Nick Grever wears funny pants, shoes

So, I have this friend. He wears funny pants.

I would dare to go as far to say he wears very funny pants. Probably even l-o-l worthy pants.

Loose pants with holes, tight pants with bones, pants that remind me of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Sometimes he wears chains on his pants, with a behemoth cell phone carrying case clipped onto his belt loops near the neon green studded belt with an oversized skull belt buckle.

On any given day, it looks like someone consumed all of the merchandise at Hot Topic, found my good old friend and vomited on him. That’s [sort of] OK; Nick Grever, the friend with funny pants, works at Hot Topic.

His retail employment also explains the motorcycle boots, the biker hat, the too-snug band T-shirts and fingerless gloves.

The only guy who is allowed to wear fingerless gloves is Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s artistic director. They’re leather. They’re Chanel. And like Karl, they’re fabulous. Karl can do no wrong.

In addition to too-snug T-shirts, they are also a little too itsy bitsy. So, if Grever danced (and I’m pretty sure I’m thankful he doesn’t), watching him would be like watching a Britney Spears music video, belly button, mid-riff exposure and all, except hairier.

Grever’s combat boots aren’t just any combat boots; they’re platform ankle combat boots.
And he wears them every day. Grever wears them with his skeleton-man pants, with his European heavy metal kid black capris, with dress pants.

Combat boots are not multi-purpose shoes and are not a substitute for nice dress shoes.
And Grever is no stranger to the accessories department. In addition to the chains he wears to keep track of his wallet, his gargantuan cell phone holder when he’s not wearing his studded belt, he’s wearing one adorned with bike chain. To add to the clutter around his waist are his keys, which are clipped to a belt loop on his, “I’m wearing my designer jeans today,” jeans.

The most noticeable keychain hanging from his pants: a Billy Club. This is Cincinnati, after all.

While observing all of Grever’s accessories from across the table at The News Record, where he serves as one half of the entertainment desk, I notice he’s listening to someone screaming and growling to some rapid fire guitar craziness. What happens next took me back to sophomore year of high school at The Orange Street – a venue no longer in existence – watching kids in circle pits, spin kicking other kids in the teeth … Curling his fingers to make claws, he raises his hands like he’s holding a box and shakes the “metal claws,” a supposed dance move that is called shaking the box of change.

“I won’t deny it’s retarded, but people do it,” Grever said of shaking the change box.

Interesting.

It is during the change shaking I noticed the bandanna tied around Grever’s wrist. And I can’t hate on the wrist bandanna because today I’m sporting a floral faux silk scarf around my wrist, but then I asked Grever if there were skulls on his bandanna.

“No, actually they’re dead baby skeletons,” he replied.

Dead baby skeletons. That’s so … it’s so wrong.

Usually there is no dead baby skeleton bandanna around his wrist; instead, Grever’s wrist sports a metal spike cuff that looks like it could draw blood if he hit someone hard enough.

Or hit someone at all.

It’s the pants with bones that earned Grever this column. (That and he’d been asking for it – literally and aesthetically – since I started writing the Fashion Dungjen about a year ago.)

The pants themselves are skinny pants, and the bones are white with a weird orange-like glow. They may actually glow in the dark. And because I’m just realizing they may glow in the dark, I’m having the hardest time deciding whether or not that would make them better or just shed light upon how ugly they really are.

Think Grever’s boney pants are awesome? Do you think Grever should stomp on her head with his combat boots? E-mail her at dungjet@email.uc.edu.