I Be Stylin'

Walked out of the theater tonight with The Wife just in time to pass an example of current teenage sartorial splendor. Now I know teen fashion for males has been to look like you've tried to dress yourself after a couple bottles of cheap tequila on an empty stomach. Shirts hanging out, droopy pants, sideways baseball cap. But as in all things fashionable, eventually an extreme is reached where what's cool (to some) crosses into the absurd without the wearer realizing it (think the giant collars during the disco era that reached to the shoulders of a leisure suit).

Tonight I witnessed it. A young man looking like a cross between one of the Backstreet Boys and a cholo from West LA. Ah, where to start: the almost shaved head with trailer trash sideburns extending down to the jawline; the two sizes too small wife beater t-shirt; the red and black underwear, visible not just because the two sizes two large shorts were droopy- no, he had them pulled all the way off his ass. I'm pretty sure he just anchored them on his schwantz. God help the public if we get a sudden cold snap. But for the final touch, just to let the honeys know he's got style, a bright yellow wrist sweatband precisely halfway up the forearm.

Damn, I was jealous. I don't even own any wrist sweatbands, since I sold my stick shift Mustang II without air conditioning back in the '80s. Until it occurred to me that I'd seen that extreme style before. As in the "extreme" guys in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. The ones with the secret Cher and Air Supply cds in their jeep. Stylin'. Yeah.