Underwear

All about weddingsInvitations, gifts, flowers, food, drinks, toasts and dresses make a wedding. The many choices can be overwhelming. This month, future brides, grooms and guests can find help from teams of local experts.NightGoods, the gift store in the Gallery at Harborplace and in the Village of Cross Keys, has scheduled wedding- and shower-planning workshops May 16-17 at both locations. The programs (noon to 3 p.m.) are free and require no advance registration. Bridal consultants, floral designers and other experts will be on hand to offer advice on wedding etiquette, flowers, music, menus and gift selection.

EAGLE PASS, Texas -- When U.S. Customs Service agents searched a pickup truck at the port of entry here, they found six live snakes in a tool compartment.When they searched the two men in the truck, they found eight more live snakes, each wrapped in socks and pantyhose and hidden in the men's underwear -- four to a man."In the past, we have found marijuana cigarettes and other drugs . . . but never snakes in jockey shorts," officer Humberto Rodriguez said after the incident Tuesday night.

Those sultans of style at al-Qaidahave released their line of lingerie for spring, and it's a blast. Tucked away in their secret atelier in Yemen, the fanatics of fashion have come up with an updated version of the exploding underwear that caused such a stir on Christmas Day 2009 when a hapless African lad tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit and only managed to severely singe his private parts. Al-Qaidabomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri is reputed to be the designer of the new nasty knickers.

It was just a briefs story until someone decided men's underwear needed a change.Now it has become a strong fashion statement. From the likes of Joe Boxer, Nicole Miller, Charles Goodnight, Shady Character, Calvin Klein and Jockey come boxers in silk and cotton prints and plaids, mid-thigh knits in locker-room gray, old-fashioned button-ups and lace-ups and avant-garde thongs. Prices range from about $6 to about $55.The classic Y-front white knit brief is still a favorite. Led by Hanes and Fruit of the Loom, briefs outnumber boxers 7 to 1 in U.S. sales, according to the National Knitwear Manufacturers Association in Morristown, N.J.But boxers -- with some 70 million pairs sold last year -- are gaining.

As head of a Park Heights children's mentoring program, David Edmondson, 30, is constantly telling his young charges to keep a neat haircut, tuck their clothes in, and most important, "Pull up your pants!" But that doesn't mean he's in total agreement with an Atlanta city councilman who has caused quite a buzz recently by proposing a ban in his city on visible bra straps and thongs and low-slung pants that expose underwear. "If I see my son [showing his underwear], I'm going to smack him straight in his head," says Edmondson, executive director of Children All Around Mentoring Program and a proponent of the neat-and-clean look.

Today I am announcing the first-ever Amateur Tax Tips Contest, featuring an exciting prize as well as an opportunity for some lucky winners to serve lengthy terms in federal prison.The purpose of the Amateur Tax Tips Contest is to provide normal people with practical, real-life answers to their tax questions, as opposed to the complex and vague "advice" we so often see in columns written by the kind of goody-two-shoes money geeks who actually save their receipts and record their mileage and file their tax returns on Jan. 2. I'll give you an example of what I mean.

Public hoopla over some young folks' baggy, saggy pants came to a quiet close yesterday - at least in Baltimore's City Hall. No legislation was passed. In fact, none was ever intended, says City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton, who in September introduced a resolution to implore the city's youths to pull up their trousers. The issue might have gone out with a whimper, but it came in with a bang. Holton's proposal was a hot topic on talk shows and on the Internet. It also thrust Baltimore into a national story involving several places that have sought to ban youth fashion that some consider indecent.

Boston. -- Everybody going to work in Washington for the first time, repeat after me: ''I look funny in my underwear, and I pay my bills.''Say it again, slowly. Wander around your house while saying it. Check out the places on the wall that need paint. Open the desk drawer and pick through the flotsam and jetsam of normal life -- rubber bands, broken pencils, odd keys, dog collars, birthday candles and directions for the VCR.''I look funny in my underwear, and I pay my bills.'' Write it down.

The American electorate has matured in the years since Bill Clinton got that boxers-or-briefs query. These days voters only want to know if Mitt Romney wears Mormon underwear. Romney has declined to answer questions about it, and his big speech on Mormonism steered clear of holy skivvies. Anybody out there who thinks presidential unmentionables should remain unmentioned, read no more. Because I know somebody who has seen Romney's underwear. One pair of it, anyway. On the eve of the 2002 Olympics, The Sun's Candus Thomson was one of a handful of reporters invited to dinner at Mitt and Ann Romney's Park City, Utah, home, a $5 million "cabin" on Rising Star Lane.

Dear Cheryl, How come Hanes sells its boxer briefs only in packages of just white or of mixed colors? Does anyone actually find the gray and maroon shorts attractive? Why can't they sell me a package of just blue or just black underpants, instead of sticking those darn grays and maroons in there? I still buy them, seeing as a Hanes three-pack goes for about the same price as a single Joe Boxer or one leg-hole of a pair of Calvin trunks. But I still want what I consider an integral part of the American way of life: the combination of value AND choices in my underwear selection.