The Fonz is cool... 30.05.08
People from a certain
generation, possibly the people who might even read this
column from time to time, will know that the Fonz is
cool.
Yep, not that the Fonz was cool way back when, they’ll
know that Fonz is still cool.
I don’t know why some people will know this as a fact,
but I have a certain feeling that it might be something
to do with having the message reinforced time and time
again on our tee-shirts.
We all knew that the Fonz was cool, we saw him every
week on tv combing back the sleek hair and clicking his
fingers to get the chicks, but just in case anybody
wasn’t sure, we had the tee-shirts.
The tee-shirts basically said, well, that the Fonz is
cool.
It showed a picture of him surrounded by a circle of wee
black stars, and well, as far as I can recall, everybody
had one. |
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Mine was orange. It was a
horrible colour and it was made out of nylon type of
material that was so rough that if you moved your arms
in a certain way it could take two or three layers of
skin from that part where under your arm joins the top
of your back.
But that didn’t matter because it had a picture of the
Fonz on the front, and well, the Fonz is cool. Unless
you are a girl of course.
For girls the Fonz might well have been perceived as
some kind of a chauvinistic pig...but I don’t think so,
I think even the girls thought and still think, that the
Fonz is cool.
Of course most girls didn’t wear that tee-shirt, and
that’s because they had their own hard-nylon offering to
wear with Charlie’s Angels on the front. (I’m not going
to say how I know the nylon was as rough and hard, let’s
suffice to say I have eight sisters and sometimes had to
wear hand me downs.).
All this rather long speel leads me up to the fact that
I kinda like tee-shirts. Well okay, I like tee-shirts a
lot.
And, even though apparently wearing tee-shirts with a
funny line on them, or maybe a cartoon character, is a
big fashion no-no. I don’t care, because, well that’s
the kind I like to wear if I can.
Not that I won’t or don’t wear plain tee-shirts. I mean
at one stage like most other households across this part
of Donegal I had about 3 million plain tee-shirts of all
different colours, all courtesy of course of Fruit of
the Loom.
But still, I like the shirts that say something funny.
In fact if I’m buying tee-shirts like that I’ll spend
ages rooting through looking for the ones that I think
are the best.
Now that doesn’t mean that they necessarily are the
best, or indeed the funniest, because, as you might have
guessed if you read this, I might have a kinda weird
definition of funny sometimes.
However all that said and done I can honestly say that
my choice of tee-shirt on any given day is not chosen by
the particular message on the shirt, but more on what’s
clean and more importantly what is near the front of the
press when I open it. |
I might take a quick glance
at whatever message is on the front, as part of the
‘double check that it’s really clean,’ moment, but if
it’s in the press then I know it’ll be funny at least in
my mind. And even more importantly it’ll be cotton.
You see the old hard nylon tee-shirt maker decided to
retire with his bazillions made after he’d ditched the
Fonz and Charlie’s Angels for his new range - “Who shot
JR?” and “I shot JR.”
They sold like hot cakes. Probably made him an absolute
fortune, but who cares about JR now? The Fonz on the
other hand...well the Fonz is still cool! |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
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