Shirt Stains: Chuck Schuldiner Facebook Bootlegs
Inside Crystal Mountain, bootlegs are reborn.
Facebook bootleg shirts are on the rise. We previously covered these awful shirts and Whitechapel recently spoke out against them. Much like their fake news problem, Facebook has been slower than sloth shit in removing these Facebook pages that advertise poor quality shirts. It’s like Facebook just wants those delicious advertising bucks and the people who actually make up the site to go sit and spin. Weird, right? These bootleg shirts prey on the naïve. They rip off fans and deny the bands the merchandise money that helps keep the band going.
As time goes by, the bootlegs seem to be getting bolder in their utter crappiness. Strange mash-ups of bands and sports teams, bad photoshops, and broken English are just the tip of the bootleg ‘berg. Things get even weirder with these bootlegs for deceased Death and Control Denied guitarist/vocalist Chuck Schuldiner.
Toilet Ov Hell Facebook Group member Ryan Cowdy brought the following shirts to my attention, and I don’t know whether I should thank him or quietly weep in the corner. They all come from a Facebook page called “Chuck Schuldiner I Still Miss Him”. I included a hyperlink just for the sake of posterity and accuracy. Do not join the over 1,000 people that have already liked that page. Do not order anything from that page. Don’t even put your credit card near that page just in case the bootleggers have invented some sort of new money-stealing technology. Just know that such a thing exists and then take the rest of the day off to recover.
This shirt is the most mind-boggling and deserves the most attention. For reasons unknown to myself or possibly anyone else in the universe not involved in the making of this, the shirt depicts beloved Peanuts comic strip and cartoon character Charlie Brown solemnly looking at the ground and saying (or shouting, since it is in ALL CAPS) “I STILL MISS CHUCK SCHULDINER.” Why? Why is Charlie Brown saying that? Is Charlie Brown supposed to be a death metal fan? Apparently, in Tirana or whatever economically depressed Eastern European city this came from, they don’t read Peanuts or watch the holiday specials because they’d know that Charlie Brown is a fan of funeral doom and DSBM. They must have also missed the memo that said Peanuts had strong Christian overtones and Schuldiner, while not religious, was Jewish.
Is there a weird cross-section of Death and Peanuts fans that we should know about? Has this been an untapped market just waiting for an enterprising bootlegger to dig into and release like an oil derrick? Does this also mean we’re going to get more comic strip/death metal mash-ups? Doonesbury/Dying Fetus shirts? Hi and Lois/Suffocation? Marmaduke/Morbid Angel? Hagar The Horrible/Amon Amarth? Okay, that last one would be fun, but you know what I mean.
The actual website selling this enigma box says “**Not sold in stores.” Fuck, I hope that’s true. I would rally the metal masses to any store that carried this shirt and have us all rub our butt cheeks onto the store’s windows until they relented. Non-violent resistance is the way to go. It’s what Gandhi would have wanted. The site also sells this terrible, terrible design as a Kids Hoodie for $39.99. Do not get this for your children. You will have to visit them with a court-appointed guardian and they will spend years in therapy because of it. Was this all done because Schuldiner and Peanuts creator Charles Schultz have similar names? That’s even worse than pretending Charlie Brown still bumps Individual Thought Patterns.
Good grief.
If that Peanuts shirt was too cute for you, have no fear because Chuck Schuldiner I Still Miss Him has got you covered. How about a shirt where cartoon hands rip open your chest to reveal the death metal forefather casually living inside of you? Chuck’s come-hither stare betrays the absolute horror of his purgatory trapped inside a gullible person who spent over $20 on something so stupid. This shirt is like a Superman story if David Lynch had written it. An explosion rocks Metropolis and Clark Kent runs to a phone booth to change into Superman. As Superman crosses into the Black Lodge, he rips his shirt off to reveal that a death metal icon is calmly living inside him. Lois Lane dances around as Mr. Mxyzptlk speaks in reverse. A stop light swings in the wind. Credits roll.
Don’t worry, I’m sure the bootlegger totally got permission to use this picture for the shirt just like they definitely paid the estates of both Charles Schultz and Chuck Schuldiner. Everything is on the up-and-up here. Also, where are those hands on the shirt coming from?
Do you still want a shirt, but feel bad that Schuldiner’s image is being used? CSISMH has still got you covered. They take the same stupid shirt-ripping design and just replace the picture with “I STILL MISS CHUCK SCHULDINER.” They use Comic Sans, the most serious of fonts to use when you want to convey sadness and mourning. I absolutely love that they just barely fit his last name onto the shirt just like I love that this page uses the same shirt, complete with folds and wrinkles, for each shirt. Bra-fucking-vo.
So what are people saying about these shirts?
A little dramatic, but this person isn’t wrong.
Hunting someone down for making a bootleg is a bit much, but I like your attitude.
This poor soul actually purchased a shirt and appears to have been ripped off. Hopefully that serves as a warning to any other potential buyers. If you can’t trust a random bare-bones Facebook page selling shirts featuring the image of a dead musician, who can you trust?
