It's been a week of changing the clock ten minutes each day. I'm now caught up with the rest of you. I'm on Standard Time. It's also been two weeks since I got double vaxed, so I am now good to go. And go I want to, given the right circumstances. Circumstances aren't always favorable in my life right now.
Selavy.
I saw Bill Burr's opening monologue for SNL on YouTube yesterday. Oy. He bombed. But he said something funny that struck a chord--it was the pantsuit that did the democrats in. That one stuck the landing for me. The pantsuit is not a fashion statement. It can't be. I worked for a CEO for half my career, a woman with a strong personality. When she got hired to replace the outgoing CEO, he showed her around the factory on her first day. I was the first worker he introduced to her. He touted my recent trip to Cuba to present at the International Hemingway Conference. She narrowed her eyes and gave me a cold look. I had told everyone she was my favorite candidate because she had the best legs. She did, and she showed them. But what she said to me when we met was, "You remind me of my ex-husband."
Ice.
I later found out he was a fishing charter boat captain in Key West, and she and he were known on the island as "Barbie and Ken." Ken, so it is told, was a bad boy. He liked women. And so. . . .
She came in as a Democrat but the factory was in a Republican county and had a Republican Board, and it didn't take her long to change her party affiliation and start wearing. . . wait for it. . . Pantsuits!
We never saw her legs again. She had a love/hate relationship with me for the next twenty years. And guess what happened when she retired. They hired a clone. The woman was an ex-college swimmer, but she wore the exact same Pantsuit as her predecessor--right down to the color.
I'd seen them each in public. The predecessor lived in my neighborhood, about a mile away, and we'd run into one another in restaurants and grocery stores. She was never in a Pantsuit.
Yesterday, after seeing the Burr thing, I sent a simple text to many of my friends: "The Pantsuit did the democrats in."
Q took exception to that. "Write a post about your thoughts here, then delete it. Trust me. That’s nonsense."
It has been a long time since I read works on semiotics, and I couldn't pull shit out of my hat at the moment, so I just Googled "Semiotics of clothing" and sent links to the first two articles that popped up. I didn't bother reading them. I was thinking of Roland Barthes, of course, but I hadn't eaten anything all day and was just sitting down to dinner after a couple cocktails and I wasn't in the mood for serious academics. But yea. . . they made me read Barthes in grad school. It was the beginning of the death of literature and the birth of its replacement--theory.
And now only 2% of college students get degrees in literature.
I'm not in the mood this morning to go searching for the appropriate Barthes writings, either. If you are interested, don't be lazy, look them up yourself. I'd suggest, however, find some explications of his ideas. Barthes can be very difficult to read.
So, Q, I stand by my statement. A Pantsuit is never a fashion statement, it is an ideology.
But, you know, a Jumpsuit is a different thing. That's what they put prisoners in. But wait--I'll have to think about this for awhile.
I spent the day working up the roller derby pics. Some of the swish pan stuff kinda worked. I'm still working on the early part of the shoot. I think the photos get better further on. I'm not sure, though, that the roller derby people will be so interested in my stuff. They are used to the pictures anybody with a camera can take, things like this.
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