The ironic t-shirt phase has taken a down turn as of late, no? The last post I made took me to a head shop, where while making my purchase I noticed the novelty shirts for sale along the wall. These said things like “NO. SERIOUSLY. FUCK YOU DUDE,” and “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK,” or my personal favorite “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.” Reminds me of my dear twin sister. They had trademarks on them from 1996. 1996! Are they the same ones? 1996, Pavement hadn’t even done Brighten the Corners. There was a whole mess of peace signs and hippy shit I used to draw on foggy bus windows when I was 8. Around 1996 is when the glow of the more successful of the 90’s Woodstock festivals had worn off. People stopped buying that shit. The ironic t-shirt first turned to sports. Throwback uniforms were quickly capitalized on by sports leagues so they can sell more jerseys. Lousy capitalism. This is when the ironic t-shirt became a black shirt with small white font. It said something mildly not clever like “CTRL ALT DELETE LIFE LOL.” Nerds loved these. This is how you could tell them apart in high school. Nowadays, it seems like all you have to do is take some obvious reference from at least 15 years ago, and put it on a shirt. Oh, hey, sweet Nicktoons shirt. Whoa, check out the Golden Crisp t-shirt. (If you work for Target, take notes)
This leads me to wrestling t-shirts. Wrestling t-shirts are tough, because most nowadays are vaguely homoerotic pictures of wrestlers (such as today’s entry), some kind of vulgar saying that you can’t really wear other than a wrestling event (Usually from the late 90’s ATTITUDE period.) or something based on a ridiculous back tattoo the wrestler in question has (Batista/Goldberg). Looking back, shirts from the 80’s have a certain obliviousness to them. Take for example Mr. Tito Santana’s shirt here: 
Tito has the distinction of having won the very first match at Wrestlemania. His shirt however, is the stuff of ironic t-shirt lore. It looks like John Travolta singing into an invisible microphone in his underpants. The presence of the sombrero confuses me. Was he wearing it, and threw it down in a fit of manly aggression as to intimidate Papa Shango? Anyways, Tito’s (official) lifetime record at Wrestlemania was 1-7. This would be like wearing a Pirates jersey. Ironic, exactly. I think I’ll look for a Strike Force shirt instead.
the self-hating hipster 
Some scumbag stole the Dude Love t-shirt I had in freshman year of high school.
’80s wrestling shirts are just cool. They’ll never stop being cool. They’re almost impossible to find, and the nostalgia value for guys in their 30s kicks them from hipster chic to something that everyone will really fucking want to steal off of your back. I’m stuck in an office doing this corporate law bullshit with an Oxxford suit on all day, but I will literally proposition the guy I see walking down the street with an ’80s Koko B. Ware shirt.