Yesterday, I was having a nice quiet coffee at a Riverside caff, listening to prog rock and spelunking Buzzfeed’s cavernous gullet for a diverting new quiz. As I chanced on that video of a cat dressed as a shark going round and round on the robot vacuum cleaner, I sensed a bustle in the universal hedgerow and looked up to see a posse of lustrous black cars beetling towards the kerb. They almost eighty-sixed the bracelet urchins and the sunglasses guy and sent two paranormally tall, flaxen flashpackers skittering into a wing of fagging sexpats inhaling their hangover brunch. It was quite the spectacle.
I don’t know if you remember the olden days, but you used to get those little surprises in breakfast cereal packets. A swap card with a football star: collect the whole team! Or a snap-together plane complete with little stickers for the fuselage. Or a Crater Critter. Apparently you could also get driving licenses. The dipsticks behind the wheels of these particular vehicular thugs were undoubtedly Fruit Loops’ bitches back in the day. Or they just went down the cop shop and handed over 40 smackers and a slab of ABC. Either way.
Once the monkey suited bridge-trolls in the wood-bead seat covers had ‘parked’ the Tundra and the Escalade and the Bentley with the white stickers still underneath the door handles into a gigantic traffic-jam-shaped clusterfuck, a single gormless twat descended from each back seat and swaggered in. I could tell from what they were shouting into their phones, held at cigar length from each piehole and with the speaker turned on, that Mr Tiny Penis, Mr Miniscule Todger and Mr ‘Scanning Electron Microscope’ Littledick were not from around these parts. I’m not being sizeist; I know they all had bijou bedsnakes because they had teensy weensy little baby hands. Plus they sported the Pan-Asian casual business stylee of the rich and tasteless that don’t leave much to the mind’s eye. 1. Knock-off ManU strip, Ping cap, booze belly and some fantastical golf pants obviously purchased from a travelling dwarf circus. Gold and diamond pinky ring the size of a rabbit testicle. #2. Unctuous comb-over, lemon popped-collar polo tucked into high-waisted, nut-sundering cargoes, dress belt. Moobs. #3. Details sketchy; I was mesmerised by the inch-long fingernails and the goitre. And the sunnies on the back of his head. Sorry.
I know I’m the blackest pot sashaying down life’s catwalk: I’ve got exactly the same hair as I did in high school and I haven’t owned anything ironable since 1981. Plus I’m on the blousy side, and not in a good way. But that doesn’t mean I can’t mercilessly shit on anyone else’s touted taste and talents. Just like I don’t play the ukelele, sing in a fake Jamaican accent or wear a cheeky chappie hat, but I’m a fucking expert on how many ways Jason Mraz sucks. I’m a stone-cold oracle when it comes to that sanctimonious, ferret-faced whine-meister. You’re so not mine, mate.
But almost without exception, 14 Hilarious Eyebrow Fails is enough to distract me from these and other sartorial ignominies in the parade of wardrobe catastrophes that shamelessly promenades CharmingVille’s riverine shores. Under normal circumstances I could have forgiven, or even ignored, the three amigos and their laughable attempt at resort wear if they’d alighted from a Camry and sat in a corner giggling over teacup ponies or lame Canadian gag shows that everyone seems to adore except me. But those punkass millionaires really got my goatskin legwarmers, especially after their sweet rides left the street kids and the sunnies dude flailing on the pavement with their livelihoods spilt all around. It didn’t help that they were sat at the next table engaged in some ostentatious nad rearrangement and talking loudly about some massive LUXURY yacht they’d just come off. In case you didn’t hear me, it was a LUXURY yacht, and the guy who owned it was a VERY IMPORTANT guy. Where’s my LUXURY bucket?
At this point I realised I’d anxiety sucked way too much Ventolin and needed a lie down at Marital HQ. Just as I scrabbled for plastic, the previously skittled blonde duo ducked through the door and sauntered like human giraffes to my now empty table. The cashed-up little prats next to them pretended not to notice, but the jabber petered out as those long drinks of water ordered mango lassis, chitchatted with their throats as the Dutch are wont to do, and emptied a plastic bag onto the table for all the world to see. Out clattered four pairs of broken three-buck RayBans which the couple arranged neatly as they spoke. Except for Jethro Tull fluting away and the tourists’ husky natter, you could have heard a pin drop. It was fucking brilliant.
I put my own sunnies on to cover up my celebratory teardrops of justice-well-served and stepped onto the pavement. I almost turned back to thank those freaking giants, but I stopped myself just in time. Those foreigners may have been good Samaritans, but a crime of fashion had still occurred. It’s a sad fact that there are so few elephants left in Cambodia. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for elephant pants.