Tom Turtle plays volleyball

Tom Turtle plays Beach Volleyball

Beach volleyball is big bananas after the Olympics. Did you see it? Even then-President George was out on the sand, slapping hands and butts. The photo above just begs for a caption, don't ya think? I'm kind of partial to, “No thanks, Tootsie, I'm waiting for the leggy blonde here to put on a saddle and assume the position.” Or how about, “Leapfrog? I thought we were playing hide the Scud.” Or, “Hey, Kitten, this isn't a sandbox!”

But seriously, beach volleyball is a great game. I myself have been playing for years. The only thing I don't understand is the clothes. As you can see, the women play in an undersized brassiere and the top half of a little girl's panties. But the guys play in below knee-length “shorts” with enough material to make six regulation platoon parachutes. Technically, they don't even qualify as shorts. They qualify as knickers or plus-fours or bloomers or jodhpurs or something, but never shorts. They're the kind of non-short shorts the rappers are wearing, with chains and hightop Nike's. MCHammer could get in there and bustamove. You know why he called it “You can't touch this”? Because with all that material, “You can't find this.”

Being a turtle, I am no fashion plate, but even I consider these shorts a fashion disaster. Like most animals shorter than a giraffe, I want to look taller and leaner than I really am, not the reverse, so what is the logic in purposely making my legs double extra wide and double extra short? These shorts move my waist a foot lower and my knees two feet lower, making me look like a vast torso on wheels. Why? Why does anyone think this is cool?

Well, I will tell you. Despite all we hear of the equality of the sexes, we see nothing like it in fashion. Every year women wear less clothing and men wear more. Men have to wear shirts in beach volleyball, too, which means the only skin showing is around the wrist and ankle (not including the head, which in sports is superfluous). The reason for this is that men are being slowly and inexorably pushed toward the sports burka. Women don't really want to have to look at us anymore, and they are quite clever. So they tell us lots of loose baggy material is cool. Whereas a few years ago we were happily wearing speedos to romp in the surf and dash along the sand, very soon we will be swimming in fitted tarpaulins, with holes cut for arms and legs. Even the sharks won't know what to make of us, floating in the tide like vast balls of yarn or like flotsam tossed off from a Clothworld steamer.

The “fashion” designers are on the side of the women, of course, since they gave up on men decades ago. So they tell us and sell us the same thing. Men never shop for clothing, except at Army surplus or Walmart, and this is how the designers get back at us. If men will refuse to spend lots of money on clothes and shoes, if they will continue trading eachother for corduroy and flannel and polyester on ebay, then the designers can't be blamed when they ally themselves with women and damn our entire sex to the woolen and plastic sports burka.

The guys in snowboarding are already there, man. They are the front line, dude. Did you see them in the last winter Olympics? They looked like they just crawled out of a laundry basket covered in superglue. Bags and folds everywhere, like some kind of sharpei puppy on a shortboard. Wasn't it just a few years ago that everyone was wearing the skintight one-piece aerosuits, gliding down the mountain like Spiderman? In a few short years we have gone from Spiderman to Sharpei-man.

female snowboarders male snowboarder

But why are the girls doing this to us? And how did they convince the rappers to join the alliance? Do the rappers really want to lead us all to the burka, or are they just tools of the ladies, too? I haven't really figured this one out, but I think it is just us white guys they want to burkefy. The ladies and the fashion designers and the rappers and the snowboarders are leading us down the garden path, telling us how cool we look in our six yards of gray rayon, with our oversized shoes and our great enveloping tuques and snoods, even in midsummer. Once the last white guy has fallen victim to this scheme, the rappers and ladies will ditch us all at Target and rush home to strip down to their aerosuits or the buff, where they will all slide into a pile. Meanwhile, we honkies will be fighting eachother for the last size 44 extra-squat cargo “shorts” on the rack.
In a pile
Upon a log
Over the water
Third from the bottom
Secreting my own hard shell
Tom Turtle