it's just a passing phase

From the "Dear Josie" advice column in Josie & The Pussycats #73 (December 1973), a poignant look at the problems facing yesterday's youth:


Wow. Josie takes the "tough love" approach to a whole new level. The quotation marks around "groovy" and "bells" give the proceedings a certain Jack Webb je ne sais quoi:

"Flares," "bells," "Bolivian boot-cuts" -- cute "with it" names for something as insidious as communist ideology. You kids need to realize that crimes against fashion are no laughing matter.

While Josie's rather harsh response to poor L.J. overlooked the possibility that kids can be capriciously cruel to their peers, I do concur that wearing bell bottoms is never the solution.

Sparks - Angst in My Pants (from Angst in My Pants, 1982) - This fine slice of quirky new wave pop was inspired by Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses on the Dread Associated with One's Trousers Tenting Up at Inopportune Moments (itself a response to Hegel's Wissenschaft der Kameltoe).

Orbital - Pants (from The Blue Album, 2004) - This is one of two trouserly tracks featured on Orbital's final album. (The other track, "Acid Pants," was done in collaboration with -- surprise, surprise -- Sparks. Such is the power of pants-love.)

First Choice - Smarty Pants (from Armed and Extremely Dangerous, 1973) - The first days of disco.

Halloween Countdown: October 16 – in strange aeons, even acidwash will die

Those Demim Ones were gone now, relegated to the dim limbo of consignment shops and Planet Aid drop-offs; but their dead bodies had told their fashion secrets in dreams to the first men, who created a style which had never died. It had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant closets and dark wardrobes all over the world until the time when the great priest Osh'kosh'b'gosh, from his retail storefront in the mighty city of St'rip Ma'al, should rise and bring all trousers again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the measurements were ready, and the fashionistas would always be waiting to liberate him.

These jeans we wear were once theirs, and will one day be theirs again.

D'kron c'tton b'lend.

- H.P. Toughskins, "At the Inseams of Madness."

Fred Schneider - Monster (from Fred Schneider & The Shake Society, 1984) - Release the beast!