The Emperor's New T-Shirt

There is something of a delicious (read: appalling) irony of New York calling itself the fashion capital of the world. The latest trend apparently is to not wear any clothes. At least this is what I gather from the fact that no one seems to put on actual clothes anymore. The streets are filled with half-dressed do-nothings wearing wholly insufficient amounts of shirt. On a good day you can spot at least a baker’s dozen of these individuals sporting only a v neck undershirt and a keffia.

If we were inclined to give our sartorial offenders the benefit of the doubt, we might presume that they are such busy and productive people that they simply do not have time to put on clothes in the morning. If they’re not out of the house in fewer than the 30 seconds it would have taken to put on an actual shirt, the nuclear launch codes will fall into the hands of the terrorists. And of course by nuclear launch codes I mean excessively tight pants, and by terrorists, I mean people who wake up before the breakfast menu items are no longer available at McDonalds.

An alternative explanation is that New Yorkers are so post-fashion that no actual clothes could possibly capture their trail-blazing sense of style. The internal monologue goes something like this: “Wearing clothes is so April of 2009. Wouldn’t it be edgy slash borderline indecent exposure if I just walked around in my underwear? Yes, yes it would. I’m gonna do it, here I go, out the door, wearing nothing by my crocs and the wife beater I fell asleep in last night. [Shields his eyes as he walks outside into the 2 pm sunlight]. Hey, it’s working! People are really intrigued. I am so fashion forward that I’m giving these jokers whiplash.”

But the most likely explanation of all, sad to say, is that our friends on the metaphorical and physical island are mindless snobs who would wear anything “on trend” as long as it’s overpriced. See e.g. American Apparel. A metaphor about bridges and lemmings comes to mind, but I’ll leave that for you fully clothed readers to figure out.

Of course this forum is something of a how-to on manners and etiquette, our lack of a proper title notwithstanding, so those of you who have been following along may wonder how this discussion relates to the theme. The fundamental problem is simple: we do not want people walking around in their underwear because they are generally flabby, sweaty, and altogether disgusting. We know this is true and before you release your indignant guffaw, think back to the last time someone asked you to pose for a Mr. or Ms. can’t-pay-for-my-education calendar and then let’s move on. The more complicated issue then is the insufficient clothing worn by people who we might prefer to see with even less clothing. Walking around showing off the fruits of your exercise bulimia is an affront to all job-holding, red-meat eating Americans trying to get through the day without a constant reminder of the crippling self-consciousness. I’m sorry if your daddy didn’t love you as a child and if you want to shake your moneymaker in the privacy of a dark bar or hipster coffeehouse, that’s your business. But for heaven’s sake put some clothes on when you go out in daylight.

Fail Blazer

Ladies, I’m giving you the week off. There is an epidemic going on in this country that has been affecting only the male of the species so I would suggest that you quarantine yourselves while we purge the population of those that have been infected. It would probably be a good idea to tuck the kiddies into bed while you’re at it because this installment is going to be a bit “adult.”

Now gentlemen, I give you…your comeuppance. It seems that throughout your formative years, you were so busy learning how to spit and to calculate the elapsed time since the last airing of Sports Center that you never learned how to dress yourselves. Time and again I walk past an otherwise neat and earnest young go-getter only to shrink back in horror when I observe the sartorial atrocities he has committed. We are going to catalogue them from most to least egregious but you should note that these offenses are different only in degree (and yes, I am aware that, technically, there are no degrees of egregiousness, but I could do without the back talk). They all share the common characteristic of announcing to the world that you were raised by wolves.

Just the other day I almost bounced a young man from an interview I was not even conducting because I saw him marching toward his inquisition wearing a blazer and slacks of the same color. Those of you thinking to yourselves, “Wow, that sounds like a pretty snappy combo,” are beyond salvation and should consider occupations that require you to use no discretion whatsoever; perhaps a garbage man, or a senator. The problem is that by trying to make a “suit” out of “not a suit,” you project an image of being a lazy slob who will cut corners and cannot be bothered to observe even the most elementary of social graces. A prospective employer or client might wonder, if you are willing to patch this little ensemble together, what sort of duct taped, jerry-rigged mass of techno scrap you are going to produce for them with the money you were supposed to use to install a new network server. “Oh don’t worry sir, Linux works just like Windows only cheaper…of course it shuts down periodically and without warning but if you just hold the ‘ctrl’ key at all times, that seems to do the trick.”

The blazer bonanza is perhaps the gateway offense to the next issue on our agenda…vents and tags. Something on the Y chromosome must make the menfolk terrified of threads because it seems you cannot bear to cut anything that is sewn to the clothes you buy. I shudder to reflect on the countless cases of a vented jacket or overcoat still bearing the telltale “x” stitch holding the back in place like a glaring scarlet letter as an eternal reminder of your sin against good manners…eternal, that is, until you remove it. For those of you having trouble following this discussion, I will put it in terms that you can understand: the string holding the flappy thing together on your new suit is meant to be CUT OFF! The same goes for the label on the sleeve to remind you which has-been designer happened to have their shipment of merchandise on sale the day you went to TJMaxx. No one cares that your ill fitting duds were hand-crafted by Alfredo Linguine in Florence, China so just bag the tag and we can all move one with our lives.



However what I absolutely cannot understand is whether you have just been oblivious to the buttons under your short collar or were confused about their function. Normally, when you see a button and a button hole, instinct should take over and impel you toward social self preservation. But we must have found the missing link because I continue to see gents out and about without a care in the world and their collars flapping in the breeze. This is not the natural order of things. A truly well crafted collar will be stiff and have a slot for a small piece of metal or plastic to keep it straight and neat. Naturally, though, this is too advanced a concept for you so the good folks at the shirt manufacturers have simplified things. No need to keep track of extra components. The buttons are right there for your use, every time, right were they should be…directly under the holes into which you are supposed to push them (TWSS…but there’s no time, but she did, but there’s no time).

As per usual, I will not leave you without a solution. First of all, you should stop being such a tightwad. Get a little extravagant and make a trip to Filene’s Basement for a proper suit. It may cost you a little more than your usual $15 blue light special, but I promise you it is worth a couple of weeks of downgrading to Red Stripe from your usual PBR. Secondly, stop being such a lazy so-and-so. I know you have the manual dexterity of mentally challenged walrus but they even make special scissors for people like you now so there’s really no excuse. As for the shirt situation, just take one day and walk around your house gathering your shirts up off of the floor, or the back of the chair, or under the kitchen sink and button the collars while you’re watching PTI. Whatever you do, though, do NOT miss the third re-run of Sports Center. It always, ALWAYS has new information than it had the two times before.

Oh! A Gime!

I am confident that Queen Elizabeth sweats. I am equally confident that she does not grunt like a baboon or groom her nose hairs in the gym. She manages to keep her composure at the age of 82 years young. So what is your excuse you ill-mannered sack of crap? I will never for the life of me understand why people find it acceptable to behave so disgustingly when they are working out. At any rate, I will not let that deter me from my purpose of cataloging the depths to which human civilization has sunk.

I think it only fitting to begin with the beginners. I know you have seen these individuals. They stroll in chattering with two or three of their flabbiest, most irritating friends, all decked out in matching track suits (or for men, those ridiculous over-sized basketball shorts that hang down to your ankles because they are designed for folks much taller and more athletic than you). They then gather around some complicated, and inevitably popular machine and stare at it like they’re in an art museum. You’ll notice them hide their confusion by continuing to chatter as they sit backwards in the seat, put their hands tentatively on the foot rest and thrust outward just hard enough to give themselves a hernia. Eventually they roll onto the floor clutching their side and crawl over to the next machine you want to use so that they can further injure themselves while also keeping you from getting on with your workout. Ordinarily, I’d say killing two birds with one stone is great, unless you happen to be one of the birds.

The beginners are followed closely behind, literally, by a hoard of wife-beater wearing steroid junkies who love the gym more than life and themselves more than the gym. They identify themselves as members of this genus by pausing after every three reps to check themselves out in the mirror. Adding to the freakishness is the fact that they perform this ritual in pairs.

“Wow, Franz,” says Hans, “that last set really makes the hairs on your arm look especially buff.”

“Thanks Hans,” says Franz, “if you check me out from a forty-five degree angle I hardly look pudgy at all in this wife beater.”

While I find this whole production odd, I would not necessarily commit these folks just for a bit of delusional body dysmorphia. What is clinically nutso, however, is when the same individuals press themselves right up against the mirror to explore the various orifices of their face. I know you know what I’m talking about so you can just take your guffaw and muffle it. It continues to baffle me that people who take no care to groom themselves at home, suddenly feel a social pressure to inspect their faces for deer tics while they are in the gym. I suppose what I’m really asking is why are they susceptible to one form of shaming and not another? Surely there’s plenty of shame to go around.

Last but not least, we have the screamers. This is a subset of the steroid junkies who manage to be irritating both during and between exercises. Now it is worth mentioning that in whatever gym you frequent, no one is going to the Olympics. They are probably not even going to make it past the Krispy Kreme next door. The only point then of their loud panting and vociferating seems to be to draw attention to their narcissistic mirror-loving selves and their heterosexual gym partners. While I try not to get graphic, I hope you’ll humor me with a little exercise. Imagine that these grunting primates are sitting on a toilet rather than a weight bench. If you’re as disgusted as I am, you’ll take advantage of the next available opportunity to drop an unfortunately placed free weight on one of their hormone swollen feet.

Back that thang up. . .

. . .at your peril. Since we all seem to be having so much trouble understanding the basic tenets of human decency, maybe we can start by taking a lesson from the machines. Have you ever noticed how trucks, tractors, forklifts, boats, barges and even the occasional dirigible all make a beeping noise when they back up? Why do you think that is? (I’ll pause while you let that sink in). So it turns out that this irritating chirping has a valuable function, alerting whatever detritus has been stashed behind said object to get out of the damn way. Ok so that’s one for the mechanical engineers (licking finger and gesturing to make a vertical line in the air).

In fact, I dare say the beeping feature is so useful that the science club even has a leg up on the almighty on this point. This is because you, clunky and mechanical though you are, do not possess such a talent. When you back up, no one sees it coming. Your generous hind-quarters turn you into a human wrecking ball and woe betide your mother’s porcelain kittens if they should be in your path. You have knocked over drinks, trampled on toes, and even ruined a few priceless antiques all for want of a horn and a sense of direction. Actually, if we’re honest with ourselves, the real problem is that you are completely oblivious to your surroundings. This has become so common a theme that I’ve given up trying to get you to change.

What would please me to no end, however, would be for you to stop randomly backing into stuff. At the lunch counter, the water fountain, even getting tickets for a move, just turn and walk forward. It’s that simple. Indeed even if you are from New Jersey, or are Zoolander, you have no excuse because I am completely indifferent as to whether you turn right or left (insert lame political pun here). What I cannot abide is the idea that you are so egoistic that you think what you cannot see does not exist. You have no idea whether there is someone behind you and therefore, in the wheel inside a ball inside your empty skull, there must not be. So there you go arms a’flailin’, backpack bustin’, treating the world as though there weren’t 6 billion other people in it who might not have gotten the memo that you’re entitled to go lumbering around wherever you please.


As I foreshadowed in the last paragraph, it is worth mentioning the exponential irritation that the addition of a backpack adds to this situation. Given that you do not even have functional control over the appendages that are attached to you, I cannot comprehend how you could expect to manage a contraption that adds such heft and girth to your already unmanageable frame. But I suppose you have proven me right yet again, because you do not expect to manage yourself at all. Instead, you expect to bump and push and maneuver through whatever objects, non-living or otherwise, that happen to be situated between you and the precise spot on the floor you have selected to place your feet. Part of me has to admire that kind of confidence and determination. Another, less forgiving part of me thinks there’s a special place in hell for people like you where the devil uses his Jansport to beat you to a pulp.

Shut Your Mouth

If the good Lord had intended for you to use your tongue to give someone a dental exam, we would not have Hepatitis. It so happens, though, that your last round of collagen injections is not what is causing your lips to be all puffy and filled with toxins; that friends, is what we call natural selection. Despite what you may be thinking, I am not here to admonish your “cavalier behavior.” What you do in plain view of the neighbors because you forgot to close your blinds is your own business; which brings me to my point. If you want to slobber all over your significant other like a Saint Bernard, that is none of my business and I’d like to keep it that way.

It seems our fair city has been afflicted with an epidemic of offensive public displays of total lack of self control. Everywhere I cast my eyes I encounter young people making soft core on city streets without a paycheck or a camera. Of course the reason they are not getting a paycheck is because no one is buying what they are selling. Eyes Wide Shut notwithstanding, do not be fooled by the idealized portrayals of romance purveyed by that most honest and productive of our American industries. Watching two people trying to suck the saliva off of each other’s uvulas is not an attractive sight.

What continues to gall me is why people find it acceptable to succumb to this temptation while forgoing so many others. Other than our striped-shirted friends who from time to time take the trouble to cross the great water, we do not defecate in the streets. Nor do we clip our fingernails in a library (sigh, that is a story for another day). Nor do we throw our empty plastic bottle into the spokes of the bicyclist who nearly killed us running a red light (though one of these days, one of them is going to get it and then we’ll see them try to ring that damn bell with a broken wrist). When dogs cannot control their urge to hump things, we put them in crates and don’t think for a second that I would not do the same to you if anyone made a crate big enough.

A related issue is the need for 1) fat and 2) insecure (see #1) men to always grab onto areas of their unsuspecting female companions’ anatomy that normally require a special doctor. This looks as though they are addressing one of two concerns. Either they are worried that their conquest will somehow escape (and who could blame her?), or they are checking to make sure that all of the expected parts are indeed there. In any case, whether she has designs to flee or is somehow missing an essential component without which she is worthless to you is none of mine or anyone else’s business (so long as your story does not wind up on a very special Law & Order). So we must find some solution to my having to watch you attempt to reduce to possession that poor waif who only wanted a big diamond and modest domestic staff. Here again, we can look to Mother Nature for guidance. When animals in the wild want to mark their territory, they just pee on it. Alright then gentlemen, button up those striped shirts and let ‘er rip, so long as you get that out of the way at home.

English M*!@#*f*!@#*...Do You Speak It?!?

The other day at the Barney’s warehouse sale, I saw two Russians invade and occupy a rack of neckties marked up to 70% off of their original prices. At least, that’s what I thought they were doing, I don’t speak Russian. And lucky for them because they were talking loud enough for the whole room to hear them; and believe you me, I would have gladly sacrificed the armload of goodies I was holding to keep that treasure trove out of the hands of the Reds. But a moment’s hesitation caught me flat footed as I wondered whether they maybe just thought this was a black market of some kind (after all, there was a shockingly high number of security guards (who demonstrated a shockingly low level of productivity)). If they thought they were going to find a crucible of yellowcake under the discarded remnants of DKNY’s bad year at the office, I wasn’t going to be the one to stop them.

This raises the much larger but less national-security-related issue of people speaking foreign languages loudly in public places where others cannot understand them. Now I’m going to pick up where your mothers left off (or rather never started) and pull a page straight out of Miss Manners: this is RUDE! No one cares what you say in your home or what you whisper privately to the boy walking with you hoping that you get laryngitis. What makes this behavior so abhorrent is that it shows a conscious disregard for the other human beings in your presence.

I know I’m not alone in this. Joe Biden can’t even stand to be around people who speak English with an accent. Having to deal with someone who doesn’t speak English at all would probably make his hairs stand on end. And who could blame him? If you don’t take a stand early, you could end up with some kind of fungus.

On the other side of the coin (which ironically contains words in Latin) there are the feelings and sensitivities of the non-natives to consider. Perhaps carving out a bubble of isolation in our helter-skelter discount-seeking marketplace of ideas is exactly the respite they need after a long hard day of enjoying personal freedom and living under the blanket of protection afforded by our massive national security apparatus. After all, George Washington was mister isolationist (he would have won Mister Universe as well but it turns out he was bald as a ripe tomato without the powdered wigs).

Coming back to my side of the coin, I say go isolate yourself at home. The world is filled with enough misunderstanding and egoism to sink the ship that brought you here. I’d prefer you not go to such pains to make it clear that you see me as a household moveable that you are free to alternatively ignore and hold your drinks without a coaster. I am a human being, not a human thinking, not a human doing, and not a human who is afraid to knock the teeth out of a mouth that does not treat me as such.

STFU...Seriously

Alright girls, I don’t know which of the X chromosomes contains the gene that causes you to squeal like a stuck pig every time you experience an emotion in public but it has to stop. My ears are still ringing from an encounter with a couple of 18 year old coeds shrieking with delight over their discovery of a new way to lace their Chucks. At least I think they were delighted. The noise is virtually indistinguishable from the apparent cries of anguish I heard moments later when they discovered that someone else had already discovered that lacing method.

Yes it seems one can’t walk a city block without a blood-curdling cry puncturing one’s ear drums and there’s a particular demographic to blame. Young women all over the country are using more words in more ways (well, probably repeating many of the same words over and over) than ever before using text messages, instant messages, Blackberry messages and carrier pigeons; yet when it comes time to express any sentiment more complicated than “I want a Diet Coke,” they return to a state of nature and scream like a howler monkey without the charm. I find it hard to believe that the fairer sex has picked up so foul an affectation by accident and I have a few theories about the true culprit.

I’m no Dr. Phil, but I’d say safe money is on you ladies being desperate for attention. You’ve already had a swing-and-a-miss trying to use looks or personality to get people to notice you so you turn on your siren and try catch some pedestrian off guard long enough to get your hooks in. I’ll tell you why this is a terrible idea just a minute but suffice it to say (not “sufficeth” for you Rhodes scholars out there) that this is sure to fail.

Think about this from the perspective of your prey. They are temperamental, narrowly focused, and easily distracted. They get one taste of your best banshee impression, do a quick over-under on how long it will take before they have to kill you to get the ringing to stop and decide that they cannot prepare a justifiable homicide defense by next week. So they keep moving and the dance begins again.

The much bigger issue here is the girl crying wolf. Eventually, humans will evolve to the point that they can tune out all the sound in your register, and then we have real problems because one of these days the hem of your dress is going to get caught in an escalator or your hair will catch on fire because you leaned too far over the candle on the table at that nice restaurant (how I wish this had not really happened) and no one will pay you any mind, thinking it’s just your usual mating ritual.

And don’t come crying to me when that happens. If I haven’t already learned to block you out by then, I will just laugh and laugh and laugh. So it’s time to take a stand for feminism ladies. Save your dresses and your tresses by corking your pie hole next time you have the urge to get vocal.