just being christian

Somehow, it has become common practice in this country for women to wear leggings as pants. A curious phenomenon to gain such wide acceptance, for sure. Are leggings not merely opaque hosiery? Appropriate underneath a skirt or capris, certainly. But not under a long shirt or sweater. And certainly not under a short shirt or sweater. Why?

Because. Leggings are not pants. They’re so not pants, it’s appropriate to call then “notpants”.

I can make an extensive list of things that aren’t pants.  Sweaters aren’t pants. Jackets aren’t pants. Shoes? Not pants in the slightest. But at the top of that list, the unequivocal champion of all things that are not pants has got to be leggings. And no matter what Gap and Target try to tell you, Jeggings are second place in the race for notpants supremacy. I don’t care if your denim long underwear has belt loops and pockets, you can’t just strut around wearing them as pants.

My stance on the subject is well known. So well know that I got called out on The Social Network last week when I announced that my daughter was running around the park wearing a pink gymnastics unitard (complete with built-in shorts), leggings as pants (over the unitard), red Columbia fleece, pink socks and ruby red slippers. But two layers of notpants does not pants make, and one of my most staunch anti-notpants allies was quick to point out my hypocrisy.

• Nikki D.: Oh snap. She’s one of “those” leggings as pants wearers? I didn’t see it coming….

  (18 April at 20:13 )
• Me: We have a special dispensation in this house that allows kids under 8 to wear notpants. But when she’s old enough to understand, we’ll certainly have a chat with her about how leggings are not pants. (18 April at 20:24 )
• Nikki D.: Start the conditioning now. Its like the DARE program for children in elementary school…cut them off before they know what drugs are. I’m sure you would be supported to start the notpants program in the schools. (18 April at 20:29)

Nikki has a point. But my wife thinks that little girls in leggings are really cute, even if she agrees with me that any woman who sported the leggings was not worthy of The Manny’s affection*. So we shall pose the question to the masses. Is it appropriate to have a leggings as pants dispensation for kids, or should we hold a strong line and not contribute to the systematic desensitization of notpants in our culture?

*True story, bro. When The Manny was being The Manny, he would sometimes go on dates. First question we’d ask was what he thought of the lady. Second question? Pants or notpants? A “notpants” answer earned the gong faster than a prolific belcher. We wouldn’t let The Manny settle for just anyone, you know.

Renew and Restore

I’m coming up on a very important anniversary.

The day I bought my own pair of hair clippers.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make. I loved going to the barber shop. I loved my barber. There was a social element to getting my hair cut that I valued. Cats in the chair talkin’ stuff about all elements of life. The dude rolling up into the shop to try to sell bootleg DVD’s of The Gospel for $5.

Seriously.

But then Kid The Second came and it was just too hard to find time to get into the chair. Going to the barber shop in the ‘hood isn’t for someone with a calendar full of appointments to keep. You get a clean cut, but it’s a deliberate process.  You’re in the chair for at least 40 minutes.

So ultimately I decided that I could save myself a lot of time and my budget a lot of money if I just got my own clippers.  I kept it simple and picked up the $18.97 joints at the beauty shop, and figured I could always bail after two cuts and be ahead in the money game.

Here we are a year later, and I’m still sticking with it.  Not that my skills have gotten all that good.  I’m content to throw on the No. 1 guard and bring my whole head down to a nice clean length.  I can edge the front myself, but still need the wife to line up the back and shave the neck beard.  I don’t think it’s her favorite wifely duty, but she could always get me a certain stocking-stuffer to empower me to handle the task myself if it puts her out too much.

Renew and Restore

You can learn how to dress just by checkin’ my fresh, checka checkin’ my fresh, checka’ checkin’ my fresh.

Jay Z on Swagga Like Us

I had this picture taken yesterday morning.  Elli took it.   That’s why my face looks so goofy.  Look, when you have a 3 year old take your picture, you’re thrilled that she gets your entire body in the frame and that it’s relatively centered.  The downside is that since you are giving her directions, you get caught with a little Napoleon Dynamite open mouth action.  You can’t have it all.

A lot of flack was thrown my way for wearing this outfit.  I anticipated as much, thus the picture.

Personally, I think the outfit is fire.  Laser etched Chuck Taylors from Black Fives, with Man Capris from the same company.  You can’t tell it in the picture, but the pants have nice subtle blue and yellow undertones to them.  They are brilliant when paired with the sweater and shirt combo, because the whole outfit ties together.

I understand that the outfit doesn’t conform to current midwestern fashion conventions.  Stacy said as much when she banned me from wearing it in public when we are together, and refused to kiss me until I changed it.  Not exactly the reaction I’d expect from a die-hard follower of America’s Next Top Model. I was thinking a response more along the lines of: “My dear. That is a very progressive outfit.  I’d expect something like that from a European, but American’s typically don’t have such a forward thinking eye for style.  I would be very honored to be seen in public with you as you sported that outfit, because it would show that you are confident in your masculinity.  I wouldn’t be shocked if you ended up on the cover of a fashion magazine”.  Yeah.  Something like that.

I figured in the interest of scientific fact finding, we could open the debate up for a vote.  I’ll warn you that the results of the vote won’t cause me to cease sporting the fly duds.  Lots of votes in favor of the outfit will give me confidence.  Lots of votes against will give me a martyr complex and just reaffirm my notion that I’m ahead of the game and misunderstood.  But feel free to vote away.

Renew and Restore

I did some coat consolidation over the Christmas break.  Our coat rack had been overrun by an abundance of outerwear.  Rain jackets.  Snowboard shells.  More fleece than a flock of sheep.  Completely out of control.

To thin out the selection, I put 5 coats on Ebay.  Sold them all and then resolved to replace them with one multipurpose jacket that I could wear almost any day.  The timing was great, because Sports Authority was blowing out their C0lumbia Sportswear gear following Christmas which meant I spent way less on the one new coat than I had accrued schlepping the others off on the internets.

The hardest part of the process was finding a coat that would be universally stylish.  My wardrobe has a certain diversity to it, which makes it difficult to successfully execute any accessory consolidation.  The logical decision was to purchase a black coat with gray accents.  It would match everything and would be super easy to keep clean.  Click and ship.

The coat comes, and I take it for a testrun.  It fits well, though is slightly poochy in my midsection as most coats are.  Nice and warm.  Removeable liner just in case I need to wear it in one of those vintage Midwest summer thunderstorms.

But then I look in the mirror.  Well, well, well, if I don’t look like a character from The Wizard of Oz prior to the tornado ripping through Kansas.  It seems as though my coat buying strategy bears a stylistic resemblance to my hat buying strategy and my shoe buying strategy.  In an effort to make everything match, everything ended up black with white and gray trim.  Get that brotha some technicolor before people start mistaking me for the Grim Reaper.

If you see me on one of those fashion faux paux shows in the near future, know that I’m at least aware I’ve let things get out of hand.

Renew and Restore