Here we see Carson & Pete in a Pose-Off (TOP THAT!), during what will surely be remembered as the most heated & intense matchup yet in Ugly Tie Friday history!
Carson’s tie features a photorealistic image of a drum set comin’ atcha in varying shades of purple. It harkens back to a time when popular yearbook photo backdrops featured laserbeams and students were clad in neon colored polos with aligator logos on the chest (back when it was Izod & they didn’t cost $100 per shirt). It was a time called The Late Eighties, which not surprisingly coincided with The Rise of Special Effects. Sort of like the mid-to-late morning period of special effects, poised patiently between “we need an exploding head? let’s build a plaster mould!” and “we need an exploding head? there’s always CGI!”.
Pete’s tie was once pale yellow. It was once dimly respectable, if forgettable. And then some six year old needed a Father’s Day gift at the last minute & decided to crudely hand paint swaths of varying thickness in pine, shit brown & teal across its surface. Whereas Carson’s tie reeks of inginuity & the latest technological advances of yesteryear, Pete’s flaunts one of the top secret desperation moments of fatherhood: The “holy crap, is my kid mentally handicapped?” fear (okay maybe not that extreme, but certainly “developmentally challanged”). It’s the kind of tie Dad would wear out of the house on Monday morning — after flaunting it to the whole family at the breakfast table — & then carefully engineer a ‘tie-switcheroo’ in the car on the way to work (probably getting honked at for lingering too long at a red light during the reknotting). He’d be careful to replace it before coming home, & to wear it one more time, this time forgetting to wear it back. Actually, he didn’t forget to switch out again…it just wound up stashed in the glove box for awhile until he could remember to dump it into the middle of a bag of clothes destined for Goodwill. Avoid the problem, hold your breath & hope it goes away. It’s a dance of quiet desperation. Some call it Fatherhood.
That brings us to now. Both competitors Brought It today. These two men have done the world proud. Audible ghasps of horror, delight, & horrible delight were overheard far & wide during the Unveiling Of The Ties ceremony.
Ultimately, Pete was given the nod for victory, but it was tough, & there are no losers here today.
