except the one guy who says "I'm not!"

Every five years, Milwaukee milks several hogs' teats worth of dollars from bikers returning upstream whence their iron ponies spawned, and...okay, gotta cut back on the metaphors here.

So day and night, the air is filled with Harleys lustily farting potatoes, so Rose has to put on headphones at work and we have to turn on the A/C rather than open the windows at night. And far be it from me to criticize all those bucks flowing into the city's coffers courtesy America's motorcycle-loving gentlemen and ladies, but...sometimes I think the city just went straight to central casting and asked for several thousand biker-looking types.

Because about three-quarters of the bikers look exactly like you'd expect Harley guys to look, and most of that remaining quarter takes its visual cues from slightly less popular variations (i.e., the younger, thinner Harley guy rather than the older, fatter, graybearded Harley guy). And if seeing the same thing over and over again eventually renders it invisible, I think black and orange will be imperceptible to my vision by the end of this weekend.

The funniest thing to me is the cliche about bikers has it that they're the last remaining bastion of freedom, individuality, and all that, wind blowing on the open road and brushing the dead bugs from their beards...and yet a more conformist, brand-oriented bunch of consumers I've never seen. And they roam in gaggles, like a bunch of freshman all Abercrombied and Hollistered, but branded with Harley-Davidson and lifestyle-appropriate hangers-on. (Mr. Daniel, I'm looking at you.) I can hardly blame every business in town for festooning itself in black and orange and cordoning off parking spaces with hastily lettered "BIKERS ONLY!!" signs, since obviously once this crowd dedicates itself to consuming something, it grips it like a pit bull and returns to it like Robert Downey Jr. to rehab.

Thus I've taken the liberty of redesigning the H-D logo and rendering it as a flag, to be flown until tattered from the proud sissy bars of Harleys everywhere:

shorts-circuited

According to this article in The New York Times, it's now okay in some places to wear short pants to the office - so long as they're "dress shorts" accompanying a sufficiently formal ensemble. Uh, no.

More proof, as if any were needed, that "fashion" is a sort of large-scale performance art piece involving dares, bets, and provocations to see just how ridiculous and humiliated fashion victims can get.

The Times helpfully accompanies the article with three photos.



Now, the first gentleman is almost acceptable. The shirt is properly unbuttoned, matching the inherently casual character of shorts - although he loses points for nerdishly tucking in the shirt, and the tight fit of the pants makes him look a bit Pee-Wee Hermanesque.



This man looks unaccountably pleased that he's wearing the sartorial equivalent of the mullet: business on the top, party on the bottom. There is absolutely no reason to wear a jacket and tie with shorts. None. Sorry. Go home, put on a pair of pants, or put on a nice casual shirt and enjoy a fun round of golf.



What can I say about this guy? He's not helped by his goofy facial expression and incipient beard; he looks rather if he'd just been awakened, told to put this outfit on, and now is having second thoughts ("are you sure this is what you want me to wear?"). Who can blame him? Let's see...what look like dress shoes, with no socks...pants nicely creased that abruptly cut off an uncomfortable interval above his knobbly knees...a jacket that looks a bit small...and a shirt that, given its slight sheen, open collar, and straight lines at the bottom (obviously I'm no clotheshorse or I'd know the technical term for this...), reinforces the "just woke up" thing by looking rather like a pajama top: I think this isn't a model at all, but a fellow who was very, very hungover, who wandered out the door and was set upon by photographers before he got the chance to realize just how incompetently he'd dressed himself. Go back to bed, sleep it off, and when you wake up, assume it was all a very bad, very silly dream.