Initially, I was saddened to see that one Mr. Burmila would decide to part with such a valued historically significant pair of silver vinyl (possibly from Hot Topic but if my memory serves purchased at Gadzooks) pants. I figured there must be some logical explanation. Perhaps it is some kind of benefit auction? Since the bidding has now stopped, we might never know.
What we do know is as follows:
The year was 2000, or possibly 2001. Actually I am pretty sure it was 2001. The date is insignificant. The location was CO Daniels. You see, at the time Mike and I both lived in Champaign. Ed Burmila lived in Madison Wisconsin (in a house with an amazing little bitch named Toby….at an address that to the best of my knowledge is still listed as the ginandtacos.com corporate headquarters). Fairly regularly Ed would flee from Toby and come and visit Mike and myself. About once a year we would decide that it would be funny to go out to Kams or CO Daniels for the evening- as a point of reference, this was never fun and or funny.
One particular time that this occurred we decided that we needed to either attempt to fit in or look ridiculous. I honestly can't remember the motivation. However, the result is firmly affixed in my brain.
mike purchased an exceptionally expensive pair of green pants (which he later returned) and a comic book t-shirt. I bought a pair of black vinyl pants and a Black Flag t-shirt. And Ed, Ed bought a System of a Down t-shirt and a pair of….that’s right, silver vinyl pants.
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you Ed, we have a picture of you in the pants thanks to Sylvia Rios
We wore these outfits to CO Daniels. We did not fit in, we did not have fun. We however decided that we did need to fit in. We proceeded to go to the campustown dance "club" Orchid- what is now Tonic, where, and I am not kidding I believe we all received compliments on our pants.
So now, in 2005…four or five years after this fateful night took place, Ed was the last remaining owner of his pants. Mike of course returned his- which was his plan all along- and I…well I must admit to frequently getting drunk and wearing my vinyl pants. They were cheap, they basically self destructed in a couple months.
Now some guy from Ebay is the proud owner of the silver pants. The frightening thing is that this man is one of the most disreputable Ebay patrons I have ever seen. He goes by the name r.not and has only three current feedback entries all of which are negative. Although I can't look at any of these auctions directly, I can only assume that they were all for "gothic" pants or shirts.