Last Friday, with a lunch scheduled at the University Club, I came to Cyan’s office in a suit. Which, in turn, prompted unexpected jealousy from my colleagues. Apparently, wearing a suit is actually fun, assuming you’re not required to do it every day.

So, with consensus of the Cyan team, I’ve now re-instituted Anti-Casual Fridays, our old policy wherein we dress to the nines the one day each week that the rest of corporate New York (or, at least, the bankers with whom we’ve been dealing these days for our hedge fund) dresses down.

Of course, we’re not a perfect converse of those bankers’ schedule, as what qualifies as ‘dressed down’ in that world is something so Brooks Brothers catalog as to make even my CFO, a sailboat-owning WASP, cringe.

No, our casual still permits jeans and flip-flops. At least once the weather warms. But, even then, come the height of August, on Friday it should still be full-on Anti-Casual. Who doesn’t love a khaki or seersucker suit?

In my case, apparently, all you have to do is shave off the beard.

What I really want for Chanukah:

Although we’ve now been in Cyan’s new offices for a couple of months, the place is still, sadly, exceedingly barren. We have desks, chairs, and a conference table. And that’s it. No art on the walls, no extraneous seating, not even a table for our printer, which instead sits in the corner on the floor.

While we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to this minimalist chic, visitors persist in giving us a hard time about it. So, as of this week, we’ve started a half-assed decorating campaign – buying up reception seating and side tables, and strategizing about art options.

Unfortunately, the standard approach for production and distribution companies’ wall art is more self-aggrandizing than this site, and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek: framed movie posters from the company’s releases, organized in as looming an assortment of star power and combined theatrical gross as the company can muster.

Companies short on egotism, or at least short on films they can brag about, sometimes veer towards a more idealized approach, instead framing classic posters from film’s better eras.

We however, think it would be funnier to instead frame posters from really, really bad films: From Justin to Kelly, Glitter, Anaconda, 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, Battlefield Earth.

Toss in SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, for which I was for some time erroneously listed as Art Director on IMDB, and we’re pretty much good to go.

For the past year or so, I wore and loved a pair of Kenneth Cole boots. They were comfortable. They made me tall. (Or, at least, as close as you can get to tall from a 5’6″ starting point.) And they looked good.

Or so I thought.

A few weekends back, however, over pizza at our apartment with our siblings and all their significant others, Jess and the other females went on an extended diatribe, tearing to shreds ‘man boots’ – what I and three out of the four other guys in attendance were wearing.

And, in short, it turned out that, while we guys all thought we looked good, the girls thought we looked like idiots. Worse, in subsequent polling, I universally reconfirmed that initial split: guys, pro; girls, very, very con.

So, continuing further the field-research-driven footwear rethinking, I polled on replacement ideas, and ended up with a pair of navy Converse Chuck Taylor’s and another of tan suede Campers.

Which, on the one have, have elicited such male responses as my brother’s, “who’s your stylist, Ray Charles?” But, conversely, have been a hit with Jess and every other lady I’ve come across.

Given my demographic preference, I’m pretty sure that’s trading up.

God bless you Sorel and North Face, makers, respectively, of my new low-top slip-on and high-top lace-up winter boots.

It’s eight degrees here in Park City, and, for once, I’m not about to lose my toes to frostbite. Which is, perhaps, the best news of the fest so far.

Spurred on by an Israeli clinical study citation from my father, I returned this morning, albeit with much ribbing from Jess, to the nostril blow-drying. Being immediately out of the shower when I did, I decided to see what I’d look like with my hair blow-dried as well.

In short: like Sonic the Hedgehog. Should make for an interesting business dinner tonight.

This morning, I took my first trip on New Jersey’s PATH train, out to Hoboken, where my uncle Robert runs an optometry practice. A quick look at my glasses – whose super-glued right arm evidences their seven year age – reminded me I hadn’t had my eyes checked in three-quarters of a decade. So, Jersey-bound, I contemplated the possibility that I might actually be far blinder than my outdated, rather pansy prescription would otherwise indicate.

Fortunately, after much consideration of number one vs. number two random letter line readings, it seems my eyes are still pretty much exactly where they were before (a piddling -1.75 diopter), though with just a touch of newfound right eye astigmatism.

So, this morning, after forty-five minutes of letter line comparisons, I spent at least as long considering frame after frame after glasses frame. There are few accessories as omnipresent as a pair of glasses, and so I tried to balance out the demands of indie film cool with the need for something I could wear, day in and day out, for at least the next year or three.

The pince nez, therefore, fell by the wayside, as did a number of other options that seemed the optical equivalent of a joke that’s funny the first time, but gets painfully old when frequently retold. In the end, I settled on two frames, aiming to switch back and forth between them as whimsy might dictate: one slightly retro, the other a touch fashion-forward, though neither so bold as to become the first (or only) thing one might notice upon my entering a room.

Doubtless, the girl, my mother, and any other style-conscious female friends and family will disdain both choices. But, fortunately, as I can still glasses-less pass the driver’s license vision test, at very worst, I can always drop the glasses (and the faux-intellectual air they lend) entirely, and stumble through life only a short squint away from seeing things exactly as they are.