The Most 5 Shameful Shirts I Ever Owned
Number 3 will shock you!
FOLKS, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t maintain the impeccable taste of an elite metal patrician. As a matter of fact, I’ve been known to indulge in the very worst of metal. I’ve gone to shows from nü metal to deathcore to tuffxguy hardcore to ethically questionable MySpace grind to wigger slam, and if I’ve been there, I’ve probably bought a stupid shirt.
Because 365 Days of Horror is indisposed at the moment, I’ve decided to hijack his weekly Shirt Stains to show off some of the very worst shirts I’ve ever purchased and worn far too often. A small caveat: I was unable to find an image online of a horrific BITCHSLICER shirt I once owned for some moronic reason or another. This is, quite frankly, better for all of us.
Let’s begin this journey with a shirt I purchased from the mall at the ripe old age of 12. As I recall, it was a size Medium which was absurdly large for my MAYBE 90-pound frame. To compensate for all of the superfluous fabric, I wore this shirt tucked into my jeans. What’s that? This image is clearly too small? You want to see the detail on the design? Oh, I’m sorry. Let me expand that for you.
GAAAAHHHHH. This garbage doodle of a garbage alien from the planet Garbage proudly adorned the center of my shirt. The back? Huge, yellow, Olde-English letters that spelled out “LIMP BIZKIT“. I didn’t have any friends at this age. This shirt is why I didn’t deserve to have any friends.
Mega-nerds will recall that Todd MacFarlane, the creator of Spawn, did the artwork for Korn’s Follow the Leader. I was a BIG fan of both. I don’t think this shit-brown shirt ever left my stinking, disgusting pubescent frame from the age of 13 to 14. In my simian teenage mind, I assumed that wearing a thing that displayed all of my interests at once would help identify me to others as a person that was really cool and cultured. Instead, I just looked like a sweaty geek in cartoon shirt.
Two things that are Bad. Ass: METALLICA (metal af, bro) and fucken’ WHISKEY (alcohol is very, very cool and also I drink it, bro). As a cool metal dude, of course I knew who Metallica was. Also, I was super into this sweet ‘tallica track I heard like a million times on the radio but never owned the album it was on. I found myself at Hot Topic one day and voilá, another bad ass was born. This shirt, like all others, failed to make me any new friends. There’s a happy ending with this one, at least. Eventually I discovered Thin Lizzy and lost my shit.
OH MY GOD. Look at this fuckin’ guy right here. That mug rivals Martin Shkreli and Ted Cruz in sheer face-punchability, and yet I owned his very shirt. I make no apologies for my DEEZ NUTS fandom. I’m just finally smart enough to realize I look like an idiot advertising BOFA in broad daylight.
It’s not that I disagree with the sentiment. Rest assured, I didn’t wake up this morning and decide that maybe Hitler wasn’t all that bad. I still believe nazis, fascists, racists, and anyone that calls themselves “alt-right” should be beaten savagely with a Hot Wheels track. But the first time I wore this shirt in public, I saw an elderly gentleman staring at me. I imagined him as a young man, storming the beach at Normandy and valiantly dodging the maelstrom of bullets as his young friends were cut down in the prime of their lives by nazi mortar fire. Against all odds, he crested a machine gun nest, dropped a grenade inside, and slit the throats of his remaining enemies. Under his weathered gaze, I realized that he had seen things that I could only imagine. Tested himself in ways that I hoped I never would be forced to test myself. It seemed awfully presumptuous to brand my torso with “NAZI KILLER” when I have not killed a single nazi. A more accurate shirt would read, “I LIKE 90s POWERVIOLENCE AND DISLIKE RACISM”. It’s less catchy but we can workshop it. Anyway, rather than living with the realization that I might a soft nerd, I sold the shirt to a different soft nerd.
