A series of rants:

My first rant goes to the clothing industry:

Dear Clothing Industry:

ENOUGH. Why is it the more conservative our country gets, the more idiotic the clothing gets? I guess it's to like... balance the religious zealots imposing their morals on everyone else, but... everything right now is unwearable. I am TRYING to spend money on clothes, and I simply cannot. Okay, so I bought a pair of tan dress shoes, and a pair of plaid shorts and a pair of Madras shorts and a pair of camouflage shorts, and YES, I bought a snap-up plaid cowboy-type shirt for going out, but that's IT! I cannot, but cannot in good faith, buy myself a shredded terrycloth polo shirt with bleach stains and a silk screen of the British Coat of Arms, covered in silkscreened scribbles and Jackson-Pollock streaks. And I cannot buy myself T-shirts like that, or pants like that.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm getting older -- but when I was in my teeny-bopper phase, the CRAZIEST thing out there was that Abercrombie shorts came pre-frayed at the bottom. Now, you're selling me a threadbare shirt with silkscreening on the inside, so it looks like I've turned the thing inside out.

I can't do it. I won't part with my hard-earned money to buy this crap. In five years we're all going to look back (if we haven't blown ourselves up by then) and smack our foreheads and say, "WHAT THE HELL WERE WE ALL THINKING!?"

You weren't. And -- for all this ca-ca that's out there, I don't see a lot of people wearing it, and I live in Miami, the idiot trend-following capital of the World (See, Von Dutch). Seriously. Are they selling this drek in D.C. and is it selling in Peoria? I'm totally fine with the resurgance of 80s preppy. I like that. I can totally do that.

However, 80s shredded Tennis-Chic? It's a little too Royal Tennenbaums for me.

So, here's my suggestion: Put out some fucking clothing people will actually buy. I'm now PINING for the diagonally-stripey boom of two years ago which is now completely passe. I loved that trend. If it came back, I would re-embrace it in a heartbeat.

So, Fashion Industry, I know boy-shorts on girls is totally "in" and it's all the rage to wear leggings and high-heels again, but, um... it doesn't look cute. It looks RETARDED. And I know you're having "fun!" and it's an Old Navy summer for all of us, but for fuck's sake, make some shit I actually want to buy. I'm an easy target. Just... try a little less hard, okay?

My second rant goes to Summertime:

Dear Summertime:

I hate you. Oh, dear God, how I hate you! You're like Winter up North. It's hot, it's sticky it's rainy and hurricaney... (Unlike snow, and ice and cold)...

But here's my biggest rant: Parents in Mini-Cuba (Pronounced Koo-bah) a/k/a Miami (pronounced Mee-ah-mee) have never heard of a little invention I like to call "Sleepaway Camp," in which to stash their ghetto hellions for the months of June, July and August.

Instead, their respectively Guido/New Jersey Bridge-and-Tunnel Trash Mall-Groupie children (the Cuban equivalents of which) burst forth like so much pus from a forcefully squeezed zit, and infiltrate even the most quiet and boring shopping centers.

As a backstory, I like to go shopping for clothes and sundries after work... like 8:30/9-ish. There aren't a lot of people around, and I think I have mild agoraphobia when I'm in a mall... so I like going at night when it's pretty dead.

I went to Sunset Place tonight to do a little zen-shopping. To pick up said pair of plaid shorts at the Gap (I got the LAST PAIR of 32 waists... and it's still 2 inches too big, but JESUS, why were all the sorts in the 35 inches and up sizes?! How many of those does Gap ORDER?!) Imagine my chagrin when, as I rounded the corner of Armani Xchange, I saw them. Writhing, and leaning and bachata-ing and sidekicking, and Boost-Mobile-ing all over Sunset Place, travelling in roaming packs around, being 12 and 13.

I. Hate. Kids.

The ONE place I found quiet solitude was in Banana Republic, and that's because even those little hooligans know that Banana Republic hasn't had any inspired clothing for the last three or four years. (Confidential to Banana Republic: How do you stay in Business? Your clothing...::yawn:: at the same time, your prices have taken a sharp upturn, and you seem to have forgotten that items "on sale" should be "affordable" and not still "shockingly expensive." You're on my list of soon-to-be-dead-to-me's, Banana. Shape up, or we're going to have to part Company.)

Know when you know it's bad? When you go into Borders to buy the ONE AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS book they have in stock (and they had one David Sedaris book in stock too. Grrr.) and the place is crawling with pre-teen punani. And let me tell you, I think the South Miami pedophiles were out in full force tonight, too. Lots of skeevy middle-aged men with thinning hair and glasses leaning on railings, observing the parade of ripening fruit writhing around them. But yes. Borders...actually Barnes and Noble... I should know better, because B&N Sucks, whereas Borders does not, was lousy with kids in it. The weary nerd behind the counter who sold me my two books looked drained. I asked him if he was excited for summer to be over, and he was like "I CAN'T TAKE THESE KIDS ANYMORE! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE! DO YOU SEE HOW DIRTY THE PLACE IS?!" Indeed, I saw. I tried to console him by telling him he only had 'till early August, to which he replied that he was going to have to buy a punching bag.

So, Summer, you see that your heat and your hurricanes, and your rambling packs of hormonally bubbling teenagers with NOTHING ELSE TO DO, cutting into MY PEACEFUL SHOPPING TIME, makes me an unhappy camper, but a camper nonetheless. Gone is the quiet of the night, interrupted by hundreds of Nokia Phones blaring Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" into the sticky, sweaty evening. (As an aside to the parents of Miami: Maybe if you enrolled your little shits in a Sleepaway Camp, you all would be less Godawful for the rest of the year, because you got a break from your demon spawn for two months? Think about it. Everyone would benefit. Your kids would all get to lose their virginity in a mosquito-infested bunk, you'd get some well-deserved peace and quiet around the house, which might improve your generally sour disposition for the rest of the year, and I'd get to buy some shorts without listening to some drivvel about "PANCHITO, VEN!")

Last rant:

All of the stores in Sunset Place are closing. The good ones anyway. The Virgin Megastore? Gone. That's right. Gone. Wasn't that like Sunset Place's main anchor tenant? Awesome. I'm about to live right down the streets from "The Mall of No Americans II." (Like the Mall of the Americas? The single-handed most depressing place on the face of the Earth?)