These beetles (peaking yesterday in number – at least I hope they peaked) are evil! Anyone living in Madison knows what I am referring to. They are pernicious bugs that, to the innocent eye look like ladybugs. But they bite. It is the ultimate irony that this friendly orange little thing should in reality be a poseur, out to do you in if you even slightly step in its path.

Yesterday morning I read (and linked to) Rothschild’s comment in the on-line Progressive on the presidential debate. In the evening I encountered him at the Wisconsin Book Festival, introducing one of the novelists. At the Orpheum stage, he made no reference to his earlier debate recap. But a subsequent author who spoke (and read a work in progress – a fantastic short story!), Jeffrey Eugenides (yes, of Middlesex and Virgin Suicides fame) did make a few remarks. He told the audience that he and his wife have just moved to Chicago and have yet to install their TV and so they have been listening to the debates on the radio. He told us “Yes, it is possible to hear on the radio Bush making faces; call it a sort of ‘vocal grimace.’”

I like Kerry’s tie that is on the front cover of the NYT Magazine. Here’s the thing (warning: I am about to brag shamelessly; modesty just went out the window with the last nasty little beetle): I had a reputation once for picking exquisite, extraordinary ties. The pressure to do even better each time was so tremendous that I would often spend hours upon hours on this project. I distinctly recall having once a 24 hour lay-over in Paris and devoting the BETTER PART of that time to a search for the perfect tie. I remember seeing one on a gentleman who was sitting and sipping an aperitif at a sidewalk café and wondering how whorish it would be to engage him in a conversation for a while, eventually offering payment (I mean of a monetary nature!) for the piece of silk loosely tied around his neck. I don’t remember than man’s face. I remember the tie.

Matthew Rothschild wore a tie last night and it struck me as having a strikingly conservative design. It always throws you when there is an inconsistency between the man’s persona and his tie.

Kerry’s tie (in case you don’t have the Magazine in front of you and you may well be without it because for some reason I got several in my NYT packet this morning) has fish swimming in one direction. [To the LEFT, of course -- like the arrows by the 24th street sign -- it’s a very subtle message and some may accuse me of reading too much into it, but I know I’m right. I mean correct.] Thus at the knot, the fish are necessarily pointing downward, toward the left-leaning fish, giving an overall appearance of a synchronized water-ballet of fish—sort of like an opening day performance at the Olympics, where thousands of local children go out and wave their flags and colorful banners en masse.

I mention this because we only have two dozen days before the election. We are down to basics now. A tie tells me a lot about a person. Based on that cover photo alone, Kerry’s got my vote.

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)