An interesting experiment, it turned out

I DID end up getting this shirt I mentioned a while back and it's better than in the picture, even. Made in Pakistan (?)! But the screening kills and it looks exactly as I remembered from July 1989 at Poplar Creek. What a night that must have been. Sugarcubes, PiL, my friend Waterman cold passed-out drunk until the headliners started at which point he bounded up and started dancing in some now-forgotten 80's way...I also remember it being so LOUD that my shirt vibrated to the drums of "True Faith." Um - where was I?


OH! Social experimentation, yes...so, on a random Saturday (last week, in fact), I threw this pup on and proceeded to get odd looks all day. Because rainbow ANYTHING (even though this is not strictly a rainbow) = TEH GEIGH, right? One joker I know saw it and laughed out loud. I, maintaining my cool and pretending to not understand, was all "What?"



"That's a pretty gay shirt, man."


"Actually, no," I rejoined, rapier-like, "it's not at all. This is from 1989, you know? Technique? This is before the rainbow was co-opted by gay pride stuff. Never mind that it's really not a rainbow. Also, that's a pretty ignorant fucking FoxNews cornball attitude you have, one that sort of shows your ignorance, you know? Social ignorance, yes, but mostly musical." Then I skipped away.


Later in the day, I went fishing with my oldest brother, who is shaped a bit like a deaf bowling pin. Not the type one would take for a poof. But as I came down the path, some tattooed baby-daddy type whispered to his companion (a woman of indeterminate age who could have been his mom or maybe lover) and then they both looked askance at me. Because A FRUIT WAS HERE TO FISH, apparently.


Still later, the Bride and I went up the street for dinner and our waitress asked us if we wanted separate checks, because I must have looked to this 24-year old like a gay Harry Dean Stanton, someone surely not bethrothed to anyone as young and fetching as my companion. Maybe I was her gay dad, in town from Albany to talk about the probating of a will, while "Keith" stayed back at the Marriott.


Anyway, it was very interesting and made me think that it is a racist, homophobic world. Thank god it's coming to an end, according to a third of tweens!


Also, my next acquisition:

















This, it will be fun to explain, is not a tacit endorsement of alcohol consumption so much as a sumptuary celebration of the 1990 single by electro-pop supergroup Electronic. You know, with Barney from New Order, Johnny Marr and the Pet Shop Boys.


Then some asshole in a Dirks [sp?] Bentley shirt will say "Pet Shop Boys? GAY!"