Flat Personality

I don’t really mean to go on about Mr. Delbert Ding McDash’s exceptionally flat personality, but — hey! just take a good look at the dude! He’s the ultimate fizzle. The consummate bringdown. The man who’s never there. The dull background we can all shine against. The proverbial blank slate. The death of the party. That mediocre soufflé immediately after you’ve slammed the oven door a bit too hard. The blankest face in the blankest of crowds.

I realize that DDMcD has recently diversified his limited personal wardrobe in an attempt to get beyond his bland and unprepossessing self to a place of flair and fashion and notice by his fellow humans. Seriously, though? The diamond-patterned suspenders just aren’t happening, man! (Especially since Del insists on calling them ‘braces’, like some black-and-white TV character from The Rifleman. If that doesn’t date Del as near-Paleozoic, I don’t know what does.)

Nor do those weird high-water herringbones he’s hitching do much for his striving for sartorial splendor. They look like some Mad French Haberdasher’s idea of a fabric replica of La Defense (with cuffs), for Pierres sake!

(Let’s not even get into the issue of pale citron nylon socks above perforated oxblood broughams that went out of style when Bill Clinton was still in nappies. Please.)

And, take it from me, there are not many today who can pull off that ironed white cotton boat neck tee shirt beneath an ironed off-white muslin dress shirt — with matching cufflinks and stud-buttons, no less — look. Brad Pittt: maybe; Colin Farrell: maybe; Delbert Ding McDash: no chance!

Believe me, I have tried schooling our ol’ buddy McD in the ways of sparking up his social quotient and his noticeability factor. Have an expression now and then, I’ve told him. Learn to juggle. Find some discreet items of masculine makeup that might actually give your face and head some distinction in a crowd. Take up the kazoo. Grow some real hair. Start wearing an eyepatch.

And, by the way, if you’re looking to get noticed now and then, well, stop standing around in the boring stretches of Death Valley, or the plains of Kansas, or the parking lots of New Jersey shopping centers, or the swampy stretches of Alligator Alley, or some desolate airstrip in Minot, North Dakota, already.

Instead, breed vampire bats in your spare bedroom. Fly to Monte Carlo and fall for a bisexual croupier. Off-handedly discover a cure for cancer while perfecting Cajun newt sausage. Publish your memoirs and name names, places, dates and assorted sexual paraphernalia, even if you have to make it all up. Pierce a nipple or two. Kidnap Dick Cheney and demand $5 million dollars or else you’ll set him free again. Tour with Lady Gaga as her live brassiere. Make a killing day trading in earbud futures. In other words: just get out there and be outrageous, my deathly dull dimwitted dodo!

After all, what have you got to lose? (Nothing you really wanted to hang onto anyway, right?)