T-Shirt Wars!

One of the most identifiable characteristics of the festival was the fashion choices that attendees made prior to leaving their respective dwellings. The particular vibes generally emitted by these people generally fall into one of the following five categories:

1. "I want you, and/or Snoop Dogg to fuck me."

2. "Look at me! I like music, too!"

3. "I'm clearly more clever, yet less pretentious than you are."

4. "My favorite band is better than yours."

5. "I wear light, hooded sweaters in the dead of summer because... I like sweat."


More than anything though, I want to focus on categories #2 and #4; or Those Guys.


These guys arrive at the festival representing three specific points of ethos:

1. I'm a fan of this year's band (Tool and The Kings were this year's big winners), and they happen to be the only reason this bullshit is cool at all.

2. I'm a fan of last year's band (Radiohead all weekend), and therefore I was here last year. Ergo, I'm better than you.

3. I bought this shirt yesterday (Again, The Kings, but also Hey Champ). Cool, right?




Now, the donning of a band's shirt is akin to the raising of a flag. It is in the land of LAIRE as it is in the fickle festival world of divided loyalties and frayed interests (we will talk more about this later), where fine borders are drawn and maintained by virtue of the slightest gesture. The only problem is when these fictitious borders are considered to be real.

"Hell yeah, I like Tool. Check out the shirt!"

My favorite thing to say to these people:

"Hey man, is Tool playing this weekend?"

PCU has already demonstrated, albeit too briefly, the folly of this action. And aside from the quip above, what do you say to these people? "Hey, cool shirt, man. I like how it says 'TOOL' on it."

It would be ironic if it weren't already so obvious.

Nope. The folks that I enjoyed the most most were those that embraced the whole affair, either by representing at the macro-level, or by shunning the music-theme all together, non-verbally and humorously voicing their opposition to societal ills (like Cancer!).

Yep, these are my people. Because, at least superficially, they are original and/or generally agreeable. Not like this guy:


(Shirt says, "Got Rings?" Taking a dig at the Cubs futility. Fashion crime of doubling up on sports team apparel aside, he was the most miserable looking mother fucker I'd seen all weekend)


But then again, we all have our flags. Just check out this asshole here:



But if I had it my way, the right way, there would be a whole lot more inclusion, rather than division. The flags that we would raise and fly high would be about something that we could all get down with. And that's a whole lot cooler than being a Tool fan:



Amen.