Saint Clement Has Second Thoughts

I don't know if you were watching, but last week at a wedding in England, a hat made history. A "royal" showed up in public wearing something on her head too bizarre even for pomp and pageantry, and Scotland Yard really had no option.

They had to arrest the hat.

This was a head ornament so hideous, even that reigning goofy-hat-monster Muammar Qaddafi was overheard saying, "ibn al Crikey! That's one ugly hat."

Yes, last week, over a billion human-being-type earth people watched an upper-crusted couple of lovely British kids get hitched, despite their being caught up in some kind of pan-galactic Silly Hat conference. Meanwhile, here at home in America, our own self-anointed King continued to not prosecute the non-war we're not fighting against neither Qaddafi nor Libya, while our own Parliament of Putzes geared up for re-election by busily failing to address any of the nonexistent problems that are not resulting from our lack of no crushing debt whatsoever.

The royal wedding between Prince William ("Wild Bill Codex") Mountbatten-Windsor and Kate ("Kommoner") Middleton was staged in London's stunning, historic Westminster Abbey. It was something to see, if you remembered to wake up and see it; after all, the festivities kicked in around four in the morning (our time zone), which in my opinion was a pretty cruel joke. But I guess that's what the "mean" means in Greenwich "Mean" Time (GMT).

Five-thousand-guest weddings, food that has no actual food in it, and silly hats: these are some of the more visible royal traditions of the timeless British Empire ... traditions that, from an American time zone perspective, have being steadily traditioning along for one thousand years and five hours. (as adjusted for GMT)

Although we blindly keep insisting that we don't have any royalty in America, we Americans remain fascinated by the fairy-tale-like idea of it. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, parades, palaces, public executions. The pomp, the ceremony, the titles, the Tower imprisonments, the tax-exempt status. Succession, primogeniture, intrigue, incest. Nepotism, beheadings, hemophilia. Gout.

And the hats! Don't forget the hats. And at the royal wedding, hats were well-represented.

Were they ever.

There were hats here, hats there. Hats of fame and folly, hats of envy, ennui and empire. Hats concocted of such stuff as dreams are made on, hats ready to cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war. Hats that hinted, and hats that whispered, and hats that beckoned, and hats that belched.

There were gravity-defying head-cluttering creations that must have required an epidermal epoxy treatment. These hats looked like the northern half of a ski chalet's roof, but covered with feathers, as if several eagles blew up over Aspen.

There were complex hats that could support their own ecosystem. Colossal hats that might have begun life at the end of an axle on a Caterpillar earth mover. Hats that could comfortably seat a party of six.

Some of the distaff wedding guests looked like they'd been side-swiped in the skull by some demented trash-can-lid pop artist, armed with a bruised pastel palette and an exhausted staple-gun.

And don't think it was just the women making overly-declarative fashion statements, either. The groom's father, Prince "Bonnie" Charles (full name: Pippin Charlemagne Mountbatten-Windsor Knot of Unisex, Duke of Whales), doddered in dressed like somebody in the front row of the photo shoot for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album. Best man and baby brother, Prince "Hal" Harry (Proxy Duke bar Chaz, Scepter Fodder Docent Needham), seemed costumed to audition for an off-Broadway remake of "Babes in Toyland." And the groom, Prince William (Wilberforce Space-Mounten, Lord Half-Mercy, Regent Regis of Philbin), showed up in an outfit that made him look like Michael Jackson, except darker.

But as wild as the hat group assemblage was, one member of the royal family took the prize. I forget her exact, entire name, but it was something like Camellia Estoppel Parker-Brothers Smythe-Dudley Phinger Bowls (she was with Bonnie Prince Pepper). What a head-helmet, this! This was a hat for the ages, a hat that wanted a considered, composed comment from Kipling. Her hat was so big, there were other hats in orbit around it.

How did things get to this? Well, because I am just the type of moron to do such a thing, I spent a little time researching the history of hats. And now, I'd like to share with you the fascinating history of hats.

Yes, I'd like to. And, if there was a fascinating history of hats, I would start sharing it immediately. But I can't.

Because there is no fascinating history of hats.

According to my research on the Internet (insert your own joke here), the very first hats were worn by cavemen. These primitive hats were not at all like the stadium-sized feather-and-felt helmets observed at the royal wedding. The first cavemen hats consisted of little more than mud, or sticks, or smaller, very submissive neighboring cavemen, tied together with straw or prehistoric bungee cords. These hats were worn for protection from the elements and to prevent injury from falling rocks, weapons, masonry, the occasional small animal, or even smaller, even more submissive neighboring cavemen ... all examples of things that were often thrown by larger, more advanced cavemen who had already invented tools (Homo Depot).

Now, how primitive cavemen were familiar with masonry at all is a mystery, much less so much masonry that they had to dodge it. You have to wonder if it might have been Masons, in fact, not an asteroid, that killed off the dinosaurs. That, or global warming.

Or George Bush.

The first image of somebody wearing a hat made out of something other than somebody else comes from a tomb painting from Thebes. Thebes, of course, was a wildly successful clothing boutique in ancient Egypt, proudly serving both pre- and post-mummification customers, with convenient locations at most Nile exit-ramps.

In the 1500s, Milan became the place to go for a nice hat, and hatmakers became known as "milliners," because nobody could spell "hatmaker." After all , it was still the 1500s, and everybody was still a moron.

Did you know there's a patron saint of people who make felt hats? It's true. Saint Clement is the patron saint of felt hatmakers. I don't know what transpired, at what point in hat history, but apparently the felt hat union managed to get themselves in trouble deep enough to require intervention from the Vatican. (see "morons in the 1500s")

Then, as often happened in-between getting invaded, the French got involved. In the 1700s, French hatmakers (now known as "plumassiers") started adding feathers to hats. At one point, entire stuffed birds were used for skull decoration and were attached to the tops of people's heads. And the sad truth is that people actually paid money to have this nonsense affixed to their faces, because even though 200 perfectly good years had elapsed, everybody was still a moron.

In the early 1900s, American men and women began to tire of the whole hat hassle (along with self-respect and personal responsibility), causing Congress to amend the Constitution, thereby creating "casual Friday."

In the 50s and 60s, hats gave way to wigs and hairspray. (see "loss of self-respect") Rather than buy stuff to shove on and wear, women simply paid to have someone sculpt their heads. (see "morons in the 1500s") This bouffant-cum-aerosol craze caused Congress to amend the Constitution, and that's how the ozone layer became our fifty-first State.

And eventually, outrageous hats more or less disappeared from the American fashion scene until the 2008 Presidential Inauguration, when Aretha Franklin showed up wearing what looked like about two-thirds of a "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" episode stapled to her scalp.

But last week, at the royal wedding, all rules were off and all Silly Hat records were shattered. Young Kate and William managed to tie the knot and slip off to the reception, but the world was watching the hats.

According to the Internet, the circumference of the average woman's head is twenty-two-and-a-half inches. By my reckoning, the circumference of the average hat inside Westminster Abbey last week was about eleven feet. (three hats couldn't fit through the Abbey's front doors at all)

And in admirable service to timeless tradition, at least four hundred selfless pheasants gave their lives. Stiff upper beak, eh, what?

I don't know, but maybe there's a patron saint for pheasants. Maybe Saint Clement can make a call.