Showing 11 - 20 of 22 posts found matching keyword: fashion

This is NOT a Georgia Bulldogs helmet.During this year's annual beating courtesy of the University of Florida, the Georgia Bulldogs wore black helmets and black pants. To avoid the public humiliation of losing to Florida at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party again (only 3 wins since 1989), we've taken to disguising ourselves as Division I-AA Grambling State University. Both the football game (final score UGA 17, UF 41) and the uniforms were unwatchable.

Please, never, ever, do that again Georgia. Ever.

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And while I'm bitching about black football jerseys, I may as well complain about black uniforms in general. (Let's just chalk it up to Bitch Inertia. "A complaint in motion tends to stay in motion.") Though I could be talking about the home uniforms of the New Orleans Saints, in this case, I'm referring to Spider-Man's black costume. Hell, let's go ahead and include every black super-hero costume. (Villains are excluded. They're supposed to be evil, remember? So Black Manta, you're excused from this conversation. Go rob a sandbank or something.)

See, once upon a time in 1973, Marvel got it in their heads to give Namor, the Sub-Mariner a black costume. Sure, it seemed innocuous enough at the time, especially since Namor didn't have much of a costume other than a green Speedo and some little wings on his ankles. However, the new costume failed the first test of superheroic costume design; namely, a good superhero costume design should identify the hero and his powers at first sight. The new costume was terribly ugly and seemed to say little more than "I, Prince Namor, King of the Sea, am ready to disco!" Not surprisingly, Namor's comic was cancelled soon afterwards. Though this swift cancellation would seem to have serve something of a mandate that the black costume was unwelcome, the damage had been done: at least one fan thought, "hey, a costume in all black would be great!"

Namor: Wearing black? Go jump in a lake.

By 1984, that poor, misguided child had grown up into a poor, misguided man, and Spider-Man was given a new costume. Replacing the famously creepy red and blue costume with a black unitard may be the greatest error in comic book history. Between issues, Spider-Man went from friendly neighborhood wall-crawler to mopey, self-indulgent anti-hero. It turns out that the black costume was really a semi-sentient alien symbiote seeking to devour Spider-Man. (I told you that black costumes were no good, Spidey. But did you listen...?) Yet the fans seemed to enjoy seeing a classic design, perhaps the most clever costume in comics history, carelessly discarded for a shapeless, colorless travesty.

Spider-Man: Good and evil.

This, of course, started a trend of new heroes dressed in all black. Soon every movie with a superhero in it featured a black costume. Batman and the X-Men cashed in their leotards for black leather. And the sickness spread. When Superman briefly "died" in 1993, we mourned his resurrection in a suit notable for it's lack of color. Gone was the traditional blue, red, and yellow. In the garishly decorated world of the 4-color funny pages, "black costume" equals "death" or worse, "cancellation." Still the fans cried for more.

Superman: Black is the new terrible.

A decade later, we should have seen it coming. Poor Superboy, once a rebel wearing a *gasp* black leather jacket (what a clever nod at the time: a super-hero who wore his tights underneath the mandated black leather!), was suddenly wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans by 2002. Not just black, but also not even a super costume! Horrors! Is this the logical conclusion for "realism" in superhero comics? If I were to suddenly gain super powers, would I be limited to what was already hanging in my closet? (Smallville, I'm looking at you!)

Superboy: Black is for funerals.

Fortunately, there may be a happy end in sight to this terrible trend. Shortly after Superboy turned his back on spandex, he was killed in a battle with an alternate-universe Superboy. And the murderous mirror universe twin still wore his classic red, blue, and yellow tights! It's pretty hard to cheer for the "hero" when the "villain" is meeting out the cosmic justice for blatant uniform violation. I guess when the good guys wear black, the bad guys have to change with the times. (Maybe you should still be paying attention after all, Black Manta.)

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Since I'm already on the subject of football, let me say something here: I hate black uniforms. I know I've mentioned this in regards to UGA before. But last week, Oregon wore all black uniforms for their game vs Arizona. (Oregon's uniforms had silver wings on the shoulders. I shit you not.) And FSU wore black jerseys in their game against Boston College. "Maybe this all-black thing is getting a little out if hand," I think to myself.

Then I read that FSU was wearing their all black jerseys as a favor to Nike. (Thank you for your honesty, Bobby Bowden.) It's not uncommon to hear athletic programs espouse such PR bullshit as, "we're doing it for the fans," or "black helps us recruit." Clearly, that's not true. They're doing it for Nike. (Nike has uniform contracts with all 3 colorblind schools mentioned above.) So that Nike can sell more jerseys.

While I'd like to call Nike the devil here, I'm not quite that naive. In a capitalist economy, the ultimate power is in the hands of the consumer: if you don't like something, don't buy it and they'll stop selling it. If Nike keeps making black jerseys, it's probably because many someones somewhere are buying them. So my gripe ultimately ends with those fools who would like to wear the jersey of their favorite player, but only if that player's team colors are black. That totally says just about everything about America's obsession of the individual over the team, doesn't it.

And if the people speak, the salesmen listen. I got the new NFL Holiday 2008 catalog in the mail today. Now, in addition to the abysmal pink jerseys ("with sugar glitter on front and back" -- I blame this sort of crap for my perpetual bachelorhood), you can now order "black & white jerseys." Sorry, Nike, but these jerseys are manufactured by Reebok. Which just goes to show you that for every bad idea, there's someone waiting to steal it.

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One week until Halloween, kids. I used to enjoy Halloween, but then I got old and crotchety. However, that doesn't mean that I've lost an appreciation for people dressing up in outlandish costumes. Oh, no. If you've got to dress up, there's really only one option. Fortunately, the good people at DC have licensed a ready-made in whatever size you need:

Batman costumes sorted by price, er, I mean age!

All of these costumes are available from a site called, appropriately enough, costumehub.com. Amidst the dozens of options for Batman (in addition to the ones pictured above, there were also costumes with sculpted muscles, rendered features, and latex codpieces -- seriously, check out the $800 Adult Premium Collector's Batman Costume) there was one costume that made me question things a bit.

You know, for kids!Maybe it's just me, but licensing a costume of a sociopathic mass-murderer to children between the ages of 3-10 seems a little distasteful, DC. Note that the movie this costume was based on was rated PG-13: you're marketing to an age group too young to have even seen the movie!

Turns out that the Joker isn't the only super-villain marketed to youngsters. The same age category has licensed costumes for Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface! Whatever happened to the generic monsters and bogeymen of yesteryear, the ghost, werewolf, mummy, and vampire? I guess their body-count wasn't high enough for kids anymore.

Well, if that's what you want, you can keep your Hollywood-licensed horrors, kids. Meanwhile, Ace and I will stick to the good stuff.

Sit, Ubu, sit!

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As a UGA alum, I've received these University of Georgia bookstore catalogs for years. This year, however, in the so-called "'08 Playbook," something seemed not quite right. Sure, there was the obligatory image of Mark Richt sporting his official Nike sideline gear, but the rest of the images seemed a little extra... generic. In addition to all of the models being WAY too old to be college kids, the backgrounds were all wrong. I'm very familiar with UGA's campus, and none of the buildings visible are in Athens. But what really spoiled the charade was on page 7:

Ah, Athens, GA: football, booze, and surfing!

Clearly, the people at Follett Higher Educational Group who produced and photographed this year's catalog have never even been to Athens. It's one thing to have a guy showcasing polo shirts and swim shorts featuring Uga produced in Martha's Vineyard (catalog numbers 0950807F $68.00 "Piqué Polo" and 0950807G $75.00 "Surfside Swim Trunks" from Vineyard Vines®), it's another altogether to have him pulling a surfboard out of his 2004 Scion xB in the presumed campus setting of glorious landlocked Athens, GA. Even worse, it's a Surftech Roxy soft top surfboard. Roxy is Quicksilver's line for girls. Good choice, brah.

I can't help but wonder how many other college and university bookstore catalogs feature a similar image with different apparel. You know, we can do amazing things with computers these days.

Meet the UGA Surfing Team!

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Update on the quest for Metropolis, Illinois' assault on the Guinness World Record for "Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Superman" at Superman Celebration 2008: They set the record with 127 people, all of whom wore costumes satisfying Guinness' strict standards for Superman costumes complete with "cape, boots and the iconic 'S' on the chest."

127 is a lot. This isn't even 40.

Congratulations, all. Let the world domination begin.

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School's back in session here in Athens. That brings with it the associated snarled traffic, confused freshmen, and late-night drunken pedestrians. Really, you get used to most of it after awhile. (This is my, what? 7th year in Athens?) It's always the little things that really start to get on my nerves.

This year the annual "get to know Athens and buy our paper" supplement the Banner-Herald published actually encouraged students to wear flip-flops in class. I consider this the most telling sign of the decay of western civilization. Long time reader of my blog (Keith) may remember that I've ranted about this particular fashion trend before. Strapping cheap rubber to your filthy, corn encrusted feet is hardly a fashion statement worth making. And now it's being encouraged by the establishment. Great.

It's not exactly that I lament the passing of hoop skirts or bobby socks, but I think that some things are just too informal to be worn in society. Soon fashion trends will have to involve shirtless people wearing nothing but underwear and belly-button rings. I think it's time to dress it up a bit more, people. Dressing for success does not include any footwear with the word "flop" in its name.

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I present, for you viewing pleasure, poodle:

Chere at rest

This is an old picture from fall 2004, I think. Last week I gave her a jacket and pants clip (her normal summer attire these days), but she'll be back to her puppy clip in a few months when the temerature drops a few dozen degrees. I've tried giving her quite a few different style clips over the years, but in the Georgia heat, she prefers it short most of the year. (Only in the rare case where there is snow on the ground does she ever thank me for leaving her winter coat on.)

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As you no doubt know by now, Georgia lost to Florida. Again. I've gotten so used to it that I'm over this year's loss in just 3 days. (Hell, I even started mourning a day early just to go ahead and get it out of the way.)

It's not bad enough that our football team is so convinced that they can't beat Florida that they are defeated before they ever enter the stadium. ("Neutral site" my ass). The Gators have now grown so cocky that they took the field in the ugliest uniforms in the history of football.

I've complained in the past about the uniforms of the Denver Broncos (those fat orange stripes are definitely not slimming), the Miami Hurricanes (lines gone wild!), the Buffalo Bills (for no apparent reason, no two sections of their uniform are the same color), the Oregon Ducks (Green! Yellow!), and the Seattle Seahawks (even kids with an 64-pack of crayons excessive better color theory), but the uniforms worn by the University of Florida were the worst that I've ever seen. It looked like the designers couldn't even make up their own mind what the uniforms should look like. A relatively normal uniform with one orange arm made them look lopsided. Were they dressing up as Frankenstein for Halloween? Does the team need color coding to figure out how to line up in the same direction at the line of scrimmage?

So, in the end, not only were we beaten, we were beaten by an inferior football team wearing uniforms that costumed super-villains would have found insulting. What a blow to our confidence. I hope we can recover before we face Auburn in their new-look tiger-stripe/eagle-feather costume.

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Underwear is Winterwear.

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To be continued...

 

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