Thursday, January 08, 2004
Who Thought This was a Good Idea, Again?
I’ve noticed two dumb looking things that demand public excoriation. Mainly, I just like the word “excoriation” and haven’t had a chance to use it since I took out my kitchen counters. (Ba-Dum!) But when you see the following, now, I want you all to notice it and point it out and then giggle and make other people realize how dumb it looks. Because it’s not enough to be smart - you have to make fun of what’s not.
* Fat Flagpoles: They’re starting to make flagpoles that are like five feet in diameter and five stories tall. It’s like a skinny smokestack, but it’s really a fat flagpole. It’s so fat that the flag itself has to hang from a rotating arm that swings around the enormous girth of the pole, so it doesn’t just wrap around and get plastered in place. It’s so fat that the flag itself looks pathetic and limp, dangling like ... well, all the analogies I can think of would have me up on charges under the patriot act so I’ll leave it at this: If having a flag is not enough for you, try a laser show or a staging of the signing of the declaration of independence. But these fat flagpoles say nothing to me about patriotism. They say something about genital inadequacy, but I’m not really up on that subject so I’ll leave it to others to expound.
* I’ve already made my position clear about bleached “worn spots” on jeans. But I understand that one person with aesthetic sensitivity cannot undo a fashion juggernaught like this passion for staining one’s clothes with pale smears remotely reminiscent of the evidence of strenuous physical labor. For what it’s worth, I wear my jeans till Ol’ Levi Strauss himself descends from his heavenly lair to complain that I’m making him look bad, but I’ve never gotten a pale patch over the tops of my thighs and each of my asscheeks like I see on the pants worn by any number of delicate flowers on Union Square every day. But I can be bigger than this. I thought so, anyway. But now I see that some bleach-pattern jeans are coming out with a little bleach ring on the back pocket. This can, I think, only be intended to replicate the pattern worn by a tin of chaw. Isn’t that fashionable? Look cool - look like your oral addiction to nicotine is wearing you out from both ends at once! If oral cancer, discolored teeth, and a prediliction to spit wads of toxic wastewater isn’t enough, you can buy pants that reflect your twisted ethic! and if you aren’t cool enough to chew, the little ring won’t give away your secret. The damn things ought to come with a Mullet wig.
* Finally, there’s a big billboard right at a freeway offramp I often use. It shows a house decorated for the holidays, and in the foreground is a huge bottle of booze with a full highball glass, half buried in snow as if they were set in someone’s front lawn and then a blizzard blew through. The text says, “Here’s to outdoing the neighbors.” Every goddamn time, I read it as “Here’s to Outing the Neighbors.” Yeah, their decorations do look a little gay, but come on, they have the nicest flower border on the block! Can’t we all just get along?