Our Two Wonderful Sons
These photos were taken just prior to their work release or return from camp, as we like to say. While away on vacation, our oldest, or as the state seems to refer to him, FL#109678-6, was able to keep in shape playing baseball for the Florida State(penal league) All Stars. Our youngest, FL#109678-13, honed his artistic skill by teaching other "campers" how to paint. This, in spite of the fact that he was limited to teaching finger painting, due to the attempts of a few of the campers to turn the paint brushes into weapons.



Yes, our two wonderful sons. What parents wouldn't be proud? Boy, am I glad they look like their mother!

SLAVES TO FASHION?


All right, I can't keep my fingers(the literary equivalent of my mouth) still anymore. We have to talk about fashion or the lack there of, especially in the young and also those who haven't realized they aren't any more.

It doesn't take an exceptionally queer eye to see there is something really bazaar about the direction clothing has taken in the past 10 years or so. I have lived through the Nehru jacket, platform shoes with fish in them, dickies, Beatle boots,velour jogging and leisure suits and Flow Bees, that come equipped with a "Mullet" setting, so I know bad fashion when I see it. First, I guess you need to understand that these comments are coming from a guy who does the bulk of his shopping in the "challenged" section of the Big, Tall and Beyond store. Also, as spiritual as I like to come off, I have to admit that the fact that I can wear shorts, golf shirt and a pair of deck shoes to church, whenever I want, did come into play in my selection of my current house of worship. So you kind of get an inkling of my fashion priorities but in light of my own fashion challenges, here's my rub with the young and young wannabes.

GUYS-Guys are wearing their clothes, especially their drawers, so big they almost fall off. It just makes me want to "pants" someone each time I see it. Their boxers stick up a full 6 inches higher than their belt loops. The first time I saw this, I thought the guy was wearing a paisley cumberbun. I've got to figure this arrangement creates quite a fishing expedition when a guy unzips his fly in the men's room. Actually, this style is not too far afield from my 86 year old neighbor, Fluffy, who putzes around his yard in an ancient pair of saggy cut offs and knee high socks with flip flops, strangely dingie boxers, no shirt and suspenders. He is probably totally oblivious to the fact that he has become a haute' couture diva and that he, A.K.A. Fluff Daddy and P Diddy are the driving force behind a giant fashion engine.

GIRLS-Girls, on the other hand are now wearing things so tight that every bump, pimple and ripple of their skin is on display. One question, who told them this was attractive? Was I hiding in the Beyond store that day? I think this whole trend started when a well-known actress was pregnant with Methuselah, Telullah, Rumor, Gossip or another one of her brood. A national magazine got the brainy idea to have her pose on the cover, nude and preggers, as they say in the U.K. Now, I am all for promoting the culture of life and happened to think that my wife was beautiful when she was pregnant with our kids. But that's me and she's my wife....Now, fast forward a decade(ions in fashion years) and you have way too many women who just look somewhat pregnant wearing way to revealing clothing. I guess I subscribe to the idea that just because they made it with your size on the label, doesn't mean you should wear it. Here's an oxymoron. If you wear a belly shirt, you shouldn't have one.

CELEBRITIES-Now, let's follow this time line. Celebrity, naked and pregnant-is photographed for the cover of a rag, Pop tarts and other celebrity types join in, "hip" celebrity wannabees, pregnant and the pregnant-lite copy them, as belly shirt becomes mainstream. Soon, Walmart Wilma with her gut, saggies, tattoos and lip-dangling cigarette, rears her tooth deficient head. From there it's only a hip-hop, skip and a jump to Billy Bob or Shawanne in a tube top, culottes and a tattoo of a daisy protruding from his crack. You know, you start with an actress who feels the world ought to know how beautiful she is, even when she looks like she is smuggling a beach ball out of K-mart and the next thing you know you have fashion chaos. The age at which young girls wear revealing clothing keeps dropping, as well. A woman I work with brought in a photo of her recent ultrasound. In the grainy picture, I swear you could make out the baby wearing a tiny belly shirt. I have heard, but been unable to confirm, that they are about to unveil a line of "thong" pampers for the next fashion season.

TATTOOS-As long as I have your attention, lets' talk about tattoos. It seems that everybody that has one, has to show it off, every day, all the time. Hey, the only people that care about your tattoo are you, the tattooist you paid to brand you and the guy who's not going to hire you.

UNDERWEAR-This brings us to "the skimpies and flimsies" as Jed Clampett once called them. Okay, what weird and perverted person invented thong underwear?Surely, no one who had to wear them. That can't be comfortable, really. I thought most people outgrew "wedgies" in grade school. Now, style indentured women have self-inflicted wedgies and pay handsomely for it. If they made the prisoners at GITMO wear these, Amnesty International would be on the next plane to Cuba. No matter what is seen in the minds eye, truth be told, most of us would resemble a summo wrestler in search of a an opponent,if made to wear a thong to pad around the house. And another thing, once extricated from these instruments of torture, do the wearers remove the undies from their laundry basket and deliver them to the washing machine with a stick? Yuck! What do women with hemorrhoids......Never mind...

HAIR-OK finally, let's talk about hair. Are you crazy? No, really I mean it. We have entered a coiffure era that defies all past logic. In the old movies, how could you always identify the "whack job?" Right, by the weird and unkempt hair. Look around you. I'll bet that there is at least one person, based solely on hairstyle, that in past years would be certifiable. The men in white coats would be marching them off in a straight jacket, to the boobie hatch instead off to a beauty salon to have their hair patch-colored chartreuse and faux mohawked. There is a woman who sings in our church choir. She is attractive and aside from her hair, appears to be quite "with it" but normal. I'm sure that she pays a great deal for her hairstyle and goes to some snooty place with a trendy French name that probably only excepts payment in Euros. In the name of good stewardship, I have thought of offering to take over her hair management. I figure with a ten dollar pair of battery powered Mr. Snippys, a kitchen whisk and a tube of Elmer's Glue and I could accomplish the same feat that her snooty salon does. Then she would have all those extra Euros to spend on more tattoos, belly shirts and butt floss... but I digress.