Last Christmas I noticed my little sister wearing a "98 Rock Honolulu" T-shirt that she must have kept since like, middle school. It was a rad shirt; an artifact from back when the word "rad" was freshly coined. "98 Rock" was scripted across the flaming vapor trail of a jet-propelled surfboard being piloted through space by a sunglasses-wearing robot. Rock and roll epitomized, basically, on a T-shirt. "Dude (my pet name for my sister), I can't believe you still have that shirt! Oh damn, I had one too, remember! But with the guitar-playing robot..."

"Um...I kinda remember that"

But she was messing with me 'cause, come time to open the presents, bang! My shirt! My sister stole it in '85, held on to it for 17 years, and gave it back to me for Christmas. Which was awesome 'cause like, if I dig a T-shirt I'll wear the fuck out of it. And something about my body chemistry eats holes through cotton...it never would have seen the light of the nineties, much less the new millennium, under my stewardship. So dude, thanks.

T-shirts became like, personal affinity billboards back in the sixties, right? Wearing an undershirt w/no overshirt in the fifties just meant youse was a straight-up tough guy. The generation of tees that followed were text-dependent: "Keep on Truckin", "Wallace in '68", "Beanz Meanz Heinz". A generation had emerged that was comfortable with the idea of overt product endorsement and affiliation. A generation that was, incidentally, split by a volatile political landscape into distinct affinity groups. Splashing your opinion across your chest helped identify you to your fellow peacenicks, klansmen, SLA members, Red-Sox fans, whoever. And hooking up with like-minded youths increases significantly one's chances of getting laid, dig?

Anyway, those two factors still manifest heavily in the t-shirt game. Only now, instead of shilling for Oscar Meyer or Pepsi Cola, t-shirts shill for themselves, Hurley, Ecko, etc...and in this style-obsessed, politically apathetic, era affinity groups have exploded into something equally self-serving. Goths, preps, bikers, punks...style and affiliation begin to take on a chicken vs. egg type relationship. But hey: it still increases significantly one's chances of getting laid. Plus like, the search for identity is what youth is all about.

(I was nine when I got to pick out my first printed t-shirt. I remember weighing heavily my options at the old applique stand, passing on the bird-flipping Disco Sucks icon and the flamed-out Ghost Rider skull and ultimately settling on a shirt that read simply, TEXAS. Above TEXAS was the outline of an old timey sheriff's star, and framed within the star was a cowboy on horseback silhouetted by the sunset. I am from Texas, by the way, so it struck me as a solid choice. And even though I wasn't particularly into westerns or whatever, I remember really relating to the image of that lone cowpoke. Maybe 'cause I switched schools and we moved a lot when I was a kid, or something...)

Anyway, by the time the seventies were over, second-hand stores were jammed with abandoned, sloganed, t-shirts; a fact that would come to define the style (and to some extent the sensibilities) of the punks and new-wavers who shopped there. 'Cause shopping at the Goodwill wasn't completely about your lack of funds. Finding affordable, contemporary, clothing was not the goal- the shit had to LOOK second-hand. The more obscure, antiquated, or out-of-context your t-shirt slogan, the louder it said "fuck you" to pop culture's status quo. The t-shirt "meant" the opposite of what the slogan read, so context was the kicker. A strung-out runaway w/mohawk and black eye might sport an Up With People! t-shirt, white suburban skater kids wore shirts embroidered with the names of Latino mechanics...the iron-on face of a Three's Company-era John Ritter would smile out from the beer-spattered tee of some amped-up dude in the mosh pit. This juxtaposition-style resonated with other post-modern trends, it fed the cold fires of irony and served as one of many esoteric delineators of a distance kept between us and them.

But that was fifteen years ago...I would imagine that the Goodwills now are fulla parachute pants and neon-green mesh tops and POISON swag, or whatever. The weak irony thing, though, lives on- co-opted by a new generation of fruits. (For further reference, I recommend brunch in Silver Lake). And whatever. It is what it is. God has been kind enough to ladle me out a heapin' portion of other shit to worry about...only, I dunno. The other day I was out rockin' the 98 Rock shirt and this kid comes up to me kinda smiling and says: "cool robot...", like he's in on a joke or something and it hit me- during the fifteen years me and this shirt had spent apart, the robot had slipped into ironic obsolescence.

How could this happen? Is it because robots in general (and guitar wielding robots in particular) failed to deliver on their robotic promise to mankind? Or was that one bad Styx song actually bad enough to sour irreparably anthro-robo relations? Maybe flaming robots, like hair-metal bands, tight jeans, and other gratuitous expressions of rock and roll exuberance lost their relevance in the wake of that gloomy messiah Kurt Cobain...

Did Kurt Cobain kill my robot? Motherfucker.

I, to reiterate, dunno.

PS: I quit buying clothes at Goodwill, or anywhere else for that matter, years ago. I rely now exclusively on the good taste and charity of my girlfriend: