That Dress is No Longer Fancy

Living in different places is great. There are new experiences to be had at every turn, or at least that's what I keep telling myself. The truth is that I'm starting to wonder if my curmudgeonly tendencies have gone from "occasional" to "permanent feature of John the Robert's personality." My patience for eccentricity for its own sake is starting to wane.

Emo bands that cover Dylan songs, especially this Dylan song, should lose whichever hand they use to apply makeup.


I've been living in New Zealand for nigh on 10 months now, and I am bloody sick of costume/fancy dress parties/events. The Rugby Sevens weekend in Wellington has turned into a 30,000 strong costume theme frat party. The dudes unironically, yet cheekily dress like the Village People, and the chicks dress like nurses, if every nurse in the world wore fishnet and had DSL's. It's stupid, it makes a mockery of the sport (which might not actually be much of a sport anyway to be fair - rugby sevens is like the 6 man American football they play in West Texas high schools too small to play real football), the blowhards in the stands don't even watch the games, and it's just wrong on all levels.

Today is Wednesday, March 11. There is absolutely nothing special about today (other than my sister's birthday, but she lives 19 time zones to the left). Thus, there is NO REASON for a guy dressed as BATMAN to walk past my kitchen window at 6 o'clock this evening while I'm cooking. But there was and he did and "Holy Fancy Dress Party" that dude showed up to wherever he was going dressed as Batman and is probably getting laid via a fat chick who went to the party as a pirate.

I declare a moratorium on fancy dress events in this country. Enough is enough. We have Halloween in America so we can keep this shit to a minimum. Once a year people. Not every Friday when you and a bunch of coworkers put on pirate and cop outfits and rent a 1960s model school bus to drive your drunk ass around from one about-to-go-out-of-business-pub to another, rocking out to classic, uh, Kiwi tunes such as Country Roads and Sweet Home Alabama. And not at sporting events, even if the sport in question is, uh, questionable.

Stop it.