Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: The Moose’s Closet: Mother Fucker Better Accessorize

If today’s story is sloppy I apologize, I didn’t get to look over it. I apologize in advance for tomorrow’s as well. Between work, my novel and putting the finishing touches on this weekend Counter Culture Festival I am beat to fuck. TO FUCK.

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Ah….accessories. I am a big fan of accessorizing and I have no shame in admitting that. There are several types of accessories that have been permanent fixtures in my wardrobe throughout the years and I’d like to take a look at each one of them.

The Bookbag

My bookbag is a part of me. I’ve worn one since Kindergarten and still wear them today. I go to important business meetings in a Turkish Wool suit from Banana Republic – bookbag on my back. Through the years I had some high quality bookbags, but luckily for you guys this week is all about making fun of the embarrassing stuff in my closet.

And when it comes to embarrassing items – nothing beats the Lucas bookbag I wore throughout Junior High School.

I wasn’t allowed to have a Jansport. Every Jansport got stolen; it was the only guarantee in JHS. Jansports cost fifty-bucks, were easy to spot and were easy to take off of someone, for what it was worth you were better off taping a fifty-dollar bill to your forehead - at least some people would think it was a fake.

So instead of a Jansport, my mom sent me to my Aunt Linda’s job where she sold bags from the up-and-coming (and never really made it) company called Lucas. This place was in some factory on Imlay Street in Red Hook – it was ghetto as hell. She let me pick out two bags and showed me their “hip line” of bookbags and I wanted to cry. These were humongous canvas bookbags with thick, padded black straps. They were perfectly square, it seemed, no crumple to them whatsoever. And they came in “hip” colors like olive green, dark purple and burgundy. And the coup-de-grace, “Lucas” was written in big fucking letters dead-smack in the middle of the bag.

I took the olive green and the purple because I knew I was going to get my ass beat either way.

I wear it to school and my own friends are making fun of me. We line-up and make our way into the building and the thugs around me are calling out, “Aye, yo, Lucas!” It had to be one of the most humiliating moments. Eventually I got over it, realizing full well these Lucas bags are in it for the long-run whether I liked them or not.

The Shades

Since I go through two or three pairs of sunglasses a year it’s safe to say I’ve taken part in every sunglasses trend over the past 20 years.

The flip-up sunglasses? Had those. At least two pairs. Thought I was a pro baseball player with those things on, flip the shades down when fielding a pop-up. I dropped the ball anyway, because I’m most likely the worst baseball player of all time, but at least I looked cool doing it.

I had those super-hip 80s glasses that look like the ones the guy from Reading Rainbow wore on Star Trek: the Next Generation. They were just a thin band of sunglasses that stretched across my face. They were so thin that they didn’t even cover my eyes, really – you can see the whites of my eyes above and below the shades.

I had those cheapo-plastic ones that had one neon-orange arm and one neon-pink arm. They looked like the Blue’s Brother’s glasses but a lot gayer.

Despite all of these horrible glasses the worst ones I ever owned weren’t even shades, they were glasses, sort of. You might say to yourself, “Oh, I didn’t know Jason used to wear glasses.” I didn’t – I had 20/10 vision back then and I still have it now. That’s right – non-prescription glasses.

NON-PRESCRIPTION GLASSES.

Most kids got beat-up in school for wearing glasses. Not me, I thought they were cool and I voluntarily walked around as a four-eyed freak.

Gloves

Despite being one stylish mother-fucker the one item I never got a handle on where gloves. I think when it comes to gloves, comfort trumps style. My gloves have to:

a) Keep the surface of my hands no colder than 80-degrees.
b) Keep all moisture off of my hands, no snow can seep through.
c) Keep snow off of my wrists. If I get snow on my wrists I flip the fuck out.
d) Have a convenient storage method so I don’t need to put wet gloves in my pockets.

Because of these criteria, every pair of gloves I have ever worn:
a) Look like hand-me-down astronaut gloves.
b) Are made out of canvas.
c) Are tapered so much that they cut off circulation to my hands.
d) Have hooks on them so I can attach them to my jacket.

I had gloves that were so bulky and padded that I couldn’t even pick up shit up when I wore them – but they kept me warm and dry.

And then I had this one pair of gloves that put the rest of my gloves to shame. They were the bulkiest gloves I ever bought – they looked like the novelty Hulk fists – but they were also unusually bulky up past the taper.

Because that’s where the battery pack was.

With the aid of a 9-V battery these gloves cooked my hands like a fucking oven. I would be FREEZING and my hands would be sweating profusely. To me, that’s comfortable – hands surrounded by sopping-wet and smelly pieces of cloth. These gloves would have made me sweat in Antarctica they were so ridiculously hot.

And people made fun of them, yes, until they were asking me if they could borrow them for a moment to warm up their own hands or holding hands with me to get some residual heat. In the land of hand warmers, my gloves were King.

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The Moose’s Closet: Mother Fucker Better Accessorize

Thursday, November 10, 2005

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