“Mr. Tyrangiel is 37, and, with his rosy cheeks and bright brown eyes, seems like he should be playing stickball in 1940s Brooklyn instead of editing a business magazine.” — From today’s story about Josh Tyrangiel and Businessweek in the Times
Wait, what? What is that? Leaving aside “he should be,” isn’t that a very weird, specific image? Why the forties? Why Brooklyn? Is that an image from Stephanie Clifford’s dream? If not, and she is simply being whimsically descriptive, why didn’t she go with “Mr. Tyrangiel looks like he belongs on the streets of Victorian London, hawking matchsticks to feed his chimney family”? Or, “If wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of a business suit, Tyrangiel would be a dead ringer for one of the cherubim in a Baroque-era church fresco”? Or, like, “Mr. Tyrangiel is 37, and, with his impish chin and mischievous dimples, seems like he should prancing around in a Harlequin uniform with bright-red lipstick from a mid-fifteenth-century traveling Commedia dell’Arte troupe”? Or, how about simply: “Come on, can’t you just see the kid running down a cobblestone street in knee-high britches pushing a wooden hoop with a stick?” Just asking.
