Huh. I felt for sure that I must have written by now about my spectacle fetish; my lens lust, if you will. But searching through the archives, I couldn’t find anything. I cannot believe that I have been writing this thing, on and off, for two years without some sort of drunken ode to the spectacle, but there you go.
Anyway, I always felt a little bit left out by my lack of cool indie/hipster/whatever frames – I think I was the only Farrago kid not to have them. All my art friends have them. All the graphic designers I know. Most of the writers, and now – glory of glories – I shall too.
(It’s here that I cop to truly believing, in quite a smug way, that I had no need whatsoever for spectacles, despite their radness. From all the OHS training I’ve done at various publications, and all the study seminars the uni made me go to in first year, I really thought that headaches, dizziness and jumbled letters were the natural consequence of reading too long. I also thought that everyone’s vision got swimmy with only one eye open. Nope; it’s a fatass astigmatism.)
I went on a brief search for the perfect pair of specs, the ones that would make me look fifties-secretary terrific, but there were none to be had. I settled on a cheapo pair of seventies-secretary specs – an entirely different breed – and will devote the winter to happily scouring op-shops for the perfect catseye frames.
In the meantime, I hope the optometrist is done with mine soon. My eyes are fucking killing me.
8 Comments
June 1, 2009 at 1:27 am
Fatass astigmatism? All your Christmases have come at once!
I’m also keeping an eye out for new frames at the moment. Teh funs.
June 1, 2009 at 9:54 am
I have a fatass astigmatism too. Does that mean you’ll have one lens and one glass inset in your glasses? Eye twins!
June 1, 2009 at 11:02 am
Did you opt for Dillon’s? Pun intended.
June 1, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Welcome to the four-eyes club, yay!
June 1, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Two astigmatisms? The way the optometrist explained it was confusing… apparently each of my eyes is at an angle (making hand gestures) and when both of them are open they cancel each other out (crossing hands a la Deal or No Deal). Yeah, like that.
I did end up going to Dillon… the man was gruff but helpful. And I liked his little shop very much.
June 4, 2009 at 5:54 pm
As a child I was taunted for my hand-picked, boys’ gold-rimmed glasses…so sad.
I wonder if Shirley Jackson’s twin bakelite coronae would be considered cool as cool today.
Can’t say I understand the will to appear like a secretary-underling, though.
June 10, 2009 at 7:11 am
look, it’s The Vettori effect – i have explained this at length before.
named for NZ cricketer Daniel Vettori, it is the phenomenon whereby and average, even utterly unremarkable looking human being is transformed into total hotness by the addition of spectacles.
i witnessed three intelligent, graduate degree holding women in their late 20s cooing like schoolgirls at the aforementioned cricketer, only to downshift into ‘ew, who is that boring git, more Vettori, plz!’ chat when, during a crickeyt broadcast returned from an ad break to show DANIEL VETTORI SANS SPECS, reading on the boundary. THEY, LITERALLY, DID NOT RECOGNISE HIS HOTNESS WITHOUT THE GLASSES!
also: i think it’s like diabetes – dumb people think ‘eating crap’ gives it to you, and likewise assume people with glasses wear them because they ‘read a lot’ and, ergo, ‘must be smart’.
when in reality their eyes are just shit.
doesn’t stop me from wanting some of The Vettori Effect myself.
June 10, 2009 at 7:12 am
ugh, i just realised how utterly inarticulate that was.
it’s 5am, my hands are freezing, can’t type. shut up.