Shopping for See-Dub, Part Two

Went to Target the other day to get some jeans. I don't wear Wranglers anymore; I was a loyal customer and liked the cowboy tie-in but then they cut and run from their rural Oklahoma roots. I heard they picked up their factories and went to Mexico. So I said fine, let the Mexicans buy your damned jeans, you ungrateful bottom-line cutthroat hacks.

Anyway, enough bitterness. Barring Wranglers, the other jeans at Target were not up to my standards. There were many brands I had never really heard of, or had barely heard of: I always associated "Mossimo", for example, with IROC-Z drivers. But pretty much all of the non-Wranglers were...pre-soiled.

Maybe they just hadn't been bleached before the blue dye was applied. But I kinda suspect there was some quick immersion in a Quaker State product at some point in their manufacture.

I'm not sure why dingy and scuzzy are supposed to be fashionable. If so, I'm pretty much a Manolo in the making. My jeans usually don't have the Pennzoil impregnation, but quickly acquire a custom patina of baby vomit, cheap Syrah, grass stains, and baby vomit. Which is one reason I went looking for new jeans in the first place.

I despise the pretense of pre-soiled clothing. Why, look at yon fellow with the ground-in grime: he appears to be a humble discount-mattress salesman, but he must spend his afternoons fixing his Harley and roping steers. From his Harley. I was raised to admire honestly acquired dirt, but not to fetishize it: after all, real actual working people put on clean clothes when they can.

So I went to Sears and bought some Lee jeans, which were clean and blue. They have this weird stripiness to the denim, but I suspect that's a feature, not a bug. It's better than dirt.