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The Voices In My Head website and all material contained herein is the creation of writer/cartoonist Tim Knox and his various alter egos.
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A COLLECTION OF COLUMNS BY HARPER LEE WEINSTOCK
Getting "Yankee Naked"Harper Lee Weinstock If you're a fan of the TV show "Seinfeld," you know that there are generally two kinds of naked: "good naked" and "bad naked." Good naked was represented by Seinfeld's beautiful girlfriend, who, as a practicing nudist, liked to sit around the apartment in all her naked goodness. While I'm not entirely sure what the difference between a practicing nudist and one who does not practice is, trust me, this was good naked. Bad naked was demonstrated when Jerry (who should be called Hairy Jerry Seinfeld) decided to join in the naked fun by belt-sanding the floor in the buff. The mere site of his bad nakedness was enough to drive his girlfriend screaming for the Gap. While Jerry Seinfeld is not a bad looking guy, the point of the show was this: when it comes to naked, there is a not-so-fine line between the good, the bad and the ugly. A nude Marilyn Monroe lounging on a red velvet spread would be considered good naked. A naked Bill Clinton chowing down on red velvet cake, bad naked. A nude Demi Moore on the cover of "Cosmopolitan Magazine:" good naked. A naked Rush Limbaugh on the cover of "The Conservative Chronicle:" bad naked. Very bad naked. Very, very bad... Shortly after the good/bad naked episode of "Seinfeld" aired, Black & Decker, Craftsmen and Ronco began putting warning labels on all their products advertising the dangers of combining power tools and salad shooters with bad naked.
What "Seinfeld" failed to mention is that naked, be it good or bad, comes in many different forms. For example, there's just plain "naked," which means you're not wearing clothes and you're not making a big deal about it. We enter and leave the world in this state of nakedness. It's the other states in between coming and going that usually get us into trouble. Next, there's "Buck Naked" which means you're not wearing clothes and you're pretty danged proud of it. Toddlers and young children are the biggest practitioners of buck naked. Who doesn't remember stripping off their clothes and running naked through the living room like a white-tailed banshee whenever company dropped by? Who can forget streaking for the benefit and amusement of their old man's boss? And who can forget jumping naked out of the closet whenever the preacher stopped by for a cup of Sunday afternoon coffee and a slice of mama's apple pie? You never did that? Uh, me neither. And finally, there's what Granny Boozie Weinstock used to call, "Buck Dang Naked," which means, not only are you not wearing clothes, but you're up to no dang good, as well. For the sake of common decency, I won't offer examples of BDN here, other than to say that we've all been there at one time or another and would probably pay to go back there again. Naked can also be defined by geographical boundaries. For example, when a northerner gets Buck Dang Naked with a bunch of his friends and they all run across a college campus, that's called "Yankee Naked." And it was being practiced to the hilt last week by a bunch of college kids as a bunch more spectators looked on. The Naked Mile (see photos), as those zany Yankees call it, is an annual event held on the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus. This year, over a thousand naked runners participated, streaking merrily across the campus green in full public view. I'm certainly no prude, but I found this shocking! I had no idea they had colleges in Michigan.
About 1,500 runners let it all hang out last Tuesday night as the run got underway a little after ten pm. Oddly enough, it wasn't all the naked college students running around that made the event controversial, it was the crowd of 10,000 clothed persons who gathered to watch. It seems a lot of the runners were upset by some of the athletic supporters on the sidelines who brought along video cameras to capture the event for posterity.
While there were several confrontations between the runners and people with cameras, all in all the Naked Mile ended without a hitch. There were no arrests for nudity, but several people were cited for RNUI (Running Naked Under the Influence) and one unhappy motorist was arrested for trying to drive through the crowd. Looks like we found the dean.
A naked footnote:
Hmm, wonder if these boys ever spent time in Michigan?
Read last week's column: The Smarter White Meat
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