Now, I’m a huge nerd, so I like me the Star Wars just fine. Hell, I even waded through almost all of the books over a 5 month period recently to find out what’s been happening to me good ol’ friends Han, Luke, & Leia. (An aside: Lots of really dumb crap, as it turns out, with just a little good stuff mixed in. It’s like knowing there’s a small handful of gold nuggets in a barrel of sewage, it’s worth the unpleasantness of sifting through to find ’em, but you don’t always enjoy the trip).
But… I’m a Star Wars fan who, like most of my fellows, am able to exist without wearing shirts that immediately announce my undesirability to all women. I’d prefer they learn that by talking to me, see…
Well, this anonymous breakfaster, with his fashionable camo shorts and optimistically crew-cut hair is not only wearing a dorky Star Wars shirt, but it’s also one of the “Big Dog” series. “Big Dog“, if you are not familiar with it, has essentially moved into the shirt genre previously occupied by the “Big Johnson” line of apparel. They’re like jokes, only smaller. Humor for leotarded people, let’s say.
Now, this might seem like a long post for what’s otherwise a pretty benign issue, but the real problem here is the cheapening effect this has on a very serious subject:
The effectiveness of funny shirts.
Some of us invest some serious time and thought in selecting shirts that are actually clever and/or funny. When we wear these shirts instead of something with buttons, we expect people to look at them and be amused. “Hey, that fat guy is actually slightly less repulsive than I thought because he has a funny shirt! Ha ha ha! I would like to have his children” is basically how the thought process should work. Instead, things like ‘Big Dogs’ shirts have flooded the market with asinine attempts at cleverness that serve to basically bankrupt the comedic economy.
I’m sure that this dude looked at the shirt in some mall shop and said “Hey, that’s some seriously funny shirt. It says ‘Sith Happens’ which is almost like ‘Shit Happens’, but it is socially acceptable because the word is actually different! Ha! Oh, and that Darth Vader figure on the back is actually… a St. Bernard dog instead of David Prowse (who, as Star War nerds know, was the actual person in the suit, not James Earl “Awesome Voice” Jones) and dogs are FUNNY HAWHAWHAWHAW” to himself, then whipped out his bank card. “Shopkeeper, good sir, sign me the fuck up for this wicked shirt! No need for a bag, I shall wear it out of the store!”
Meanwhile, my Threadless shirt of Vader pruning a Death Star-shaped topiary receives an occasional chuckle at best, obviously because people are no longer investing the time to appreciate the sublime humor of T-Shirt art because shirts like that goddamn ‘big dog’ line have ruined it for them. FFFFFUUUUUU-
If I can reach just one person with this rant who might otherwise stray in this fashion, I’ve done my duty. Once you start down this ridiculous path, forever will it dominate your destiny.