Bundy Clowns In Oregon Need Their Cowboy Boots In Court, Dammit!

Ammon Bundy, one of the ringleaders in that
Oregon wildlife refuge standoff last winter,
says the courts are being the fashion police
and won't let him dress up like a cowboy for his trial.

Let's check in with the guys who took over that wildlife refuge in Oregon last winter again, shall we?

When last we looked, back in May, some of them wanted to have their guns with them in jail while they awaited trial.

One of the ringleaders, Ryan Bundy, said not allowing him his guns in jail violated his Second Amendment rights.

The jail, and a judge didn't buy the argument, and the poor guy had to languish without his guns. I'm crying so hard for Bundy and his suffering that my office is now flooded with tears.

Now Ryan's trial is coming up, along with brother Ammon Bundy is upset that he will not be allowed to wear his cowboy boots in the courtroom during the proceedings.

According to OregonLive:

"Ammon Bundy's lawyer J. Morgan Philpot argued that his client is innocent until proven guilty and should be allowed to wear the civilian clothes that he chooses.

'We would prefer our clients not look like disheveled slackers in front of the jury,' Philpot told the judge during Tuesday's pretrial conference hearing. 

Philpot added later in the day in a written motion, 'These men are cowboys and given that the jury will be assessing their authenticity and credibility, they should be able to present themselves to the jury in that manner.'"

What, is this a costume contest and not a trial? They expect Ammon to show up in his cowboy boots, and the jury will swoon, "OOOHH!! A real cowboy!" That means we need to let him go. Yippee Ki-Yay!

The reason there is a dress code in court for defendents - no ties, belts, steel-toed boots, etc - is nobody wants the accused to weaponize his or her fashion accessories to launch an escape attempt. Or assault somebody.

The problem with Bundy's cowboy boots is that leg shackles used when he's led into court won't work. (The shackles are removed once he's in the courtroom.)

There's already photos of what the Bundys might wear in court, because their pictures were taken for the jurors' books.

OregonLive says both Bundys are in suit jackets but no ties in the photos, and the judge said the two look perfectly presentable for court appearances in those photos.

OregonLive had another fun tidbit about Ryan Bundy in its court fashion article about the bumbling brothers.

Ryan Bundy challenged prosecutors' assertion that he aided and abetted in the theft of government property, specifically the theft of cameras during the standoff last winter.

Buddy cited "basic Biblical principle" saying, "A man will be accountable for his own sins and not that of another. "

In other words, Bundy is saying he can't be prosecuted for helping somebody steal something. He's only accountable with God.

No, he's also accountable to the law here on Earth. "The Biblical standards don't apply, says the judge.

Zendaya/Rancic: TV Host Demonstrates How To Make A Proper Apology. Others Could Learn...

A Fashion Police host apologized
to Zendaya for an offensive comment about
her dreadlock hair style at the Oscars.  

Very often, celebrities, politicians, public figures and other people in the news say something stupid, and the Internet and media pile on.

The well-worn trajectory has the people who make the dumb comments digging in, then apologizing.

But you can tell the apologies from most of these people are done just for PR, and the wording of these mea culpas betray a total lack of sincerity.

"I'm sorry if I offend so and so....."

No, you DID offend them. Even if you didn't mean to offend them, you did.

So, it was refreshing to hear the way Fashion Police co-host Giuliana Rancic apologized for making a racist-sounding remark about the actress Zendaya's hair.

First let's get to the offending comment from Rancic. She said about Zendaya's hair style at the Oscars, which was a nice dreadlock do:  "I feel that it smells of patchouli oil, or weed. Yeah, maybe weed."

Fashion Police, is of course, famous for its snarky comments on the way celebrities appear in public, especially their style, or lack thereof (depending upon your opinion.)

Though Fashion Police is a frivolous show and what's said there is certainly not important, Rancic's remarks, pardon the pun, reeked of possible racism.

Zendaya responded to the insult with maturity and class, but also with needed outspokenness:

"To say that an 18 year old young woman with locs must smell of patchouli oil or "weed" is not only a large stereotype but outrageously offensive....... There is already harsh criticism of African American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who chose to judge others based on the curl of their hair. 

My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough. To me, locs are a symbol of strength and beauty, almost like a lion's mane."

Fashion Police co-host Kelly Osbourne was offended enough by Rancic's comments that she threatened to leave the show.

Clearly, Rancic had to apologize. So she did. Thankfully, she got it right.

In her on air apology, Rancic began:

"I'd really like to address something that is weighing very heavy on my hears. I want to apologize for a comment I made on last night's Fashion Police about Zendaya's hair. Now, as you know, Fashion Police is a show that pokes fun at celebrities in good spirit, but I do understand that something I said last night did cross a line.

I just want everyone to know I didn't intend to hurt anybody. But I've learned it is not my intent that matters; it's the result. And the result is that people are offended, including Zendaya, and that's not OK."

Lets stop here and analyze the statement for a moment. I'm so glad Rancic didn't say, "I'm sorry if I offended anyone. She knows she offended people, so she says straight up that she did, even if that wasn't her intent. Rancic says she crossed a line, and she used the word "learn" to make clear that she had to educate herself on what she did wrong.

Rancic goes on:

"Therefore, I want to say to Zendaya and to anyone else out there that I have hurt that I am so, so, sincerely sorry. This really has been a learning experience for me. I've learned a lot today, and this incident has taught me to be a lot more aware of cliches and stereotypes...how much damage they can do, and that I am responsible, as we all are, to not perpetuate them further. Thank you for listening."

Again, Rancic gets it right. She doesn't say "if I hurt anybody." She acknowledges that she did hurt people, no ifs ands or buts. Again, she talks about how she learned from this, and more importantly what she's learned from this, so she won't do it again.   She also urges others to not make the same mistake she did. Kind of paying it forward.

For the record, Zandaya said she accepts Rancic's apology. And Osbourne said she's glad Rancic apologized and that Zandaya accepted it. Crisis averted.

In the grand scheme of things, a host of a celebrity show saying something rude and crass about another celebrity isn't going to make the world come crashing down.

But more powerful people, the ones with enough mojo to make the world come crashing down, should learn from Rancic.

Rancic might be a star on a celebrity fashion show, but people who should know better, who at least arguably are in positions more powerful than the people on The Fashion Police.

To cite just one example, it makes me think of Rudy Guiliani and his ridiculous "Obama doesn't love America" comment.

Giuliani just couldn't admit he said something over the top. That it was wrong and insulting. It's perfectly legitimate to criticize the president and his decisions, but how does the wild accusation that Obama doesn't "Love America" help.

Instead of at least saying he expressed himself wrong, he did some verbal somersaults, saying he didn't intent to question President Obama's motives or "the content of his heart."

But Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. You didn't acknowledge that you overstepped.

Oh well, he's kind of irrelevant anyway. We can be thankful Rudy isn't a host on Fashion Police.

For the record, here's a video of Rancic's on-air apology:

Would You Like A Pair Of These Comfy Shoes?

I don't know if this photo is a joke or not.

Well, yes it's a joke, but I wonder if there's a "serious" designer behind these shoes. If there is, it's an escalation on the shoe fashion industry's War on Womens' Feet and Dignity.

Tottering on high heels must be a huge chore. (I've never tried it, never will.)

But wearing these? I hope she's not in a hurry to wherever she's going.

I also hope there's no market for these shoes. And that the women pictured has an excellent podiatrist.

Those 1970s Abba Outfits Existed To Avoid Taxes

Let's hark back to the golden years of the late 1970s and maybe early 1980s, shall we?

Abba and their, um, incredible fashion sense.  

Specifically, let's ponder the fashion sense of Abba, that pop sensation that gave us everything from "Dancing Queen" to "Waterloo"

It turns out that Abba's fashion sense, if you can call it that, was at least in part, not really a fashion sensibility. They were trying to avoid paying taxes, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Apparently, under Swedish law, clothing was tax exempt if they were for performances and it was judged that no sane person would wear them out in the streets as everyday wear.

"In my honest opinion, we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were," Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba said, as quoted in the Guardian article.

Watch it, though. If any country has any similar laws, you might start to see people on the street dressed more strangely than people already tend to dress.

To fully enjoy Abba, their fashion sense, their (legal) tax evasion and that era, here's their video of "Dancing Queen" so you can dance the rest of your day away.

TSA Fashion Police: Please Dress Beautifully While We Molest You

News surfaced this week of a 15 year old girl who really, really displeased a TSA agent at a Los Angeles airport recently.

It shouldn't matter how she was dressed, but for the record, she had on  dark leggings, a tank top and an oversized checked shirt over the tank top. A pretty run of the mill outfit for a teenage girl.

The TSA agent barked that she should "cover herself" like the teen was some sort of slut or something. 

Plenty of other bloggers have already correctly weighed in on how this is an example of public shaming of a young woman for no good reason, that the TSA agent had no business commenting on what the girl or anybody else was wearing, and why does it matter what the girl was wearing anyway?

Is the TSA now demanding we be
fashionable if we dare set foot in
an airport terminal?

And why was the TSA agent saying such creepy things to the teen when clearly he had a problem and the girl didn't?

So I won 't re-answer those more serious questions. I'll leave that to people who are smarter than me.

My frivolous question is: The TSA are the fashion police, too?

You mean I have to be fashionable and oh-so-well put together when going through the airport.

This is a challenge, since the clothes I wear to the airport must be functional, so I can put shoes and belts on and off quickly, and so I don't strangle myself with constricting clothes as I try to squeeze myself into airplane seats that are too small for a toddler, much less a 200 pound, six foot tall guy.

What exactly is correct fashion, in the TSA's view of fashion police? Maybe we can get some TSA agents on Project Runway, to design the best clothes for dashing through an airport, and more importantly, clothes that are optimally pleasing to the TSA agents.

We wouldn't want to disappoint them and ruin their workday by wearing clothes that aren't the latest fashion, right?

Will Fashion Week in New York be given over to TSA agents? Anyone associated with airports and airlines probably like those teeny tiny skinny models anyway, since they're easier to frisk and fit better in those miniscule airplane seats that I've already referenced.

And will I have to go on a diet? Will the Fashion Police TSA demand we all look like those undernourished fashion models. Don't you have to ingest massive amounts of cocaine to get that skinny? And isn't cocaine frowned upon in airports? So how to I resolve this problem?

I hope the TSA agents all have adequate training, as their work load is increasing. After all, they have to make sure nobody brings a loaded gun, a bomb, or hair gel on a plane. Plus they have to make sure everyone is dressed perfectly.

I wonder what the federal  penalty is for dressing sloppily for that flight to Dubuque?

Really? Obama Commits Crime of Fashion. Impeach!

Say what you want about President Obama. Everybody does anyway.  Some people are fans, some are not.  Fair enough. Praise him  his policies or condemn him for his political positions.

However, according to one fashion writer, Ellie Krupnick, Obama committed the ultimate sin, a crime of fashion: He dressed without paying the least bit of attention on being fashionable.

President Obama seen here
apparently committing
an impeachable offense:
Being not fashionable.

He committed the crime on a recent brief vacation to Hawaii.

Wrote Krupnick:

"President Obama, bless his heart, was basically a mess: baggy pleated khaki pants and a billowing turquoise button-down shirt... with short sleeves. Oh, and it was tucked in. With a belt." 

Those are Krupnick's italics in that passage, by the way, not mine.

She went on:

"We can tolerate a bright hue (Michelle Obama has certainly worn her fair share), but with men's clothes, fit is key. Obama's shirt is too big around the waist, the shoulders and the sleeves. The pants are too roomy at the top, too long at the bottom and wrinkled to boot."

Oh the humanity!  We're stuck with a president who is incapable of being sufficiently fashionable! America is over.

Yep. Our president is a failure. Not for any foreign policy decisions, economic plans, or opinions on social issues.  The real problem, apparently, is he doesn't dress fashionably enough. At least not for Krupnick.

The photo of Obama's crime of fashion is in this post. To me, the outfit he's wearing does its job. It's fine. Unremarkable. Except to fashion police.

This happens too regularly, more so to women, though. There is this bizarre expectation in some circles that no matter how busy somebody is, (and Obama sure is busy) they're supposed to agonize day in and day out on whether their clothes look Just Right.

Look, there's nothing wrong with fashion and dressing up beautifully and creatively if that's what you want to do. Fashion can be beautiful and interesting.

And yes, we want to be presentable and dressed somewhat close to appropriately for whatever situation we're in.  Some people take casual too far. Look to the site People of Walmart for examples.

 But what I hate, hate, about a number of people in  the fashion industry is the extreme cattiness. You're subhuman if your clothes don't look exactly right. Please just stop that sense of exaggerated horror they express if the outfit somebody is wearing is so last week.

This is why I don't dress fashionably.  Actually I kind of want to have better, nicer clothes sometimes. I wouldn't go for the latest fashion, just something that's classic and looks good.

But why bother?  Those classic and good looking clothes clearly wouldn't be good enough for the fashionista gestapo. That wouldn't exactly hurt by fragile, sensitive soul. But why reward these nutcases with something to condemn? T-shirts and Carhartts it is. Deal with it.

I'll just go through life paying attention to the stuff that matters. Just as Obama presumably focuses more on governing, not fashion.

Because guess what: Contrary to what some in the fashion industry would have you believe. Appearing as someone's idea of perfect is not what most of us want to, or need to aspire to.

I repeat: Deal with it.

A $290 Brown Paper Bag To Make You the Top Fashionista

Hat tip to brother in law David Jenne for alerting me to this one. A designer has come up with a handbag that looks like a crumpled brown paper bag because..... it IS a crumpled brown paper bag! And it's available for the low low discount price of $290!!

Operators are standing by!!! Or not.

Who needs to go to Dollar Discount for a supply of paper bags when you can spend a good chunk of your mortgage payment on a brown paper bag?

You, too can have this brown paper bag
for the low, low price of $290!

Of course the designer, Jil Sander,  has added a special protective layer for the bag, to it holds together. It has drawstrings, ventilation holes and other design elements.

The handbag is this year's perfect accessory for your hot night out in Skid Row, drinking bottles of Colt 45 from this beautiful work of art.

I suppose the reinforcements the designer has put into the bag are good, because I find brown paper bags pretty impractical. They rip easily. If any food in there has condensation, the paper bag gets wet and falls apart.

I'm sure it would be embarrasing for a fashionable woman breezily strutting down the street with her brown paper bag handbag and have all her lipstick and eyeliner fall all over the sidewalk.

But that could be part of the charm of this powerhouse fashion statement. End a night out on the town gloriously, decorated by the soggy, fragmented remains of a brown paper bag stuck to the glitter on your Versace cocktail dress.

W Magazine raved, calling the bag "perfectly in sync with the fashion house's minimalist role."

Still. What would you carry in this brown paper bag handbag? Pet rocks is my guess.

Or, as Jenna Sauers in Jezebel asked, "Does Jil Sander sell a bag I can barf in, too?"

Now there's an idea.

Musicians Have Bad Hair Days, Too.

Was mindlessly touring that there Internet thingy on a boring Friday night looking for stupid stuff and was not disappointed.

The best find was a Buzzfeed list of the 12 best hairdos on music album covers. You can see a couple examples of the photos in this post, but feel free to look at all the covers to get fresh ideas on nice spring hairstyles. 

Bad Eyebrows

I found a random Web site that showed people with strange eyebrows.

Add caption

There's a Web site for everything, isn't there.

I stopped on the eyebrow site because I'm fascinated by people who start out looking perfectly fine and make themselves look ridiculous.

Do they want attention? Have a skewed sense of what is attractive? Want to be ugly on purpose?

I can't complain about these people too much, though. They're not hurting anybody. Well, except maybe  the guy with profanity tattooed onto his eyebrows.

So go ahead and make your eyebrows weird if you want. Just don't expect me to pay you too many compliments.

There's no limit on how people want to mutiliate themselves, I suppose.