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Look at This F-ing Guy #52

Who wears sandals and socks

 My father used to do this all the time. He did it most often on his day off work. Sandals, socks, ratty sweats and a plain white T-shirt on our way to the grocery store to fill my weekly public embarrassment quota. It doesn’t need to be the awful thong sandals with the socks, more often it will be the slip on sandals or the all-terrain, Land Rover sandals. No matter the sandal it should never be accompanied by socks of any stripe, pardon the pun.

I never got the idea behind the sandals/socks combo. I know the Germans and the Asians like this fashion faux pas, but that is a cultural pariah that doesn’t need to be jumping the shores to America. Were you wearing socks and then decided to leave the house, but thought slipping on a pair of shoes was too hard? I know, tying the laces of your shoes can be really tough work what with all the loops and knots and whatnot. Maybe it’s a little cold outside and you don’t want your feet to get cold? Then I refer back to putting on of the shoes! You keep your feet from getting nippy AND you keep from looking like a Germanic tourist.

Hell, sandals in the rain in shorts and a hoody could be adopted as the Oregonian uniform. I know the practice of wearing sandals 24/7 is observed with devotion by the college community today. Walking around all day long in sandals from class to class; all in pajama pants and concert t-shirts or college sweatshirts. I know that it is now cool to look like you just rolled out of bed in the middle of the afternoon, and you just might have for all we know, but you need to put a little thought in to the fact that you look like a jack ass. If it is too much trouble to put on a pair of shoes with your socks, or too much trouble to take off your socks before you put on sandals, then maybe you should just give up all together and just walk around barefoot all day long. I see these anti-footwear people all the time just feeling the grass beneath their feet and doing cartwheels in the quad, maybe you should join them if proper footwear combinations make your brain hurt, otherwise the tour bus leaves promptly at 7pm, Hans.

Look at This F-ing Guy #45

Who owns hemp anything

We get it, you like pot! Hemp clothing is as comfortable as a burlap sack. I’ve never looked at a bag of potatoes and said, “Hmmm, I wanna wear that.” 100% hemp clothing is less comfortable than wearing a St. Bernard. It is stiflingly hot, itchy, and begins to smell after a while.

Have you ever seen a single person in a hemp sweatshirt that didn’t look as uncomfortable as shit? They look like they’re sweating like a rapist, and for as often as the hemp-clad population showers, I would think you’d want to avoid stinking up that sweatshirt as much as possible.

Hemp is not a good source for anything. Rope? Oh, I can make rope out of it? Guess what? We can make rope out of all sorts of materials, and they work a hell of a lot better than hemp. What else ya got? Oh, it’s an affordable material for clothing? Yeah, so is cotton, and polyester, too. A good cotton blend feels great! If anyone uses hemp in comfortable clothes they blend it with…guess what? Yeah, fucking cotton. And black people don’t pick cotton anymore, so don’t talk to me about the injustice of cotton over hemp.

You just want hemp as a source of material since it’s natural byproduct is copious amounts of weed. If they want to legalize production of hemp for the purposes of soap, jewelry, and fucking rope, then the next logical step is legalizing all that sticky, crystallized goodness. Get over it, they are gonna legalize pot. You will get your weed, but the championing of the pros of hemp is not gonna get us any closer to getting pot out of vending machines…that’s already a thing, so don’t worry.

For my personal philosophy I say that you buy cotton, smoke pot, and just be comfortable in what you wear. Hemp does not make good clothing, we already have all the high-tensile strength rope we can handle, and soap is already operating at it’s peak performance. Pick another cash crop and don’t try and convince me that hemp is the future. If we legalized hemp and pot you’d be at a loss anyway. You’d have literally nothing to talk about anymore pot head. So then you’d be uncomfortable in your sweatshirt, annoying as shit, and now boring to boot. Just let it go and get a new wardrobe if you want to work anywhere but a head shop or a swank coffee shop on the bad side of town. Jesus.

Look at This F-ing Guy #44

Who doesn’t know how to properly shake hands

What is going on with greetings? What ever happened to just putting out a friendly hand and giving my extended hand a good shake? When did all this ‘saying hello’ become a carefully choreographed dance of the digits?

I am white, ok. There, I said it. I am a lame-ass gringo with no street cred and no urban connections. I am old-fashioned to boot, so you know that my greeting savvy extends as far as a classic handshake, and no further. I don’t want to get in to a thumb-war with you. I don’t need to go palm-to-palm grip, slide in to the thumb-war position, and follow that up with a pound (or daps, maybe you call it). Frankly, more than anything I just don’t think that there is any more respect in the hand dance than there is in a good ol’ fashioned handshake.

What gets me most is that I don’t know when the handshake ends. I don’t know what’s coming after the half-hug, palm-to-palm, thumb-war, and daps. Hell, I didn’t even know if we were doing daps! Now you snapped your fingers, and pointed at me. What do people do? Are we doing a Fresh Prince “pssshhh!” or maybe a chicken dance and bumping elbows. I just don’t know.

What’s worse than the hand dance is the lame and weak handshake. I hate a weak-handed shake. Just a minimal grip, clammy-palmed number that makes you feel like your firm grip is crushing their hand, and you pull back to match their soft grip. Worse than that is the cartoonishly over-exaggerated handshake. Like your arms are jump ropes and your playin’ double dutch. Or the handshake that goes on for more than two seconds. I don’t need to hold your hand and lock eyes with you while the guy introducing up gives each of us the other’s bio for the last ten years. That kind of handshake just makes me feel like I’m having some contest of wills at the bar of an Applebee’s.

OK, that's not right

I didn’t grow up on your block in Compton, and I don’t know the neighborhood handshake. I don’t know the secret handshake to get in to the fraternity. I don’t know the little two-step of the Shriners and I don’t know what you guys used to do “back in the day.” All I was trying to do was say hello, introduce myself maybe, and now I’m locked in to an awkward moment like trying to karaoke to a song I don’t know all the words to. Why did I pick R.E.M.’s “It’s The End of The World”? I don’t even know the words to this song! I must be drunk. For future reference, just shake a hand, because the person across from you is about to feel pretty fucking lame after you go through the five-step greeting that only you and five of your buddies know. Fuck you, for making me look stupid on our first meeting.

Look at This F-ing Guy #43

Who wears his pants around his ass

This style was an epidemic when I was growing up, but I still see it today. Those kids, and even grow adults that still let the waist of their pants hover around their ass-equator. Those people who think the crotch of an oversized pair of jeans belongs squarely between their knee caps. They walk around with the gate of a man holding in a deuce all day long so their pants don’t fall right off of them when standing on a street corner waiting for the walk signal to change colors.

It started innocently enough with baggy jeans. The look was one even I enjoyed since I was a boy blessed with the frame of a number two pencil. But then those guys that bought 36 waist pants for their 28 waist frame began letting them sag just a bit. It was on par with a plumber’s approximate ass crack view. Then the pants began their descent from barely covering your ass to actually being somewhere in the vicinity of the upper thigh. Now you had guys in extra long shirts covering up the boxer shorts, or in most cases basketball sorts, that the pants were simply not able to cover.

I always wondered what the reasoning was for this to be the style you decided best suited you. As a young lad, the guys that cinched belts at thigh-high level considered themselves mean muggers and bad asses. The lower the pants, the badder they were. These were the kids in the Principal’s office, or who knew the local cops by first name. If this is the look of the tough, loose pants hanging just above your knees, wouldn’t this actually be counter-productive the idea that you’re not one to be messed with. You can’t exactly be tough if your pants leave you less agile than a woman sporting a mini skirt. One good shove and you’d lose your balance, toppling like a bowling pin. Not a real tough guy when you pants are around your ankles while you are trying to get back up. You are not a Weeble-Wobble, my friend. Forget about running from the cops. You are not exactly going to be running an five-second 40′s with pants that allow for a range of motion on par with the prison issued shackles you’ll be wearing once you’re caught. You look stupid, you’re about as stable as a house of cards, and your ability to back up how tough you think you look will forever be hampered by that very look. Oh, and make sure you buy some new drawers, I can see you’re not one to wipe twice. That’s disgusting.

There is only one instance where this look can be forgiven. If you were once obese, a big boy, husky fella. Let’s say you drop some 100+ pounds and are not a trim young man, than I can see that your pants are not going to be fittin’ quite right when you start having to punch holes in your old belts. That diet is working out very well and you are shedding pounds. You’re swimming in your shirts, not a single pair of pants fit right, and your boxers are on display as you tug at your waistline and are constantly showing a little crack. I get this, you can’t afford to buy a new wardrobe as you’re still losing weight! Another 50 pounds and you’re gonna hit the stores and be rocking all the latest styles in your new found body. Skinny jeans and Member’s Only Jackets as far as the eye can see…well, those are issues for another LTFG, I suppose. Unless you’re halfway through a life changing Biggest Loser moment, then pull your damned pants up and stop walking like you’re smuggling heroin the “prison way.”

Look at This F-ing Guy #41

Who takes up two spaces with their luxury car

 Oh you all know the scene. You are parked at the mall and on your way in from your painted-line respectful position in the parking lot and you walk by a $60,000 car parked at 45 degrees in a spot ten spots up from you taking up two spaces. They don’t want anyone to ding their car, but damned to hell if they are going to walk any further than they actually have to. They spent that much money on their vehicle, have achieved platinum status with American Express, and damn it to hell if they aren’t going to park conveniently for themselves, social contracts of designated parking spots be damned.

This audacity can also be seen in any vehicle topping out above $45,000 on the highway. They bought the flashy car for the sake of appearances and to reward themselves for a salary well-earned, and since you had better be looking at them anyway, they are going to change lanes or take a right turn without signaling. You were looking at the fat rims on the Infiniti G35 anyway, so you’re going to take notice when they break sharply and jump in to the left turn lane in front of you from the far right lane. It’s their damned world, and you just live in it after all.

I don’t know if the vapid sense of self-importance is required with a vehicle of this price tag, or if it come standard with every Benz and Ferrari, but it seems to at least go hand in hand with it. All social contracts and laws be damned, I paid good money for this car, and I will do damn well whatever I please with it after driving it off of the lot. I’ll merge in traffic even if there is no room for it. I need that extra car length to get where I am going, who cares if you have to slam on your cheap Toyota breaks to make room for me. These parking spots are designed for your cheap vehicles that get you from A to B safely, but they simply are not built to fit my car and the overly inflated ego that goes along with it. Signals are for the poor, and it is my road to do with as I please, so stay out of my way and be ready when I was on my cell phone and need to get to the exit while driving in the fast lane; it’s the same way I live my life, so why would I not drive in it? It was practically made for me.

If you’re so self-absorbed and financially solvent to afford that damned phallic analog, then you had better learn to live in the real world with the rest of us. I challenge all you non-luxury car owners to park right next to that two-spotter at the mall. Just park right next to the car on the driver’s side, like six-inches of space, and block him in. Just have at it and do your shopping in a leisurely manner. Who cares if he is livid and needs to climb in on the passenger side, scuffing up his fine Italian leather. If he is waiting for you when you come out, and is most likely steaming mad, just simply tell him, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was park-wherever-you-want-day at the mall. Seemed like you were observing it, so I figured I would, too.” After $45,000 the sense of adherence to social contracts goes out the window, but sometimes the luxury class needs to be taken down a peg.

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