Ayo, you might see us in designer underwear, bloggin' in a recliner leather chair with minders everywhere, and when we postin' shit up the minors stop and stare, but we just spotted this Canadian TV performance of Horse & Carriage in the Youtube Suggestions bar of the Ma$e live medley on Teen Summit video that's currently everywhere :
Oh, jou don' know that Fat Cam and Jimmy doing some synchronized pattycaking is a matter for much discussion, but here at The Martorialist offices the most pertinent talking point has been Jim's 3/4+½ nu-metal cuffed jean shorts which can finally set the scene for an epic Martorial Elegance showdown at noon we've been waiting to take place for over 5 years now; Michael Buffer's currently recovering from throat cancer and swimming in the $400 million he's made from licencing, so we had to rope in Mystikal for this one instead. Our shorts tinted out, yours see-through - we see you :
Mystikal - Ready To Rumble (2000)
In the left corner we have Capo representing Harlem in the Fieldy from KoRN cuffed jhorts that are bigger than a Sumo; in the right corner we have V.I.Prodigy from the Outta Control remix video representing th-th-th-the 'Bridge in some eastern European builder during the summer months cuffed jhorts which won't let ya mouth getcha in shit ya legs can't run from :
MC Serch attempting The Crane in the video for that Kurious Benetton joint he was on with DOOM a couple of years back; his only worthwhile contribution to the song.
Back in the late nineties the gentlemen's fashion magazine Draper's Records proposed that the reason men's denim sales in the U.K had slumped to an all-time low was because of "the Jeremy Clarkson effect". It's an immensely plausible hypothesis, but it doesn't explain why the effect didn't spread to the 2 countries where denim is king when Top Gear is the highest rated show on the BBC's flagship channels in America and Japan, or why the equally atrocious Richard Hammond & James May visage of bootcut jeans with a brown leather jacket then became the default casual look of 97% of men over the age of 35 throughout the last decade.
Here at The Martorialist we spend at least 3 minutes per waking hour formulating theories about the effect celebrities in appalling jeans have on the tastes of the general public, and today we've come to a conclusion on the origins of sagged pants and it has nothing to do with 2 Live Crew album covers, street looks derived from the lack of belts in prison, or skaters buying their pants two or three sizes up to act as protection against injuries; the act of wearing one's slacks drooped below one's waistline, we proffer, was actually borne out of the universal horror teenagers experienced in 1989 when they flocked to see The Karate Kid 3 and laid their eyes on the then slightly portly Ralph Macchio making his jeans look all Jeremy Clarksoned out and thought "Christ on a pogo-stick, let's try to look as far from that as is sartorially possible" :
And there, in a pair of ill-fitting denim, is a lesson for you on how cruel, fickle, and ironic the worlds of both fashion and cinema are, given that Ralph had outswagged the rest of the male cast in The Outsiders as Johnny Cade by pulling off what's arguably the greatest Canadian Tuxedo in celluloid history back in 1983, yet still found himself as a proto-Kenny Powers figure for denim dystopia a mere 6 years later. Damn, Daniel son. To his credit, Karate Kid 3 saw Ralph still posessing aspirations of James Dean with his red Harrington jacket ala Jim Stark, but fate was conspiring against him on multiple levels by this point and the movie's wardrobe department could only come up with a cheap replica rather than a real Baracuta G9. Save for My Cousin Vinny, Ralph's movie career never recovered from such indignity and it shadowed the downfall of Sensei John Kreese and the Cobra Kai until regular tv parts acted as a sort've televisual Terry Silver.
BONUS BEATS :
Let's cast our minds back to the days when Serch was a tad more athletic :
3rd Bass - Wordz Of Wisdom (1989)
Yo, you know who's to blame for Serch's achingly solemn delivery on that aforementioned Kurious & DOOM joint? You dudes who've been calling him thee most exalted potentate of whiggatry on the internet for the last 15 years or so, that's who. Even if you've never been partial to Serch's brand of pre-Rappaport whiteness, you have to admit that the enthusiastic Serch of yore is far preferable to the earnest Serch on that song, and I'm sure you'd also concur that in 2011 it's about time someone leaked that original version of Serch's Back To The Grill Again with Akinyele on it which was mentioned in the Ego Trip book back in 1999.
Okay, so the whole skinhead-to-psychobilly metamorphosis in This Is England '86 is on-point judging by what I remember of my old childhood pack of cheeky little bastards getting legged by former local skinheads who'd made the transition to horse-shoe hairdoos and Guana Batz t-shirts (is there anything which quite signifies BRITAIN IN THE MID EIGHTIES! like a powerstation with The Meteors daubed onto it in white emulsion paint?), but what's up with Shane Meadows giving that kid a Bad Music For Bad People Cramps tee to wear and then raiding the old Brookside costume department box at the C4 studios for Jimmy Corkhill's black pleather jacket and stonewashed jeans for the rest of his outfit?
As far as movie-to-tv conversions go, the first episode of This Is England '86 was more the "you don't think you're stretching the format a bit too thin here, guys?" Ferris Bueller show than the Anthony Michael Hall helmed Dead Zone series which was spawned from Cronenberg's flick (the third best Stephen King movie adaption after The Shining and Carrie? Difficult to choose between that and Stand By Me, personally), but I'll stick with it because there's nothing else on tuesday evenings and the breezy who plays Lol somehow manages to pull off looking pulchritudinous despite the fact that Meadows apears to have based her '86 steez on what Rhona Cameron with a bottle of bleach would look like.
The Cramps - Sunglasses After Dark
My stomach churns when people lump The Cramps in with British psychobilly bands because it's just so abhorrently wrong to compare the group of Ohio-to-New York fuck-ups who made Sunglasses After Dark to bands of quiffed up, double-bass strumming Waynes & Kevins knocking out Stray Cats karaoke numbers (yo, don't worry rap dudes, we'll be back to posting videos of the time Masted P & The No Limit Soilders joined WCW and made their wrestling debut against La Parka and Psychosis soon). I read an interview with Ian MacKaye once where he talked about a Cramps show in DC sometime in 1979 being the entry point into punk for him and Henry Rollins and thought it was an interesting revelation because, while that means The Cramps were the impetus for Minor Threat/Fugazi and Black Flag, it also means they were evenutally responsible for Ian's terrible this-is-me-and-my-missus-farting-around-on-acoustic-guitars-and-a-toy-drum group The Evens and Rollins's many terrible books of self-pitying twaddle (every book of his bar Get In The Van, basically). What a tarnished legacy to leave.
Where are the middle aged blokes dressed like Alain Delon as Jef Costello in Le Samourai or the eccentric 30-something chicks going for that whole Cruella de Vil look? Nowhere we've been with a camera in the last week or two, so, all we can do is bide our time with another gander at denim shorts :
This guy pro'lly thinks he has steeze(sic), but, as always, denim shorts will never be able to escape the wrestler ghetto into semi-respectable territory. Just because one wears tailored jean short-shorts, as opposed to some 3/4 length DFS sofa sized ones, it doesn't make one any less immune to the wrestler effect; it just means that, rather than Raven or John Cena, one has achieved the Stevie Richards or Stone Cold Steve Austin look instead :
Our Martorial elegance subject's shirt? Refer to this post for our thoughts on the pressing matter of sleeveless denim, but we'll add Tom Cruise as Steve in The Outsiders to our brief list of acceptable sleeveless denim shirt/jacket sporters.
Lil' Boosie ft. Lil' Phat & Webbie - LEVIS
So, Boosie's Superbad leaked this weekend and I'm downloading as I type this very sentence, but why on earth are Back In The Day and We Out Chea not on there? This is especially puzzling since Boosie shot lo-fi WSHH.com 'hood videos for both. Thankfully, my favourite Boosie song of the fortnight has made the final cut :
We've noticed that Curtains has been partial to a sleeveless denim-jacket in recent times but, realistically, this is a particularly unforgiving item of gear which shouldn't be attempted by anyone who isn't a 70s NY Puerto Rican gang member or Lemmy.
However, we've spotted a couple examples of the armless jean-jacket which are, at the very least, interesting takes on the look :
The Hub festival last weekend saw Tuf Tim Twist going for the old skool Popmaster Fabel painted denim look and he manages to pull it off, if only for of the ridiculouslness of a 40-something white bloke from the U.K attempting the look in the first place and the painted graf' on the jacket itself being pretty good.
On the flip-side, we have this hesher, recently spotted by Killa Barratt, who's gone for the metal-take on the look :
Your author can't call it on this one. If our subject is a bonefide hesher who just wants to celebrate his love of those pre-whigger crossover days when metallers looked like proper metallers and not members of the Boo Yaa Tribe then he should be applauded, but should this fellow be some ironic twerp out for the LOLz then we'd like to douse the jacket in petrol and set it alight, preferably with him still inside it.
Keak Da Sneak ft. E-40 - White Tee, Blue Jeans And Nikes
Killa Barratt recently suggested that shant wearing, Slipnot loving, cyber-raving metallers are a perfect target for Martorial Elegance posts, but, I 'unno, I disagree they'd probably be better served being used as target practise for balacava-ed up brickthrowing Irish teenagers.
I wouldn't even pass wind in the direction of the sort of zany cunt who wears purposefully mismatched stripey leggings let alone pass judgement on them on such a, ahem, highbrow website as this but here's a little newsflash for all you plebians thinking of sportin' jean-shorts this summer :
Unless you're Craw from Six Ft. Ditch AKA C-Raw the Denim Short Don then don't even think about it 'cause the rest of all y'all are some sorry late 90s ECW tag-team wrestler lookin' motherfuckers :
In the same way that Levi's are pretty much the blueprint for any good jeans (and a few lessthandecentones too), JNCO are the prototype for the gazebo-like denim disasters that look tailor made for Holly Willoughby in her current behemoth state which keep cyber-goths, cyber-ravers and a whole carnival of other cyber-cunts dipped in ridiculous 32" width hem kecks with rear detailing.
Only, instead of the sewn-in spacko graffiti fonts and Funkdoobiest LP cover-esque goateed characters with blunts of JNCO's, we now get sub-culture specific strains with the cyber-goth variety featuring studs, skulls and various other shit you can only get away with wearing if you're Kerry, Lemmy or Glenn.
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