It's a man skirt!

I have a cousin.

He's awesome, partly because he is my cousin but mostly because he stores more knowledge of music and film in his pinky finger than you have in your entire head. If you're looking to kill some time, a collection of his artwork (photography, digital art and writing) can be found here. Beware: the pretty motion blur and smoke photographs might suck away half an hour of your life.

Many moons ago when the world was young, when I was seventeen and he was fourteen, he and I drove down to the beach together for a weekend in my dad's convertible. But that's an entirely different story (I'm not sure his mother ever trusted my mother again).

This cousin came to visit me this summer. We (and our respective families) took a trip down to Panama City Beach.

I hadn't seen him in about half a decade and it was cool to meet the new, improved cousin, since almost everything about us both has changed since last we met.

After he'd been in town for a couple days, I realized that he looked like he'd had a serious accident involving a vat of toxic chemicals and a hot topic. No joke. Tight blue jeans, Obscure Indie Band Concert Tees, ultra-wide Grommet belts. Converses. The works.

When I realized that this was his current style, my first thought was "Oh my god, the hipster bus ran over my cousin." However, he pulls the look off better than most of the hipsters I know, so I can't fault him for it too much.

In any case, when I pointed this out to him (yes, I said "hey, you look like you were run over by a hot topic."--we've always been pretty direct in my family) he said "well, I worked there for a while."

This explained a lot. He then proceeds to tell me why he quit. It was because of the one leg pant. (Yes, it is a real product).

"The what?" I asked, somewhat incredulous. I haven't been in a Hot Topic since I broke up with EKG and I generally zeroed in on stickers for Lorelei.

"The one leg pant." He explained, his eyes glinting with an almost feral sarcasm. "It was a man-skirt. It had one opening at the top, and one opening at the bottom. I'm sorry, but that's a skirt."

"Ah." I said.

"I couldn't deal with those idiots. Because guys would come into the store and attempt to buy this thing. They would ask for it, and I refused to sell it to them. I would make fun of them: "You realize that's a man-skirt, right? It's a skirt. Dude. Don't buy it." I just couldn't stand them!"

So, in homage to my cousin, I am pronouncing September 1st this year "Call a skirt a skirt day."

And to all you hipster/punk/scene kids who might have actually considered purchasing this silly, silly item: Don't be a fashion victim. Think twice.