Welcome to Dadelaide

Remember when you were 14 and hated the world and your dad would wander through the living room wearing his cardigan with the leather buttons while you had friends over and were listening to music? And he’d try to be cool by making a dad joke or saying, “How about that Madonna, eh? Doesn’t wear very much, does she?” And then you’d notice he had a bit of Vegemite on his chin?

Well, Adelaide is your dad when you were 14.

There’s a new trend. Any event organiser worth his piss-and-party-pies at the work Christmas do is stuck on world record attempts. Last year, there was the attempt at the world’s biggest guitar band at the hugely underwhelming Adelaide International Guitar Festival. It failed dismally, but they refused to be deterred and decided to give it another good Aussie go at this year’s festival. They’ll fail again, of course, unless they bus people in from sheltered workshops all over the state.

Then there was yesterday’s stab at creating the world’s biggest and longest Mexican wave before the Christmas Pageant. Captive audience, you’d think, as people waited for Father Christmas and dumpy little fat chicks dressed as clowns to pass by. Epic fail. They tried twice and couldn’t get past the halfway mark. No one took into account the complete apathy of the local populace.

A week ago, a little town in Peru decided it was going to break a world record by hook or by crook, so it made the world’s biggest pair of jeans. I don’t know what bastard is going to wear 114-foot-tall denims (“Hi, can I get these taken up please? They’re a little long.”), but that’s beside the point. Now Lima gets to be home to the world’s biggest blue jeans and the previous record holders in Medellin, Colombia can sit around plotting revenge and drinking rum while they wonder what to do with their 113 foot jeans.

Sure, it’s a record. But it’s still pants.

Really, what were we going to do if we had broken the record? Change all the car number plates to “The Mexican wave state”? Erect a sign at the airport reading, “Welcome to Adelaide, holder of the world record for biggest Mexican wave?” It’s all so Dogpatch, USA. What do you do when you have no other claim to fame? Why you set a world record, of course. No point in going for anything that requires talent, of course, like eating 300 hotdogs in two minutes, and bona fide freaks are in huge demand, especially in India. And Lima has the biggest jeans, so that’s out. Ooh, I know! A mass participation record will make us sooooo cool. Madonna cool.

By the way, did you know you had Vegemite on your chin? Just there under your lip. Big smear.

Greetings from Randomland

Yesterday morning, two women stopped at the base of an empty escalator, blocking the way.
"Excuse me," I said, politely.
They both turned and looked at me as though I'd spat on them.
"Could I get past, please?" Politely, again.
They mustered up some more outrage, but moved as little as possible. I slipped past and climbed the escalator. When I got to the top, I heard one shout, "You kno-owww, there are STAIRS if you want to WALK!"

***

On the train home, an eight-year-old boy restored my faith in humanity by running up and down the carriage, chanting, "Snot-snot-snot-snot-snot-snot-snot-snot-snot-snot".

****

Tonight, after leaving a civilised booze-up that was showing signs of turning messy, a guy approached me in the street.
"I had Portuguese chicken!" he said with a grin like an old sneaker.
"Well, that's just great."
"It was so good! It was Portuguese!"
"Fantastic, mate. Glad you enjoyed it."
"And spice-eeeee!"

****

And it's only Tuesday.

Chef of the damned

This guy scares me. He's life-size and he stands at the door to a rather grim cafe that I pass several times a day. I swear I heard him sniff and murmur longingly, "Mmm, brains..." as I passed by this morning.

I presume that his hat is red because he dips it in the blood of the damned, just like a real redcap, and the latte cup is for offerings of grey matter.

Welcome to Oddelaide

Ah, Adelaide, my Adelaide.

I've been suffering from bloggers' block since I finished writing about Africa. I thought about deleting my blog and never logging in again because, after all, how could anything be worth writing about after that? But then The Weird came crashing in again.

Ah, The Weird. Where else but Oddelaide could one see, in the space of an hour:

• a line of girls waiting for the doors to their strip club to open so they could get painted up and start work;
• a little guy who looked like a dirtier version of Stig of the Dump baring his scrawny arse on stage; and
• a pale and podgy man wearing nothing but white Y-fronts standing in the gutter talking to the cops?

Oddelaide is weird at the best of times, but right now it’s Fringe time and there are all sorts of comedy, theatre, music, circus and burlesque acts in town. Add to that the World Police and Fire Games, a car race, WOMAD, the Adelaide Cup and various food and wine festivals and March has been one crowded hour. We’ve had really buff filth and firies lugging bags of volleyballs and sweat socks about town, hippy world music lovers, bogan revheads, arty types and pissed racing princesses on top of all the usual suspects.

Of course, once March is over, that’s it. We go back to sleep until it’s time for the Christmas piss-ups.

Bloke and I have seen some really good shows this Fringe, like the Soweto Gospel Choir (which really just made me lonelier for Africa), but we also saw Rubeville. Well, some of Rubeville, anyway. The theatre group was from Melbourne and they called themselves The Black Lung (which appealed because of Zoolander. "~Cough~ I thnk I've got the... ~hack~ black... lung... pop!")

They’d taken over an empty Hindley St shop next to a strip club, brought in a bath to ice the beer at the bar and scattered about a lot of weird objects. There was a Cabbage Patch doll on a lamp table that looked as though it had been napalmed and a collection of mismatched chairs and couches that I suspect had been rescued from hard rubbish piles.

It was hot in the bar area and I couldn't seem to get served anyway, so we stood out the front waiting to be let in to the theatre space. One of the actors was prowling the footpath, smoking with a ferocious intensity. He was built like a skinny chimp and covered in smears of camouflage paint that made him look as though he’d slept in a food court dumpster. As he smoked and paced, he eyed the group of exotic dancers waiting by nextdoor's street door.

The girls carried cantilevered make-up boxes and wore sky-high white stilettos, but the real giveaway was that they were lining up at the front door of a strip club. Hard to hide that, really. But you’d think the owners would let them use the back door instead of making them stand on the street. It's not nice, yeah? I suppose they were called Mystique and Safyre and Rayne and had a level of flexibility of which I can only dream.

Seeing the actors before a show usually bodes ill. Just looking at Smoker Boy gave the show the stink of death. It was those fake shit smears, I think. We debated leaving then and there, but decided to give it a go. After all, we'd just eaten the worst hamburgers in the world at a dodgy Aussie-themed pub (at least the flies were authentic), so the night couldn't get that much worse. Once we'd shuffled into the theatre space, squeezing past a bed and a stack of signs that all read “'KISSY”, I thought perhaps I’d been wrong because there was an absolutely cranking band playing. The music was something between ska and zydeco and all the musos were wearing nightmare make-up and funky hats. One guy played the saw while another in fedora and waistcoat thumped on a double bass.

But then the lights went down and Smeary Smoker Lad appeared. He stalked up and down the stage, trying to cadge change from the audience and abusing people with a filthy schoolyard tongue. Eventually, he decided that someone sitting a few rows back from the front looked like a dirty bastard who might well be interested in giving it to him, so he climbed on a hard rubbish armchair and dropped his shorts, exposing a skinny and luminous arse. He started to sing, “Don’t you want me baby?” in a pathetic monotone and segued into an impression of a sobbing and abused child.

By then, my mouth was hanging open and my eyebrows had vanished into my hair.

We lasted another 10 minutes, through some pretentious wank about consumerism by a second, smearless boy and an attempt by a French-junkie-prostitute in a fluffy jacket to have sex with him.

There was no backstage area and as we slipped out, the arse-barer was standing at the back of the room, tying a bandage around his head. He bowed us out the door.

Yes, I was offended, but this show didn’t even have the distinction of being the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen. After all, I lasted through I bought a spade at Ikea to dig my own grave. Anything less than that is just kiddy stuff. Three years later, I'm still having trouble looking at hotdogs and cooked spaghetti the same way, having seen people trying to shove both of them up their bums. I still can’t eat lasagne, let alone smell it. But I survived, yeah?

Rubeville, on the other hand, was just pretentious twaddle, playing for cheap shocks. The thing that really left me wondering was the fantastic reviews it got from local “critics”. Doesn't the word "critic" imply that they are actually critical? I'm sorry - I thought that was part of our job description. They were just falling over themselves to say how daring and raw and so veryveryvery it was.

I think I’m getting old. But if life’s too short to stuff a mushroom, it’s far short to sit through shite theatre. After all, stuffed mushrooms at least taste good.

Oh and Mr Y-Fronts? Tss - Ford knows what the story was there. We drove past a police car with all lights flashing and saw him standing on the kerb, covering his man boobs with jubbly paws, just as a woman might if she were caught half-naked. But we’ll never know where his trousers were. Sorry, guys.

Edit: Ha, that's all I know! Rubeville won Best Theatre as voted by The Traumatiser's "critics".

You know it's January in Adelaide when...

There are more blokes than chicks in town with waxed legs. Believe me, I kid you not.

Ah, Tour Down Under. For non-Adelaide people (ie, most of youse what is sane), this is a cycle race. Our premier (Jedi - this equals "governor"), Media Mike, likes to think that our cycle race is about to take on Le Tour de France. Ha. Sadly, Media Mike is wildly delusional and also thinks that he can catch arsonists. But that doesn't mean that this isn't a fun ol' Adelaide time. Yeehah and all.

Frankly, I have no interest in cycling. I haven't been able to love it much since that Nasty Incident where I was trying to avoid looking at a really annoying neighbour and ended up pranging my Malvern Star up the back end of a stationary Ford Zephyr when I was 11. I was chewing grape-flavoured bubblegum at the time and (allegedly) my neighbour said, "Here's where it happened! Here's her gum!" So, bikes and me = not that friendly.

I do see the benefits of the Pretty European Cycle Boys, though. They're very picturesque. Toned boys in lycra, even if they're not that tall, are a distinct enhancement to any streetscape. Adelaide is a far cry from Paris, but a PECB brings one that little bit closer. Eh, bonjour! Tu es un bien barraque! Voudrais-tu coucher avec mois, ce soir? Non? Meh! Va te faire foutre!

I used to work in Victoria Square, which, apart from being courthouse-central in Adelaide, also happens to be home to the Tour Village (ie, a lot of tents) and the Hilton Hotel (where most of the PECBs stay). I'd drag my sadly unglamorous arse into work in the mornings and there would be piles of PECBs at the cafes, downing coffee. You have to pity the poor little bastards, even if they are built like jockeys and wearing athletic socks and Nike slides - coffee is the only drug they're allowed.

But it doesn't matter if one is out of the CBD (yes, Adelaide DOES have one!) because one can still get an eyeful of the PECBs in the 'burbs. I live by the beach and if one gets one's fat arse out of bed early enough in the a.m., one can see the PECBs training. For some reason, they prefer to ride by someplace purdy. Buggered if I know why. I'd way rather train in a place that was known for carjackings.

However, sometimes one can be gypped. Like this morning. I was driving to work and went, "Phwoar! PECBs!" But it wasn't really a pelleton. Instead, it was just bunch of wannabes. Even worse, some of the wannabes turn out to be chicks. You have no idea how this challenges one's sexuality.

"Phwoar, look at the PECBs! Oh, CHRIST! Chicks! Noooo! Really, I wasn't attracted to their arses at all! No! It's not my fault! How the hell am I supposed to know? They've all got shaved legs! Sob!"

Sadly, January is also the time when any wanker with a pushbike gets the thing out of the shed. You never, ever see so many cyclists in Adelaide as during the Tour. Suddenly, it's cool to risk death. Suddenly, people forget that Adelaide drivers are among the biggest pricks in the country, and will run a cyclist off the road before breakfast without even batting an eyelid.

So, hurrah for the cycle race. It's over on Sunday or something. Bah, humbike.

The plague

Ah, Adelaide. Can there really be a better place for weirdo-watching? I have two examples par excellence for your amusement.

Exhibit one: Ms Orange Peel
Yesterday, I wandered into Rundle Mall to do some shopping for Western Consumer Holiday (book vouchers, mais bien sur). On the way back, I found myself walking behind Ms Orange Peel. It was like an immense train wreck. I simply couldn't look away. Ms OP was wearing fried blonde hair with about four inches of dark roots, the skankiest high heels one has ever seen in one's life and a denim miniminimini skirt. She was a reasonable size for a mini, yet not of a reasonable age. Cellulite overtakes us all, sooner of later. It's a sad fact. But I could have forgiven her all of her other sins, had it not been for The Skirt.

In the end, there is very little I can say about this skirt apart from, "Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! The plague has spread!!!!!"

Naturally, I mean the plague of pantlesssness. Britney and all those other over-paid, over-privileged little skanks have done it again. Knickerlessness is rife.

Ms OP had either failed to undies up for the day, or she was wearing a G-string. Nothing really wrong with a G, although I find them extremely uncomfortable myself, and I can't help thinking of Number One Brother's charming turn of phrase: "Have you flossed your arse today?"

So, Ms OP had either flossed her arse or simply gone sans culottes. (There's a reason that in French "sans culottes" means "crazy". Especially when you are wearing an arse-length denim miniminimini.

Because Ms OP had one small problem. Every time she took a step, the lower half of her right arse cheek fell out of her skirt. Never the left. Only the right.

I couldn't look away. How could I? It was like The Ghan hitting that dirty great pantechnicon that was parked across the tracks outside of Darwin. Step, fine, step, maaahh! - visible arse cheek! Step, fine, step, maaahh! - visible arse cheek!

As my dear Mancunian mate said when I told him this story (and pointed out a similar specimen on the footpath ahead of us), "Is orange peel the only fruit?" Hurrah, Marc. I enjoyed your Janette Winterson reference, but was nevertheless traumatised. Holy hell - I used to like oranges!

Example two: Mr Crab
As Bloke and I walked through the train station last night, we couldn't help but notice Mr Crab. I looked at him and thought, "Oh, poor fucker. He must be brain injured."

Mr Crab was bent sideways, with his head all but in his armpit and his knapsack riding his ear. He was staggering. He had a very long, grey pony-tail. Every now and again, the head-in-armpit thing would get the better of him and would steer him directly into a wall. And he would just stand there, kicking the wall some. He didn't seem to be able to work out the right combination of moves to get away from the wall.

In fact, the poor bastard was so fucked that he looked like me trying to play Grand Theft Auto. It's embarrassing to admit, but I'm a Playstation 'tard. The last video game I was capable of playing was Donkey Kong in that little orange-and-silver Nintendo double-screen thingie. Jump barrel, forward, forward, jump barrel, up ladder, jump barrel...

Anyway, here was I thinking this poor bastard was brain injured and I was torn between trying not to look and wanting to help him onto the train, when Bloke says, "Faaaark, he's pissed". Obviously, I'm not what you'd call a nice or compassionate person. Obviously. But even I said, "Jeez, Bloke, he's brain injured isn't he? That's not nice!"

"No," Bloke said. "I often see him on the train and he's totally normal."

Well! Reader, I developed a new sense of respect for Mr Crab. I've never seen anyone that trashed who was still conscious. Even some of MY mates, and let me tell you, that's saying a lot.

So, hurrah, Adelaide! Well done to us. We have the mankiest miniminimini-skirt in the history of pantslessness AND the Most Pissed Guy In The World.

Wow.

Tea and bongs

You are travelling to another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. You are entering The Twilight Zone. A place where Coles bar cake is a lovely snack and everyone is happy because they are growing tomatoes.

How and why did we enter this other dimension? Well, I found something in my letterbox the other day that reminded me of my last visit to the Twilight Zone, so I thought we’d just step across the threshold together. Another crapalogue? Local government election material? Someone filled my letterbox with sauce? No. It was an invitation to a local meeting of Nosy Bastards Anonymous, aka, Neighbourhood Watch.

The invitation made me think of the meeting I was forced to attend a few months ago. No, I didn’t have to sit down and say, “Hi, I’m Redcap and I’m an alcoholic.” It wasn’t that type of meeting - I go to those on Tuesdays. This was a Watch meeting, but it was all special-like - this wasn't the usual angry clutch of five people pissed off by finding used condoms and empty Bacardi Breezer bottles in their violas. No, this would be nearly as good as CSI because there would be Senior Policemen talking about Important Things. Hurrah!

For those of you who are not blessed with Neighbourhood Watch, it's not really made up of concerned citizens, as you might think. Most of the members are just plain old curtain-twitchers. You know the type. You’ve staggered out to get the paper, weighed down by a four-star hangover (complete with the shakes), wearing your jammies and with bedhead that makes that dude from A Flock of Seagulls look pretty darned sleek. You see the lace curtain across the road twitch and you know they’re there: people with nothing better to do than keep an eye on their neighbours. I realise this is probably a sign of social disintegration, but I just don’t care what my neighbours are doing. Unless they’re mowing the lawn at 7am on a Sunday. Then I care and I want to kill them. But the rest of the time, I don’t want anything to do with them. (This probably explains why we didn't get trick-or-treaters this year. Oh, and there aren't any Mars Bars left, by the way.)

Anyway, this is why it’s called Neighbourhood Watch: because they do. I like to imagine a few pissed coppers sitting in a pub one night, coming up with the idea. “Hey, you bastards, let’s get all the nosy bastards everywhere to work for us. For no pay! It’ll be a bloody great joke.” But, as bloody usual, I digress.

The meeting I went to was doubly blessed because the Police Woodwind Quintet was performing. They were lovely, really: very woodwind, definitely a quintet and rather good musicians. I’m just not quite sure why they work for the police force. Do they call them in to quieten down unpleasant siege situations by playing the Brahms Lullaby? By the time they'd Mozarted up the stage a bit, there were three people in the audience. Including me. There was dead silence at the end of the first song, followed by me clapping extremely loudly to compensate because I felt bad for them. A few more people drifted in every few minutes and the process was repeated, with me continuing to lead the applause out of embarrassment.

By the time the room was three-quarters full, I’d realised I was going to be the only person there under the age of 55. At least I didn't have to lead the applause anymore, though. Between songs, one of the coppers called, “We’ve put the billy on and there’s cake in the other room!” I got all excited for a moment, thinking that John McCrea and the boys were waiting to take over from the woodwind quintet and we were in for a bit of Sheep go to Heaven. Hurrah! It was worth my while coming here after all! Sadly, I realised my mistake when the assembled throng murmured, “Ooh, cake! How lovely!” and trundled off, returning with Styrofoam cups and slices of a particularly grim variety of Coles bar cake. “Oh, it’s lovely cake,” they said, slurping milky tea and hoovering crumbs.

By then, I was hoping for it to start raining vodka and for the ceiling to spring a leak above my chair. I was also seriously considering poking myself in the head with a pencil and saying, “Oh, goodness, I’m bleeding. Blood rule! Best go then!”

Finally, the band scarpered (probably to the pub, the lucky bastards). Cake still didn’t appear, dashing my hopes for once and for all. Instead, a copper stepped up to the stage and welcomed everyone before starting on the fertile subject of grow houses.

Bloke and I know all about grow houses, having lived next door to one. It was a bit of a running joke, actually. All the signs were there: two people living in a four-bedroom rented house; newly-installed, locked gates; an enormous yet sweet-tempered malamute for scaring trespassers and a Staffy for biting them; tenants who looked a little on the rough side, yet never, ever had noisy parties; and the clincher, a huge trailer-load of hydroponic gear in the driveway one day that was gone the next. Despite all these signs, we never smelled anything, so we just kept joking about it. Then the people disappeared and the owners’ parents came to clean up. Having removed six garbage bags of dog poo, they leaned over the fence to ask whether we’d ever seen anything funny going on in the house. They thought the tenants had been “growing mara-joo-ana in there” and had destroyed the electrics in an effort to get around the meter. Oops. Obviously our collective sense of smell was on the fritz for nearly a year.

“Now keep an eye out for drug houses,” the copper told the gathered Watchers. “You’ll know something funny’s going on from the people coming and going at odd hours, the blinds always being down, perhaps things being stolen in the area. And of course, there’s the smell.”

“But what does marijuana is smell like?” one old guy piped up. “Rotten eggs?”

“Ahhh, no,” the copper said, completely straight-faced. They must teach them the art of the poker face at the academy. They certainly don’t teach it at Hack School, because I nearly choked.

“The closest smell I can suggest is burning rope,” he said.

Burning rope? I thought. That guy’s snotter must be out of action too. Is there some sort of nose-disabling virus going around? Are we all doomed to die from gas leaks because we can't smell them?

After some guff about drug testing and evil, evil hoon drivers, another policeman decided to get a bit of audience participation happening by asking some questions. As you do.

“Who knows what equipment is used for smoking marijuana?” he asked cheerfully.

(Pause) “Bongs!” piped up about 15 oldies, all at once. (It was almost as though they'd rehearsed it. One, two, three - BONGS! But for the true effect, you’ll need to imagine this said in nanna voice. If you're a guy and can’t produce nanna voice for yourself, just ask the nearest girlie. Every woman has nanna voice inside her, waiting to get out.) There was another slight pause and a few more people chipped in rather hestitantly with, “And pi-ipes.” (Also said in nanna voice.)

Needless to say, I nearly choked again. After all, I now had a licence to kill: what else could give me the excuse to walk up to my workmates at odd moments for the next three weeks and shriek, “Bongs!” in a nanna voice? Gold, Jerry, gold!

Since there was obviously a knowledge gap in the room, the policeman must have thought a quick lesson in bong-making was warranted. After all, you never know when you’ll need one. So he explained a bit about the different types, concentrating on the bucket and the Coke bottle models. When a copper starts talking to 100 senior citizens about how to make a bong, you know you're in bat country. Or at least bong country.

“But whatever sort of bong you make, you need a bit of hose,” he said. “So if your hose doesn’t seem to reach the petunias anymore, perhaps you should be looking hard at the grandchildren.”

“Ooohhhh,” tutted the old people in front of me, exchanging “young folk these days!” looks.

The same bloke who’d wanted to know what the green gear smelled like also wanted to know what a plant looked like. Is this guy writing a book? I think he's going to have to get a bit more gonzo than just going to a Neighbourhood Watch meeting.

“Oh, it looks rather like a tomato plant,” the copper said. “But the main difference is that you can put all the water in the world on a marijuana plant, but you’ll never get a tomato off it.” Ba dum tish. Obviously the coppers who aren’t in the woodwind quintet are all hoping to get into the Boys in Blue Comedy Review.

So, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think I’ll go to my local Neighbourhood Watch meeting. After all, I don’t like Styrofoam tea or dirt cake, I’ve already been told how to make a bong and I know that I should be looking for tomato plants if I want to get high. What more could they teach me?

Leggings for the legless

I spent 10 minutes loitering in Rundle Mall at lunchtime today. I never fail to be bemused by watching my fellow humans.

For example, have you ever noticed that some days you see a lot of people with no legs? Obviously by "a lot", I mean "two or more", since most days you don't see anyone with no legs. Is the increase caused by one of those nasty diseases the cigarette packets keep banging on about? (Speaking of which, is it only me, or do the gangrenous toe and the cancerous mouth make other people feel ill? I'm not usually of such weak constitution, but I can't stand to have a pus-adorned ciggie box on the table at a cafe when I'm eating. And I don't even smoke! The clogged artery doesn't bother me, but the asthmatic child is my favourite - she just looks slightly tragic and consumptive a la Emily Dickinson. Actually, can't you see freaky little kids trading the packet tops like football cards? "I'll give you a festy toe for a manky mouth." "Nah, I've got four festy toes already. Don't you have a bloody eye?" But, yet again, I digress.)

Back on topic, what about guys wearing hair bands? I know it's a bit gender-Nazi, but that one bugs me. Today I saw a guy wearing a stretchy black hairband, similar to one I used to own in the late '80s. He was of beautifully exotic complexion and very nattily turned out in a suit, but there it was: a hairband holding back a luxuriant 'fro and ruining the whole effect. Metro really has gone too far. Please, Ford, don't let the boys start wearing Alice bands! I will not be able to cope. Watching cinch belts, leggings and bubble skirts come back into style has been traumatic enough. Next it will be fluro socks, Choose Life T-shirts, lace gloves and legwarmers. For boys.

Speaking of horror couture, there were, as always, fashion victims aplenty in the Mall today. More like fashion roadkill, really. I probably should preface this torrent of abuse by admitting that I have zero fashion sense and no idea of how to look edgy and cool. After all, I did get trapped in a dress not so long ago. I can match black with black, add some funky earrings and that's about as far as it goes. I really only like wearing jeans, boots of varying lengths and black stuff.

Anyway, despite me being a fashtard myself, I still have enough:

• sense to know what not to wear (hopefully);
• sense to know that frou frou always looks crap; and
• arse to say that chicks who make questionable clothing choices deserve what what one of my mates refers to as a fashion crash tackle.

Don't like the look of that dress worn with jeans? Think a white balloon skirt with a heavy leather belt, knee-high fishnets and gold pumps is just a bit beyond the pale? Reckon those pink ugg boots look crap with a skimpy summer frock? Can't stand this whole trend for formal shorts? If you're still not sure what I'm talking about, visit the Fug Girls for some celebrity examples. If, on the other hand, you know exactly what I mean, see it every day and are duly horrified, then you too can be an honorary member of the Fashion STAR Force. It's great being a Fashion Starrie. You get a little silver star for your handbag and everything. Now you've got the badge, it's your duty to take out fashion offenders with a flying pounce, much like what Hobbes does to Calvin when he's not looking.

But sorry - you're not allowed to crash tackle the legless, even if they are male and wearing hair bands. Come on, it's just not nice.