Where's Che?

For a good couple years now, Astrid, DJ, and I have been playing a game called "Punch Che," in which we get to hit each other in the arm whenever we come across someone wearing the iconic image of Che Guevara. It's basically like "Slug Bug" 'cept the entire point is mocking people for buying into the unintentionally ironic marketing frenzy around one of history's most notorious leftist revolutionaries. I'm not a Che-hater, though being a pacifist, it's hard to get me behind the tactics of guerilla warfare (okay, a punching game doesn't count as violent; we're all consenting to being slugged.) It's not a criticism of Che, it's a game making fun of the absurdity of all the lily-white hippy kids who have no fucking idea what Che did or what he stood for wearing his image. Extra points for Che-wearing white kids with dreadlocks.

OK, so, on Sunday, during the insanity of Pride on Market Street right outside the posh Zuni Café, where Astrid, Giddy Girl, and I stopped for a very bougie bloody mary, and after running into my high school English teacher, who is a dyke, no less, at the bar, I spotted someone in a run of the mill Che t-shirt, and got to punch Astrid.

Then not five minutes later, another dude walks by with a Che t-shirt, this time the Argentine agitator emblazoned, tattoo-style, on the bicep of the equally recognizable popculture icon Homer Simpson. My brain broke, and I burst out in uncontrolled, tearful laughter at the sight of it. I'm sure many of you have seen Che's image mashed up with Homer before, but I guess I'd been under a rock. The brilliance of that many layers of irony packed together into a gimmicky t-shirt was just overwhelming to me.