THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601120050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Got my love beads on
And white shoes to boot
All dressed up in my leisure suit
Looking cool and looking neat
Ready for that disco beat
Howdy foxes, my name is Chester,
I'm the throbbing prince of polyester.
I HAVE BEEN searching for my old, wrinkle-free leisure suit in the cardboard boxes stacked in my closets since Monday morning. During the snow, Headline News broke me out of my lethargy with some stunning news.
The cameras zeroed in on the National Leisure Suit Convention in Des Moines, Iowa.
Imagine hundreds of conventioneers wearing wrinkle-free leisure suits. Incredible that someone had the good sense to suggest taking all those mothballed disco duds out of storage and airing them out.
The screen was filled with the suits. Some with flap pockets, some without. Blue jobs, and white ones, and women wearing red leisure suits with black stripes.
Then came the shocking news: The convention for leisure suit wearers was coming to an end.
As unbelievable as it sounds, the convention's creator, Van Harden, a radio personality with WHO in Des Moines, said it was all over.
Formerly held in the city's Val Air ballroom, the leisure suit seizure would not take place in 1996 because the ballroom is closing.
``Shocking,'' I thought.
Then my innate sense of public spiritedness took hold like the seat belts that polyester leisure suit wearers once used to keep from sliding off vinyl sofas.
Why not hold the National Leisure Suit Convention right here in Hampton Roads?
Forget the CFL or the NFL. We are talking big-time convention here. Only In only its fifth year, the National Leisure Suit convention started with 350 people. About 3,000 showed up in '95.
And no wonder. Contestants in the ``most flammable leisure suit'' category were required to strut down a runway illuminated by the globby glow of lava lamps.
Harden, the convention's founder, has the kind of imagination that would flatten the electric hair of boxing promoter Don King.
Recall those white belts - a lot of them made of macrame - that put the final touch of chic onto a stunning leisure suit outfit? There was a ``white belt throwing'' contest, with the disco dizzies tossing buckled white belts at a plunger.
One observer said there were enough gold chains on the ballroom's disco floor to make a golden anchor chain for the aircraft carrier America.
And mood rings. Hundreds of them, turning purple with passion for the disco music jolting loudspeakers in the Mal Air (sorry, make that Val Air) ballroom.
The lounge lizards in their leisure suits got crazy feet dancing to ``That's the Way I Like It'' by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, ``Celebration'' by Kool & the Gang and ``Don't Leave Me Alone'' by Donna Summer, to name a few.
But the Gotterdammerung of the tall-corn country convention was - to no one's surprise - ``YMCA'' by the Village People.
That number has an amazing effect on leisure suiters. At the sound of the first three notes, they go crazier than Nixon in his last days at the White House. Arms waving, hips swaying, eyes glassy, and feet jumping like a chicken on a hot tin roof.
My old leisure suit had a life of its own. One hundred percent polyester, I could toss that baby in a ball in a corner, and the resistant synthetic fibers would bounce back and unfurl on me, one leg stretched out as though ready to dance.
Let's bring that convention here, where it's needed. Just imagine Hampton Roads filled with lounge lizards in leisure suits and led by that two-headed turtle on display in Newport News.
Wow! What an idea. Jump start your mayor or city council now, before this little jewel is snatched up by Sioux City or Peoria. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing by Janet Shaughnessy, The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB