You look Incredible!

This has got to stop.

After another futile day spent shopping for a pair of jeans, I'm about ready to hit up the Goodwill and buy some dead man's pants made back before the world lost its damn mind.

Every pair of jeans now comes with the descriptor "sits just below the waist." This does not mean, as you might imagine, that the jeans go right under a man's navel, thereby covering the man's butt and allowing room for a man's genitlia in the front.

No, 'sits below the waist' means "sits so low that every time you so much as sit in a chair and stand back up, you'll be tugging them back up over your ass, and crushing your nuts when you do so because there's no room in there for your junk." Actually, that's giving these pants too much credit. Even with a belt, as you walk around throughout the day, they're constantly working their way over the butt and down the legs. So you're either hanging in the breeze, or constantly adjusting your pants.

Now, I can understand the necessity of indelicate wardrobe-adjustments if the tradeoff is a pleasing aesthetic effect. If these pants made me look like the bottom half of Brad Pitt, or something, I would happily put up with constantly adjusting them. But they don't. They ride so low that they erase your ass in the back and emphasize your gut in the front. Basically, they make anyone who wears them look like Mr. Incredible: a giant tub of pudding on top of two spindly li'l legs:

Look out, ladies.

I'm sure any woman who reads this isn't exactly overflowing with sympathy, because women have been putting up with this for years. Not only do they contend with the ass-erasing, muffin-toping, butt-cleavage pants, but so much more clothing that is ill-fitting, uncomfortable, and unflattering. But let's be fair, ladies: they sold it to you because you bought it.

And now, sadly, it looks like not enough men put on these ridiculous nut-crushing plumbers-butt pants and said "you may insert these trousers forcibly into your rectum, Old Navy and The Gap, because my self-esteem is not hinged upon dressing trendily when the trends are fucktarded, so I shan't be buying your bullshit jeans." Nope. Have we finally lost our common sense, men? Have we finally lost that dignity that kept us from wearing ridiculous clothing just to chase a trend?

Given how many dudes I saw in calf-length plaid shorts this summer, I'm guessing yes.

Maybe I'll take up kilts.

In a word: Peacemaker

You pay too much money for tickets, even without the fees.  You pay a little too much for parking.  You pay a little too much for drinks at the venue.  You stand in front of a stage and you get jostled a little too much, shoved a little too much, pushed a little too much.  The music is a little too loud.  You're gonna stay out a little too late, and morning will come a little too soon.

And you do it because when they play, they open a tap in your brain and release a flood of happy memories: how she came bounding back to you through the crowd to dance during Green and Dumb.  How you sang "Mexico" in Mexico.  How "Nada" saved your life in Los Angeles.  How Charlie told you the band who played that Jean Luc Picard song was doing a concert, and you went and they played for four amazing hours.  How you watched the pregnant hippie dance at the Sedona show.   Justin, Charlie, Ted, Erin, Autumn, Shannon, Jake, Taylor.  So many friends, and so many shows, and so many good songs and you know every single word.

And it's worth every single 'little too' to open that tap, to remember every good time while you're having a new good time, to hold up your bottle (and if your bottle's empty, help yourself to mine) and say: "Here's to life."