Leather Materials are Amusing

OUTTA LEFTFIELD: Getting coached on the intricacies of genuine water buffalo
Published: Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Dare I guess that Borsch is about to write about a topic he doesn't fully understand and about the merits of which he is rather dubious?

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: I’m now carrying a water buffalo in my pocket.

Uh ... I may need a bigger pocket.

Is this supposed to be a "we're gonna need a bigger boat" Jaws reference?

There just aren’t too many daily situations or conversations where the words “water buffalo” come into play. In fact, the first and only water buffalo reference I can remember in my life was when I was a kid watching “The Flintstones.”

This is great - we aren't even on-topic yet and we're already off-topic!

Fred and Barney were members of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge No. 26, whose members wore really cool hats with horns and whose president was called The Grand Poobah. For you cartoon trivia buffs, the lodge’s secret password was “Ack, Ack, A-Dak.”

... This isn't funny.

But the water buffalo entered my life once again on this past Memorial Day. With no better plans in the offing — and that alone exposes a major flaw in our family’s holiday planning procedures — we found ourselves out at Limerick Outlet Mall with about a bazillion other people who obviously thought that shopping was a better option than having a picnic or going to a ballgame on a holiday weekend.

Morsch tortures the English language with his keyboard like a Medieval turnkey tortured peasants with the rack. He gets a perverse pleasure out of stretching sentences far past their normal limits.

Of course, some of the reason for the big crowd had to do with the big sales going on, which I’m told by the shopping experts in the family is not an unusual occurrence on Memorial Day.

How many things can this man not know about??? I know it's part of the "joke" that he doesn't know things, but really, sales on Memorial Day? Will he claim ignorance re: Black Friday sales next?

That the sales attracted a crowd was immediately evident upon our arrival to the outlet mall. The number of cars in the parking lot suggested the nearest open parking spot might be in King of Prussia.

So after stating that "a bazillion people" were at the Outlets, we once again have to establish that a lot of people were there (a bazillion, by the way, is also the number of years ago Babe Ruth did something in baseball, according to a recent column).

Swell. Fortunately, my exercise routine includes walking several miles a week, so I was not intimidated.

Watch out men - this guy walks with the best of them!

I dropped the shoppers off near the point in the mall where they intended to spend my money and went in search of a parking spot, which I eventually did find in the back 40 of the lot.

So after stating how scarce parking was... we once again have to state how scarce parking was.

As I was making my way in from the parking lot, a text message arrived from The Blonde Accountant: “At the Coach store, and it’s a jailbreak.”

“Jailbreak” is a term in our family that we use to mean, “It’s crazy-go-nuts with people in here.”

Uh-oh - cue the "heart" of the story, which I'm guessing will be how guys don't understand the Coach phenomenon.

Gentlemen, if you’ve never experienced a jailbreak at a Coach store having a sale, it’s a real treat. Imagine hundreds of women overdosing on the smell of leather and the potential to snag an overpriced handbag or wallet at a somewhat reasonable price.

Does he actually think he's the first to comment on these cultural trends? People were making jokes about overpriced, trendy Coach bags four or five years ago.

In what may be a surprising detail to some of you, I occasionally shop at the Coach store, despite the fact that it does not serve beer with its handbags.

Beer joke! The hits keep on comin'!

The reason I do is that the founders of the company drew inspiration from a leather baseball glove to create handbags with the same concept where the more they are used, the softer and smoother they become. Given that connection, straight from the company bio, The Blonde Accountant has yet to be convinced that we can have a catch using a couple of her Coach handbags as ball gloves.

Good Lord. This man really cannot write a column in which he doesn't employ at least half a dozen of his personal cliches. Not only does he work baseball into a discussion about purses, he even inserts a "ballpark" and a "ballglove."

By the way, look at that first sentence. It's as bloated and clumsy as Borsch himself. I'd be embarassed to turn in a college paper with a sentence like that, let alone a published column. What a hack.

So I carry both a Coach wallet and money clip, which usually is just wishful thinking on my part because after I pay for the wallet, there isn’t anything left to put in the money clip.

This presents something of a "chicken and the egg" conundrum - if his money clip is always empty because he has just paid for a wallet, how can he always carry both a wallet and a money clip?

But I was in need of both, and the big Coach sale provided me the opportunity to purchase them, but only after being knocked down seven times by the scores of women flitting about the store in their leather-induced haze.

Seven must be a funny number to Borsch (see "seven kinds of heck"). So he has a wallet, a money clip empty because he had to pay for the wallet, and a need to purchase both a wallet in money clip. This should be impossible.

It was only when we got home at the end of the shopping excursion that The Blonde Accountant pointed out a detail that I had overlooked.

“Did you know that your new wallet is made of water buffalo?” she said.

COMEDY!

“What? Water buffalo? Since when did water buffalo move to the top of the leather wallet food chain? You’re making that up,” I said.

He never said that. Totally fictional exchange.

Apparently not. In the Coach shopping bag there was a card that was slipped in by the checker that detailed how to care for a water buffalo wallet. It read: “Do not use Coach Leather Cleaner or Moisturizer on water buffalo accessories. Ink marks or grease stains should be left untreated; most will eventually blend into the darker leathers. Scratches or scuffs can generally be removed simply by rubbing them with your fingertips until the natural oils in your hand cause the marks to disappear.”

Is all that supposed to be funny? Did we really need to read the whole text of the card?

To which I responded: “There is a whole line of water buffalo accessories?” Besides, I never cared enough about a wallet to care for it anyway.

Keep in mind, we're now two paragraphs away from the end of the story, and we're just now reaching the "point" - which is that his wallet is dumb, I guess.

So now I carry a water buffalo wallet in my pocket. My sense is that now qualifies me to use the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge secret password of “Ack, Ack, A-Dak,” which I’ve come to believe in prehistoric English means, “Show us your Coach water buffalo wallet and empty money clip.”

This money clip/wallet thing makes no sense. Another thing making no sense is the "water buffalo in my pocket" joke from the beginning. Hey, I'm wearing a cow on my feet! And a sheep on my body! Har dee har har har.

And as a bonus, I’m looking forward to wearing the Water Buffalo hat, if for no other reason than as protective headgear. It should be the perfect accessory for the next big Coach sale.

Terrible. I understand this is just a small newspaper group and all, but this is the best they can do for a "humor" column? And how desperate were they for an editor that they hired this guy?