Greetings from Key West
Hello all! Damn my luck for leaving town during what sounds like a mini performance renaissance, but Key West has its share of freaky delights.
Like most tourist towns, Key West specializes in two things: Public drunks and sassy T-shirts. The appeal of public drunkenness is obvious to all who drink. (You can either join the fun, via the daiquiri stands placed every 16 feet along celebrated Duval Street, or just sit back and laugh at the drunken others.)
The joys of sassy T-shirts are more complex. When I say “sassy,” I mean shirts with slogans of the “It’s not a bald spot—it’s a solar panel for a sex machine!” variety—vaguely comedic, typically raunchy, but, unfortunately, never, ever funny. Never. Ever.
But of course there’s nothing that’s never funny; there are only those things that long for the proper comedic context.
For example, wouldn’t this unfunny infant T-shirt become at least 250 times funnier if worn by, say, Terry Schiavo?
And wouldn’t this icky infant offerering become slightly more charming placed on that beloved, buzz-cutted, swaddled-in-Depends waddler of Seattle’s Pike/Pine corridor?
(While I’m asking rhetorical questions, is there anything more frightening than the prospect of this establishment’s stools?)
Still, you gotta appreciate a town featuring alcoholism-themed liquor stores and America’s most gay-friendly cab service.
(Thanks to Jake Nelson for both his digi-cam photos and travelling laptop…)
never in my life have i wished to be in florida. until now. with dave schmader.