By: Ben Johnson
 |
| Bieber is a TOTAL CradleDick |
Is there a word for it? Skinny jeans worn
sagging below the butt? I’ve seen it enough times for it to be a mental
category of thing where from now on whenever I see it again I take one glance
and think “oh right, that’s that thing.” There should be a shorthand for it
and/or the young fellas who “rock” this “look,” and who therefore may or may
not also say things like “rock this look.” Like maybe the pants are MummyDumps
and the dudes are CradleDicks.
I saw another one today. Just now. On the "street."
I realize that ripping on these dudes is
pretty hackneyed territory. But I’m
turning a corner. I like it now. If you are a CradleDick or if you otherwise have
any inclination to do so, you should absolutely wear your MummyDumps as low and,
conflictingly, as tight as possible. Do so proudly. Be brazen. Be bold and
stupid and glorious.
MummyDumps is not a thing to be worried about.
Your parents will not call you in three years to ask if you’ve heard of
MummyDumps because they saw it on Brian Williams. It will never catch that
amount of on. It will not be semi-acceptable in a professional environment. People everywhere give too many collective fucks for that to
happen. It is a thing, enough of a thing to be a thing, but it will probably never be a
saturation-level “phenomenon” provided you can (and you definitely should if possible) avoid going places where there are teenagers.
What is it? Why? Wearing tight jeans below
where your legs meet your butt makes no sense. It’s pointless. It impedes
movement. The only benefit is in the way it makes the wearer look, some forceful
quality wholly, puzzlingly separate from “cool.” It’s post-cool. It’s as
wantonly unconcerned with your opinion on its coolness as a man in a full clown
costume drinking Wild Irish Rose out of a brown bag at the OTB, and therefore
it is cool, and therefore it’s also, tragically, the least cool thing you’ve
ever seen.
MummyDumps are dangerous and imply danger. As
much in the intended “IDGAFYOLO” way as also in the “Warning: person has
demonstrably refused to correctly operate pants and therefore is probably
unpredictable in other social modes such as volume of public belches and/or
unabashedly grabbing your little sister’s tit” way that causes monocle drops
and “well I never”s. This danger factor must be like catnip to 14
year old girls whose parents got divorced and who are therefore in an ungentle
coming of age experimentation phase wherein the idea of being kind of trashy is
toyed with. Step one is defining how untrustworthy of a boy to give a handjob
to in the back of a cousin’s Geo Tracker, and MummyDumps and CradleDicks serve
as an easy visual reference point. This, I think, is the essence of why this
thing is even the possibility of a thing.
Although I’m not big on pushing meaning where
it doesn’t belong. They are stupid pants. They are the current stupid pant.
As a teenager I was kind of like the least
trustworthy nerd. Danger nerd. I made out with other nerds. I never got a
chance to fool around with any girls who’d ever been in a fight. I’d probably
consider this a missed opportunity if not for the fact that a grown man in the
throes of sexual nostalgia is gross, bordering on totally unacceptable, and I’m
33 years old. I will not go that far. I am totally flaccid as I write this.
But I have turned a corner on MummyDumps.
I wish now, and I also wished as a teenager,
that I had the balls to wear something that stupid. I can picture it. I’d ride
a skateboard to Kim’s house, and we would smoke a joint and go buy candy with
money we stole from her Mom’s wallet, and then we’d shoot her brother’s pellet
gun, and she’d tell me her Dad has a real gun and I’d hold it and sneer. If it
got cold, I’d warm my hands on my scrotum, like, “fuck you, I’m warming my
hands on my scrotum right now,” and my boy Jay (real full given first name
“Jay”) would have a BMX with that super low seat thing, and we wouldn’t go
anywhere without moving slow as hell, and if anybody ever gave us shit we’d
say, “fuck you, you’re not my Dad” and MEAN it.
Later I’d get into club drugs and even later
than that I’d get into computers and be one of those infuriatingly laid-back
and agreeable smiling tattooed condo owner dads whose wife has a nose ring and probably
sucks his dick all the time.
I am WAY off of that track of possible lives.
That has to start early. And you have to grow up in someplace like Maine first.
I missed it. I grew up in suburban Maryland with a Mom and a Dad and values, in
a household which placed a social stigma on any perceived lack of academic
rigor. I didn’t even go all the way with my stupidest era-specific pant idea. I
had one pair of Jnco big pants, and they were the khakis. They were glorious
and stupid, but not glorious or stupid enough to ever merit a trip to second
base with a girl I met that day at Spencer’s Gifts. Not MummyDumps stupid.
I see these kids now, and I just smile sadly.
I care as little as they do how stupid they look. I care maybe a little bit
that I am now so old they don’t even see a human being anymore when they look at me. I care about this until they open
their mouths to speak and I’m reminded how utterly devoid of intelligence
anybody younger than 25 is. I mean they’re wearing fucking dumpy fucking mummy
pants wrapped around their thighs. What the fuck do I care what they think?
Anyway, I’ll put $50 on Guggenheim’s Fancy to show and another $50 to place in the 6th
at Oakmont, and it’s none of your fucking business what’s in the bag, buddy. I
know my rights.
Can I smoke in here?
