Snake America Ninety Eight
Snake is a weekly email newsletter focusing on vintage clothing, sometimes furniture, on eBay. This week: A Muppets Penn State shirt and a Throbbing Gristle ski jacket. Subscribe and tell your friends.
eBay: Animal Penn State shirt, $40: Wild piece of clothing here. It's Animal from The Muppets playing drums, and it's Penn State, and it's a blue bar-tag Champion shirt, all of which place this to the 1970s. I guess the name of the school is the drum riser. Never seen that before. I've come across these shirts for many schools, mostly small sizes, some for babies, very few big. There are Mickey Mouse Champion shirts with similar FCS affiliations, predominantly Big Ten and XII. Some Mickey shirts have this felt lettering. Then there are Artex-brand Snoopy shirts, which go for less and are from from the 1980s. Some of those have Joe Cool and not Snoopy. Joe wears sunglasses, takes things easier and likes Alabama.
On a skim of active auctions, Snoopy is a fan of Rio Hondo College, Siena College, Santa Clara University, Camden Community College, Alabama (Tuscaloosa), Florida State University, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, U of Washington — two shirts, the Kansas City Chiefs, the NY Football Giants, the New England Patriots, the Cleveland Browns, the Chicago Bears. Joe Cool is a fan of St. Olaf College, Kings College, Arkansas, Illinois, the Cleveland Browns, the Washington Skins and the LA Rams (original).
There are more Snoopys on Artex than Champion, and more Snoopys than Mickeys and Muppets put together. I've seen some Kermits but never an Animal. The Animal shirt raises some questions. One because Animal is a minor character. Two because the school's former defensive coordinator was revealed by a redhead graduate assistant to be a pedophile. And then after that the assistant coach kept doing it, his actions effectively being covered up by the school's football program and administration, and condoned, tacitly at least, by a handful of people at the college and in the state, some of whom wore thick glasses and all of whom should have known better.
I think about Penn State a lot. Someone wrote that Gamergate -- I don't remember what g.g. was; I don't read about video games, if you want to know what it was, look it up -- was a prologue to this country turning its racism inside out like victims' skin in a zombie movie. A recent story in The Atlantic says David Duke's near-election in Louisiana in the 1990s was the canary. That's when a plain racist ran for elected office on less plain but as racist policies, and went very far since racist voters didn't see themselves as specifically racist. I think the Duke thing is more true.
But part of me thinks the canary was Penn State. Sports reporters, fans ... the closer people were to the mess, the less they saw it.
The past couple of weeks: Greg Schiano, an Ohio State coach that worked at Penn State in the 1990s and was linked to the crimes in a court statement, was up for the Tennessee head football coach job. The memory resurfaced, Tennessee fans and state representatives became upset, complained, protested and Schiano didn't get the job. So Knoxville is far at least from Pennsylvania. Not recommended.
Descente jacket, $99: Good jacket that's a down-the-middle mix of that Throbbing Gristle photo where they're covered in bleach (scroll down), and early 90s Milan garbage. I don't listen to much Gristle, but when people say they're their favorite band, I'm not surprised. Since:
They have Agnostic Front hair. (Besides the guy with the mustache)
They sometimes wore moderately baggy camo pants(1). Japanese magazines describe this as anti-fit, or "relax."
Different military jackets than their pants and boots. Not a uniform, but matching. You can't just wear clothing from different wars. English musicians do this right. White French musicians wear Nike Frees and Schott leather jackets and skinnies -- you shouldn't do that either. Even when Mick Jagger wore Capezios and football pants in the Start Me Up video, those were both workout gear.
Covered in bleach.
Lots of different looks. Gristle has more looks than most bands -- maybe all bands (this). Definitely the only band with multiple looks to have a skinhead-adjacent phase.
Before writing this newsletter I felt like Gristle and AF wore the same clothes. I spoke to a few people about this, and was shouted down. "That's crazy man" -- that's what one friend said. I get it. AF were a hardcore band from the 1980s who lived in squats and in Little Italy. Gristle started in England and played industrial music -- I can't do them justice here. AF were shirtless as often as Gristle wore jackets. It's much more drafty in England. But they have stuff in common. I think Genesis P-Orridge moved to the New York that Agnostic Front lived in. They both wore bleached clothes. I would go so far to say they are the two most prominent bands who wear clothes with bleach stains on them.
The photo is 40 years old and it could have been taken today. Meanwhile things from last year look old. Having that much style is psychedelic and bends time. Back to the auction: The filthy green on this 1990s piece of ski trash offsets its provenance. This thing should not have been made. But ... it works because of the extra pockets. They have the same shape as the pockets on the bleached Gristle jackets here. The abovementioned's sturdy, fat shape make me think surplus. Why would someone ski in this thing? They'd look like Doc Brown running after Marty. But somehow this piece of garbage is more hard living than Annie Lenox. I can't do it but would like to see someone try and pull it off. Only one way to find out, though. Recommended.
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Leg Day Observer: Leg-Free Viral News Edition
Lindsey Lohan is dating a bench specialist now. So that's reassuring. In powerlifting there are three exercises. The squat: weight on your back and you sit down and get up. The deadlift: weight off the floor to standing. The bench press: weight on a bench, suspended, and you lie down on a table and lower the bar down -- the exercise still hasn't started -- and then you push it up to where you picked it up from. What a worthwhile exercise. Did I mention there's no carryover to your legs? And nine other people help you return the weight to the bar? And it's somehow exercise even though you're lying down on a table? Highlights include shoulder injuries and inflexibility. So that's what this guy does. But he also arm-wrestles.
My favorite arm-wrestler is this Russian guy, Alexey Voyevoda. He beat John Brzenk, another arm-wrestler and maybe the most dominant athlete of the past 40 years, a in 2012. That was like when Iverson crossed Jordan or when Rulon Gardner beat Alexander Karelin.
Voyevoda was on the Russian bobsled team in Russia but got stripped of his medals a couple weeks ago because his teammate doped. Which is fucked up. They won't be back this winter, which is also trash. How are you going to have an Olympics without Russia in it? There's a good video of Voyevoda on a Russian weightlifter's YouTube channel. The lifter (Dmitri Lapikov, who also lost his Olympic medal for doping violations) picks him up at the airport and they drive around in his (Lapikov) Benz and discuss Voyevoda's vegan diet and collagen synthesis, and how he doesn't really need protein. Kind of a scam if you ask me. He says he eats nettles but has giant arms. No way, man. There aren't any videos of Voyevoda armwrestling Je Yong-Ha, though, just one of Je failing a squat. I want to say 400 lbs.?
Thanks for reading.
Snake
PS -- new shirts coming! One for Leg Day Observer and one for the other one (Snake America).