the long and shorts of it (*ba-dum-ching!*)

This weekend's heat and humidity have me thinking that it's time I shed my pants....again. I've already professed and documented my love for the summer dress, but I have yet to pontificate on my love of shorts, which I recently rediscovered and decided to incorporate into my everyday wardrobe.

Until I moved to Moscow in 2001, shorts were a staple in my warm-weather wardrobe. However, after living for a time in a city where the air literally turned your snot gray (um, sorry for the grotesque body fluid reference, but that statement is sickly true), I decided I'd rather keep my mid- and upper-thighs mostly covered. I mean, if the air is that dirty, I don't even want to know the strains of gnarly sh*t found on the public benches, the metro or the street, onto which I may have once tucked and rolled after jumping out of some random Russian's BMW as it slowed down to turn a corner at 4 a.m. in the dead of winter (um, but we'll save the more sordid details of that story for another time...).

Anyhoo, I got so used to not wearing shorts in Russia that even after returning stateside almost four years ago now (has it really been that long?!), I remained shorts-less. It just so happens also that 2004-2005 was the year during which I began my love affair with ultra-tight pants. And for those of you new to the nonsense that is this blog, my bond with tight pants is a tough one to break, even in the heat.

However, heat is one thing; energy-sucking humidity is quite another, meaning DC's hellish weather has really left me with no other choice. It's either short pants or no pants and since I decided long ago that if I ever get put in the clink I want it to be for something cool and sexy like an Ocean's 11-style casino heist and not something creepy and pervy like indecent exposure, short pants it shall be.

And so here we are -- my re-discovered style du jour, shorts. But since I'm born-again to the shorts game, I find that I need to ease my way back into it. Strangely, going from showing no leg to whole leg can be a hard transition to make, even for an attention hooker like myself. And so, I came up with this:

Unfortunately, you don't have to adjust your screen, my unsteady hand and lack of photog flashbulb skills really do yield that low quality of stuff lately.

Boots'n'shorts'n'sweatervests, oh my! It's got a bit of a "if Pocahontas was a stripper" style about it, n'est-ce pas? And while I love the idea of risque historical figures, that's not what I love most about this outfit. Nope, what I love most about this combo is the screwy proportions. Everything's just a little off-kilter -- the oatmeal-colored sweatervest (made by Jamison and bought at Shopbop.com on sale) is a little too long; the brown shorts (made by some brand called "Department of Peace" and bought at Off 5th in Leesburg for $12, marked down from $96!) are a little too short; and, the gray suede just-over-the-knee boots (made by Penny Loves Kenny and bought at Endless.com) are a little too high. In other words, I think all of this ensemble's not right-ness makes it all just right.

So not-right right is this combo, in fact, that I decided to display it in several different lights, er, pixel formulatons. (OK, and I also just serendipitously discovered Photobucket's ridiculously awesome fun photo effects, including the Andy Warhol effect that I posted above.)

Outfit amour-propre now in neon, fresco and old-time film!

And sh*t just gets tighter in heatmap, sketch and nightvision!

Yeah...get ready for The Anti DC 2.0, the even more annoying version! Oh, you're lucky it's a short week...ciao!