Would You Like To See My Fall 2013 Hat?

Every Spring and Fall, I purchase a stylish new hat from Mike the Hatter’s.  It’s a slightly vain expenditure, but I’ve become a little fastidious in my old age, what with my pretty nails and gaudy Hawaiian shirts and Cuban-heeled boots.
Gini laments the expense at times, but then again she complained at me for a solid decade that she wanted me to wear something more elaborate than black jeans, black T-shirt, and sneakers.  The lesson? Careful what you wish for.
Anyway, this year’s hat was a very close call. I literally spent twenty minutes putting these two hats on and off, wandering around the store to see if there was a clearer choice to be made, wandering back, asking Gini, asking my father, asking the very knowledgeable salesmen, trying them on and off.  And the winner was not this hat, though it was damn close:

This year, I wanted to experiment with something more colorful than the usual browns and tans – alas, pale green made me look like a pillbox, and bold purple, though magnificent, would have clashed with every Hawaiian shirt I own. So wine-colored it was, though in the end it was the shape of the hat that dissuaded me; there was something about the way it sat on my head that I deemed funny.
As a side note, I am not a hat person. Gini is a hat person. I wear hats, but I have to try twenty or thirty of them on before I find one even marginally acceptable. Gini flips on any hat, and she looks as adorable as this (which she purchased for a cheap $14.99):

In any case, the end winner was this delightful little number, which was also a slightly brighter shade of maroon. (If that’s maroon. As I’ve noted before in cartoon form, men see in different spectrums.)

That, my friends, is the official Fall 2013 hat.  You can see it at all my public appearances through next Spring, at which point I’ll purchase some spiffy new Panama hat.