You’re going out in that?

If it’s prom season, it must be time for the annual what’s-with-these-girls-and-their-hoochie-mama-dresses story, here in the New York Times and here on Gothamist, which has the distinct advantage of an array of photos showing a range of hoochie-mama dresses so we can all judge them.

Frankly, they’re pretty hoochie, but I think we all know that’s the trend. Right, Bey? Kim? Jenny? Or, to summon a role model closer to high-school age, Mylie. Can’t forget Rihanna, the OG of the naked dress.

So you can’t blame girls for wanting to dress like the famous ladies, and given that most of them don’t have Donatella Versace on speed-dial, they have to find these styles at far lower price points, which means they’re even hoochier than usual.

All I have to say is this: Thank GOD my daughter has no interest in going to the prom. Not that she’d be caught dead in these ghastly frocks; she’s way too modest.

Of course, the story is about whether schools should be imposing vague dress codes for prom, then deciding, after the money’s been spent on dresses and alterations, that a particular specimen won’t fly. Here’s the guideline for Kate’s prom: “The dress code will be strictly enforced: formal attire, NO TWO PIECES DRESSES, no plunging neck lines, sides or backs, if we deem too low etc you will be given a t-shirt to wear over your dress. Please feel free to bring a picture if you have concerns, PLEASE be sure to tell your guest this information, no exceptions.”

I was mystified by the no-two-pieces (sic) rule, until I figured it out: That’s how you show off your belly.

So, I’m watching Celebrity Jeopardy right now, thinking what I always do: Man, celebrities iz dumb. When an NFL player (Aaron Rodgers) is the runaway winner, you know…something, anyway.

Bloggage: Too stubborn to buy health insurance, he’s now going blind. Who should save his eyesight? WHO SHOULD SAVE YOUR EYESIGHT, DUMMY?

A lawsuit follows the Rolling Stone false rape story. One of many, I expect.

Now I think I’m gonna shoe-shop online. I don’t need shoes, but hey — everybody can window-shop at Zappo’s.

Be good, and happy Wednesday.

Posted at 12:30 am in Current events, Popculch |
 

65 responses to “You’re going out in that?”

  1. Pam said on May 13, 2015 at 7:18 am

    The case of Luis Lang is exactly as predicted and should be shouted from the rooftops to other dumb individuals and dumb states who fail to comprehend that you just can’t check into the ER and get care. Doctors and hospitals insist on getting PAID. Blaming Obama is of course what any good Republican would do. Shame on him for not taking care of his diabetes (and that takes considerable money too). What a complete FOOL this guy is, but so like others I’ve met and spoken with. I propose that the $300K house be put on the block to pay for his surgery. Or perhaps he could go to a foreign country where the prices for this type of thing are a little lower. This guy needs to take responsibility for his own action or inaction and wipe that pathetic look off his face. This is entirely his fault. But my guess is that he will never give up his dogma and accept that he is wrongheaded and has been lied to by his pols. Hey, State Farm! I just had an auto accident and need some insurance to help me pay for the damage. Like that’s going to happen. Why should the govt. pay for this?

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  2. alex said on May 13, 2015 at 7:57 am

    So the idiot with no health insurance has a $300K house? And he’s a diabetic having mini-strokes and hemorrhaging eyes at age 49? I’d bet his other priorities include fast food, alcohol and cigarettes along with bragging that he has never been to see a doctor.

    On the bright side, the GOP base might just be dying off sooner than any of us had imagined.

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  3. Basset said on May 13, 2015 at 8:00 am

    No interest in going to prom? I’m impressed.

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  4. beb said on May 13, 2015 at 8:30 am

    Don’t forget that this man going blind would qualify for medicare is his state legislature had approved the medicare expansion, which they did not. So blame them, too, as well as the Supreme Court which made medicare expansion a voluntary decision.

    Of course, when this man finally goes blind he can apply for SS-disability. Which reminds me of Rand Pauls recent comments about that. Disability is the one part of Social Security that is running out of money. But Paul argues that instead of finding new money for the program we should look to improve it’s “efficiency.” And by efficiency he seems to mean hiring more inspectors and creating more hoops to jump through to keep more people from qualifying.

    Getting back to proms… Does Kate’s school have any rule against girls wearing pants? I keep hearing about girls being told they can’t wear a tux to their prom. Usually these as gay girls so it seems like sexual orientation discrimination. But a lot of girls these days, don’t wear dresses. Its all jeans and Ts. forcing them to wear a dress instead of comfortable pants seems like discrimination to me.

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  5. Heather said on May 13, 2015 at 9:11 am

    I only looked at the comments on the first dozen or so contributions to that gentleman’s GoFundMe account, and they’re all from compassionate ACA supporters asking him to reconsider his position on Obamacare. Not sure I am that compassionate . . .

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  6. Connie said on May 13, 2015 at 9:17 am

    I have no compassion for the guy, he can only blame himself, in more ways than one.

    I will note that all three of my prom dresses had turtlenecks. Really. A long time ago.

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  7. brian stouder said on May 13, 2015 at 9:50 am

    Shelby (our gonna-be 17 year old) and I had a conversation two days ago, about “proper attire” (that term reminds me of the Proprietress’s “sensible shoes” touchstone) at school events, and, indeed, day-to-day at school.

    At one point in the conversation, she (quite earnestly) asked “Who is to say?”

    And I ceased upon that question, and asked her – in all honesty – what if she was that person; the person whose job it is “to say” what the rules and standards mean?

    We agreed that arbitrariness cannot be avoided, and that predictable even-handedness would be the goal, for that person whose job is “to say”

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  8. Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2015 at 10:12 am

    Pretty soon you get administrators measuring inches from the floor and searching for evidence of bras worn or not, as happened in my high school. And if those administrators are male, it get skeevy fast.

    Like Connie, in my day dresses for school dances were modest, maybe because they were usually flowery cotton numbers sewn by moms.

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  9. Judybusy said on May 13, 2015 at 10:20 am

    beb, as one of the resident social workers, I want to offer a correction to your post: when you say Medicare, I suspect you are actually talking about Medicaid. They are two very different programs. You are correct that once he goes blind, he can apply for SSDI. After being on that for two years, he’d be eligible for Medicare. Medicare is also the program we all can get once we reach a certain age. Medicaid is a partially federal, partially state-funded program that each state gets to administer as it sees fit. Or not, in this case. Like Alex, I suspect this guy has a lot of other priorities than his health.

    A slightly related aside: in Ghettoside, the author observes in her epilogue that rules for obtaining SSDI were loosened for felons, which means many more are able to get benefits. She posits this has helped bring down te murder rate (all relative, it’s still obscenely high) because it gives the men just enough options to get out of the life.

    I went to my nieces’ prom’s grand march this year. Lots of cutaway-in-the-torso dresses, (including one of my nieces!) but not too much was overly skanky. No girls in pants (that would be utter death in their small town, I suspect) and not a few wore cute flip-flops instead of heels.

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  10. Dave said on May 13, 2015 at 10:40 am

    So many people really believe that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them, it always happens to “other” people. Until it does. Couple that to the idiots among us and this is the result. I used to think that this was something a person would outgrow as they mature and grow but experience has taught me that never seems to happen for a lot of people. Oh, I almost forgot, it’s got to be Obama’s fault.

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  11. Jeff Borden said on May 13, 2015 at 10:43 am

    I never attended a single dance with a date in my high school years. No homecomings, no proms, nada. I would love to say this was because I was an iconoclast who shunned such spectacles, but the real reason is that no one would say ever yes to my request. So, on the night of Senior Prom, me and some other losers played poker in the basement of my mom and dad’s house. After 11 or so, a steady stream of tuxedo-clad friends began arriving, most complaining about the money they’d spend on tuxes and corsages and how little fun they’d actually had.

    The fellow in South Carolina is, well, a dick. He spit in the eye of life by apparently believing he would never fall ill. . .and when he does, he blames the president and political party that did its best to assure even idiots like him could get coverage. That he failed to take advantage and now blames everyone else undercuts a favored conservative meme that they take full responsibility for their actions. If the guy has half a brain, he’ll keep screaming about Obummer until someone starts a GoFundMe page. If the homophobic pizzeria owners in Indiana can attract $800,000 from fellow bigots by trashing gay rights, Mr. Lang should be able to cash in on his visceral hatred of the commie/muslim/fascist/kenyan usurper.

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  12. Bitter Scribe said on May 13, 2015 at 10:44 am

    If they make “immodest” girls wear T-shirts over their dresses, I hope at least the T-shirts don’t say “DRESS CODE VIOLATION” in huge letters. (That actually happened to one poor girl in the course of a normal school day. And then presumably she went to English class to discuss “The Scarlet Letter.”)

    Alex @2: You’re right about the cigarettes, at least. In the photo I saw, he had a pack of smokes in his shirt pocket. And of course the idiot blames Obama for his problems. When Mark Twain said, “Let us be grateful for the fools. But for them, the rest of us could not succeed,” he must have had Republican Congressmen in mind.

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  13. Tim said on May 13, 2015 at 10:50 am

    A pastor in this area declined health insurance coverage to save money for his small church. But then, when he was hospitalized after a heart attack, an appeal went out for donations to help pay his hospital bills. Of course, the kind-hearted contributors had to pay much more, individually and collectively, than if the church had insisted on paying the insurance coverage. There’s no debate — no rational debate, anyway — about single-payer (i.e., taxpayer-funded) coverage for police and fire protection. Why not for health?

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  14. Sue said on May 13, 2015 at 10:56 am

    Oh dearie me. Mr. Lang prided himself on paying his own medical bills, but after $9000 in bills, his savings were ‘exhausted’. Pardon me for laughing at the idea that someone who won’t get insurance because he can pay his own way, unlike all those takers, has less than 10 grand to cover medical costs. Now he’s scrambling for someone to carry him.
    Sell your house, bozo. This is what you wanted. This is what you voted for.

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  15. Jolene said on May 13, 2015 at 11:06 am

    Jeff, he has a GoFundMe account. (See Heather’s comment above.) So far, he’s raised almost $8500. You can keep track of his progress at the link below.

    http://www.gofundme.com/s78e9w

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  16. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13, 2015 at 11:34 am

    Hey, Julie – http://images.patternreview.com/sewing/patterns/simplicity/9125/9125.jpg

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  17. Sherri said on May 13, 2015 at 11:52 am

    Okay, yes, the guy deserves ridicule, but he also deserves care, and the whole point of what we want to accomplish is that he, too, should have government health insurance to cover him even if he didn’t take care of himself. He’s the poster child of stupidity of the SCOTUS decision on Sibelius.

    I want everyone to have health care whether or not they make stupid decisions, or live in stupid states, or think that government health insurance is socialism, so I want this guy to have health care, too. You can’t exclude the stupid and annoying.

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  18. brian stouder said on May 13, 2015 at 11:58 am

    …Like Raphael Cruz, who promptly went into the “Obamacare” exchanges to obtain insurance, when his wife left her high-profile job – and the benefits her employer provided – when he announced his run for the presidency.

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  19. Little Bird said on May 13, 2015 at 12:06 pm

    When I was a senior in high school, one of my friends borrowed the top half of her fathers tux, wore wool dress shorts (it was the early 90s, forgive us), and I wore a super simple black dress. Kinda long, with a scoop neck. We went together, not in any romantic sense, but because the pool of guys was extremely shallow. No one at my tiny school wore anything particularly skanky, and the only dress code violations at the school in general tended to revolve around hair colors not found in nature.

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  20. Connie said on May 13, 2015 at 12:45 pm

    Your title, You’re going out in that, reminds that when my mother did not approve of what I was wearing out she would tell me “If anyone asks your name tell them it is Sally Brown.” Meaning not my kid.

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  21. LAMary said on May 13, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    I went to my prom with my best friend who is still my best friend 44 years later. I made my dress from Vogue pattern and it stood out in a sea of Jessica McClintocks. Neither of my kids had any interest in proms or anything like that and I was fine with that. What’s spent on limos and pre and post prom festivities is way out of my budget.

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  22. Basset said on May 13, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    Nancy, next time you come south take 65 instead of 75 and stop at Zappos’ outlet store outside Louisville. It’s in one corner of a warehouse that’s something like a million square feet.

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  23. Deborah said on May 13, 2015 at 1:27 pm

    I went to the prom when I was a Junior because my boyfriend at the time was a Senior and I was his date so I got to go. But I didn’t get asked to the prom when I was a Senior, instead I went to see the movie Camelot with a girlfriend who was devastated that she didn’t have a date to the prom. I didn’t feel so bad about not going because I had gone the year before and knew that it was fairly meaningless. It was more the fact that I didn’t have a date that was embarrassing than feeling bad at missing the event itself. Anyway the year I did go to the prom I wore a pink satin long dress, that had a cropped, quarter length sleeved jacket that went over the spaghetti strapped dress top. I wore the jacket all night because I was so boney on top. The jacket buttoned in the back anyway, so I would have had to ask for help to remove it, which seemed wrong. I looked far and wide for a dress that would cover that much of me. It must have been cheap because I can’t imagine having a lot of money to pay for a prom dress. I got my hair done at a beauty salon nearby and it looked ridiculous, so when I got home I asked one of my friends to do it all over again. I was a nervous wreck when my date finally came to pick me up and I remember the entire evening feeling self conscious and ridiculous.

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  24. Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2015 at 1:58 pm

    Whoa, Jefftmmo, that is WAY more skin than any of us would have shown!:)

    Our son decided to go to prom his senior year with a girl who was a friend, along with a bunch of other friends. They decided to be as cheap as possible and just have fun, so they wore suits and Goodwill dresses, caravaned together in our Caravan, some parents hosted them for dinner, etc. They had a great time and no one spent too much, drank too much, or got pregnant.

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  25. adrianne said on May 13, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    Both my sons passed on their high school proms, they could care less, had no steadies to go with. I went to both my junior and senior proms with my boyfriends at the time. My senior year I wore a (semi) slutty white polyester halter dress, long. My date wore a baby-blue tux, with fancy ruffled shirt. God forgive us, it was 1979.

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  26. Dorothy said on May 13, 2015 at 2:32 pm

    I went to two proms my senior year of high school – mine and Mike’s (we went to different high schools). I made one of the dresses, and the other one was a bridesmaid dress I had worn in November (6 months before prom). If I were a high school student today I couldn’t afford to go to prom. It’s ridiculous what it’s become. And I guess that officially makes me an old lady.

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  27. BethB said on May 13, 2015 at 2:51 pm

    It seemed like the prom was more about what you were going to wear, who you were going with, what pre-prom parties you’d been invited to (called open-houses and big in 1968), what after-prom parties you’d been invited to, and what lake cottage you were going to for the rest of the weekend. Too many kids came back to school hung over, sunburnt, and possibly pregnant.

    Since my parents wouldn’t have allowed me to go away unchaperoned to an over-night stay at some lake cabin (I wasn’t invited anyway), my date and I and another couple made different plans. We all got home at a relatively early hour from the prom, got some sleep, and then we met up again early the next morning and drove to Turkey Run State park for a fun day of picnicking, enjoying nature, making out a little (or a lot), and finally snoozing some on top of picnic tables before returning home late that same evening. It was a parent-sanctioned day; there was no alcohol but plenty of non-chaperoned necking!

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  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13, 2015 at 4:06 pm

    Ruffled shirt, baby blue tux . . . good times, good times.

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  29. brian stouder said on May 13, 2015 at 4:22 pm

    I cannot dance a lick, and never could, but I did go to my senior year prom (1979); can’t recall what color my rented tux was, but the lovely young lady I escorted to the event had on a beautiful cream-colored gown that was tastefully stylish.

    Thinking back on those days, in more general terms, I was a no-good boyfriend; basically un-trustworthy.

    Further thinking about it, it occurs to me that mostly all the young ladies I was with (between, say, ’79 to ’83) had no dads in their homes.

    Gives me a new appreciation for my own value as a dad, for our young folks (and especially our daughters)

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  30. Colleen said on May 13, 2015 at 5:38 pm

    No prom for me (see yesterday’s comment about high school…). The dresses that were in style at that time were—-foofy. Lots of jewel tones and cabbage roses. However, they weren’t skanky. But I am so old as to be appalled at what girls wear as regular clothes, let alone prom dresses. What’s with the tiny shorts? They cover scarcely more than underwear would. I find myself muttering “If I had a daughter…..”.

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  31. A. Riley said on May 13, 2015 at 5:58 pm

    I didn’t go to my senior prom — I was in love with a boy in another state, and when my brother’s friend Steve asked me to the prom, I said no, in some kind of romantic haze over the other boy. Oh, was my mother pissed off at me. We all got over it, though.

    But I did go to the winter formal in junior year — I wore a light blue crepe de chine and chiffon number with a high neck (not quite turtleneck, but leaning in that direction), empire waist, and long sleeves. And DYED TO MATCH shoes!! Woohoo! Got to the dance, and there was another girl in exactly the same dress. The. Same. Dress. Well, hell, that happens when you live in a small town with only one shop that sold formals.

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  32. MichaelG said on May 13, 2015 at 6:49 pm

    I went to both junior and senior proms. I wore a tux and the girls wore strapless dresses with minor décolletage and just above knee length flared bottom portions. Skirts? The proms were held in the Gym. Everybody was driven by parents or somebody because: When the dance was over, all participants were bused to a chartered train. The train had hot dogs and soda pop etc. and dancing to a real DJ. Dick Biondi, the Wild Itralian from WGN radio. And yes there was plenty of necking as well. One year the train went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where we spent much of the day walking touring, doing stuff and having a nice lunch. Then back on the train to home where parents picked up everyone at the train station. The other year we went to Indiana University at Bloomington. I have no idea what it cost but it couldn’t have been that much if my parents sprung for it. It was a wonderful, happy time and it served to keep the kids out of cars, out of the booze and out of trouble.

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  33. MichaelG said on May 13, 2015 at 6:52 pm

    The years were 1961 and 1962. A while back,eh?

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  34. Deborah said on May 13, 2015 at 7:51 pm

    We had a butter and cream sauce with MORELS on pasta tonight. A once a year treat. I got fresh morels at the green market this morning. Usually they’re gone by the time I get there but we went early and it was fairly cold outside so it was a hardy bunch out there today. A beautiful sunny day, but windy and cold. I don’t think it got above 46. These morels were about $56 a lb. I got $15 worth. Pricey but much cheaper than they were at Whole Foods where I passed on over $80 a lb. Little Bird bought some morels at Whole Foods in Santa Fe today, they were only $36 a lb there.

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  35. Suzanne said on May 13, 2015 at 8:42 pm

    I went to the prom with a friend because neither of us had a date but we wanted to go. I think I spent $35 on my dress and my date wore a tux. No after prom back then. We went home and went to bed (not together!!) because we both had part time jobs and had to work the next day.
    Prom is completely out of control now. In our neck of the woods, many of the girls go to Indy, or Chicago, or Cincinnati to buy their dresses because you just can’t get anything decent in Fort Wayne. They rent limos, get their hair & nails done, and where I live, there is the pre-prom “Promenade” during which the couples are announced and process across a red carpet kind of thing. The parents all come an watch. I would have croaked if my parents had shown up at my prom.
    Then there is the after Prom for which the parents spend all kinds of time and $$ decorating the gym with a theme and give away prizes. All so the kids don’t go out and drink, which they do anyway because you have to have the Prom in some other locale which means they have to take a 20-30 mile drive just to attend, so they just drink on the way there and back. Thus, the limo rides which parents supply the booze for (well, they aren’t driving after all). The most eye opening was the girl my daughter told me about whose mother was mad at her for going to Prom with a good friend who wasn’t interested in girls. Mom was upset not because the friend was gay but because Prom night was supposed to be lose your virginity night, and that would be all ruined.

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  36. Julie Robinson said on May 13, 2015 at 9:24 pm

    MichaelG, we came across prom pictures from my father’s younger siblings in that era. Most of the dresses were atrocious, and then there was a white dress with red embroidery on the skirt and a red sash, and it was beautiful and classy. Two of my Dad’s siblings married their high school sweethearts, and one of those couples stayed married for life. Just about the national average, I guess.

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  37. alex said on May 13, 2015 at 9:40 pm

    “You’re going out in that?”

    (Nah, Go Fund Me is paying for my casket, a dress suit with no backside and a new pair of specs.)

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  38. Joe K said on May 13, 2015 at 9:53 pm

    Took a senior my junior year in a 62 vett, got home around 3 and was up the next day planting corn, worked on a dairy farm, senior year took a junior, had a good time at both of them, think senior year watched the sun rise over lake Gage.
    45 when we left dtw this morning 85 in Orlando 2hr later, got up to 90 today.
    Pilot Joe

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  39. David C. said on May 13, 2015 at 9:58 pm

    I didn’t go to prom. A group of fellow band nerds were invited to the cottage of one of our parents. Her parents were there all day, so our only regrets were our sunburns.

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  40. Basset said on May 13, 2015 at 10:45 pm

    Haven’t worn a crushed velvet jacket or a big bow tie since.

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  41. Dexter said on May 14, 2015 at 12:31 am

    My daughter’s best friend in high school and yet today has a senior at Southport HS near Indianapolis. She posted a photo of him in his prom tuxedo and bow tie, with his date in a very nice dress. But kids, man, they have to find a way to fuck shit up. He was wearing black Converse All-Stars, the old Chuck Taylor canvas shoes. The kid has a naturally curly giant Afro-style haircut anyway, more prominent by far sticking way out the sides…he looked like a real bozo…no…he looked like Bozo.

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  42. Wim said on May 14, 2015 at 6:12 am

    I might have gone to the senior prom, but someone invited me to the Sadie Hawkins dance and I barely got through the night with a whole skin. A few girls asked me kind of coy was I taking anyone to the prom and I barked at them to get back. Fool me once, shame on me…

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  43. susan said on May 14, 2015 at 8:20 am

    Dexter @41… Ha ha ha ha! What an image. Wonder if he will laugh at that 40 years from now.

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  44. BethB said on May 14, 2015 at 8:41 am

    My date for the prom my junior year was a guy who sat behind me in choir. We weren’t dating, so I guess we went together because no one else asked me; I don’t know what his reason was. I had to wear a dress I had worn in my sister’s wedding, so I was pissed about that because it looked exactly like what it was, a bridesmaid dress.

    I had my hair done in a salon, and it looked so horrible I came home and had my sister re-do it for me. Side note: my current long-time hair stylist refuses to do prom or wedding hair; she says she doesn’t need the drama. I don’t remember much else about the event except that he wore brown shoes with his black tux, and when he pulled up at the house (about 15 minutes after the dance ended), he leaned over and kissed my briefly saying, “This is your 1967 prom kiss.” Yuck!!

    I’ve already reported here about my senior prom, but some additional comments: I wore a dress I liked, my sister did my hair, I had contacts finally and not glasses, and I was going with my long-time boyfriend, so you would think all was well with the world. The only problem was this (which is probably TMI): I started my period the day of the prom!!! I always had excruciating cramps in those days, so I as out of my mind with pain. My older sister gave my a tylenol with codeine to ease the pain, so I was flying high through most of the evening, but I was able to go and enjoy the prom!

    BIg whoop. I can’t believe how important I thought prom was then.

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  45. brian stouder said on May 14, 2015 at 8:48 am

    BethB for the win!

    Your post is very Molly Ringwald/John Hughes/Pretty in Pink/Breakfast Club-ish.

    Higher praise does not exist!

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  46. Dorothy said on May 14, 2015 at 9:43 am

    Brian I’m not sure why, but I have a difficult time thinking that you would be ‘un-trustworthy’ at any time in your life. But I take your word for it. I think it’s important when we realize our shortcomings and work to become better people. I certainly hope I have changed for the better over the years.

    Can you tell I’m feeling very introspective today?!

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  47. brian stouder said on May 14, 2015 at 10:32 am

    Dorothy – we’ll have to have that conversation, over an icy cold Diet Pepsi…or pink lemonade!

    For now, suffice it to say that, at 54, my personal revisionist history* is (at best) scathingly critical. Nothing criminal or deviant, mind you – but unbecoming and…small

    *and indeed, isn’t real history always “revisionist”? Or – put another way, would you visit a doctor who practiced NON-revisionist medicine? (simile taken from a Lincoln historian who was lecturing somewhere or the other, years ago)

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  48. Dave said on May 14, 2015 at 11:04 am

    Our prom was a junior-senior prom, I went both years, one year with a friend and the senior year with a sort of girlfriend. It was at the school in a cafeteria, redecorated, junior class was responsible for decorating, as I recall. Certainly not very fancy, not very expensive. I remember being out all night my senior year but not with my date, as she lived in another town and I had to take her home. No drinking, no shenanigans, very tame and aboveboard, it was 1967 and 1968 and the only person I knew who ever drank was a boy who was 19 and a senior, who would go to the Pourhouse in Reynoldsburg, OH, and buy quarts, or maybe half-gallons, not sure which, draught beer.

    I think I led a very sheltered existence then, I believe the majority of my schoolmates were, too.

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  49. Danny said on May 14, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    A link regarding Mad Men series finale predictions:

    http://wtop.com/entertainment/2015/05/falling-slowly-predictions-for-amcs-mad-men-finale/

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  50. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 14, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    Basset, what about a white sport coat and a pink crustacean?

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  51. dull_old_man said on May 14, 2015 at 2:58 pm

    Dexter, I believe your post at 41 is the wrongest thing on the Internet today. Black Chuck Taylors are elegant, timeless, and beautiful, especially the high tops. No tuxedo ensemble is complete without them. My black Allen Edmond wingtips are more comfortable and much better in the rain, but they don’t even compare on looks.

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  52. Dexter said on May 14, 2015 at 3:16 pm

    dull-old-man: I stand corrected then. 😉 I go back so far I actually played high school varsity basketball in Chuck Taylors, but by then the black ones were out of style and all the kids wore white ones. Black Chucks were only worn by gauche kids by then.
    I the mid-nineties for a short while many colors of high top Chucks emerged, and I bought ten pairs of them and just wore them all out. I had black, green , red, orange and yellow ones. I got them when shoe store owners were stuck with them because nobody bought them by then…I remember I bought ten pairs for a buck a pair.

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  53. nancy said on May 14, 2015 at 3:27 pm

    Kate just stopped into my office to say hi. Wearing these.

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  54. Charlotte said on May 14, 2015 at 3:33 pm

    Deborah — those prices for morels!?!? Wowza. We’ve been eating them here for about a month? They came in early this year — only price for us is gas and time spent foraging. It’s been so dry though, that I think the season might be nearly over with … which is sad, since mushroom hunting is my very favorite outdoor activity (you get to walk very very slowly and then eat delicious things). If it stays this dry, the chanterelle/porcini harvest isn’t going to be any good either.

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  55. brian stouder said on May 14, 2015 at 3:41 pm

    and for something different, even if old-as-the-hills, I give you today’s bleat-of-the-Fox:

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/13/obama-needs-to-keep-out-newsrooms.html

    “President Obama took me and my Fox News colleagues to the woodshed — during a speech at Georgetown University.”

    See, now a REAL journalist and/or wordsmith would either not refer to themselves at all, or else say “My colleagues and I” (or in his case, “the Klan and I”…” or “The Skinhead Nazis and I…”)

    But aside from that,Mr Starnes is worked up about the president actually expressing an opinon about the press. Starnes says

    ”Anyway, the president was blathering on about how all of us folks here at the Fox News Corner of the World are a bunch of anti-poor people bigots. He said we portray the poor as “sponges” and “leeches.”

    And then he pretty much begins to sob and bleats I’m afraid our Constitutional law professor turned commander in chief is not aware of something called the First Amendment. That’s the one that says “Keep your Saul Alinsky, community-organizing paws out of our newsrooms.”

    And it made me wonder: Has Mr Starnes ever read one scintilla of the history of the United States? Because it looks like the answer is that he (and his opinions) sprang up from the right-wing fever swamps, fully formed and with blissful ignorance, with no regard for anything from before, say, a year or two ago!

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  56. Little Bird said on May 14, 2015 at 3:54 pm

    Has any one seen this yet?
    http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/anti-gay-pundit-homosexuality-factor-amtrak-crash

    I’m speechless.

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  57. alex said on May 14, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    I didn’t know the First Amendment said anything about Saul Alinsky. And it’s usually the right-wingers who accuse everyone else of putting words into the constitution that aren’t there.

    As for the link from Little Bird, I think a better argument can be made that the Amtrak crash was caused by right-wing assholes. It’s because of their unwillingness to finance public works that rail infrastructure is subpar and that’s not just speculation but an indisputable fact.

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  58. Sue said on May 14, 2015 at 4:25 pm

    Here ya go, alex:
    http://gawker.com/conservatives-cut-amtrak-funding-day-after-crash-1704316041

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  59. Basset said on May 14, 2015 at 5:24 pm

    All messed up for the dance, Jeff@50. I didn’t drink then, made up for it later.

    I missed the first time Chucks were popular & was too old for the second round, but I do remember Bata Bullets and PF Flyers.

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  60. Connie said on May 14, 2015 at 5:33 pm

    Four proms , two of them my class. And four Christmas formals, short formals, most of which I sewed. Most memorably a dress of dark green velvet (velvet! Nap!) with ivory lace set in the edge of the scoop neck and at the ends of the bell sleeves. It had an ivory ribbon tied around the empire waist, and it barely covered my butt.

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  61. Deborah said on May 14, 2015 at 5:41 pm

    Love Kate’s shoes in the photo.

    And Charlotte, I would love to go hunting for mushrooms, morels or anything edible. I wouldn’t know an edible mushroom from a poisonous one though. Little Bird has a friend who may take her mushroom hunting soon. I hope so, I want to learn what to look for and maybe she can teach me after her friend shows her. Meanwhile I will have to continue to pay through the nose out of ignorance. But I usually only buy morels once a year so I don’t break the bank.

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  62. Sherri said on May 14, 2015 at 7:49 pm

    Just give them all Apple Watches! https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8608493/jeb-bush-apple-watch-obamacare

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  63. Charlotte said on May 14, 2015 at 7:56 pm

    Deborah — come to Montana and we’ll go hunting! Or, if you want to trek north from Santa Fe, the Telluride Mushroom festival is fabulous. The guys who wrote the identification books are all there, and even if you don’t register officially, you can go foraging all day and bring your mushrooms to the tent to be identified. And local restaurants will cook them! And Telluride/Norwood’s beloved Art Goodtimes, unreconstructed old hippie, leads the mushroom parade down main street. It’s where I learned what I know … (and you’ve bought and cooked a morel — the only “lookalike” — the false morel, doesn’t have that hollow core. You’d know a morel in the woods if you saw it!)

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  64. Deborah said on May 14, 2015 at 10:46 pm

    Charlotte, now I absolutely want to go to the Telluride Mushroom Festival. I googled it, sounds fantastic. I’m going to have to study my schedule to see if I can swing it, our building project starts up again in July and August, plus the playground project. But now I really want to go. We’ve driven to Telluride before, it’s not that far.

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  65. Dexter said on May 15, 2015 at 12:27 am

    By God, dull_old_man is right! All the cool kids (and Michigan-bound frosh gotsta be the coolest kids in the USA) are wearing Chucks once again. My sincere apologies to the lad from Southport High whom I dissed for wearing Chucks with his blue tuxedo and bow tie. I guess I am the bozo here. My sneakers all wore out and I am wearing Red Wing Irish Setter work boots, just like a clod-kicker from East Lansing would wear to class…how far I have sunk….

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