In a fit that had nothing to do with fit, my long-suffering fiancée decided I need to retire my stonewashed denim and replace it with a darker hipper Levi called "1969."
I didn't think twice (it's all right) about it. Jeans are jeans to me as long I can get them over a post-prime waistline expanding faster than the economy is contracting. But the Levis named after one of the best years of our my life -- Woodstock, the Mets, the Jets, the Knicks -- were so big that even I could fit into them...so big, in fact, that I can't wear them without a belt.
What's going on here? My "1969" jeans are at least a full-size bigger than the retired jeans of the same size I had to fight so hard to get buttoned up the week before. My "1969" jeans, you see, are nothing more than a sham, a fraud, a stonewashed Watergate metaphor for the previously stoned.
What does it all mean? I immediately thought of former President Bill Clinton and the way the ex-Commander-in-Chief plays golf. When it comes to the small dimpled ball, the Billary is famous for taking one mulligan after another, for hitting three or four balls or (many) more, all on the same hole, until he hits the one he likes -- and then subtracting the lesser strokes as practice.
He's a cheater, in other words, and he makes no bones about it.
Or how about this true Clinton story? He comes out here to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Old Snowmass, Colorado, right after he leaves the Oval Office. Amory Lovins, the chief RMI energy poobah, assembles a roomful of experts at the command of the recently former Commander-in-Chief.
Does Clinton want to talk about carbon offsets? Or greenhouses gases? Or electric cars?
Not a chance. Just months out of office, all the Leader of the Free World once removed wants to talk about is hydrogen-powered tanks -- and whether they would allow a country to fight simultaneous wars, a twofer on two fronts.
Billigan looking as always for shortcuts.
So you ask yourself: why in the name of all that's holy would a former president care about something like hydrogen tanks in such detail so soon after his presidency, with some of the best energy minds in the country willing to tell him anything about everything on the house? You can't help but come to the conclusion that a consulting client -- maybe even a Middle Eastern country with potential trouble on both borders -- wanted some answers and that President Clinton could get them from RMI with no questions asked. You can't help but wonder what the president charged his client for that insight: I'm thinking maybe a quarter million dollars, maybe more.
Time is money for the former prez, and nearly 40 years have gone by since Woodstock, with Levi Strauss more than willing to cut us the slack that Bill Clinton takes to the bank. Like our Boomer Presidents, we Boomerangs always take the easy way out. When we get in the private jet we can gobble carbon offsets like candy; when we get fat we can just buy Levi's expansive jeans; we can even smoke pot without inhaling.
You've got to love a generation taking one mulligan after another. The long and short of it is that I haven't felt so fat and happy since 1969.