What Makes A T-Shirt Funny Or Not?
(or Why Some Are Funny, Others Are Not, & Those With A Short Shelf Life)
© Buzzy Multimedia
by Theresa Bane

Things are defiantly afoot in this great country of ours. Banks are dropping like flies; jobs are drying up; and if you have a 401 K it has probably shrunk faster than a chenille sweater in a hot dryer. This being an election year nothing is going to begin changing until after the last floating chad is counted .

In times such as these, there is only one burning question that people want answered. The question that is on everyone’s mind-what funny tee shirt should I get?

Let’s take a moment and discuss what makes for a funny tee. In all seriousness this is an important decision to make. After all, what tee you wear speaks volumes about you . You cannot choose your next funny tee shirt too carefully.

Let’s start from the ground up. All tee shirts with a funny or relevant saying should be basic black. This is not 1972 people; brown is not a legitimate color choice for a tee with print on it. Black is a not only a timeless classic and makes you look slimmer, but as a background choice it causes no distraction whatsoever for the person reading your shirt. Admit it, you have met the rest of the world, and generally speaking, “folks is stupid” and are easily distracted by the smallest thing. If you are going to go through the trouble of selecting and buying a shirt with a statement emblazoned on it that you find to be entertaining and or noteworthy, why allow the message to be muddied up with color?

Naturally, if your tee shirt is black than the saying on it needs to be in white ink. Again, in my professional opinion this makes whatever the saying on the tee shirt that much more striking, funnier, and likely to attract the attention the persons of your preference.

Now to the truly important: what the shirt says.

Remember that when choosing your shirt no matter what is written on it, it will say something about you as a person. Even if what the reader surmises about you is not in fact true and makes decisions about you solely based on the t-shirt you are wearing, you have lost the right to be affronted or even complain because you did not read the whole of my article and purchased a shirt willy-nilly and deserve whatever you get.

For instance: You are wearing a properly fitting black t-shirt with the words “Bad Wolf” printed across the chest in white ink in a highly appropriate and readable font. You are at the mall and a man rushes up to you, he grabs you by the shoulders and looking you right in the eyes say in dire seriousness “I am the Doctor.” If your response is anything other than “I understand, we have to hurry.” you my friend will be considered the weirdo in this scenario. Every able bodied geek and nerd alike knows that the words “bad wolf” in any incarnation they may take is an omen of either the passing of or the arrival of the Doctor. And by the “Doctor,” I mean Doctor Who. And if you have no idea who Doctor Who is, what the hell were you thinking when you purchased that shirt to begin with!

OK, yes, true, “bad wolf” could in fact be a Furry reference; and I can see where it would appeal to a lycanthrope as well. But any Furry or Furrykind worth his salt would get the Doctor Who reference to begin with.

The point is that when I see someone wearing a black shirt with the words “Bad Wolf” printed across the chest in white ink in a highly appropriate and readable font I already know at least one of the following things about that person.
1. They are well aware of the tee shirt rules
2. They like Doctor Who
3. They have had the nickname “Bad Wolf” since they started to shave
4. They have at least enough income to buy a clever fan shirt
5. They are either a geek or a nerd, or both, and thereby smarter than most other people

There is a concern I have regarding the “Bad Wolf” tee-shirt, and that is its shelf life. As you may already know Doctor Who has been a sci-fi mainstay since the 1960s. For the last 40 years the good Doctor has been a presence on the television and bookshelves entertaining folks not only across space but time as well. At the rate things are going, our fictional hero can only keep up this grueling pace for maybe another 65, 70 years tops. By then I imagine everyone will have a sonic screwdriver and the “magic” of everyone owning such a device will have caused the character’s popularity to somewhat diminish. So, by my reckoning, in 2078 the tee-shirt in question will have an archaic saying on it that only a few linger-ons at the old age home will get.

To avoid future embarrassment your closet, dresser drawer, or bedroom floor should also have an ample supply of tee shirts that are considered “timeless classics.” There are a wide variety of sayings and funny observational quips to choose from so that you will be able to have the proper shirt for any given occasion. Going to the local coffee shop to hang out and do a little net surfing with the free wi-fi they offer? Then there is no better shirt I can recommend you wear than one that says “Drink Coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy” It’s funny because you and everyone does stupid things; and while high on the caffeine rush coffee can give, you can make your mistakes more quickly than usual, which is funny because everyone laughs at another man’s misfortune.

Another funny shirt, in a homonym sort of way, is “Meat is murder. Tasty flame-broiled delicious murder.” It plays off of the “Meat is Murder” saying that PETA and hippy tree huggers like to throw around like a machete. At the same time this shirt mocks those who deny themselves tasty flame-broiled deliciousness. It tells the word that you are a “Food Chain Winner” (another timeless classic).

My favorite is one that reads “Member of The Secret Order of Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses and Supervillains.” Tis funny because no real member of the Secret Order of Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses and Supervillains would wear a shirt (of any color) announcing their membership to the world where anyone could read it, especially since benign scientific geniuses and superheroes could be among that number. That is unless of course I am a member of the Secret Order of Mad Scientists, Evil Geniuses and Supervillains and a super badass to boot and didn’t care who read it. Maybe I am bragging. Can you imagine the look of the face of the White Hat who tries to stop me and my nefarious plan when he reads my shirt? It may buy me the time I need to finish him off once and for all. Muhahahahaha!

But I digress.

Where should one shop to find such tee shirts?. The local big box outlet store may carry some shirts that mimic cleverness but they are either not very clever at all or there are 40 million of the same shirt being sold to and the opportunity to make a unique statement is lost forever. I shop on the net. The wonder that is the internet has enable us to shop at stores we otherwise never woudda been able to. With the use of the net you can browse thousands of companies and see millions of shirts. You can scroll to your heart’s content or until you go blind. For fun one day, type in you search browser “Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and go good with ketchup” and see how many companies are selling that shirt. Of all the places on the web to choose from I find that Buzzy Multimedia has the best. It comes on a black shirt, printed with white ink, and is in a highly appropriate and readable font. There is no picture of a dragon or a knight on it junking up the quaintness of the saying. Further, Buzzy carries shirts up to 5X, and they sell them at big box store prices, even at 5X. I kid you not.

The other place that is available to buy shirts worthy of wearing is at your local con. “Con” is the geek-speak word for “convention,” as in sci-fi, gaming, or fantasy. If you have never been to a con you must go. The show is worth the price of admission, and you need not even have an interest in the genre, although it helps. DragonCon and ComicCon are the ones everyone has heard of, but you need not travel across country to buy a tee shirt. There is always a con somewhere in the world on any given weekend, and chances are, there is a con held local to you at least once a year.

But you need to be aware of one thing when buying a shirt at a con-don’t get caught up in the moment. There are a lot of funny shirts out there and a lot of shirts with funny pictures on them too. But when not at a con, these shirts are not only not funny, but pretty often able to upset the thin skinned moral majority. For example, I have seen a shirt that has a parody of the Jedi mind trick on it, it reads “these are not the boobs you’re looking for.” Haha, I know, and on a hot chick at a con its very kuel, on a fat guy at a con even funnier. But at church or Wal-Mart, not so much. I have even seen shirts at the larger cons with obscenities written on them, large enough to be read across a room. A shirt like that is inappropriate anywhere in my humble opinion, and I thanks folks who wear shirts like that. Honestly, I do, but to myself. This goes back to what I was saying earlier, about choosing your shirt wisely. Folks will make judgments about you based on what you wear emblazed across your chest. If someone is wearing a shirt like that I know not to even talk with them, let alone do business or allow them to pet sit for me. Maybe they just had too much coffee that morning and did a really, really stupid thing to fast to be stopped.

Terry Bane, T-shirt guru and sensei to budding supervillains everywhere