You Look Like An Asshole: The History of Fads Vol. 1

Welcome to part one of a very special commune promotional feature (what the powers that be at the commune don't know won't hurt them), a series of excerpts from my upcoming book "You Look Like An Asshole: The History of Fads." Unless the world ends in the next month, parts one and two will look at the greatest fad decade ever known to man: the 1950's.

The 1950's were a fertile decade for embarrassing fads, as the national IQ had reached a record low not seen since the days when our ancestors thought it would be fun to take the Indians out and get them drunk. America in the 1950's was still reeling from the fact that the country's best minds had burnt themselves out cracking Nazi code in WWII, so by the 50's they just spent their time inventing crap like the hula-hoop and the scooter. This is the only acceptable explanation for a generation of otherwise passable Homo sapiens running around with tap shoes on their feet all the time. Nobody is certain how that insanity got started, but it wasn't long before you weren't anybody if you didn't sound like a team of Clydesdales walking down the street. Eventually this trend had to be outlawed after basketball spectators started going deaf and there was one too many tragic fires started by workers in the nation's flint quarries.

When looking at Fads of the 50's, few can top the practice of piling a bunch of assholes into a phone booth for the present-day denial factor of all involved. This originally started as a way for Universities to inexpensively house foreign exchange students, but before long the insecure white student populace decided that no foreign pinkos were going to show them how many peer-pressured nimrods you could squeeze into a phone booth. Like all fads, this soon grew out of hand and by 1958 it was impossible to find a phone booth anywhere that wasn't stuffed to the ceiling with dead college students.

Later, after the practice was outlawed, it was discovered that the record everyone was trying to beat (25 people stuffed into one telephone booth) was actually set by two guys who were so stoned that every time the phone rang they thought there was somebody else in the booth with them. Thankfully for the runaways and drug dealers with a legitimate need to use public telephones, this fad was soon replaced with one involving how many duck farts you could squeeze into a Volkswagen.

Another front-runner for stupidest fad ever was the Duck's Ass haircut. Invented by a barber in the 1940's as a joke on neighborhood kids he didn't like, the grease-mop style spread locally as all the other kids became insecure that their heads didn't look enough like the ass-end of a duck and demanded a quick remedy to their respectable appearance. This fluke probably would have ended with that gaggle of lead paint chip-eating imbeciles, but as fate would have it, dimwitted local rocker Roger Stagg of the Jersey Turnpikes inadvertently modeled the style while being beaten by the New York City police on the evening news one night in 1951, and within minutes of the broadcast the Duck's Ass had landed on heads all throughout the faux-tough world. Musicians and movie stars mistook the style for the look of the street, and after they adopted the haircut it trickled down and eventually became the actual look of the street, in some kind of bizarre chicken-eating-an-egg loop that it hurts the brain to comprehend.

However, this look soon faded away after a few dozen greasers bought the farm while blowing out the candles on their birthday cakes, and tales of these grisly grease-fire head infernos spread to suburbia. That part was left out of The Outsiders; but trust me, it was like Vietnam crossed with a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial.

The 1950's also saw the birth of the panty raid, a masculine rite of passage for guys who would never, ever get laid. This unfortunate craze started when some wiseacre convinced the incoming class of freshman males at Tulane University that if they snuck into the girls' dorms and stole all their underwear, the girls would have no choice but to walk around naked all year and have promiscuous sex with anyone who asked politely. This being the 1950's, the guys bought it hook, line and sinker, and a shallow gene pool tradition was born. At first girls retaliated by staging their own boxer raids, but that turned out to be a lot of work and soon the girls discovered that sleeping only with jerks was the best revenge of all.

There were more ridiculous fads in the 1950's alone than there are deadbeat dads on the commune payroll, but this column is already longer than Leo Tolstoy's wedding vows so you'll have to stuff that curiosity back into the cat until next issue. Until then and possibly after, I'm Griswald Dreck.

Medicine for Dummies
The best part of being a professional Research Editor (and if you don't capitalize that you're shit out of luck if you expect a response email) and knowing shitloads about history is that you get to spend most of your time laughing at how stupid... (8/4/03)

Whatever Happened to the Test Tube Babies?
If you're like me, you're starting to wonder if they're ever going to come out with a pill that makes everybody beautiful, or if that was just the Twilight Zone blowing smoke up our asses. You also thought that by now the world would be... (7/21/03)

Why is Everybody Else So Fat?
It seems like you can't open an unrealistic women's magazine or go game hunting in a daycare center these days without hearing about the nation's weight problem. And it's true, America's been packing on the pounds like a newlywed in Wisconsin since... (7/7/03)

How the Internet Works
To kick things off with a bang, and also give you a taste of my own personal pain, I'd like to start off this column with a slice of reader email I received recently. "Yo yo yo Griswaaaaaaaasssup Dreck my man! Shit baby! Anyway, dude, the Internet?... (6/23/03)

What the Fuck Is Up With That New Matrix Movie?
Most of the reader mail and random catcalls I've been getting on the street lately revolve around my new haircut, which I refuse to discuss beyond warning that cutting your own hair is harder than it looks in the movies. Everything in the mirror is... (6/9/03)