Lures, jewelry snag angler’s eye

According to Elle magazine, anglers are the cutting edge of fashion.

I discovered this Monday while waiting to see my dentist. There was a dearth of reading material, but my pathological need to read compelled me to pick up the December issue of Elle. That title appears frequently in The New York Times crossword as an answer to clues such as “Vogue competitor” or “Fashion anagram.”

Elle. Write it down along with Alda, Etui, Ewer, Ebb and Neap and about a dozen other daily NYT gimmes.

In addition to being on the cutting edge of fashion (according to Elle), I am also an NYT crossword junkie. The crossword is the first thing I do every morning, and only in pen. I consider it a personal failure if I make a single mistake, but I also consider it a victory if my conquered puzzle looks like a massive ink smudge. Those slugfests sometimes take days to solve.

For an extra challenge, I only solve the Down clues and fill in the Across clues by deduction. It also makes a mess of that particular Style Section page because I use it as a worksheet. I scrawl all over the comics, which really irritates my daughters.

Don’t get me started about Judge Parker, which also appears at the bottom of that page. Miss Laura and I discuss Judge Parker and its vapid cast of twits the way millennials discus Game of Thrones. And Zits, too, because we live it.

I usually smoke the crossword until Friday and Saturday, when I am forced to use both grids. I regard each side as coasts and beachheads. I employ strategies I call the “Seep,” “Ivy” and “Rain” to isolate and eliminate pockets of “resistance.”

I could write a book about this, but, um … what was I talking about? Elle? Right!

As I waded through pages and pages of Elle’s “heroin chic” fashion ads, I found a whimsical photo essay about fishing-themed jewelry. It is really expensive jewelry, too, with each page featuring the works of a different designer.

The jewelry, ironically, was overshadowed by stunning arrangements of fishing lures.

Naturally, I examined closely to see which lures I have. I have most of them.

There were Rapala Jigging Raps and other fancy ice fishing jigs. Another page showed a selection of lipless crankbaits conspicuously represented by what appeared to be Lunkerhunt Krakens, Sebile Flatt Shadds and even a fine Arkansas product, the LuckE-Strike Hail Mary.

Also pictured were plastic frogs, notably the River2Sea Spittin Wa frog.

Most impressive was the assortment of swimbaits. They were jointed hardbody types in rainbow trout patterns that look very similar to a pair that I bought at the 2013 Bassmaster Classic in Tulsa. There were many more, but the sensory overload nearly shorted my circuits.

Don Singleton, a professor in the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in the

1980s, speculated about the way that beer ads promote solidarity among brand loyalists. For example, a Budweiser ad during a football game infuses Bud quaffers with such pride that they puff out their chests, raise a fisted longneck and shout, “Hell, yeah!”

I heard that lecture in 1982 when I worked nights with a fellow named John Watt, who is now the pastor at a Baptist church in western Pulaski County. I asked him at that time if this theory were true. “Hell, no!” Watt scoffed. His emphatic response left no room for argument, but I reconsidered as I absorbed myself in Elle’s ersatz fishing catalog. I felt curiously vindicated as I recognized lures that I own and use in a magazine that is a light year and 180 degrees from my universe.

I admire the person that arranged those photo spreads. The curator chose carefully, and I wondered where he or she got the items. Online?

Over the counter?

Moreover, that person is obviously knowledgeable about bass fishing. Is that person a native southerner, or does he or she have a bass fishing advisor in the South?

Common discount store lures would have subverted the jewelry’s projection of exclusivity and elegance. Instead, the selections enhanced it. They were stealthily well conceived. That was obvious to a good ol’ boy with a toothache in Saline County, Arkansas.

I wonder what the average Elle reader thinks of all those hooks? I wonder if they’ll get hate mail over it?