12 June 2009

huh?

You know, I was thinking that I hadn’t posted anything on the blog in a while and I should probably come up with something to say, when this happened:

So I stop off to get a bagel on the way to work this morning (a little Friday treat after going to the gym @ 6am). And now I notice that my previous entry also took place at a bagel place. Odd. Anway, I’m standing in line minding my own business when a guy comes in and gets in line behind me. I turn around and am confronted by this:


Now, I apologize for the complete crappiness of the photo but I while I was trying to take the picture I was having a bit of a struggle for the following reasons:
  1. I didn’t want the dude to see that I was taking a picture because, well…awkward.
  2. I was walking past him on my way out and couldn’t really stop, you know, for reason #1 (and which is the cause of the extreme blurriness. The subject was still, but I was in motion)
  3. I didn’t bring my bag with me when I ran into the bagel place, so I was trying to snap a photo with my iphone (which is often tricky under ideal conditions) while also trying to hold onto my wallet, my bagel, a side of cream cheese, a cup of diet coke, and my keys
So really, you’re lucky to have any photographic evidence at all.

Now, since you can’t see his head in the photo, I will say for visualization purposes that he looked quite a bit like Tim Conway in the “Mrs. Wiggens” sketches on the Carol Burnett Show (and while that is a truly weird point of comparison, it is totally the first image that came into my mind when I saw him. That must have been lurking somewhere in the back of my head for quite some time. I haven’t seen or thought about the Carol Burnett Show in years – although I used to watch the reruns all the time as a kid. But, I certainly don’t know how that particular sketch remained in my brain. Oh another digression: as soon as the sketch popped into my mind, I could totally hear Tim Conway saying “Mrs. Wiggins” with that weird pronunciation, which is much the same way Stewie says “cool hwhip” in that episode of Family Guy. )

Anyway, back to the bagel shop. So the notable thing about this dude was not his similarity in appearance to a 70’s-era variety show sketch character, but rather the t-shirt he was wearing. And while you can’t make out what it says in the photo, you may be able to tell that it is airbrushed which I think just adds and extra layer of weirdness on top of the already weird layer that is the shirt’s message, which was: Lesbian trapped in a man’s body.

Yeah...that's just odd. On top of the whole cognitive dissonance (i.e. the shirt might make more sense on a frat boy than a guy who looks like a middle-aged accountant) what is he even trying to say with that? Is he trying to pick-up lesbians? Is he expressing solidarity with the sisters? Is he pointing out that he, like lesbians, enjoys sex with women? Really, it was just too much for me to parse at 7:30 on a Friday morning.

3 comments:

E. Peterman said...

Is he trying to be funny by saying lesbians resemble men? However you look at it, the joke is hopeless.

KMS said...

Only in the U S of A...

KMS said...

We saw a shirt to match this, whilst in Blackpool. Middle-aged (older than us) guy with ample belly... Shirt has arrow pointing to his face with "The Man" under it; arrow point to crotch with "The Legend". Pure class! I tried to snap a pic but he was too close but I do have a witness because The Beard saw it too.