THE RIDE IN MEMORY OF ALL THOSE
WHO FORGOTT TO LOOK BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT.
AND TO ALL THOSE THAT DID! JUST KEEP WALKING…
AS WE WILL KEEP ROCKING THE INTERSECTIONS
OF TEE CITY.
WATCH OUT!

So, putting all the disparate elements of this design together – and feeling like Sherlock Holmes staring at a table laid out with several pieces of apparently incongruous but abstractly connected evidence – I have eventually arrived at the following harrowing conclusions:

This T-shirt fake-commemorates a made-up event that ran, annually, for six years, between 1978 and 1984, before it was presumably banned owing to widespread public outrage. Said event involved “Dare Drivers” barrelling down “26th Street” with a deliberate lack of due care and attention, often resulting in them ploughing into crowds of pedestrians, leaving behind ghoulish piles of twisted metal and eviscerated flesh (as depicted on the spectral illustration behind the main text).

Those killed were then ‘commemorated’ by the following year’s carnage-filled Dare Drive, which generated yet more deaths, which were then commemorated by the following year’s Dare Drive, and so on and so on, until 1984, when the city’s residents finally decided – after six years of sociopathic automotive slaughter – that enough was enough.

Can that be right? Can it? Like the Koran or the Mona Lisa’s smile, this T-shirt is surely open to an almost infinite number of interpretations. Furrow-browed, elbow-patched, coffee-breathed scholars will be poring over this bad boy for decades.

Thanks to Bwalya Newton

Whatever the reason, fake distressing is fast becoming the norm for many high-street clothing chains. How long before this practice spreads beyond the world of fashion? How long before new cars come pre-riddled with rust, or new houses have chic rising-damp built into them? Ladies will wear bras that make their tits sag, men will shave bald patches onto their heads, and eventually we’ll all just be lying around in the street, pretending to be dead.

1976 (or “Seventy Six”, if you’re numerically dyslexic) was, of course, the year that hurdles pox broke out in Ashbury Heights. A lot of good people hurt their shins and fell on their faces that winter. Let us never forget.

Reckon your neck tattoo and earlobe gauges make you the final word in edgy, anti-authority cool? Well prepare to stand corrected, because this lady’s got “REBELLION 1983″ emblazoned across across her flippin’ eyes and mouth! She’s such a militant iconoclast, she won’t even allow herself to see or eat until the Berlin Wall’s fallen, Thatcher’s resigned and Mandela’s been released.

Thanks to Helen Amazing

Thanks to Helen Amazing

Well now, this is a new development: New York and Chicago, traditionally fierce rivals in the fake-souvenir-garment racket (and also, of course, the frozen-pizza racket) have obviously put aside their differences and joined forces, in order to ruthlessly dominate the global nonsensical T-shirt trade.

How long before the West Coast contingent wants ‘in’ on this all-powerful new cabal of banality, and we see the first “New York & Chicago & California 1976 Sports Team” T-shirts coming through? Then it’ll be Miami, then Hawaii will get involved…

I’d like to see T-shirt designers be a little more imaginative with their meaningless locations – howsabout one that reads “Kabul & Bognor Regis & The Moons Of Jupiter”? It’d give the impression that you’ve just been on one helluva holiday.

Thanks to smelltherage

A) “Hog” has never, in this or any parallel universe, been short for “hedgehog”.

B) The hedgehog depicted here looks to be either paralytically drunk or suffering from severe mental retardation. Either way – unsavoury.

C) Sticking “yummy!” on there totally changes the meaning of “Let’s go the whole hog” from “Let’s take this activity to its limits” to “Let’s eat a hedgehog”. Why, in the name of all that is sacred, would I want to eat a hedgehog?
The idea of it isn’t even particularly comical, just baffling and a bit nauseating. Queasy confusion – is that really the sensation you want people to feel when they look at you?

It makes you wonder if these T-shirt manufacturers employ any kind of quality  control whatsoever. If they do, I’d imagine that the Quality-Control Manager is the oldest, blindest, deafest, thickest person in the factory, and when they finally keel over, the cigar-chomping floor manager simply grabs whoever’s to hand and pins the still-warm Quality-Control Manager badge on them.

“Here, you!” he barks at an elderly man in brown overalls, wringing out a mop. “What’s your name, old-timer?”

“It’s Sid, Mr Whipsnade, sir,” comes the frail response. “Sid Chumley, sir.”

“Well congratulations, Sid Chumley – you just got promoted. Put this on and go stand over there. You’re Quality-Control Manager now.”

“But… But Mr Whipsnade, sir, I’m just the caretaker ‘ere – I ‘ave been for 46 years now. I don’t know anyfin’ about controllin’ any managed qualities…”

“Oh pish-posh, Sid – you’ll soon get the hang of it. Off you toddle now.”

It’s a fretful, heavily burdened Sid who returns home that night to his kindly wife of 52 years.

“Ada, I’ve absolutely no idea what I’m doin’! They showed me somethin’ with a hedgehog on it and asked if it was okay to get ‘signed-off’, and I just stood there  noddin’ away like a daft flippin’ monkey! I’m out of me depth, love. I just want to go back on the mops!”

“Eeeh, don’t fret Sid love, I’m sure you’re doin’ a grand job! I’m so proud of you. My husband, the Quality-Control Manager! I’ll make you some extra-special butties for your lunch tomorrow. Special butties for an important businessman!”

Thanks to Mike Shaw

Translated into English, this reads “silence, road, girl, milk”. If you can deduce what the next word in that sequence is, you owe it to your country to contact MI6 and inform them of your prodigious code-breaking skills.

Thanks to Helen Amazing