Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks’s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

I want to tell you about an object or service or good of questionable importance and presumably little market value — though I personally believe the object or service or good is pretty nifty, and think you should know about it — but will first make you endure a 300 to 400 word introduction, all the while employing sentences that are too long and divided by too many parenthetical phrases — all part of my attempt to get to some sort of point about the object or good or service in question. This introduction will more than likely include an anecdote of questionable relevance and/or taste, causing you to lose sight of the object or service or good in question — even though, as I said, I think it’s pretty nifty — thereby rendering its importance all the more marginal, thus even further reducing its already limited market value. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.    

Ah, January! A new year, fresh beginnings, resolute resolutions (not all the adjectives can be good), and, of course, the start of National Sobering Up Month here at the Gentleman of Leisure Institute for Higher Learning of Useless Things and Various Other Even More Useless Things (Dynasty XII Middle Egyptian, for instance, or perhaps Post-Amarna representations of sun deities; I wish I was joking). And so, I thought January might be the perfect time to write a column dedicated to my continued, firmly held belief that my computer should be armed with a breathalyzer, especially when it pertains to online purchases. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

With the holiday season upon us, I am reminded that by familial disposition I am both a really lousy gift-giver and in a perpetual state of geographic dislocation. During the rest of the year, I suffer from an inordinate amount of seemingly good ideas that, through their implementation, tend to spiral out of control. And so, what follows is a tale, rambling in nature (if pressed for time, I would skip down to the third paragraph from the bottom), about the Goods 4 Good holiday e-card, why they are incredible, and why you should be sending them this December. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

I am a man of simple tastes and many, many overly-complicated sentences. Unfortunately, the latter part of this statement means that I sometimes have to sacrifice my bloggitudinal output in favor of printed words (they do still exist!), where pay is measured in dollars rather than hay-pennies, and deadlines revolve around months rather than decimal-minutes. Extending this blogrithmetic a little further, 125 years in normal time is approximately one month in internet time, ergo, my writing about a new shirt line one month after its launch is the exact same thing as the shirt company itself celebrating its 125th anniversary! Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

With 6 p.m. being the start of what I’ve termed our household’s Neil Diamond/Yanni Listening Hour, I don’t like to think of myself as an avid runner so much as a man who has tried, once a day for the past ten years, to escape his family on foot, only to change his mind three to five miles down the road. I’ve come to enjoy these bust outs from Marksatraz, and, to a certain extent, the rhythmic monotony that comes with them –- the drumming of sneaker-to-pavement, my iTunes perpetually stuck in 1997 guilty-pleasure mode, my wandering, limitless thoughts (mostly about iguanas) after a day spent chained to a desk. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

When an affordable 8 mm camera came onto the market in the 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola predicted, “one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart.” Little did he know that with the advent of inexpensive digital cameras, social networking sites, and blogs, that little fat girl from Ohio would turn out to be a puckish Korean gentleman named Hanuk. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

Once upon a time, all a man needed for a good shave was a sharp blade, a bar of soap, an old mug, and a freshly caught badger (the bristles for lathering, the haunches for eating). But as razors started taking on the names and structural components once reserved for F-16 fighter jets, we entered the Era of the Product, and my bathroom soon filled with enough balms, salves, and ointments to give the pachyderms at Barnum and Bailey’s a spa day. Pre- shave, post-shave, meta-shave, inter- and intra-shave — prefixes so difficult to parse that I did what any sensible person would do; I grew a beard. But when my facial hair transitioned from refined to academic to Unabomber-esque, I thought it high time to go back to the medicine cabinet. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

Last week, Guy Trebay wrote about his ocular trials and tribulations over the discontinuance of the Oliver Peoples frame the O’Malley, his go-to pair of glasses since the 1980s. I could not empathize more with this ophthalmological plight. And while Mr. Trebay’s article was bound by the constraints of traditional print media (getting paid for his writing, it subsequently appearing in print, etc. etc.), the blogosphere is an infinite resource, run by a room full of gerbils hopped up on amphetamine (little known fact!), allowing me to go into rather specific, almost ludicrous detail about my own eyewear struggles, while employing overly long appositional phrases riddled with punctuation errors. Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

With numerous articles and style guides proclaiming that we are now in the midst of The Summer of the Short, this week, I serve as one part Miss Emily Post, one part Captain Quint from Jaws, steering us through the treacherous shoals and animatronic shark-infested waters of the half- and quarter-pant, in this, the Gentleman of Leisure’s Guide to the Proper Usage of the Beshortened Pantaloon — or GoLGPUBP for short(s). Read more at PAPERMag.com.

Gentleman of Leisure is writer, erstwhile lecturer and notionally overeducated Martin Marks‘s PAPERMAG column on the things he likes and why.

When questioned about the identities of my favorite musicians, I’ve always said that Levon Helm (and Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson of the Band) and Diana Ross (along with Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Betty McGlown of the Supremes) formed the Holy Trinity of American Popular Music. This has been my strongly held belief for many years, and I’d only concede two points in the matter: that The Band was four-fifths Canadian, and that, as per its name, a Trinity usually suggests a triad of something. For some reason, I was never willing to reveal who I thought should join Mr. Helm and Ms. Ross at the top of America’s musical pantheon. Sadly, the third member of this Trinity passed away yesterday. And so, I thought I’d spend some time talking about what this humble columnist believes to be one of the greatest records of all time, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. Read more at PAPERMag.com.