Quilting Your Shirts to Live Vol. 1
Well hello there, all you young whippersnappers! Don’t worry, I don’t bite! Can’t anyway. Haven’t popped the dentures in yet.
*shhhtuuck*
Much better now!
My name’s Faith Wurning. You’ve caught me in the middle of quite a vast undertaking. See, my drug-addled grandson loves this awfully loud music called “heavy metal.” I find most of it just so terrible. The names alone are putrid and oftentimes misleading. Last year, he told me he was going to see Gutalax. I said to him, Well, that’s nothing special. I see that every morning with all my other pills.
Because of this, he just can’t bring himself to stop buying band shirts. Is that really what you want to spend your hard earned money on? Back in my day, when we were able to cobble together a few dented coins and, if we were lucky, a crumpled-up dollar bill, we lived like kings and queens! We feasted on the highest quality cans of creamed corn. I spent afternoons lusting for Johnny Weissmuller in the Tarzan talkies. Of course, we started having to pay it forward with the Social Security Act so we no longer had the dollar, just the dented nickels and dimes, but how do you think I’ve been able to live so darned long?
And yet this one pisses away his savings on shirts with hideous fonts, absurd imagery, and awful names. I am ashamed to say I have helped contribute to his problem. After all, I always throw my grandson some money for his birthday and Christmas. I say to him, Put that in a savings account! You never know when you’re going to need to get an unexpected endoscopy. He never listens! Now he has too many. He’s outgrown a lot of them as he’s a growing boy. Some he’s treated like garbage and look like absolute hell! Before that, they just looked like normal hell. Some of them had pit stains so dense they could have stopped a bullet. Others he trimmed the sleeves off so he could show off his alleged “guns” but I don’t see any pistols or rifles. All I see are some flabby limbs and believe you me, I know all about flab!
But I am not without a heart. He told me throwing away his beloved comfort gear brought what he called a metaphorical tear to his eye. That’s a term he learned at college while studying creative writing and the history of Pabst Blue Ribbon. When I’m not spending my time reading the latest Harlan Coben novel or watching reruns of As Time Goes By, I fancy myself quite a knitter. So I suggested he bring his collection of wretched shirts to Granny Faith and I’d put together a patchwork quilt for him out it. All washed beforehand, of course! I forbade him from giving me any apparel worn the night before that’d become drenched in sweat and other man fluids.
I’ll chime in every now and again with updates to the quilt. Can’t let it take up too much of my time, otherwise I’ll be rescheduling my mahjong days with Doris and Edith. I’ll make sure to get some fascinating tidbits about each shirt addition from my little scamp, but don’t think I won’t have my own say about the garments! My grandson said he wanted to contribute more, to which I said, You’ve already handed me this filth. That’s enough. But he insisted and I wouldn’t be a good granny if I didn’t entertain my favorite smooth-brained grandchild. He said he would give me an album to listen to while I quilted away. I asked if I’d need to break out my old phonograph to listen, but he gave me one of those intelligent phones with a built in appliance to “stream” music from. What music has to do with flowing water, I don’t know, but it’s handy!
I started this homemade horror show on July 17th, the same day in 1938 when Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Ireland (Moron!) and the birthday of James Cagney, David Hasselhoff, and Darude. I have been known to turn on “Sandstorm” before my big afternoon outings with the gals! Home by 6, of course! Unfortunately, my hearing aid fell out during the day, so if my grandson put on a record for the first round of knitting, I haven’t the slightest clue what it was. Anyway, I started the quilt off with these fine textiles:
- Metalocalypse Dethklok: My grandson said he loves this cartoon, but that I would find it lewd. He did mention one of the animated fellows has a thing for older women. I thought he meant someone like Bo Derek. Even older, he says. Perhaps I should seek out my very own Swedish lothario with a taste for the, ahem, well-aged. He also didn’t go to this show because he was at some festival in the desert of New York City. I don’t recall any desert landscapes from my days in the Big Apple, but perhaps things have changed! Instead, his lovely girlfriend got it for him and it took him two whole weeks to wire her the money back!
- Eternal Black: He bought this at the first Ode to Doom show after that woeful pandemic tapered down a little. Evidently, this band does not exist anymore. They’ve gone on to join the likes of other such great disbanded musical groups like B. Bumble and the Stingers, The Everly Brothers, and Fine Young Cannibals in the Heaven for Bands That Ended. The guitar player was on my grandson’s poddycast (whatever that is) twice and the bass player did the design work for his website. I hope the young boys in this band will find another outlet for their raucous music.
- Saint Vitus Bar: I thought my grandson was handing me army fatigues at first and it gave me a jolt. I said, When did you join the army? He put up that hand horn gesture and remarked, The metal army! I asked him, Who do they fight for? Anyway, this shirt has a logo designed by oh for cryin’ out loud! The sticky note with her name on it got stuck to the shaft of my reacher grabber! Hold on! Got it! Okay, her name is Caroline Harrison and she did the artwork for oh my word! Why did he have to write so small? It’s hard to read! He could have used another note. After squinting, I can see that she has provided artwork for the following bands that I assume are all terrible:
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- The aforementioned Dethklok (with my future husband in it)
- Emma Ruth Broomhandle
- Pig Destroyer How violent!
- The Sunn O)))
- Inter Arma Is that a new kind bus?
- KEN’s Mode My deceased husband’s name was Ken! His mode was usually complaining.
*flips note* - Python? Oh, no, Pyrrhon!
- Portrayal of Guilt What are they guilty for?
- Artificial Brain My grandson has one of those!
- And many more. I suggest she do something for the next Cher tour!
Here’s what I added on the 24th of July. My grandson dropped off some more shirt scraps for me to work with. Time was of the essence though. I had to get my rascal tuned and oiled so I could make my way to the theater to catch The Odyssey. I once wrote a translation of Homer’s epic as my thesis back in the 1860s, but it was never published on the grounds that it was too “sensual.” The nerve! I’ll have to see how the two compare.
What was I spinnin’ while quiltin’: I listened to the album Zoo by Ceremony. I assumed it was going to be something like Pet Sounds but I was wrong. I was told they were more of a punk rock band back in the day. I’m the expert on back in the day and back in the day, we certainly had bands of rocks who would roll but no punks. I’ll have to see what punk rock was all about, but I didn’t think this one was too bad.
The quilt additions for this include:
- Tons: My grandson loves Godzilla, so I know why he bought this shirt. I thought I needed to translate the kanji to read the logo, but it turns out it is the band name. How creative! When he put the band on briefly for me to hear, he said they were like Italian Weedeater. Heavens to Betsy, what does that even mean?! Was he suggesting there are Italians that spend their days scarfing back cannabis for the heck of it? I thought you had to smoke it or as the kids do, vape it. Maybe he was saying they sounded like some kind of European gardening device.
- Caustic Casanova: Now this one got me excited. I had previously told my family about some of my affairs, I mean, dalliances, I mean afternoon tea breaks with the real Casanova back when I was a young and buxom gal. I was disappointed to find out this was just a band from Washington, DC. What a boring place! Nothing exciting ever happens there. But I do love this design by Jase Harper. I noticed that Mr. Eyeball Man is tapping at a Morse code key. I remember when Morse code was invented! In this case, if you look at the letters in the band name, you’ll see that it is also spelled out in Morse code.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back again to deal with my grandson’s trash issue, er, collection of tattered things. In the meantime, be nice to each other, check your pilot lights, and stop by TJ Maxx! They’re running a sale!
