This morning, I shared the post office line with a man who dressed for aggression. A skinny, dreaded, Def Poetry Jam-style fellow not exactly weighed down with testosterone, he wore a t-shirt that said: “Ever had one of those days where you just fucking messed with the wrong person? Don’t make this one of those days, motherfucker. Respect!!” Fair enough, but it took me upwards of a minute to read and process the t-shirt and its wearer. Isn’t that some form of entrapment? This was an aggressive statement. It is an aggressive statement when you leave the house in a “The Quickest Way To A Women’s Heart Is Straight Through The Fucking Ribcage” (witnessed at a gun and knife show) t-shirt, or a “If I’d Known It Was Going To Be Like This, I Woulda Picked My Own Cotton” (again, at the post office) bumper sticker on your gun-racked F-150. The latter examples are extreme, uncommon, and more likely to surface in the South, sure, but my last trip to Brooklyn (early 2003) put me momentarily behind this gem of a bumper sticker: “Fuck The Middle East,” which I suppose can be attributed to the post-911 strain of blind hate that coursed through the region. Same goes for the boot-legged Sopranos portrait featuring the men of the show, arms crossed, glaring into the camera, with the words “Show Us Where Bin-Laden Is, and Fuggedaboudit!!!”
Totally unrelated, but aggression is all over band posters, and many are aggressively pathetic. A club down the road will soon be hosting Southern Culture On The Skids. The huge posters boast wild colors and a fair share of faux-retro fonts. The new album is titled “Mojo Box,” as is the tour. The poster’s centerpiece displays the three band members gathered around an open box, the glowing contents of which we cannot see. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that this is the “Mojo Box.” The subhead under the main billing reads as follows: “Music For People With Problems,” to which I can only ungracefully say, “No Shit.”