Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your aesthetic!

So Sunday night I’m sitting in Molly Malone’s, waiting for the band to start*, and because Spooney and Randy are ignoring me and talking about gear, I’m in a curmudgeonly mood. I knew I was being childish even as my funk descended, but seriously, how much more is there to say about a Marshall stack that hasn’t been said already?

Also, there are certain bars in LA that I loathe, and Molly Malone’s is one of them. I hate it almost as much as I loathe the Troubadour, which, despite its history as one of the most venerable rock and roll clubs in the world, has the most jackassy bouncers this side of the 405. Molly Malone’s, however, I hate because their bartenders have attitude. Not the more common LA bartender attitude, which seems to be based on a feeling that after spending 10 grand on a boob job, they really shouldn’t have to know how to make a gimlet. No, the attitude of the bartenders at Molly Malone’s is all about the entitlement of being a smelly Irish hole-in-the-wall in a town where most of the taverns boast oxygen pipes and ironic jukeboxes.

And, so, there’s this chick sitting next to me who’s taking pictures of the band, and although she’s clearly in her thirties, she’s dressed like a cross between Avril Lavigne and Ashley Simpson. And as I stare at her skull-and-crossbones-patterned tank top, I think to myself that maybe some design motifs should just be outlawed.

Stay with me.

Because if they were outlawed, then chicks like annoying camera girl would not be able to leave her house, and the world would be spared yet another avenue of sartorial boringness. I figure we could crush camera girl and her pop-punk-post-goth-rockabilly ilk merely by making illegal the following patterns:

1. skulls, bones, and skeletons
2. crosses and/or ankhs
3. spiders
4. snakes
5. hearts with daggers, broken hearts, bleeding hearts, etc.

Also, just as Los Angeles has driven out its smokers, I propose that a ban on shoes that look as though they might have been worn to flee from pitchfork- and torch-carrying Bavarian peasants might make everyone feel a little healthier and happier.

We could make the penalty for wearing any of the above something really repulsive to them, like being forced to sit through an Emerson Lake & Palmer reunion concert.

Prog rock is their nemesis, right?

Look, I know I’m hating. I just find the whole milieu so fucking hypocritical. How can you scream about how fucking punk you are when you’re wearing the same $90 Paul Frank hoodie as everyone else? It’s like hip-hop clothing. The rules of adornment are so rigidly enforced, it’s ridiculous. I mean, I understand that clothes are an expression of where you feel you belong, but goddamn, what if giant-sized manpris are just not your thing?

What if you feel like you do NOT belong in a circus?

What’s the alternative? Ostracism?

It has been my experience that ostracism is severely underrated.

*They were, in spite of my bitching about the wait, really good.