a chance for pants

Every time I have the chance
While some may think it’s whack
I’ll write a post involving pants

Let the kitchen swarm with ants
Leave the laundry on the rack
Every time I have the chance

I give my work a sideways glance
I may catch a lot of flak
I’ll write a post involving pants

Humming lines from Safety Dance
I’ll type away upon my Mac
Every time I have the chance

I’ll not read a bad romance
Nor journal papers in their stack
I’ll write a post involving pants

Though others look at me askance
I swear I’m not on crack
Every time I have the chance
I’ll write a post involving pants

—————

These pants are dedicated, in loving memory, to my friend Elizabeth, whose claim that pants was the funniest word in the English language first introduced me to the humorous powers of pants. Your pants will never be forgotten, dear friend.

The form of this post is a villanelle, a style of poetry, and the assignment of today’s Monday Mission. Please pay a visit to Painted Maypole to see who else has chosen to accept this mission. Painted herself has told me that she has a poem up, also with the theme of pants. (Painted penned a poem of pants.)

Today also marks the third anniversary of this blog. It seemed only fitting that it should wear plenty of pants today.

This Week in Pants

The web is abuzz with pants. With so many people writing about pants these days, I’d be letting them down if I didn’t put up a post about it.

I bring to you: This Week¹ in Pants.

First, I’m pleased to report that the “in my pants” music meme is alive and well (and not just in my pants). Dee of On the Curb is the latest to report in:

• Dee: Lonely People in my pants
• Mary: Dancing in my Pants
• Magpie: Thursday Thirteen In My Pants
• GirlGriot: Party in My Pants
• Painted Maypole: A Little Pants Music
• FatBoyFat: Music in my pants
• Rima, whose musical pants started this run: Sunday Funnies In My Pants
• Sally and De also participated in the comments on the sound of music in my pants

You, too, can have music in your pants.

And wearing pants elsewhere…

• Comedian Myq Kaplan offers up some pants wisdom in Godzillionaire style: Umbilical Corduroys
  

  Umbilical Cord.
  Corduroys.
  Umbilical Corduroys.

  The grossest pants in the world.

• Leslie struggles with pants angst: The Art of Buying Jeans
• Country Girl has had a pants epiphany: And all I can give you is fat jeans…
• KC gets an awkward compliment on her pants: It’s not a compliment if you have to explain it’s a compliment
• And lastly but not leastly, Ashley has found “magic pants:” don’t touch my pants

And would you believe that the realm of pants extends even beyond the blogosphere? I scoured the headlines for news of pants around the world. Here are some of the top pants headlines:

• Chris Weitz and the peril of his orange pants
• Young black men can succeed without their pants sagging!
• Sagging pants may be outlawed at school events
• High school students launch crusade against droopy pants
• Tight pants a no-no for women in Indonesia’s Aceh
• Pensioner in pants battles burglar
• Man with no pants looks for job in downtown Chicago
• Cops: Fla. man stole ferret by shoving it in pants
• What do men’s pants say about them?
• Men only buy pants for 17 years of their lives
• The peril of pants for the young men of today

——-

¹ Okay, fine, so many of these posts are older than a week. But “This Fortnight or So in Pants” isn’t nearly as catchy as “This Week in Pants.” I mean, just check out the acronym: TWIP.

A Panthropology 101 Vocabulary Primer

For those of you new to the study of pants, it may be helpful to learn a few key terms commonly used by the field’s top panthropologists. As an exercise, please use one of the following words in a sentence.

pantipathy: a strong aversion to pants
pantiquity: bloomers of old
pantithesis: the opposite of pants
pantidote: a remedy for really ugly pants
pantidisestablishmentarianism: a fierce opposition to going shopping for pants
pantagonize: to cause annoyance by mocking someone’s ugly pants
pantepenultimate: the pants you wear when you are almost, but not quite, down to your last pair of clean pants.
pantecedent: the pants you wore yesterday
pantennae: trouser-shaped appendages atop the head (see also pantlers)
panterior: the front side of one’s pants
pantathema: really, really ugly pants
panthem: a song of pants celebration. PANTS!
panthology: a collection of short pants
panthrax: an infectious disease that makes one’s pants fit poorly
panthropormorphism: ascribing properties of pants to objects or creatures
pantlers: the horns atop the head of a pantelope
pantomime: the trousers of a mime

A pair of pantennae.

This load of pants was for a Monday Mission, hosted by Painted Maypants. This week’s assignment was to write a post in the form of a vocabulary list.

the sound of music in my pants

My pants are alive
with the sound of music…¹

While my pants were off galavanting about Spain, without an iPod in my pocket, the lovely and talented Rima tagged my pants for a meme. A pants meme.

The ensuing weeks of painstaking research (thankfully not pantstaining research), and the reunion of my iPod and my pants, have resulted in the following playlist of pants:

1. Photographic in my pants–(Depeche Mode. Seriously old school Depeche Mode.)
2. Shiawase (Happiness) in my pants– Puffy AmiYumi
3. Anchor in my pants–Trespassers William
4. Under the Milky Way in my pants–The Church
5. Crash in my pants–The Primitives
6. Chains of Love in my pants–Erasure
7. Trampoline in my pants–Calamine
8. Pilgrimage in my pants–Nine Inch Nails
9. Nutshell in my pants–Alice in Chains
10. Bizare Love Triangle in my pants–New Order
11. Pianos and Clocks in my pants–Aztec Camera
12. Protection in my pants–Massive Attack
13. The Ramblings of a Mad Man in my Pants–FSOL
14. Welcome to the Fold in my pants–Filter
15. Overflow in my pants–O Positive
16. Radio Silence in my pants–Thomas Dolby
17. The Postcard in my pants–Boris Grebenshikov
18. Island in the Sun in my pants–Weezer
19. Bamboleo in my pants–Gipsy Kings
20. Psychobabble in my pants–Frou Frou
21. Rockville in my pants–R.E.M.

And now I’m going to go all crazy with the tagging. I tag the pants of the last 10 blog-bearing people who left comments on my blog. (For those of you who left comments and don’t have blogs, why don’t you have blogs??) I’m also going to tag my friend jenny, just because I like to see what’s on her iPod.²

1. Painted Maypole
2. antropologa
3. magpie
4. Madame Meow
5. Mary G
6. Kyla
7. Holly
8. girlgriot
9. azahar
10. bon
11. jenny

If you want to join in, the game is played thusly: set your iPod to shuffle, and make a note of the songs that come up. Append the phrase “in my pants.” As many songs as you choose. If you have no iPod, come up with a list of songs of your choosing. If you have no pants, you may want to append instead the phrase “without pants.” Or you can write a 500-word essay discussing your current state of pantslessness.

———

¹ Note that the post title song is not on my iPod. But the song, along with “Do a Deer in my pants,” has been stuck in my head. Perhaps I’ll leave it to your imagination what has been stuck in my pants.

² And because I wanted to go all the way up to 11.³

³ Because otherwise I wouldn’t have a good segue to mention going through airport security with a cucumber in my pants.⁴

⁴ Well, not my pants.

12 Classics of Pants Theater

We at the Pants Institute are dedicated to education of the public on the many contributions that Pants have made to our culture and society. In our previous monographs, we have been pleased to share with you in-depth discussions of great works of Classic Pants Literature as well as more popular media, such as critical analyses of the genre of Pants Horror Cinema. Our next installation of this ongoing series of Great Seriousness and Importance delves into the pants classics of the stage:

Pants of a Salesman
A middle-aged man discovers that his pants are both terribly unflattering and decades out of fashion.

Waiting for Pants
A story of time wasted away in the laundromat when the dryer cycle is unbearably slow.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Wear Pants
Two men hang out at the laundromat playing quarters while waiting for Hamlet to finish his laundry.

Pants on a Hot Tin Roof
When a family’s dryer is broken, they consider laying their laundry out on the roof to dry.

A Raisin in the Pants
A legal drama about the status of a raisin left in a pocket on laundry day.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia’s Pants?
An inebriated couple exchange verbal barbs as they sort through their dirty laundry.

The Importance of Wearing Pants
Two young men practice deception by frequently changing their pants.

Oedipus Pants
The story of a man’s unholy love for his mother’s pants.

Barefoot in the Pants
A newlywed couple find how hard it is to put on pants when you are already wearing shoes.

A Doll’s Pants
A marriage falls apart when a woman discovers what a small pants size her husband really wears.

The Pants of Dorian Gray
A young man’s pants increasingly show the stains of his escapades.

The Pants Menagerie
The story of a blogger who writes obsessively about pants.

—-
Thanks to Painted Maypole, thespian and pantsblogger extraordinaire, whose recent flurry of pants posts has given me the much needed kick in the pants to get back to pantsblogging. Thanks also to John, who suggested the addition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Wear Pants.

The 2009 Golden Pants Award

I’m ever-so-pleased to announce the winner of this year’s coveted Golden Pants Award:

Painted Maypole!

Painted Maypole is no newcomer to pantsblogging. Her highly acclaimed 2008 post, The New Pants Network, is considered one of the finest pieces of contemporary American pantswriting, and is frequently discussed in upper level college pants seminars.

This year, Painted Maypole has added to her pants repertoire with three stunning new works of pants under her belt this year: Shakespeare’s Pants, More of Willy’s Pants, and undoubtedly her finest pants oeuvre to date, Showtunes in the Key of PANTS. This latest work explores the gamut of pants emotions, from sheer pants exuberance to pants melancholy, and will have you singing in your pants:

When you are PANTS,
You are PANTS all the way
From the first time you’re worn
To your last dyin’ day.

Truer words were never sung.

Congratulations, Pantsed Maypole. You are invited to try these pants on for size.

The historic and highly coveted Golden Pants Award was first awarded in 2008.

we can dance (if we want to)

Today is May Day¹, a holiday which many celebrate by dancing around the maypole. I don’t have a maypole, but I may dance around the living room with Phoebe. Perhaps while listening to Safety Dance³.

As Painted Maypole pointed out last year, the video for Safety Dance features a maypole. (Also Morris Dancing. I probably won’t attempt to Morris dance with Phoebe.)

(You can see slightly better quality video at the MTV site here).

Painted Maypole, who has adopted May Day as her blog’s official holiday, offers a whole host of other May Day activities and photos of her own festivities.

She also entreated us to compose a May Day poem or song for this week’s Monday Mission. I struggled with this assignment, but
inspiration finally struck, and happily without causing serious injury.⁴ Here is my May Day tanka⁵:

the maypole beckons
revelers frolicking ’round
bright ribbons entwined
you can dance if you want to
you can leave your friends behind

Dancing 'round the maypole in the video for Safety Dance by Men Without Pants. I mean Hats.

¹ Today is also No Pants Day, an event I can’t really get behind with all of its dangerously anti-pants propaganda.²

² We can (wear) pants if we want to!

³ Safety Dance is one of Phoebe’s favorite songs, and will sometimes ask to hear it over and over again. She requested it at the wedding we went to in March, and cried when she learned we’d only get to hear it the one time.

⁴ I wasn’t sure where to fit this in, but I learned that May Day, as a distress call, is actually based on m’aider from the French phrase venez m’aider, meaning “come rescue my sorry ass.”

⁵ I was introduced to the Tanka form by girlgriot, who stunningly wrote a tanka a day for the entire month of April.

red britches

This was a post that I meant to write and post on Sunday. See how the post title from Saturday was “red bridges”?¹

The pants in the photo are from a snow suit I got for Theo at a second hand store for a few dollars. I quite like the festive suit, with its bright red fabric and traditional Chinese design, but we haven’t managed to get any use out of it yet.

Sunday was a special Chinese New Year’s event at the Boston Children’s museum, and John and I had talked about going. So I thought “hey, Theo can wear the snowsuit!” Of course, plans change. For a start, John was too busy with work to go. And then it was surprisingly warm, with temperatures in the low 50s after a long cold spell, so the snowsuit was out.

The museum website had a few items listed for the Chinese New Year day, including some plays and some concerts. There was even mention of a Lion Dance. Phoebe has a book about the Lion Dance, which was a favorite for a while. She loves music. She was going to love the day.

Getting ready to go was rough, though. Somehow amongst feeding Theo, getting breakfast for Phoebe and me, finding clothing for the 3 of us, diaper changes, trips to the potty, brushing hair, and packing up all the snacks, lunch, and whatnots we’d be needing for the day, the morning just evaporated. It was a bit past noon by the time we were ready to get in the car.

The last concert scheduled was for 1:30, and I wasn’t sure we could make it. But somehow we did. Phoebe and I ate our lunch in the car. We met up with my friend Erica (who happily was able to join us), parked at the garage, walked the couple of blocks over, checked in, and made it into the theater before the concert began.

I felt mildly victorious.

Of course, I didn’t get to see the whole thing, even though it was only a half hour long. We probably saw 15 or 20 minutes of it before Phoebe suddenly needed to use the potty. By the time we made it back, the concert was done. Then we missed the Lion Dance. There was a flyer given out with the schedule and so forth, but we hadn’t been given one, and didn’t find one till later. At which point we saw other goings on that we missed, too.

In all, we had a fine time, but it was rather a bust in terms of Chinese New Year activities.

When I got home, I thought I could write a little post about the day, and my various failed plans. But that plan failed, too. I don’t even remember what happened to the evening. It might have been one of the recent nights when I’ve fallen asleep in my clothes while putting Theo to bed.

Then I was going to post Monday, but the day evaporated again, and it was time to put together the Just Posts post, a new commitment I’ve taken on.

This is a common pattern in my life right now. I have grand plans for things I want to do, but time barrels forward in a blur of feedings and eating and diaper changes and trips to the potty. In trying to get little people to sleep, and big people to wake up. Work meetings. Doctor’s appointments. Home repairs. And somehow I’m always behind. Out of clean clothes, missing bill due dates and car inspections. Still needing to put away the Christmas tree ornaments. I often feel like I have little control, that I’m just bounced around from one obligation to the next. I get frustrated at the lack of time I have to myself, to do with as I wish.

But then again, I realize how good I have it. I may feel like I have no control over my time and my life, but I am here in this life by choice, and by good fortune. My days are full because my life is full.

But I’m a bit sorry I haven’t managed to get Theo into the damn snowsuit.

¹ Playing with post titles is one of the ways that I amuse myself. (cf. look who’s stalking and look whose stocking, putting my money where my mouth is vs. putting my money where my mouse is, pigeon post vs pidgin post, and grrrr vs. brrrr)

picking myself up

Dear diary,

Another day has gone by, and I’ve been overlooked yet again.

When she grabbed for me a couple of days ago, I nearly burst at the seams from excitement. But then I nearly burst at the seams when she tried me on. I guess I don’t quite fit the way I used to. Maybe I shrank in the wash. She just tossed me aside, half-way inside out. I felt so exposed.

My mother used to say “you’ll be put on one leg at a time just like everybody else.” But I always thought I could do better than that. These days, I’d settle for just being worn on one leg. Or at least to be folded up in a drawer with some dignity.

Some days, I wish I could just pick myself up off the floor.

—

So the Monday Mission for this week was to write a post in the style of a diary entry.

I used to keep journals. I wrote really often when I was 17 through 20. I still have all those books, lined up on a bookshelf next to my bed. I don’t really look at them, and certainly never read them. I largely forget their existence. But for the assignment I thought “wouldn’t it be funny to post a real journal entry?” So I went and had a look last night. I picked up a few of the journals, and flipped through them, looking for something entertaining. I tell you, I am slightly scarred from the experience. At 17, I was insecure about my looks and my self-worth, wasting time and energy dieting and suffering from unrequited affections. And I took myself way, way too seriously.

I can say that, without doubt, I like myself much more than I did back then. I wouldn’t go back for anything. I’ll take 37 over 17 any day.