Ironic Dressup Parties

On Saturday evening I went out with Clever Dunne's (the person, not the bar) near the University District and we wanted to get a drink and play some pool. We wandered around a bit and saw a bar named after a primate. I can't recall the name of the bar, but I believe it had "monkey" in it.

We weren't feeling too picky, so we went in and after showing our ID we took a hard right into the pool table/primary bar space and our senses were assaulted. And by "senses" I mean:

• hearing
• sight
• dignity

It was more crowded than it had appeared at first, and Hava Nagila was playing loudly on the sound system.

OK. Fine. I'm not Jewish (as far as I know; my mom was adopted, so who knows?) but I'm down with the Tribe. If there was some sort of celebration of Semitism or Zionist hoe-down, that's fine. Rum still will be rum, irrespective of all of that.

My sense of dignity, then, was not that we were (at first glance) the only gentiles in the room... no. It was that, upon further (like, two seconds worth of) inspection, I began to suspect that none of the party participants were actually Jews.

How did I come to that conclusion? Why would I reach such a belief?

Maybe it was the coffee filter yarmulke (by the way: I had a devil of a time finding out how to spell that correctly; normally I'm a master Googler, and therefore seem omniscient, but "Jarmulka", my first guess, wasn't helping me out... so I had to Google for "Jew cap" to get that spelling). Maybe it was the construction paper sidecurls. Maybe it was the couple of asian chicks wearing the coffee filter yarmulkes (and, yes, I know that there are Asian Jews; I think they're called Micronesian).

So after I had convinced myself that they were not actual sons of David, celebrating their culture in a dive bar with macaroni salad and cake, I became a bit indignant... were they having a Jewish-themed party? Again: I'm not Jewish (probably) and I'm certainly not the most politically correct person in the world, but... that just seemed wrong.

But whatever. We played pool (I won... she really wasn't kidding when she said she was no good, because I'm pretty terrible) and had a drink and went on our way.

I think that my subconscious was able to set aside the negatives of the idea and it went to work with coming up with a theme party of my own. Later that night, after substantially more drinking, it came to me: Ed Hardy Party.

Ed Hardy is a design line (primarily of clothes, but also things like bed covers and steering wheel covers... it seems that if anything needs covering, Ed Hardy branded goods will be available) inspired by Don Ed Hardy, who is considered the father of modern tattoo.

Of course, I knew none of this until the last few days (when I felt some odd compulsion to research for my theme party). What I did know was that Ed Hardy clothing is (in the words of some random blog that I can't currently locate the URL for) "the magic cape for douchebags". It's expensive, it's brightly colored, and it's got some combination of skulls, great cats, dragons, birds of prey, and "Ed Hardy" in large text all over it. To wit:

Some of the shirts are black. Some are brown. All are douchie.

In fact, as part of my research, I turned up an entry in the Stuff White People Like blog entitled "Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy", which included the following commentary:

To put this in proper perspective, Ed Hardy is so hated by white people that it cannot be worn ironically. This is no small feat. As it stands, the only other entries in this category are Nazi Uniforms, Ku Klux Klan Robes, and self-tanner.

Since you cannot in good conscience have an Ed Hardy themed party, the best way to make use of this white hatred is to give your stories a little more appeal to white people.

As bold as I am, I'm not going to consider either of the other options (after all, I am down with the Tribe) but I'm going to risk the wrath of my people by not only wearing Ed Hardy but encouraging some of my friends to do so, too... at least for one night.