Oll Inkorrekt

I just looked at my G.I. Joe collection (you know you have one and I know it too) and I just had some bizarre thoughts. Well, that’s par for the course, but . . .

A number of years ago I was somehow in San Francisco, somehow with a druggie friend, and somehow transported to one of the strangest spectacles I have ever witnessed (is there no limit to humanity’s depravity? Tell me it’s so)

I suddenly found myself in some dude’s apartment, and he obviously wasn’t just “some dude.”

He had very expensive digs — think Al Pacino in Scarface — and the lighting was subdued. There may have been candles, I can’t remember now.

But in his “living” room, there were about 20 or 30 mannequins, all dressed in various Nazi uniforms. You could tell they were authentic; not replicas, but real Nazi uniforms from World War II, because they had that stiff, starched look that old clothes tend to have. And indeed, our host confirmed this.

We’re talking Sturmbannführer stuff, people: overcoats, smart SS black dress, Oberleutnant stuff, hats, pistols, belts . . . you name it.

I’ve always been a WWII buff (because my dad flew 8th Air Force bombers) so naturally I was fascinated.

For despite the fact that the Nazis singlehandedly almost destroyed our civilization because of that tiny (so hard to envision such powerful maniacs as tiny, but it was so) blood-sucking leech Hitler (oh, the list majorly does not stop there; the usual well-remembered rota of deranged human beings — difficult to dignify them with that moniker, but I digress, and I’m glad my father bombed the FUCK out of them, because it’s what they deserved) . . . they had a perversely good fashion sense.

Think U-Boat captain (probably some of the few “good” Nazis of the war) . . . You know, those dashing turtleneck white sweaters that I can never seem to find, the requisite beards, the cap cocked at a jaunty angle, the pipe (the schnapps).

So, in spite of my obvious repulsion (akin to watching snakes being killed by mongeese) I had to admire the long coats, the smart pockets in the right places, the very GERMAN korrektness of it all

Just like my G.I. Joe Panzer Commander . . .

Cool, but only on a mannequin.