I just bought some new shorts yesterday. It is so late in the season that the GAP wasn’t even selling them anymore. I am still accustomed to Los Angeles living when it is shorts weather virtually year round. That doesn’t mean it is appropriate to where them anywhere and everywhere but that never stopped me before. So, I wandered down to Macy’s to see if I could find some shorts. There in the POLO department I found a nice array of shorts, all on sale, and virtually all of them with a waist size of 36. Curse those skinny gays getting all the good sizes! Finally I settled on a 33” pair just out of my size range but at least I liked how they looked on.
So I am wearing my new shorts today and I noticed something strange about them. Of course they are cargo shorts with seventeen pockets on them. But now all of the pockets button or zip close, some of them even have double flaps for added security. I am as concerned as the next person about losing a wallet or cell phone, having many times looked back into a cab as I climbed out and noticed my cell phone sitting on the seat. Those slippery rascals will slip out of your back pocket during the bumpy ride across Manhattan in a New York minute. But now it all seems ridiculous to me.
While in Hawaii, I bought a new Oakley backpack that I love, though it too has intense security issues. Like my cargo shorts, it is a sea of zippered pockets (which I suppose is normal). But it also has a chest buckle on the front as well, should I need to suddenly repel from a subway car or zip line across the Avenue of the Americas to Radio City Music Hall. It is undeniably a sexy look, but I spend half my day looking for things in the myriad pockets that I know are in there somewhere but that require the skills of Indiana Jones to unearth them. Several weeks ago I couldn’t find my umbrella in there. An umbrella! That’s too much. It’s not supposed to have the properties of Mary Poppins’ carpetbag.
As with everything that goes wrong, I blame the terrorists. When gas prices go up, it’s al-Qaeda at work. Starbucks is out of ice? Colombian drug cartels! I have no proof but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Taliban is behind the closing of all the Taco Bells in Manhattan. It seems like the terror threat is lurking behind every inconvenience and annoyance and in a fit of panic we are cocooning at home and choosing fashions and accessories designed to assist us in the increasingly likely event that we will need to flee for our lives and want to look cute doing it.
After 9/11, I predicted that movies filled with fantasy would rule the box office and true enough, we have been besieged by Harry Potter and the Lord Of The Rings and Spider-Man and now most sensationally the Dark Knight. There are estimations now that the Batman sequel could surpass the box office score of Titanic. That doesn’t surprise me. If they remade Titanic now, Jack would have used his superpowers to keep the ship afloat long enough for the Carpathia to rescue everyone. We all want to escape into a world where the forces of evil can be vanquished by a basic good and a little magic, but instead we live in a world where we can only depend on ourselves for survival, with zipper pockets full of energy bars and vitamin water to propel us on into an uncertain future.
2 comments:
Oh Derek! A Mary Poppins reference. This is how you've won my heart. I had a Mary Poppins bag when I was 5, but a jar of malt powder broke in it and that was the end. No wonder I hate malteds. The book is great and kind of twisted.
Security is good, when it's done right, but I too think that we have kinda gone overboard!! Just be aware of what's around you, and if you see something funny, tell someone. But we see funny stuff every where these days. I blame part of this on the government, part on the media, and part of it on ourselves. The government has been back pedaling so hard to make it look like they didn't screw up, it's laughable! The media reports every little problem like it's our last days on Earth. I want to be a Photojournalist, but the media groups need to grow a set, and report the news, not drama, that's what the soaps are for!! And the American public is so gullible. People ned to do less believing everything on T.V., and more thinking for them selves!! That's my peace!
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