A Thin Line

there is a thin line between cool and pathetic.

case in point, this afternoon while i was grocery shopping there was a middle-aged man (i’ll guestimate 50) wearing a t-shirt with a logo of a car. above said car were the words, “my other ride is your mother.”

now, believe me, i am as guilty as anyone of wearing semi-ironic t-shirt designs from time to time, but i like to think that (even if i’m still living in los angeles) by the time i reach this age i will have given up on trying to dress like a hipster (which isn’t really why i wear these t-shirts now — usually it’s because they are really comfortable due to the type of cotton they’re made from — and that said, i don’t have any shirts proclaiming that i ride anything).

because the only thing that went through my mind upon seeing this guy was that he was absolutely pathetic for trying to pull this shirt off.

first off, let’s consider how this violates one of the primary principles of comedy (something obviously he was attempting to convey with a shirt containing such a “witty” slogan). things that are (or might be) true, generally aren’t as funny. therefore when a guy wearing a t-shirt that says, “my other ride is your mother” is actually around the same age as my mother, where is the comedy in that? It’s just strange.

of course, since the t-shirt didn’t say alex’s mother, it was generic, let’s consider another possibility. was he intending the comment to be read by his peers? is his other ride an 80 year old woman? see, now it’s just creepy.

there’s really no interpration of that slogan that is going to justify his wearing it.

that said, now let us investigate the possibilities of this same t-shirt on an 80 year old man.

now that would be both ironic and funny…and I would say therefore that this was a man walking with both feet firmly implanted on the cool side of the line.

in the same way if the guy’s shirt said my other ride is your grandmother, i probably would have laughed. come to think of it, i think that t-shirt would be universally funny. No matter what age the person was who was wearing it, it would work.

picture it on a 14 year old
picture it on a 25 year old
picture it on a 50 year old
picture it on a 80 year old.

funny every time (and yes there is a difference between the 50 year old wearing the mother shirt if i interpret it as being directed towards his peers and thereby meaning 80 year old women as opposed to the 50 year old wearing the grandmother shirt. mostly due to the fact that if he’s wearing the grandmother shirt it’s a conscious decision on his part to put out the message that he fucks grandmothers, and that’s funny.)

but, alas, there are no, “my other ride is your grandmother” t-shirts out there (yet).