vs Retro Sexy Clothing

You little Gen Y punks have no idea how good you got it, with your apps and recycled R&B music, and your boring clothing.  Back in the day your wardrobe meant everything, it directly reflected your social status and objectified your sex appeal.  And that was just the men.

Today I'd like to thank Sashini, who emailed me the following examples of just how powerful and anarchic fashion was back in the '70s and '80s, where fashion started with earthy tones and flares and ended with neon-intensity schizophrenia.

The '70s: Decade of Manhood

Holy fuck, this is what sex would look like if you sprayed it with polyester!  Just read the description, pussies, and lament the passing of true manhood. 

"You're headed in the ultimate fashion climax." 

"it shows all you've got," 

"you're a walking turn-on." 

Back in the '70s the word 'innuendo' had been invented yet so all you got was "This jumpsuit is basically a condom!"  And that was a fucking guarantee, provided you were man enough to fill the Big Zip suit.

When your clothing company/fashion house is literally called 'Jumpsuits Ltd' you know you're delivering the goods.  Powder blue onesy?  No fucking problem.  Additional hood?  Way ahead of you, real man.  If this thing wasn't a piece of clothing it'd be classified as a date rape drug.  It's built to make you bulge, and doubles as summerwear for Jedi knights.  Just take a look at beardy, blow-wave boy up there and tell me he doesn't mean business?  Even the hot woman beside him knows she doesn't stand a chance, because sleeping with girls is for poofs!

Apart from the decriminalisation of homosexual polygamy, Bob, Paul and Steve only want one thing: Mach II shaped shirts.  Your amorphous shirts can go to hell!  These bad boys demand patterns and colours that really swing.  It says here that "Dress models have long or short sleeves, 4.5 inch Scorpio collars, 2 button chiseled cuffs, and a 2 inch wider front placket."  Even Druids have no idea what that means, but I'm buying three before my testicles disown me.

I'm not immune to the irony that a generation of men who preferred one-piece outer garments also insisted on two-piece underwear.  And who can blame them when open mesh briefs and vests were on offer.

Back then it was a sad fact that most men looked better with their clothes on - any clothes.  Which is why instead of male porn magazines they published catalogues like this.  The thing about belted sweaters is that they endure, maybe not as clothing but certainly as a meme.  Hell, they even have their own Facebook page, suckahs.


The '80s: Decade of Douchehood
See, the '70s were my father's generation, when men were proud regardless of apparel, side-burns and long hair bespoke virility, and natural fibres were considered effeminate and possibly communist.  A decade later a horde of adolescent, sexually confused upstarts came along and rewrote the fashion books by first becoming illiterate and also colourblind.

So, '80s teenager, would you prefer a white, preppy look jacket or red bomber style?  We also have pants in pocket pizzazz and pierced leg.  All collars are guaranteed poppable so you don't look like a nerd, or someone who isn't a douche.

Aargh!  My eyes!  They've seen too much!

Towards the late '80s the word 'colour' took out a restraining order against the word 'natural' and then began experimenting with drugs.  Also, 'surfing' stopped being a sport and started a new, violently loud career as a fashion genre.

"Remember, Designer Denim Jackets are not only for women and children," they're also for teenage guys who want to be women and children.  Any young teenager wearing this was blatantly telling all the other child molestors on the block "Sorry, I'm taken."  And if you tried rocking up to Casual Day wearing a jacket that was also your sister's pre-school craft project you were begging to be held down by the special kid while the chess club shaved that facial fuzz off with a spoon.

And here we have the epitomy of the era - three relatively normal kids hanging out with their muscular hermaphrodite.  Seriously, nobody gave a shit back then.

And just to drive that nail home, let's see what passed for modelling headshots in that period:

Archivists are still arguing over what kind of product was being sold in this ad, or if it's just an instructional video for home embalming kits.

So rest easy, Gen Y, knowing that these horrors need never be repeated.

vs Anti-cheating advice.

People are idiots the moment they fall in love.  If it wasn't for all those narcotic-strength hormones and neurochemicals released by the 'falling-in-love' process and subsequent co-dependence rewiring that occurs upstairs, there's no way we'd put up with each other's shit for a second.  Ever watch that horribly hilarious American show, Cheaters?  Of course you have, because it gives you that guilty little buzz we all get when someone else is caught with their hand in the vagina-shaped cookie jar.

Infidelity detection is huge business - websites, books, private investigation/honey trap services, tv shows, video guides, mail order lie detectors, you name it, there's a product or service ready and waiting to give you peace of mind in exchange for money.  Only it never is peace of mind, is it?  Let's face it, the word 'trust' only comes up in a relationship when it's lacking.
 
As your sexiest of sex detectives it's my code-bound duty to remind you that these products and related bullshit are no substitute for the responsible option: sorting shit out.  People cheat on others for a hundred different reasons - child-like lack of impulse control, low self-esteem, boredom, resentment, envy, frustration, whatever.  But people only stay loyal for one reason, and that's what needs to be sorted out.

If you don't, then bitterness, ignorance and an overactive imagination is going to see you end up with something like this crap.

Oh thank God, a book that tells women whether or not their guy is penetrating a third party.  Take a look at the promising product description:

Cheating has become the proverbial lament heard around the world. Universal in its occurrence, cheating often leaves women broken and men shrugging their shoulders, declaring, "It's just the way I am. It's in my DNA."* (Note: In some circles, DNA stands for Dumb. Needy. Asshole.). So stop the cheater now! With its expert author team primed to out-wit even the sneakiest sleezeball, The Cheat Sheet uncovers the entanglement of infidelity with tools as simple as quizzes and as versatile as GPS systems. Each chapter reveals true infidelity stories, common cheating excuses and exposes the cheater's thought process and patterns. Readers will learn how to catch a cheat in the act; which rules cheaters live by; how to deflect a cheater's advances; how to forgive; and when there's no choice but to forget and move on. The Cheat Sheet teaches readers to recognize cheating, catch cheaters red-handed, and ultimately find a relationship that will make them happy for a lifetime.
*Cheating as a genetic disorder is a far less common argument than this description indicates.  Seriously, what sort of desperate twat would try to blame evolution for poking your sister?

If you're wondering what an 'expert author team' is, it's a couple of otherwise under-qualified women who run websites devoted to thinking how horrible men are.
 
And why is something called a 'cheat sheet' 256 pages long?  It's full of tips and tricks, including quizzes (hopefully for the reader and not the perpetrator, that would be a little bit too easy) and something about GPS.  I've done a lot of research into the common themes espoused online about catching male cheaters and they all seem to assume certain things, including that you somehow have access to CIA resources, and that your man is a 1960's super-villain.  It's all validation fantasy bollocks.

Listen, people, a book like this will only guarantee one of two possible outcomes:

1. Your man finds that you have a copy of The Cheat Sheet, in which case some extremely fucking awkward conversations are going to pop up over the dinner table, or;

2. You find that he has a copy of this book, in which case he is not only cheating on you but has also done his research.

But what if you don't have time to order, wait for, then read something stupid?  That's cool, fool, eHow has your back.



Wow, Joe covered just about every possible form of human behaviour in 2 minutes.  Is your spouse doing ANYTHING different at all?  Then he's a cheater.  But you already knew that due to your intuition.  What shits me about supposedly professional advice like this is that it only has to be right some of the time to be right at all.  There's no qualifying mitigation.  I've been accused of cheating a few times and to different degrees, depending on the neurosis of each girlfriend.  These accusations were all an initial result of 'intuition', or as I call it, 'crazy-ass projections of self-torturing doubt'.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to prove that you're not cheating?  You could provide monitored evidence over a 12 month period of eveything you do and every vagina you didn't touch and some crazy bitch can still say "Well, maybe you controlled yourself last year, but what about the next?"  When I enter into a sex-based relationship I wish to do so without having to live in a police state where sniffer dogs get shoved in my crotch every time I walk through the door.  

Sure, I've flopped around on top of my fair share of ladykind, but I prefer to be a serial monogamist.  Not for moral reasons, though, simply for the sake of stress management.  Covert cheating just takes too much hard work for too little pay off because you're living on borrowed time the moment you enter into more than one relationship. Obviously hookers don't count, provided they're tax deductible, but trying to coordinate multiple sex-based relationships in cognito would be a fucking nightmare.  Even my dick would get confused.

But that doesn't mean I'm not a cunt.  Any girlfriend who tries to secretly tag and track me on some baseless suspicion instead of the doing the grown-up thing and talking to me about it is in for some real excitement.  I will scatter seedy motel receipts and used condoms around the house like rose petals.  I will buy a new cell phone just to fill it with explicitly sickening texts, bizarre photos and stripper phone numbers then leave it unlocked on the kitchen counter all day.  As for GPS/surveillance, I can sit quietly in a pub all night after paying a friend to drive my car all over town for 6 hours.  And with the right marker pens and a steady hand I can probably make my junk look like a sexually transmitted theme park.  By the end of the first week you won't be wondering if I'm cheating because you'll be too amazed that my penis hasn't been abraded down to a nub.  You'll be afraid to leave me at home with your cat because by the time you return it'll be crying to itself in the shower while I'm the one coughing up hairballs.

So, SD, when is it okay to go through my man's email/phone?

The moral answer is: 'never', and also 'fuck you!' Is it your phone or email account? No? Then stay the fuck out. I'm your partner, not your kid. If I want you reading my crap I'd forward that shit to you.

The practical answer, of course, is: 'whenever you can get away with it'. Morality only ever applies when you don't think you're being fucked over. The moment you suspect you're getting shafted information becomes more valuable than gold and you'll stop at nothing to get it. We simply can't help ourselves. An unlocked phone or hacking your way into an account becomes fully justified in your mind because you trade off the relatively minor breach in privacy for the potentially far larger sin of infidelity. There are two ironies at play here: firstly, infidelity is not illegal, while accessing a protected account is (potential fraud and identity theft); secondly, invading a person's privacy or cheating on someone are both immoral acts.

Still, I fully understand why suspicious partners do it. See, in personal relationships there is no universal right or wrong. There really isn't. It's too personal. Emotions override reasonable behaviour every time because that is the price of love, doubt and resentment. And, like I said to begin with, being in love - along with any resultant jealousy - is pretty much a mild, fluctuating form of psychosis. Hear that, romantic tragics?! I just called you batshit crazy to your face. Deal.

But make no fucking mistake, idealists, the moment you employ deceit to expose deceit you are at war with your partner.  The same way they did when they went behind your back.  Sure, it might be a Cold War instead of a hot, yelling, tantrum one, but you're still in a fight.  You'll have heaps of different reasons for justifying what you have to resort to in order to uncover the truth, but 'Love' isn't one of them.  Not ever.

Kidd's random Vids: Dating guides & Holy clowns

Why show this crap?  Because I fucking can, okay?  It's been a long week and it's only Wednesday, so I need to share the pain that is awful video relic research, just so we don't digitally repeat the greatest mistakes made in VHS-based education.

The '80s was a bizarre time for anyone who suffered through it.  Hard-line capitalism flourished, but so did androgeny and perms for men.  The Cold War was dying, and with it the last of the traditional 'evil' empires.  Greed, selfishness and narcissism became aspirations instead of sins, and the ensuing social competition led to what would become diagnosed as status anxiety ten years later.

There is no question that the best action films of all time originated in the '80s, as iconicism gave way to sardonic and timely catch-phrases.  There's also little argument from me that the decade also spawned some of the most poorly conceived training or advice products ever to exploit the magic of portable media devices.  What follows is a sample of what some may bravely term 'cavalier marketing', or as you know it, the opposite of awesome.

Dating Tips and ... stuff?



The great (and fully credited) guys at Found Footage Festival uploaded this highly confusing and protracted montage from a video product called Attracting Today's Woman.

I was half asleep when I first viewed this clip, so I wasn't surprised when it didn't make sense.  "Some flabby Country singer is coaching a spastic burn victim to enter the Special Olympics," I shrugged, "Good for them."  Then after a stiff coffee I played it again with the sound on and realised this was the Rocky-esque vignette of this 'nerd!' (the word meant something a bit different back then)...

 'Gay' apparently.

...transforming into this 'hunk' (once again, terminology relative to the era).

'Confusingly gay'.

See what I mean about the '80s?  The solution to boost your popularity from bow-tied, horn-rimmed moustache dweeb to this dream guy was to get extensive plastic surgery then engage in a rigorously mentored fitness program while still bandaged and woozy from anesthetic.

Sadly we have no idea what else featured in the consumate Attracting Today's Woman tape - oh shit, yes we do because someone who believes this product deserves modern, if ironic, attention, uploaded the entire contents in 5 parts on Youtube.  That's certainly reassuring beacuse every poor sap who featured in this shallow social experiment can look back online and recall the very day they all fired the same agent.

If you're reading my current story arc you'll know that only professional advice and training will provide you with the special skills necessary to communicate with a potentially fuckable homo-sapien.  This is nothing new, and even 20-30 years ago an entire market for socially maladjusted and sexually frustrated morons was already being exploited.  Which is why you end up with this:



Gail Prince (I know, I know, she's got that horrible Judge Judy voice thing happening) and her school teacher approach to patronising an audience of gormless desperados was actually cutting edge stuff back then.  She asks all the right questions to a couple of strange people sitting awkwardly on a set couch.

What is flirting? 
Is it eye contact?
Is it touching?
Is it smiling?
Maybe it's a simultaneous combination of all three, but I really fucking hope not, because if anyone spontaneously lunged for me while grinning and staring into my eyes there's going to be a brief, kinetic interaction followed by a lengthy court case.





Gail then talks to the audience about the importance of props.  How disappointed was I when I found out she wasn't talking about period piece weaponry or model spaceships?  Earrings and suspenders?  Yawn.  Who the hell notices shit like that?  "Hi, strange woman whom I've never met before, tell me about all that metal hanging off your head.  Please ignore my unblinking gaze, static grimace and the way I'm gripping your thigh while we talk."

But verbal instructions are never enough when trying to teach people how to finger strangers.  That's where role-playing comes in.  And role-playing can be sexy, unless you're doing it like this couple who seem to be trying to bore each other's clothes off.

Here we have two people apparently riding a train or sitting in a diner or, I dunno, killing time in an STD clinic.  And as for props, this is where they should be featured but aren't.  Instead we're left with a guy reading the most unenthralling invisible newspaper in the world (The Wall Street Journal, Casanova?  Really?), while the girl points to her invisible earring and mumbles something about dancing.

Holy Entertainers

If you ever want to combine two very unfunny things try mixing clowns with religion, then watch the horror unfold.

Yep, Christian Clowns are as scary as fuck, but they're also scavengers, not true predators, preying only on those too old and infirm to evade them.  And I just love the bit where Preacher Guy warns clowns against making a frontal assault en masse, but instead to creep up on unsuspecting pensioners and corner them.

When I first saw the title for this vid I hoped it was all about a clown-based religion where clowns try to convert non-clowns.  No such luck, it's just churchy volunteers dressing up and behaving like idiots to spread the word of their now cringing god.  Seriously, can you imagine Christ the Lord returning for his Second Coming and seeing this shit?  He'd step off his cloud-bike or whatever and start apologising to old people: "I am so fucking sorry, I really am, these dicks aren't with me.  I never asked anyone to dress like a gay candy wrapper to scare the elderly.  I mean, shit, right?  That's pretty much the opposite of what I stood for back in the day."

But it's not just clowns taking names in vain and using childish gimmicks to spread the Word.

Not all magic is evil and occult.  Sometimes it's religious and lame to the point of pity.  Whether it's rap, rock or soul (to paraphrase DC Talk), religion has the capacity to turn any form of entertainment into a diet cordial experience.  I mean, Guy Sebastian didn't launch his career from 'Idol by continuing to sing about God, right?  Hell, no, it became all about chicks in elevators and secret boners.

But this dude and his magicforjesus Youtube channel is just downright depressing.  He likes to show off the kind of magic tricks most of us accidentally mastered by the age of 5, allthewhile rambling about Jesus stuff.  And his analogies are as disturbing as they are clumsy.  Christians react to stress by exploding unless they have some Christ-water in them?  You've taken a spiritual metaphor and made it into a magical metaphor, well done, because that shit wasn't confusing enough the first time around.