Happy St. Stupid Apparel's Day!

A brief history of this special day:

Over fifteen hundred years ago, on an island in the North Atlantic, St. Stupid Apparel rounded up all the team colored merchandise and drove it into the sea. He then replaced all the items with stuff you could only wear one day out of the year (without looking like an asshat).

For more recent developments in St. Stupid Apparel's Day, please visit Simon On Sports. He has extensively chronicled these recent crimes against team branding and aesthetics. You can even vote on the most egregious!

Now go sneak out of work and grab a Guinness. And bring your green hat.

Hobo St. Patty's Slideshow

On a certain level, this is sort of a cop out because I'm not up to snarkicizing every one of these photos or really writing anything substantive at all. On the other hand, I trust you will enjoy this slide show commemorating my experience at Hoboken's St. Patty's day celebration.

Most of these photos were snapped from the hip so as to keep them somewhat covert, but as you will see towards the end, I got pretty sloppy and people definitely started noticing. I promise there are some gems in there, especially the one with Sampson and the guy in the yellow shirt.

It's not a coincidence that I set the show to "Keep It Pourin'" by Tha Alkaholiks.

"Who wants ta ride mah bicycle?"

Still trying to make sense of the 98 pictures I took yesterday at Hoboken's preemptive strike of a St. Patrick's Day celebration.

More forthcoming. (Probably)

Asshats

In honor of the fact that Real Time with Bill Maher starts up again tomorrow night, I've got a New Rule:

New Rule: Team apparel can only be sold in team colors.

The above items are useful for exactly one day per year, which doesn't even fall during the baseball season. Have at it, Sox fans! Grab yourself a pair of those pajama pants, one of those hideous green shirts, and wave that "lucky" banner while you are jumping off the Prudential Center.

I'm not just picking on the Sox. Check out all of these acts against God:

If are wearing one of those right now, please ex-out of your browser and never read this blog again.

Are you a Mets fan but want to wear a Yankees hat for some odd fucking reason? Maybe you are a Yankees fan who just adores the combination of blue an orange. A lifelong David Cone/Doc Gooden/Darryl Strawberry fan?

No? Are you a straight gangsta from Oakland who ain't afraid to show some love for da Yanks? Or a colorblind nerd from New York attending Berkley?
Then you must like the Braves, Cubs or Pirates, and are dying to wear their colors on the hat of the most hated franchise in all of baseball, right?

Can someone please explain how buying a team's hat with another team's colors on it makes even one small bit of sense? Do you like both teams? Do you wear it only when the two teams play each other? What takes precedence, the logo or the colors?

Look, I understand the financial reasons a team has to bastardize their logo by sewing it onto a million different hats. More unique items translate into more sales. There are some very stupid people out there who probably want a Yankees hat to go with every outfit they own and are not ashamed to look like a complete and utter douchebag while doing it.

But here is a short message to those dummies and others who have bought branded merchandise in non-official team colors:

You are suckers.

At a certain point the following conversation happened somewhere in the MLB offices:

Executive: Our merchandise sales are stagnating, gentlemen. What can we do about it?

Sales guy #1: Well, we could make it cheaper, sir...

Executive: You're fired.

Sales guy #2: We could try to increase our global distrib-

Executive: Great idea! Just kidding, you're a moron. Next?

Sales guy #3: Well, we could make stuff in different colors...

Executive: Brilliant! We'll put out a never ending stream of new colors and some idiots are bound to buy them!

In closing: Don't be a sheep. If you don't like your team's official colors, don't buy the merchandise. If you are worried about the colors of your team's hat and whether or not they match with the rest of your clothing, rest assured that people will notice how ugly you are long before the fact that your hat clashes with your stupid jacket.