Last Pants Standing

It started with twenty-four pair.

Black slacks. Tan khakis. Stylish trousers. Sturdy corduroys. Funky pants. Faded jeans.

Call it a riches of britches.

They came in a variety of styles and an assortment of sizes, but they all had one thing in common: they were too small for me to actually wear.

They were hidden all around my bedroom, some in a big plastic tub behind the headboard of my bed, some squirreled away on the top shelf of my closet.

I don’t know how it is for you, but there are two universal truths for me when it comes to pants: (1) as soon as pants get to big for me, I get rid of ‘em and (2) pants that I outgrow, I keep forever.

When I began my latest weight-loss journey this Spring, I also started a game that I affectionately called “Last Pants Standing.” Once a month or so (usually on a quiet Sunday afternoon) I’d pull out the entire pile and try them all on.

The pants that fit, I moved onto hangers in my closet. The rest got put back on the top shelf for another thirty days.

The largest pair of pants that I owned were a 42" waist, but most of them were 40’s. I’ve never been a fan of that 40 number, by the way. My first real weight-loss journey (remember, I’ve yo-yo’ed quite a few times) came when I was eighteen or so and my mother Shirley was buying me some work pants for a new job. I had just grabbed a pair of 38’s like I always did, by my mom insisted I try them on.

I still remember that sinking feeling of being in that dressing room and trying to stuff my gushing gut into those too-small slacks. I came out to get approval from the boss, who simply shook her head and handed me the dreaded 40’s.

It devastated me, and it didn’t help that my father Horace really laid in with the jokes. I remember we were having pizza that night for dinner, and I wouldn’t have any. I skipped dinner altogether that night, as I recall. That was the start of my first effective weight-loss journey, but unfortunately it wasn’t the end of the 40" trousers.

Which brings me back to those twenty-four pair, teasing me from the top shelf.

Each month, the pile comes down, and a slightly smaller pile goes back up.

Twenty-four down, eighteen back up.

Eighteen day, eleven back up.

Eleven down, five back up.

Now the 40’s are long gone and the 38’s have been retired as well. There are some 36’s still in my closet, but I’m mostly in 34's these days.

What started with 24 pair is now down to just two, a pair of 33" waist Eddie Bauer dress slacks (the EB ones always seem to run a little smaller, I noticed) and my a brand-new still-tagged pair of 32" Levi jeans.

I bought those jeans years and years ago, and they were my “goal” jeans. I never came close to being able to wear them; I’m not even sure why I bought ‘em, except, well… hope springs eternal, I guess.

This week, I tried on the dress slacks and they were still too small to close the clasp. I was about to just throw ‘em back up on the shelf and go about my business, but I had a “what the hell?” moment and grabbed the jeans (which I usually don’t even bother to try on ). I guess I just wanted to see how much work was left to do, now that I was coming to the end of the road.

I slipped the jeans on and pulled them up. I took a deep breath and pulled them to close. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a perfect fit, but I buttoned them up and stood there dumbfoundedly gazing at myself in the mirror.

I couldn’t, in good conscience, move those 32’s off the top shelf, but I will one day very soon.

Game on.

Googles of Fun

One of the best purchases my father Horace ever made was a brand new set of World Book Encyclopedias. When I was a young Sh*t, I spent hours and hours with those books, researching subjects I was interested in, discovering interesting facts about the world I lived in and killing spiders.

I remember thinking back then, “Wouldn’t it be cool if all this information was indexed in an easy to navigate system, and furthermore, wouldn’t it be awesome if everyone in the world could access it and add to it?”

I distinctly remember discussing my ideas with my buddies Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and they thought it was the dumbest thing they’d ever heard. Sergey said I was an A-hole, and I said he was an A-hole squared, and it went back and forth like that until I called him an “A-hole googoled.” Knowing he was outclassed, he ran home crying, with Larry tagging along looking like he was about to crap his pants.

Now, I’m not saying those two jerks stole my idea and name and ran with it. However, it’s a fact that Sergey was such an A-hole that he didn’t even know what the term “googol” meant.

A googol is the large number 10 to the 100th power; that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros in decimal representation. The term was coined in 1938 by Milton Sirotta (1929–1980), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, when he was nine years old. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination. Other names for googol include ten duotrigintillion on the short scale, ten thousand sexdecillion on the long scale, or ten sexdecilliard on the Peletier long scale.

The true irony is that I used Google to quickly gather that information about “googol”.

I was thinking this week how much easier Google makes my life when I was farting around with another parody song after hearing Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” while on the bike at the gym.

Fat Pants Fever

Well they filled my closet up, wall to wall,
Ugly things that came from the Big & Tall.
I really hate wearin’ what I wore.
I hope you know I don’t wear ‘em any more.

They gave me fat pants fever (waaa-wa-waaa)
Fat pants fever.

But that wasn’t enough for an entire post, so I Googled other Ted Nugent songs, thinking I could replace them with silly names to fill out the post. Such as…

• Just What The Doctor Ordered (Phentermine)
• Free-For-All (at the Old-Way Buffet)
• Dog Eat Dog (Suprisingly Low in Points)
• Motor City Madhouse (Must Be Weigh-In Day)
• Paralyzed (by Hunger)
• Stranglehold (on my Scale)
• Baby Please Don't Go (Back for Seconds)
• Wango Tango (Mango Fandango)
• Wang Dang Sweet Poontang (Insert Your Own Joke Here)
• Yank Me, Crank Me (You’re the Best Personal Trainer Ever!)
• Homebound (Got No Business Going Out to Eat)
• Give Me Just A Little (Dessert)

I put it all together, but then got sidetracked by a bunch of Ted Nugent facts. I had no idea the guy was such a whack-job. Apparently the rock-and-roll legend has kind of reinvented himself as an archconservative, conservationist family man.

• His book Ted, White, and Blue made it onto the Top 10 of The New York Times Bestseller List in its first week.
• He played Skunk Tarver in the 2008 film, Beer For My Horses as Skunk Tarver.
• He had a relationship with a 17-year old Hawaiian girl when he was 30. He became her legal guardian in order to comply with laws regarding relationships with minors.
• He is on the board of directors of The National Rifle Association, although he usually goes hunting with a bow and arrow. He eats everything he kills.
• Nuge's take on free-range chicken, from his book Kill It and Grill It: “Free-range chicken ain’t free and that ain’t no range. Venison is free-range. Pheasant is free-range. The almighty Ruffed Grouse is free-range. I’m free-range. Chickens are incarcerated. . . . If it can’t get away, it ain’t free-range and I ain’t interested.”

So now I know all these interesting facts about the Motor City Madman. I even know that Nugent’s nickname is the “Motor City Madman.” Google makes it easy to find all these facts, but I can’t say it’s always a time-saver; I spend hours going down crazy paths and nonsensical by-ways while on my searches.

Maybe what I’ll do is use Google to find a good set of World Book Encyclopedias to use instead of Google from now on. I think I won’t waste so much time if I go back to the old-school set of books.

Plus, we’ve got a lot of spiders.

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