Back around the holidays I wrote up a guide for the 5 hats to add to your Christmas list. If you heeded my advice, you've undoubtedly been strutting around with the confidence of a lone male savanna baboon within a pack of 10-15 prospective mates.
I don't look for "thank you's" or $10 appreciation Venmos. I'm just trying to keep toeing the edge of fashion and pop culture in a world full of conformist lemmings. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.That said, there are a few things from back in the day that I'd like to Bring Back this summer. We're a handful of weeks out from Memorial Day Weekend so it's time to get in the gym and prepare for what Summer 2024 has in store.
1. Pants that Zip into Shorts
This is a fad that has been slowly cooking like a blue-ribbon Austin brisket but it's time to bust that beef breast out and serve it to the masses.
Saturday morning, June 2004. The thermometers still aren't touching 70 before 11AM so when you're heading out for a pick-up run at the park, the air will still be a bit nippy. You don't want to wear a hoodie, that's a bit too warm, but you don't want to get cold while warming up. Boom, Zipper Shants.
Hit some layup lines, jack a few stepback threes off the side of the rim, then take a quick breath before tip-off and unzip your MF pants into MF shorts.
There are cooler basketball warm-up pants out there. A pair of shiny adidas with buttons down the side, fire. But that's too much for playground pick-up. You're not gonna be early 2000s Andrei Kirilienko out there so don't attract so much unnecessary attention by flinging your pants off after thrusting side to side back and forth trying to unclip the last fucking button on your left ankle, risking a hyper extended knee before even logging a minute played.
It's been long enough. I want the versatility of wearing shorts when walking around the outdoor outlet mall while still maintaining the personal security of knowing I won't get calf goosebumps upon entering Nordstrom Rack's 63 degree air conditioning. And after two long decades we're gonna take that back, dammit.
2. Skip-it
Hopscotch? LAME. Skip-it? Freakin sweet. Take jump rope, hula hooping, the foxtrot, and Wii Sports 2014 Olympic Ski Jumping, twist 'em all up, and you get a whirling dervish device that was named by Time magazine as one of the Top 100 toys of all-time.
Back on the schoolyard the boys and I would play cool sports during recess because we were dudes. Kickball. Dodgeball. Capture the Flag. Touch Football. No gossip, no dolls, no bickering over what shade of green best compliments the speckles in our kitchen granite even though we're painting a second floor bedroom.
But before school started we would line up in that same schoolyard, except there wasn't enough time or room or organization to get a kickball game going. Most days those 15-20 minutes were filled with Pokemon card battles, throwing eraser chunks in the 6th grade science teacher's puffy haircut that she got in 1988, and learning the newest curse word from Johnny's older brother.
Sometimes, though, someone would bust out the mothafreakin Skip-it and the challenge was on. The Skip-it leveled the athletic playing field. Personally I went from the class's Bo Jackson to looking like Joe Biden trying to escape a room full of microphone cords. But the quiet girl who drew horses all day looked like Nastia Liukin when she tossed the Skip-it around her ankle.
My days in the schoolyard are long past numbered, but I think the Skip-it can be utilized as a piece of effective workout equipment. There are articles about the health benefits of jump roping itself, but compound movements make the joints and muscles strengthen together and that's where the ankle to hip/IT band twirl transfer of the Skip-it enters the chat. I think that for every 1 Skip-it movement, you'd be exercising the equivalent of 4 jumps of a jump rope and in a world where so many people are trying to save time, I think we could look into this hypothesis.*
*-I'm not a kinesiologist but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
3. "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUP"
Long overdue. Long, LONG overdue. Hey, I don't dislike Sketch the streamer, I find him pretty funny. But we've got professional athletes greeting each other by knocking their fists together like they're cracking pepper and testing the wind with a finger in the air. That's not Guys Being Dudes. What's Guys Being Dudes? Buzzing into your homie's apartment while keeping it calm on the intercom then busting through the door Kramer-style and yelling "WAAAAAAAZZZZUUUUUUUUUPPPPP" to your 4 best friends suckling on light beers.
Has the dive bar had a sad feel to it lately? Most do. Always. But for 15 seconds everyone there can feel something if you nudge open their slightly ajar, windowless door and give the regulars and their miserable bartender a big ole "WAAAAAAZZZZUUUUUUUUPPPPP" and getting it tossed back at you from 5 guys avoiding their wife and/or kids.
Sea Isle City, Ocean Drive, No Shower Happy Hour. They check your ID at the door, stamp the back of your left hand, and you spot your friends across the outdoor bar putting sand in Jimmy's swim trunk back pocket. Instantly you shout "WAAAAAAZZZZZZZUUUUPPPPP" and your friends look to the entrance and yell "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUUUP" and then you grab two pineapple High Noons from the side bar and make your way over to start up an absolutely leeeggggendary night. Smile, you're in Sea Isle!How many more pictures can I paint? How many more baskets can I weave? "WAAAAAZZZZZUUUUUUUP" is Back baby.
4. Baseball Cards in Bicycle Spokes
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
What a lovely sound. The sun is out, the sky is clear, the robins chirp, a lawn mower buzzes in the distance and a boy's bike clicks down the street as its spokes get poked by a 1955 Roberto Clemente rookie card that his dad had preserved as a backup to his 401K.
Nerds Hobbyists at baseball card conventions probably spend hours trying to quantify how many potential thousands of dollars were destroyed by Trek bikes, but there's no price on nostalgia.
This one's going to be a little tougher to Bring Back since me and my friends don't ride bikes around the neighborhood anymore, but there are ways. Ship baseball cards to Amsterdam, ask the Dutch to carry on the legacy. Bring my old Topps and Dunrosses down to Center City and start putting them in the spokes of city bikes. Maybe try to get the motorcycle community involved, I don't know I'm just spitballing.
5. Wallace and Gromit
I'm sick and tired of the narrative around claymations. "Their movements aren't fluid" and "I think its creepy" and "they look all like mushy and stuff." It's a load of bull crap. Claymation is a very difficult and precise art that should be better appreciated by society, a society enthralled by fuckin AI and charcoal paintings on tiktok.
Emotions aside, I just think it's time we got another Wallace and Gromit movie. It's been almost 20 years since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and 35 years since Wallace's legendary "it's like no cheese I've ever tasted, Gromit" line in their debut A Grand Day Out. This dynamic duo has accomplished some impressive feats together: taking down Preston in A Close Shave, foiling the plans of the evil penguin in The Wrong Trousers, and combatting the horrid Victor & Philip as they try to terrorize the town's vegetable competition in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
They've run quite a gambit of villains but there's always ideas for antagonists out there in this world. Maybe Wallace could invent a water filtration system for Flint, Michigan or Gromit could stop Benjamin Netanyahu from missile striking a Palestinian hospital, I don't know I'm just spitballing.
Honorable Mention
- Tamagotchi: Used to be a blast back in the day and the ladies LOVE when you mention your pets at the bar. "Oh what's that Josh? You're showing her a picture of your labradoodle that's at home sitting by itself in the cage you locked it in? That's cute. Hey Angela, I never leave my pet home alone." *whips Tamagotchi out of pocket*
You just have to make sure you do your proper upkeep because as easy as it is to seal the deal after pulling this move, it's just as weird and creepy to show a girl a dead Tamagotchi covered in its own shit and piss.
- The Milkman: This country started getting soft when we stopped drinking unadulterated, pure, whole milk...and when the Milkman was banging every businessman's wife so she wasn't a nag when he came home at 6 PM. Oh by the way, he's in a good mood because his secretary gave him the ole Lewinsky. But what the children don't know doesn't hurt them as long as mommy and daddy are happy.
