If you're like most people, you probably can't imagine living without me. The fact is, however, that one day I'm not going to be around any more, and you need to be prepared for it. Relax, I'm not planning anything; I just want you to be ready for my eventual demise. By which I mean, of course, that you should be prepared to immortalize me in some suitable way. I like the idea of an eternal flame, but I don't want that Bangles song ringing in my head for eternity. A bronze statue would be nice, but those things tend to turn green over time and I wouldn't want people to look at it and go, "Whoah, what's up with the giant emaciated Hulk?" There would be less confusion if I didn't insist on being sculpted wearing only a pair of torn purple trousers, but hey, that's the way I want to be remembered. Sure, for the first 50 years or so the locals would be like, "That's not the Hulk. That's Quasimofo." But eventually that generation would die off and no one would be left to correct the tourists who insisted on meeting "at the Starbucks across from the Skinny Hulk." And just like that, I'm forgotten.
So I'm thinking T-Shirts. Everbody loves T-Shirts. What's not to love? It's a shirt, but shaped like a letter T, unlike most shirts, with a long vertical part for your body and then two short horizontal bits at the top for your arms. But not your whole arms, just the shoulders and your upper arms. Brilliant. It's functional, and it has the most apropos name since they called those things that broke on the space shuttle 'O-Rings.' You know, because they're round, with a hole in the middle.
Where was I? Oh yeah, T-Shirts! All the famous historical figures are on T-Shirts these days: John Lennon, Bob Marley, Jesus, Chuck Manson.... It's like a who's-who gallery of people who really made a difference. That's where I want to be, not hanging out across from the Starbuck's in my purple pants with tourists putting out cigarettes on my feet. So I've been doing some research, trying to figure out the criteria the T-Shirt people use to determine whether one is T-Shirt material. I've come up with the following guidelines for helping my chances:
1. Be a fictional character. People love Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse, Pocahontas and other colorful, nonexistent individuals. Unfortunately, my odds of achieving a purely imaginary existence are rapidly dwindling as I continue to incur credit card debt attesting to my corporeality. Oh, I can hear the existentialists out there insisting that any idea of Quasimofo as a definitive being is fictional in the sense that there are an infinite number of potential Quasimofos existing at any given moment, no one of them any more or less real than any of the others. But let's face it, none of that is going to turn me into the Tazmanian Devil.
2. Die at a relatively young age. This worked for John Lennon, Jesus, and James Dean, among others. Unfortunately, I'm already older than all of them were when they died. Also, it seems to help to be murdered by Romans or a crazed loner, and I don't know how to go about arranging that. I'd hate to go to the trouble of provoking the residents of the Lombardi Home for the Criminally Insane into offing me only to find out that I missed the age cutoff by six months.
3. Have crazy hair. Crazy hair makes for great T-Shirts. Check out Albert Einstein, Bob Marley, Che Guevara, Jimi Hendrix and countless others. I think I could pull this one off. But very few people make it into the ranks of T-Shirt immortality based solely on their hair. The only one I can think of is Peter Frampton, and I'm not leaving the house looking like that.
4. Kill a lot of people (Charles Manson, Che Guevara, etc.). The problem with this is that I wouldn't know where to start. And I certainly wouldn't know where to stop. Also, I don't want to go to jail.
5. Be a pop star. Unfortunately, I have no talent. Which wouldn't matter except, as I mentioned, I'm also old.
6. Be a hot chick. Well, I'm tall and I have great hair. I'm practically Jessica Rabbit. See #1.
Well, that's all I've got. I don't like my odds. I'd better press my purple pants.
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