5-4-Fri: Son of Horrifying Things

Were you terrified by Halloween’s Five-for-Friday list? Did you cower in fear at its enumeration of horrifying offenses against Man and Nature? Did you shudder and start and look under your bed before you went to sleep to be sure that, say, a tramp stamp was not lurking there?

Well, the thrill is back, baybee. Prepare yourself for “Son of 5 Horrifying Things!” Bwa ha ha ha.

1. Fanny Packs. Dear tourists visiting Your Nation’s Capital: Fanny packs are a no-no. Say it with me. Now, I can understand how you might make the mistake. Things are different on vacation. You make a little more noise in the sack--’cause, hey, who knows the neighbors in a hotel? You sleep in. You start drinking before Noon. Home rules don’t apply. What goes on on vacation stays on vacation, right? Wrong. There are still limits. You wouldn’t kill a man and say to yourself, “Vaycay makes it okay” would you? No. So you still cannot wear a fanny pack. I know that they seem like the best of both worlds: all the ease of a wallet, all the utility of a backpack. But this line of thinking gave us the skort and the El Camino. Not okay. Stop it.

2. Hose with Open-Toe Shoes. Ladies, gather close and listen carefully. Winter is coming. Yet, you still have all those fresh, kicky, open-toe shoes that made summer so much fun. (Maybe they were on SUCH a good sale. Maybe you wore them out to that bar crawl that one night and got your groove back. Whatever.) And it seems like such an easy thing, as the weather cools down, to enjoy all the freedom of your cute, pedi-baring shoes with the practical addition of snuggly pantyhose. The perfect fall pairing, non? Non! Stop dressing like grandma. If a straight man can spot this infraction from 20 yards away, it is a major offense. Trust me. Time to break out the boots.

3. Boogers. I am routinely surprised to pull up to a stop in traffic, glance to the side and see someone sitting at the steering wheel with a finger up their nose going for the gold. This visual train wreck is neck-wrenching reality television cum performance art and, naturally, you can’t look away. The driver roots and rotates. Sometimes a combo thumb-inside/finger-on-the-outside of the nostril method is used to help excavate a particularly big nugget. And the whole time you begin to involuntarily chant beneath your breath, “nononononono, donteatit donteatit donteatit....” Yet, inevitably, the miner next to you pans booger gold out of a rich vein and (a) holds it up to examine it and then (b) eats it. How, how, how is this okay? People, we can SEE you in your car. It is not Harry’s Cloak of Invisibility. It is not Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. And, even if it were, you should not, not, not eat your buggers. It was not alright when you were 3 years old. It is not alright now. Brrrrr.

4. Sideways Baseball Caps. Hey, everyone who is living in a post-gangsta, suburban mall-going, hemmed baggy pants-wearing, studio-managed rap pablum world: quit it with the sideways baseball caps. You don’t even know why you are wearing them like that. And they look stupid. So you look stupid. Not stoopid, mind you, just stupid. And not fresh. Not at all fresh. Here’s a secret: real gangbangers look stupid wearing sideways baseball caps; but no one tells them that because they’ll kill you if you do. And you, son, are not a gangbanger. You are a middle-class poser who is taking his allowance/paycheck from obeying/working for the man down to the movie theater/shopping center/bar to hang out with your friends/co-workers in a totally safe place to chat/meet girls/watch a corporately-packaged sporting event. If you were any less edgy you’d be round. By the way, being black doesn’t get you off the ersatz hook, either. So, straighten the brim, bro. And, no, leaving the “Official Product” holographic price sticker on doesn’t help. It just helps you square the circle on the Snoop-Dogg-to-Minnie-Pearl equation.

5. “W” Car Stickers. Mein freunds, it is safe to take the “W: The President” sticker off your entry-level German import and/or SUV. By now, you have gone well beyond stubborn “rogue” statement-making into a place that just says, “Attention, citizens, I am a feeble-minded contrarian who doesn’t want to acknowledge the existence global warming or minorities.” It’s not hard. Just slip into the garage under cover of darkness and peel that bad boy off the window. (Look, if you’d really meant it you’d have put it on the paintjob anyway, right? You think Dick Cheney is buying magnetic political stickers!? He’s stapling that @#$* right onto the bumper.) Time to face it that your guy destroyed a perfectly good first world economy, cashed out the WWII global gratitude bond grandpa gave us for our first communion and spent it on a flashy Baghdad trial for Saddam to show Dad who’s who, turned the US education system into a multiple choice exam, and basically had his Cabinet stand outside and empty aerosol hairspray cans into the environment for 8 years. You made a mistake. We are as sorry as you are. Take. The. Sticker. Off. (Or I’m going to have to pee on your car tonight.)

PS - Scary stuff. And that’s not mentioning people who inexplicably still play the air guitar, sniff their fingers, or, woefully, wear Tommy Hilfiger clothing. I’ll save all that for next year’s Fright Night Spooktackular. Oh, and “You're the Ocean” by Teitur is the opposite of uncool; now playing on iTunes.