I’m on mornings the rest of this week as one of my coworkers is off to Idaho for training. So after a busy start (it seems the mornings are always a little wild around here) I sat down with my first cup of coffee and Fark.com on my browser and I came across an entry for an article at StarTribune.com about the official clothing merchandise for the upcoming Republican National Convention. The tagline on Fark.com read as follows: Official attire for the RNC announced, including red and white Zubas. That’s right. Zubas.

I had to check the article out because the first question that popped into my head was: What the fuck is a Zuba? As it turns out it’s actually spelled “Zubaz” and according to its Wikipedia entry they are:

Zubaz (pronounced “zoo-baz” or “zoo-buz”, though officially pronounced “zoo-buzz") are a brand of shorts and pants that became popular during the early 1990s. They were created by two bodybuilders, Dan Stock and Bob Truax, as a comfortable, functional short for weightlifting.

They hoped to make a short that would stretch and expand with the body during a workout. In a short time, the shorts became wildly popular in the United States. The Zubaz company sold $100 million worth of products in 1991 alone.

Although Zubaz began as a line of shorts, they were later developed into long pants, caps, shirts, and even diapers. The pants are tapered at the ankle, with the outer part of the leg being longer than the inner part. They have an elastic waistband to allow for greater flexibility and movement. The pants were originally created in a zebra print, but later began to be sold in almost any design imaginable.

I lived through the early 1990s, Courtney was born in 1990, and for the life of me I couldn’t recall ever hearing about Zubaz before. Though after seeing some of the pants I can certainly recall some folks wearing them and laughing my ass off as a result. Those things are hideous. It seems as though they were a huge fad for awhile, but have since diminished in popularity and are listed on Bad Fads.com. That hasn’t stopped the company from trying to stage a comeback beginning back sometime last year. Usually I’m up on the latest fads because of my interest in trivial things, but fashion is something I’ve never been particularly interested in or adept at (as most of you can probably tell from any of my photographs) so I managed to completely miss the whole Zubaz trend.

Now that I know what they are I can see the humor in the Republicans deciding to go with an 18 year-old outmoded fashion choice for their official convention attire. It certainly does nothing to improve their out-of-touch with the mainstream image. I suppose it could be worse. They could have chosen to go with leisure suits.