Dress For Success

Say you're Hans Gruber. It's Christmas Eve in LA, and after months and months of scheming, all your plans are about to come to fruition. You have everything mapped out to the tiniest detail, and have spent a small fortune on enough men, guns, and explosives to pull off the heist of the decade. This is your life's work. So, right on schedule, you pull into Tony and Karl's pad to round out your team of gunmen - and what do you see? A couple of bleach-blonde Germans in sweatsuits. Seriously? I mean are these guys on their way to knock over 40-story skyscraper, or going to grandma's for a sleepover? Were these boys on a schedule? Did they just come from the gym? Did Hans not give them time to go back inside and change into something with pockets?

I actually took a required course at MY job (not the international terrorism business, but a business nevertheless) called "Dressing For Success". It was like 45 minutes of mind-numbing boredom but the moral of the story was that you want to look good - but not so good that it makes your boss look bad. Fair enough. When Hans stands next to Tony or Karl, there's really no question who's in charge. But still, they could have found some kind of middle ground as Marco did with his pretty shirt or Uli with his leather pants.

At the end of the day, I guess you want to be comfortable. Knocking over Nakatomi Tower could have proved to be a marathon job, and while everyone else was adjusting their ties and fumbling with their zippers, Tony and Karl were able to keep focused on their work. Good for them, really. I guess the 80's were a different time. I can't believe that these guys had to start firing automatic weapons into the air before the attendants of Takagi's Christmas party realized they didn't really fit in.

Luckily, John McClane was about dressed to match. No shirt, no shoes, no problem. It seems to me that McClane at his worst is equal to or greater than a German henchman at his best.