pacific sunwear is my new favorite store, and stephen collins is even cuter in person

I LOVE PACIFIC SUNWEAR!! I decided today that it is my new favorite store. In the past month I think I've dropped at least $150 there (of my husband's money, of course.) Now, keep in mind that almost all of this money was spent on $6.99 and $4.99 shirts and 2 for $20 pants. John and I have now amassed entire new fall/winter/spring wardrobes (because here in Ohio, we only have two seasons: Fucking Cold, and Summer.) There are four Pacific Sunwear stores that I frequent, and today I got to hit my favorite one again. Lo and behold, it turned out that THEY ARE THE STORE that all of the clearance crap from the others gets shipped to!! I had a pair of pants to exchange from *yesterday's* PacSun jaunt (John said they would look hot on me. He was wrong) so I brought them along on our Strongsville Trip.

(A somewhat amusing aside: I meant to blog this when it happened but have been distracted as all hell lately... when I visited this same store a few weeks ago, the clerk who was taking fucking forever to ring me up and her don't-I-look-like-Chris-Carabba-if-he-worked-in-a-cheesy-ass-mall colleague were having a total bullshit contest with each other. I swear, it was the two biggest bullshitters on the planet arguing about who was the cooler one. It seems that one of them knew someone who used to be a rep for some record label, but the other one might be getting a job with a hipper record label. Well, then it turned out that Emo Boy in fact USED TO BE a rep for a label. No, no, Arguing-Not-Ringing-Chick knew someone who was a rep for SONY. Thank god her co-worker knew that SONY ISN'T A LABEL and shouted it from the back of the store. THEY JUST OWN OTHER LABELS. Well, she knew it was whatever label "That band? Trapt? Like, Tee-Are-Ay-Pee-Tee? Is on? Whatever label that is." I think at this point in the conversation I was wondering if those spikey bracelets they sell really *would* break someone's face if applied correctly. Especially since the chick reminded me of the most annoying bitch at my high school. Her name was Dawn, but I saw her waitressing in a TGI Fridays a few years ago, where she informed me that "IT'S SELENA NOW." End of aside.)

So I traded my makes-my-ass-look-flat pants for some Too Superlow Levi 520s. (I always buy the lowest rise I can find, as I'm built like a Ford worker who just can't give up the daily twelve-pack.) I could just die. My ass crack hangs out, like, two inches more than it usually does in my jeans. HOTT. I cannot even believe that I got $42 pants for $10. Woohoo! I also tossed two $4.99 tops - a 3/4 sleeve stripey polo (which I like to think of as my "signature" style) and a RILLY CYOOT turtlenecky sweater with EMBROIDERED SNOWFLAKES! - and two pairs of awesome Tilt jeans in there. I don't know if Tilt is JUST a Pacific Sunwear brand - I didn't think it was, but as that is almost all that's on their clearance rack, I wonder. But they have THE BEST pants. I swear, my ass looks GOLDEN. One pair was missing the top button, and had been there - for TEN DOLLARS - since December. DECEMBER!! It took me five minutes to sew one on. Stupid girls. Anyway... Total? $32.47. The guy who waited on me was SO HOTT, and SO NICE. He talked about how he got his girlfriend a bunch of the $4.99 clothes, and I thought he was a great guy. But when we got home, John informed that the guy was, in fact, just throwing off my Gaydar. And now that I think about it - a guy who takes home clothes for his girlfriend?!? HA! - I realize that he was almost certainly right. Which saddens me a little. The cute ones always are....


But enough about my clothes. Let's talk about the REASON I was in Strongsville in the first place - STEPHEN COLLINS!!! He signed books and CDs today at Borders from 3 till 5:30. Well, he was supposed to be there until 5:30, but there was SUCH A BIG TURNOUT that he stayed until 6:15. Thank GOD, because when I got up there to meet him, it was 6 pm. The crowd was pretty much what you would expect - you had your retards, your cripples, your fat ladies with their homely daughters, and Seventh-Heaven-lovin' teeny boppers like me. To my delight, there was also one Trekkie family - a very ugly couple and their 10-year-old son, who had these weird pointy shoulder pads under his, umm, Trekkie shirt. I wondered why they were there for about an hour or so, until John returned to me from the magazine section and asked if Stephen Collins used to be on Star Trek. Of course, I just read a big article about him being in some Star Trek movie the other night, but that's not the kind of information I have room for, what with all that weed I used to smoke. They were all out of Stephen's erotic mystery novels by the time we got there, so I broke down and spent the $18 on his new CD, because I figured that if the guy is nice enough to sit there for three hours and shake hands with idiots who are asking him things like "Is Mrs. Camden as nice in person as she looks on TV?", the least I could do is throw the guy a little profit. Besides, he sang pretty on Seventh Heaven. As I stood in the 90-minute line, I heard this really groovy doo-wop loungey stuff playing, and I was like, "Ohmigod!! I think this is his CD!! It's so gooooooood!!!" Which was such a deliciously pleasant surprise. In front of me in line was a Fat Mom/Ugly Daughter combo, and they kept getting out of line to grab books on collectible dolls, NASCAR, and Omar Vizquel, then getting out of line AGAIN to put said books back. And bending over and sticking their giant white trash asses in my face. Behind me were two darling, giggly teenyboppers. The cuter one's cell phone had a vaguely familiar, but unidentifiable ringtone, which I heard about twenty-seven times, in addition to one side of a debate with her mother over whether she fed the dog before she left. When you are 23, 16 seems soooooo young.

So I got up to the front of the line. I met Mr. Collins, and he was a delighfully charming man. He's a quiet talker, and he has big, strong hands. His hair was longer and thinner than I expected, but his eyes are sooooooo sparkly, and his SMILE!!! ::dies:: He is gorgeous. Especially for a man who graduated COLLEGE in the 1960s. I made John go to Target and buy a disposable camera since I forgot the digital in my rush to get out the door by 4:00, and he took a picture of Mr. Collins with his ARM AROUND ME!!! (Just like he did for every other ugly woman - don't worry, I have no illusions or stalker tendencies here.) I tried hard not to say anything incredibly retarded (per my history of making famous people hate me), he said thank you for coming out, and then it was all over. My brush with greatness. Ahhh, Stephen Collins. I hardly knew ye.