"The Highs and Lows of The Sound of Music Live."

Including: "HIGH: The many, many instances of Rolfe's shorts."

"Without the sign, without the context, I definitely look like someone who is a bit insane."

"That’s how I thought of it, before I clicked to look at the hundreds of replies; I figured people were probably wondering why I would bring my typewriter to a park."

And when I started reading the comments, I saw most people had already decided that I would bring my typewriter to the park because I'm a “fucking hipster.” Someone with the user handle “S2011” summed up the thoughts of the hive mind in 7 words: “Get the fuck out of my city.”...

There were hundreds more. A few people were my staunch defenders, asking the more trenchant commenters why they cared so much. Others started to wax nostalgic about their own typewriters. But the overwhelming negativity towards me, and the “hipster scum” I represented, was enough to make me get up from my computer, my heart racing, my hands shaking with adrenaline....

I was going to send you to this piece about a fashion designer "pushing" women "into a trap" or "a prehistoric exoskeleton."

It's Robin Givhan expatiating about Thom Browne. She seems to be going overboard.  But then I clicked through to the first picture in the slide show and I'm frozen in horror. Please look at that picture first.

Okay, now, I've settled down, and I think that picture is funny. I'm amused. I can go on with the slideshow. It's quite amazing!

I like this one too. Not as something that could be worn in a real person's life, but as theater. And this.

And — isn't it just perfect? — when the artist emerges, he's a man in shorts!

Back to Givhan. Would you like the job of describing this stuff in a world that has photography? Givhan develops a theme about the literary tradition of portraying women as crazy. It's an old feminist theme. "The Madwoman in the Attic." Were you ever trapped into reading that? Anyway, what does that have to do with Thom Browne?

Browne is not a feminist scholar nor an academic of any sort, but his fashion told a lucid and thoughtful story about constraints, social expectations, and cultural prejudices....

... Browne’s intricate, high-minded gestures served as an invigorating reminder that fashion has the potential to tell stories and raise fundamental questions about how we live our lives. 

After all that, Givhan comes to rest on the same idea anyone flipping through the slide show:

One only wished that Browne had allowed his audience to see more clearly, if only for a moment, something fundamental to a fashion show: What he proposes women wear.

I thought the fashion cognoscenti were aloof from the proletarian question: Who can wear that? When the artist goes this far, it's gauche to ask.

"He’s like the biker angel of Kotex."

It's Johnny Weir and it's getting the men in shorts tag.

Speaking of men in shorts...

Here's a NYT article about how Richard Simmons has gotten a new lease on fame through the internet, even though he's 65 years old and like "a lot of older people in show business, Mr. Simmons has been slow to fully grasp social media."

In late July, Mr. Simmons started a weekly YouTube series called “Workout Wednesdays,” with theAudience pairing him with young Web celebrities like Cassey Ho, whose YouTube fitness channel has more than 800,000 subscribers. Coming soon is a separate video series involving the D.J. Steve Aoki, who has 2.4 million Facebook fans. Mr. Aoki will go teach at Slimmons; Mr. Simmons plans to go crowd-surfing at a concert.

“There’s just something so cool about the way he does his thing, it’s punk rock,” Mr. Aoki said. “I’m definitely wearing a pair of those super-short shorts when I go. Those are dope, man!”

So... we's got Steve Aoki vouching for him... and his shorts. Your logical fallacy is: appeal to authority.

The Althouse Amazon portal: your entryway into your next pair of big boy pants.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want and – while paying nothing extra – make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only your tailor will know it's you.

Dockers Men's Casual D2 Straight Fit Pant

Racial clowns: What Paula Deen said in the deposition.

"Perhaps most damning for the butter-loving mogul, who recently came out with her own line of spreads at Walmart, the Enquirer claims that Deen wanted to use a 'slave motif' at her brother's 2007 wedding."

Deen said she got the idea from another restaurant at which the couple dined. Said Deen, per the Enquirer: "Well, what I would really like is a bunch of little n-----s to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts, and black bow ties. You know, in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around."

All right, this is so wrong on so many levels. First, obviously, don't use the n-word. Second, a slave-themed wedding is a terrible idea. But — and I know these are lesser offenses, but I've got to say it — slaves don't wear shorts. Modern American white men wear shorts all too often and look like overgrown boys when the do so. For all of the diminishment of black men over the years — including calling them "boy" — the stereotype did not have them dressed in shorts.

And, obviously, there were all sorts of problems with the way black people were depicted in old Hollywood movies, let's at least get it clear in our minds what the movie reference is. There was a 1935 Shirley Temple movie called "The Littlest Rebel," and here's what it looked like when Bill Bojangles Robinson (playing the slave "Uncle Billy") danced. He's not tap dancing "around" — as if slaves dance around while working — he's giving a performance at an elegant affair — as a soloist, not in "a bunch." And he's not in shorts and shirt-sleeves. He's wearing long pants and a vest and a jacket. So Deen's mental image of what went on in the bad old days of Hollywood is itself an embarrassing distortion.

Dealing with the no-shorts rule, Swedish men wear skirts.

We talked about this 4 days ago, but this new article has a photograph.

"Male train drivers in Stockholm have circumvented a ban on wearing shorts in the summer by coming to work in skirts."

"Uniform regulations by the train company Arriva state that skirts or long trousers are acceptable.
At a meeting last year, drivers were told that shorts were not allowed."

They have given their blessing to the men wearing skirts however.< "To say anything else would be discrimination," Thomas Hedenius, the communications head, told the local Mitti newspaper, cited by the Local website. He added that the regulations were in place so staff looked presentable and tidy, adding that shorts appeared "more relaxed" than a skirt.

Purchase of the day.

From the May 2, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Columbia Sportswear Men's Silver Ridge Cargo Short

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you wear it on your sleeve will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: laughable, unphotographable, yet incredibly sexy.

Purchases of the day.

That's right – more than one.

From the April 18, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Lee Men's Big-Tall Belted Wyoming Cargo Short

and

Columbia Men's Battle Ridge Short

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you show us your knobby hairy knees will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: because it's springtime, you're rugged, and, hey, who doesn't want to be comfortable?

We get that. Really we do.

Meade watches the NCAA tournament, but I do not.

I don't like it. And I do watch baseball and football. Not as much as he does, but enough to prove that I'm not averse to all spectator sports. But I do not like basketball. Meade tells me he guarantees that if I were to take a little time to learn a few things about what's going on in basketball that I could enjoy it.

He compares it to his learning to like "Survivor." At first, he spurned it. A fake endurance contest. Why, he's done real endurance races — 24-hour mountain bike races. What's this voting people off an island? But — motivated to share time with me — he learned some details — the strategy, the edit — and it became interesting. If I would learn a few things about basketball, I wouldn't just be putting up with it. I would actually enjoy it, as he now enjoys "Survivor."

"Did you ever notice how the women on 'Survivor' are all wearing bikinis?" I ask. The whole implied argument is painfully obvious. Basketball players in their slinky, baggy tank tops and immense, swishy skirt-pants.

But maybe women don't care so much about what a man looks like. It's the functionality of the body. The performance. This is Meade's theory.

I resist the theory. There's performance on "Survivor" too, I say. But would you enjoy "Survivor" if the women were all wearing big baggy T-shirts and big loose pants?

We compare football, which women are especially fond of watching. The big shoulders, the tight pants (bulge-enhancingly light-colored and shiny). There's something to see. That's a spectator sport. The men look like men. Basketball players are dressed like very unattractive women or horribly oversized children.

"And they're always falling on the floor, and then Dad comes over and gives them a time out," I say. "It's completely not sexy."

"Audiences like nicely dressed characters. They also enjoy nudity."

"Split the difference by putting your character in a pair of cut-offs and call him a Never-Nude. Advanced: feel free to dip him in a vat of blue paint. That's a real turn-off."



ADDED: You can buy the complete "Arrested Development" series — all 3 seasons — for only $38.50.

"The Best and Worst of the London Menswear Shows."

Not a joke. Or... tell me it's a joke....



I've complained a lot over the years about men in shorts, but this takes the cake:

Althouse-approved short pants for men.

These shorts have the guts. Do you? No? Buy the book.

"The Lakers have just pooped their big-boy pants..."