I Love Denis Leary

I'm not ashamed.

I absolutely love Denis Leary. He is one of the most talented comedians in the world and never fails to make me laugh.

I tell you this, dear reader, as prologue to this post.

If you go to YouTube and look up Leary's rant on coffee you will, at one point, hear him go off on a tangent about fashion. He tells of an encounter with a convenience store clerk whose pants are doubling for socks.

Funny stuff. I think you might laugh out loud as I did.

So again, I ask...what is with that "fashion statement?"

Why is it cool to wear your pants down below your ass?

I understand that the trend began with inner city men emulating friends who had been incarcerated. Apparently the authorities take your belt when you get locked up, presumably so you can't hang yourself or strangle another inmate.

So when you get out your pants are falling down because you have no belt.

Got it. Young guys in the 'hood want to gain street cred so they decide to wear their pants down around their ankles to give the impression that they have done time and went up against the man and, incidentally,...lost! Chris Rock talked about not voting for Senator McCain because of his much vaunted prisoner-of-war record. Rock asks why he should vote for a man who went to war and got captured. He'd rather vote for a man who got away! More funny stuff...

But back to fashion. Don't the youngins have mirrors? Don't they see that they look ridiculous? Don't they remember that underpants are just that...underpants? To be worn under your pants (more Denis Leary there...)? Not outside as an accessory?

Maybe it's because I'm almost a senior citizen (I did get my beach pass this year with a senior discount...so...)

But I'm not completely bereft of fashion sense. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. We practically invented the ridiculous look...if you don't take the Zoot Suit into account.

We wore torn jeans, tee shirts with idiot remarks on them, Nehru jackets and HUGE bell bottoms and then platform shoes and leisure suits with the enormous shirt collar outside the jacket unbuttoned to the navel and a gold chain (I never wore the shoes or the leisure suits, etc. but I did have the bell bottoms...real ones from a Navy surplus store...with way too many buttons...and real cowboy boots...long before "Urban Cowboy")

But our drawers were always inside our trousers. And our pants were at our waists.

Period. We would have been laughed out of the room if we had shown up with our pants at our knees and our boxers exposed for all to see...with the stupid designs that underwear have on them. What are the designers thinking with that stuff? Are they just simply that cruel? And what is it with nurse's blouses? They have got to be the most god-awful patterns ever conceived of. Hands down the worst designs ever. If you weren't sick when you arrived at the hospital you will surely be almost dead after being subjected to those examples of medical fashion. Jeez!!

And baseball hats on backwards...don't get me started there. The POINT of the hat is to shield your eyes from the sun so you can catch the BALL!! WTF!!!??? And so people can read the embroidered crap on the front and be impressed by the fact that you went to Wimbledon or belong to the Hoity Toity Country Club or drink Heineken or drive a Porsche...or are a Yankee fan...or a Red Sox fan...

So, as Denis Leary puts it, "Pull up your pants!"

And as Elaine says to Jerry, "Well crafted."

I couldn't have said it better. If I had I'd be rich, not them, and I could afford that leisure suit I always secretly wanted. You know the one. The pale, robin's egg blue one in the faux denim with the white buttons and belt. And the Paisley shirt. And a Ferrari hat...

OMG...I'd be stylin' then.

Alone...but stylin'!!