I don't need reality TV, inky tabloids, or talk radio. To tap into the latest in lowbrow zeitgeist, I just walk down Vermont Avenue here in LA, past the front window of crazy t-shirt store Y-Que (say "ee-kay," means "so what" in Spanish).
Today, I saw this Free Janet Jackson's Exposed Boobie shirt. Other new ones were on display, too — like Robots, Powered By Pancakes, Condoleezza Rice: Employee of the Month, and Visit Lovely Guantanamo Bay.
I was walking with a group of people, some of whome were English speakers, some who spoke Spanish. One of the latter was a visiting Quiché Maya linguist from Guatemala. He noticed the rest of us cracking up over the "No Justice/No Quiche" Free Martha t-shirts — I had a really hard time explaining (in clumsy Spanish) the concept of quiche, and how the word quiche had nothing to do with the Quiché Maya people, who Martha Stewart was, and how all of this related to protest slogans from the American civil rights movement. But by the time we were done, he thought it hilarious that the biggest scandal currently shaking the USA centered on a wealthy woman famous for baking egg pies on TV.
Link to Y-Que online.
