04/03/03’s illustrious band:

The Wrong Trousers

Brought to you by several pants-related conversations I've had lately.

Item 1: Has everyone seen the Wallace & Gromit videos? They're exceptionally high-quality claymation movies (from Nick Park & Co., the makers of Chicken Run), about 30-40 minutes apiece, about befuddled British inventor Wallace and his clever, exasperated, dog Gromit. There are only 3 or 4 W&G movies that I know of. My favorite is The Wrong Trousers. In this episode, Wallace invents a pair of mechanical pants that he can program to take Gromit out for a walk and a couple other tasks. But Wallace accidentally puts them on himself one morning, and things go, as they say, comically awry.

Trousers aside, the best part of the movie is an evil penguin who, because the police are after him, masquerades as a rooster by putting a red rubber glove on the top of his head. How a beady-eyed, nearly featureless penguin can appear so expressively sinister is beyond me -- but not beyond animator Nick Park.

Item 2: Media Headquarters has, and sometimes enforces, a dress code. One of the rules is that jeans are not to be worn in the office except on Fridays. People will occasionally wear "heavy cotton trousers," a.k.a. jeans of color, however. For the most part that's not a problem, although we do tease one another about getting busted. Yesterday, El Queso Grande and I both wore black denim but promised not to turn each other in. I've also heard tell of an incident involving Amy 2.0 and a skort that lacked a matching jacket, and was therefore found to be in violation of the dress code. I'm not sure of the logic on that one.

I used to find it surprising that adults had to be told what to wear and not wear to the office, but Northwoods Barbie changed that. NB (who no longer works for Media HQ) was a statuesque blonde who favored extremely slinky clothes, to the point that she once showed up in a "dress" that looked a lot more like a silk slip than a dress -- a "Hey, sailor, lookin' for a date?" dress, not a business casual dress, at that. Legend has it that she did receive a wardrobe reprimand, but not for the slip/dress; I think she wore jeans on the wrong day or something.

Item 3: I'm wearing a dress today -- ankle length, with long sleeves, thank you very much. And sandals, too. And it's 33 degrees out, with spitting rain that will turn to sleet in just a few minutes. I'm not sure what possessed me to dress this way this morning; I had already been outside for a run and knew what the weather was like. Maybe I've been inhaling too much printer toner lately or something.

Well, rest assured that I will not wear the wrong trousers tomorrow. I have a pair of Friday jeans all washed and ready to go.

E-mail the Media Sensation: jugglernaut@hotmail.com