And Now …
Pants in the News
By Jim Shahin

ITEM: The national outbreak of sagging pants as a fashion statement has led one small Louisiana town to pass a law that metes out jail time to those whose languishing legwear reveals the much-reviled plumber’s crack. It is unclear whether the law applies to actual plumbers.

ITEM: A Washington, D.C., man, distraught over the loss of a pair of beloved trousers, took his local dry cleaner to court. Asking for a $54 million settlement, he hoped to sue the pants off ’em. But, to extend these groan-inducing puns further yet, he was the one caught with his pants down, as late-night comedians made him the butt of their jokes.

ITEM: In a sad development, the already high price of dressing down has soared. It seems that the cheap-chic thrift-store look, which itself cost a pretty penny to achieve, is succumbing to designer blue jeans that cost upward of $240 per pair — and some of these don’t even have back pockets! The heart-wrenching sound you hear is of spoiled poseurs everywhere crying, “Oh. My. Gawd.”

A lot of people, of course, blame the pants. But I feel that, as the Bard once (kind of) said, the fault is not in our pants but in our selves.

IT’S A SCANDAL, the way we treat our pants.

I know the way I treat mine is. Not the way I care for all my pants — just one pair. They are a pair of black corduroys. That is, they used to be black. The color has been drained from them. Now they’re more a sickly ashen shade. They also aren’t corduroy anymore; they no longer have enough threads to be corduroy.

They’re forlorn, these pants. Clinically depressed. A formless, faded shadow of their once deep-hued and well-constructed selves.

At night when I go to bed, they hang listlessly on the hook on the back of the master-bathroom door, all but whimpering. “Please,” I think I hear them plead. “Cut me into rags — anything to help me be something more than what I’ve become.”

But I can’t. I love them. They fit me. They’re as comfortable as pajamas.

Old pants, I’ve decided, are the new old sneakers.

Or, as the Bard also (kind of) said: Comfort, thy name is pants.

BUT APPRECIATING the comfort that pants bring to our everyday lives does not absolve us of our responsibility to treat our pants with some respect.

That guy in my hometown of Washington, D.C., had the right idea: Lose my pants, and I’ll sue your assets.

Sure, everybody thought it was crazy. But when you live in the nation’s capital, you get to see craziness up close and personal.

While having dinner with friends, most of whom were wearing pants, the subject of the lawsuit came up. All of us were choking with laughter, spitting food, the usual. Suddenly, a friend named Margaret piped up.

“I think he had a point,” she said defiantly.

The table fell quiet as we determined whether she was joking.

“I mean, come on,” she said. “Dry cleaners? Give me a break. They lose stuff all the time, and there is no accountability.”

Accountability for dry cleaners? I considered the notion as I swallowed my chicken parm.

“They break buttons, ruin shirts, lose clothes,” she continued. “And what do they do to make it right? Nothing. They say it wasn’t their fault.”

A great nodding of heads and repeating of “yeah” went up.

To quote the Bard yet again: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the dry cleaners.

THE REASON I HAVE pants on the brain, and my wife is telling me to get them off the brain because it’s not funny, is that school has started. That means pants will be everywhere.

In summer, nobody wears pants. Summertime is frivolous time. Show-skin time. Wear-bathing-suits-and-shorts time. Walk-around-wearing-skivvies-with-Homer-Simpson’s-face-on-them time.

Fall? That’s back-to-school time. Buckle-down, hit-the-books, nose-to-the-grindstone time. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no foolin’ around. This is pants time.

With pants come students. With students come droopy drawers. With droopy drawers comes the long arm of the law, which isn’t a pretty picture.

But if you live in Delcambre, Louisiana, and your drawers are a little too droopy, you can actually get up to a $500 fine and six months in jail.

Five hundred smackers!

You could buy two pairs of designer jeans for that — and have money left over for pockets.