I give up. This New England weather has finally beaten me into submission.


It snowed last night. The last week of fricking March, and it snowed in Boston. These weren't flurries, either. No delicate gentle snowflakes, these. These were the wet, sticky, slappy sort of snowflakes. They thudded audibly against the windshield as I drove home from dinner. They may have dented the hood, even. This precipitation wasn't screwing around.


To be honest, the snow itself isn't the big problem here. I do have an issue, in principle, with seeing the white stuff this late in the year. 'April showers' should bring 'May flowers' -- not 'snow plowers', for crissakes. It's baseball season now, and there's no blizzards in baseball! So sure, the snow is troublesome.


Worse, though, are the wildly fluctuating temperatures. Last weekend, we had 'seasonal' weather, in the mid-fifties.* On Thursday, it was a warm and sunny near-seventy. Today -- thirty. There's no one on the planet, besides those equipped with a surname of Kennedy or Marcos, with a wardrobe wide enough to accomodate that sort of climatological claptrap.


I sure as hell don't, that's for certain. And I'm fed up with trying to outguess the weather monkeys over what to wear. From now on, I'm going to storm onto my porch in the morning, wearing short pants, a parka, and one galosh, and demand, 'WHAT? WHAT THE HELL'S THE RIGHT ANSWER TODAY?!?'


Some might say this week's wacky weather is simply proof of the old New England adage:


'If you don't like the weather now, just wait a bit. It'll change.'


Very cute and folksy, no doubt. I can readily imagine Grandpa Massachusetts in his rocker, with a Red Sox Nation shawl around his shoulders, dispensing such nuggets of wisdom to the wee ones gathered at his feet.


Except for one thing: that particular homey bit of fluff is true for ninety percent of the inhabitable land masses on the planet. Certainly, the weather's not going to change much in Antarctica or sub-Saharan Africa, no matter how long you wait around.


(For that matter, nothing much changes in Southern California weatherwise, either -- but there's no stupid adage in Southern California that starts with, 'If you don't like the weather...' If you don't like the weather there, they have you committed. Or ship you to Minnesota. Occasionally both.)


In the rest of the world, the weather changes. That's what scientists call 'seasons'. Seeeea-sons. My beef is simply this: if we only get four seasons, we shouldn't have to deal with three of them in the space of a week. The 'T-shirt and mittens' look is just dandy down at the sanitorium, but I'm not sure I should go to work that way.


Weather, you win. I'm putting on knee socks and a muumuu, and going back to bed. Somebody wake me when it's August, or even December. At least I'll know what the hell to wear outside.


(* The temperature tallies above are in Fahrenheit, obviously. I apologize to our friends across the pond. I'd convert to Celsius, really -- if only because it's a hell of a lot easier to spell -- but the math always ties me in knots.


'Take five-ninths of the number, add thirty-two, and subtract the barometric pressure expressed in milliliters of mercury on the third moon of Neptune,' or some such nonsense. I could never get it right. I'd have an easier time converting to Kelvin, and reporting how close we got to absolute zero today.)

I did a very strange thing this week: I bought pants over the internet. Somehow, it just doesn't seem right. There's something distant and foreign about purchasing legwear sight unseen. It's like buying a car without a test drive, or getting a mail-order bride. How well will it fit? Will you want to be seen in public with it? And will you still be comfortable jiggling your gearshift? These are important considerations.


Mostly, the purchase worked out okay. I bought my pants from the Gap. Or 'The Gap', or 'GAP', or whatever the hell you're supposed to call them. How the hell should I know? Branding washes over me like subtlety over Harland Willaims' fat head. Not a crumb of it sticks.


Normally, I don't buy clothes from a store as trendy as the Gap. Actually, I don't normally buy clothes at all. Between Christmases, birthdays, and the occasional tube sock spending frenzy, my wardrobe is mostly self-replenishing. But I'm down to two pairs of jeans that the missus will let me wear outside the house, and that's cutting things dangerously close. One ripped knee or unfortunate marinara mishap, and I'd be down to just the one pair. And that would mean wearing khakis to work some days. I'm afraid I can't let that happen.


So, I checked my favorite pair of Christmas-present pants, found they were from the Gap, and I hit the web site. There, I was presented with a dizzying array of mens' denim lowergarments. The Gap has approximately seventy-three hundred different styles of blue jeans -- some of them not 'blue' at all, and many of them not intended for any men that I know. If I wore one of those 'low-rider' pairs of pants under a T-shirt, you'd think I was smuggling inner tubes in my undies. And not in a good way


Luckily, I could pull my style and measurements from the existing pants, so I was able to bypass much of the jeans-related jargon. Relaxed fit, pre-faded -- them's the pants for me.


Yesterday, the jeans arrived. Two pairs, with the specs as specified. And having no other clean (non-khaki) pants available, I ripped open the bag this morning and slipped on a new pair.


At first, I was considerably encouraged. The pants were certainly faded, which I like. The denim was soft and pliable, too -- they'd really broken it in well. Almost too well, actually; the jeans felt more worn than the old pair I've had for over two years. I'm not sure I'm convinced that can be accomplished with simple stonewashing or acid treatments. I'm worried that there are professional wearers out there, slipping into these 'new' jeans and giving them a workout. It's one thing to sport the 'broken-in' look; it's quite another to feel the need to check for someone elses pubes in your 'new' pair of jeans. So that was a tad troubling.


Then, I noticed another glitch. Just above the right knee, the denim was fraying already. Not enough to see leg skin, but a time or two through the washing machine would open the hole, for sure. And I know what that means -- another pair of pants I'm not allowed to wear outside the house. My new 'old-style' jeans are maybe a week away from becoming my 'ratty old' jeans that I only get to wear when I'm cleaning the gutters or bathing the dog. Damn.


Good thing I bought two pairs. Now I just have to hope the unopened jeans don't have a kneehole, or a big rip down the ass, or I'm back on the cusp of Khakiland again. Man, how do the kids afford buying these fancy falling-apart jeans every week, anyway?

I'm not the most stylish guy in the world. Or even the most stylish guy on my block. Honestly, there's a good chance that I'm not the most stylish guy who's ever worn these pants. I'm not proud to be a slob, per se -- but at this stage, I'm not sure there's much I can do about it. Not without a visit from the Queer Eye crew, anyway.


The good news is that it seems I'm not alone. A recent study has shown that most men identify themselves as either 'metrosexuals' -- think hair products and silk ties -- or the also-cleverly-coined 'retrosexuals', meant to invoke visions of wifebeater T-shirts and Chuck Taylor sneaks. Now, I consider myself somewhere in between -- I'm about as likely to shoot a moose as I am to use mousse in my hair. But I'm definitely camped out on the 'retro' side of the spectrum.


(And by the way, are we finished with the cute names yet? What's next -- if you like to dress up like an animal doctor, are you a vet-rosexual? Along the same lines, should we call guys with big furry backs pet-rosexuals? And if they shave it off, are they then Gilette-rosexuals? These are questions that I'm sorry I ever asked. Moving on.)


Of course, my wife wishes that I were a bit more 'presentable'. Apparently, she likes to go out in public, and mingle with other people, and eat meals that don't come wrapped in foil. Which is all well and good, but she's got this crazy idea that I should also be involved, somehow. I don't recall that sort of nonsense coming up during the wedding vows, but I wasn't really paying close attention at the time. I was too busy fighting with my mother-in-law-to-be over the cutoff jeans and tuxedo tee I was wearing. I tried to point out that the black Chuck Taylors counted as formalwear, but she wasn't impressed. Women, eh?


I suppose I could try to clean up a bit, though. There must be a class I could take, or maybe a seminar of some kind. I imagine there's someone out there offering a whole weekend series to guys like me, with titles like 'Sweatpants Aren't the Only Pants', 'One Manicure Doesn't Make You a Sissy', and 'Ties -- They're Knot Just for Funerals Any More'. I could show up in shorts and flip-flops, and walk out in a pressed suit and new loafers. It might even be worth the money -- and the ribbing I'd take over the manicure from my friends. They're not enlightened, stylish clothes hounds like the 'new me', you know.


The problem with cleaning myself up, of course, is that I'd just end up going out to nice places. You can't show off a new set of expensive threads by sitting at a ball game or standing in line for McDonalds slop, after all. If I were to ever get myself together, the wife would be dragging me out to expensive restaurants, or fancy parties, or -- depending on the quality of that manicure -- heaven forbid, the opera. I'd never have a few minutes to myself to sit in my boxers and drink beer again. Forget that. I'll stay my own slobby self, thank you very much. I may not look 'fabulous', but I'm feeling pretty damned good.