Rocking The Man Skirt

New shop coming in on Alberta Street where the doo-dad shop used to be. Stumptown Kilts. We didn't have a kilt shop yet on Alberta and we have to cross our fingers that it will make it, stranded on a corner at least two blocks away from the nearest Thai or Mexican restaurant. Noodles and tortillas run this street like electricity, and you don't want to be too far from an outlet.

I wish them well. I'm a fan of kilts. They're snappy. I like the old time kilts best, though. A few centuries ago a kilt was basically a gigantic tablecloth, assuming your table seated fourteen, and half of it got bunched up into a skirt and the rest got wrapped around whatever chilly bits were left out: over the shoulder, around the bend, on the head, tucked into the waist. You had to lay it out on the ground and painstakingly fold over all the pleats, then lie down on it and cinch it with a belt. You could probably wrap your horse in it. It was an operation, putting that on.

It seems silly to have to lie down to put your clothes on, but I remember doing it myself. In the old days when pants were supposed to be tight, and Spandex hadn't been discovered, we had to lie down on the bed just to get them zipped up.

But the so-called "great kilt" got abbreviated at some point and now most men wear just the short kilt, although there's still plenty of material involved. The classic great kilt and newer kilts are all gathered mightily in the rear and sides, and flat in front. Simple knife-pleasts, usually, but sometimes box pleats. I know box pleats.

You KNOW I'm putting in Liam Neeson.

I know box pleats because when we learned to sew in 8th-grade Home Ec, we had to make a box-pleated skirt, for some goddam reason. Each pleat is folded on both sides and stitched down. You start with a couple hundred yards of fabric and pleat your way to your tiny 8th-grader waist size, a number you will never see again. It was a giant pain in the ass. I don't recall if I ever wore my pleated skirt, but I do remember it was blue and white gingham, unless that was the apron we also made to wear when we were supposedly learning how to cook but didn't.

Anyway the modern kilt is much like that gingham number, and you don't have to fold it up on the ground in order to get into it.

I get a big kick out of the men wearing kilts around Portland these days. That is because there is clearly a bit of pride involved in deciding to wear one in the first place, America being the sexually repressed place it is. "I am manly enough to wear a skirt," the modern Portland man says, and just in case there's any doubt about the manliness, his skirt is made out of some kind of poop-brown duck cloth you could make tractor tires out of. You know Carhartts? That material, folded ten ways to Sunday and fortified with extract of boar gristle. Doll that bad boy up with rivets, chains, buckles, a winch rope, tiny skulls, bear claws, and penis bones and slap on a sneer and nobody's going to come after you.

Then top it with your sporran. That's Scottish for "purse," but no one has to know that. It's worn right in front, and comes in various sizes depending on how much you're planning to pack, or are already packing.

They also sell a "sport utility" kilt, but I'm pretty sure you can get a King Cab Super-Duty version with cupholders if you want. Whichever you choose, be sure to accessorize with your sporran, and mind how it's hanging.

Rebooting The Biffy

Kohler has developed a toilet that anticipates your every desire, because men simply do not spend enough time in the can as it is. It's called the Numi and it can be yours for around six thousand dollars. It has a remote control.

The seat and lid open and shut on command. An extendable cleansing wand can be summoned at the appropriate time from the back end of the toilet to rinse your target area, followed by a quick blow-dry, which is exactly half as much fun as it sounds. User presets allow individuals to customize their personal target area position. There is an iPod jack on the remote in case you prefer musical accompaniment, and it comes pre-loaded, like a new wallet with a photo, with John Fogerty's "Doo doo doo, looking out my back door." There are three flush options, Number One, Number Two, and Nelly Bar The Door. A pop-out hemorrhoid abrader, conditioner and a light comb-through are optional. And if you look carefully in the back left corner, you will find the toothpick and the little tiny scissors attachment.

What disturbs me is the remote control. Already there are way too many remote controls in this house. Nothing we have seems to operate with fewer than two. The television has one remote for changing channels but we have to find the other remote to lower the volume and you still have to walk over to it to turn it on or off. We also have a stash of orphaned remote controls that do not operate anything, as far as we can tell, but they're like mystery keys--we can't throw them away. Decades ago I picked up something advertised as a "Universal Remote" with which I hoped to be able to operate my stereo, my CD player, my TV, my video player, and everything else. It's possible I botched the electronic introductions required, but that sucker never did anything. Although I did not check the toilet seat. I may have misjudged the purpose of the Universal Remote, and if it turned up the spin on Venus, I didn't notice.

The Japanese are the originators of excessive toilet technology. They live in a jiggly country, and the illusion of being in control of something is dear to them. They also put a premium on personal cleanliness and are enamored of technology in general, and the overachieving toilet is the happy product of those attributes. Here in America, the very same factors coupled with a less rigorous educational system resulted in the invention of the plastic doggy tennis-ball thrower.

I'm not accustomed to having to feel stupid while on the toilet. The toilet is one area in which I usually have everything well in hand. I may have courted catastrophe on the way to the toilet, but once I'm there, I'm usually good to go. I know what to do, and an instruction manual would only depress me. The toilet is where I go to get away from that. It's just me, gravity, and a decent flapper valve. Sometimes things don't work out, but I never have the sense that my toilet is looking askance at me, or that I have disappointed a fleet of engineers. If something goes wrong, I want to be able to fix it with a plunger and a little bleach. I don't want to have to shut the whole thing down, wait thirty seconds, power it up again and cross my fingers. And I hoped to be years away from having to get a twenty-year-old to help me in the bathroom.

So I don't think I'm going to be buying a Kohler Numi. But I am inspired by the effort it took to trot this baby out to market, and I'm working on a little invention of my own. It's a bed pillow. It will have a revolving terrycloth drool strip and a built-in rapid eye movement detector that activates a subliminal recording. Mine will be set on Liam Neeson. In a kilt.