when I am not home. Right now, it’s only tuned on my channel, which shows my attempts at creating a couple slideshows out of… of what? …. Well, possibly of This and that….

Finally, on behalf of the captain (that would be me), may I personally thank Becky Wagner of Becky’s blog, who strongly encouraged me to take the plunge and start a blog.

Come, comment often, and enjoy the ramblings.

Coming up… I always wanted to be a pin up, cakes, Barbie, Aggie Mack, French comedies, chanteuses from the 1960’s, death memorials, planning a road trip, roadside architecture America, The importance of owning a green dress, Pam Grier, old school books, French cartoons, TV series, movies and book reviews, the path to Saint Jacques de Compostelle, things seen from my French point of view, how I became a translator, nursery rhymes, maybe even ….music…. This, that and a couple more things too…