If we’re going to be a real culture with a readily-identifiable visual identity (and a culturally innate sense of humor), we simply have to have our own Big Funny Hat.
My east Texas cowboy culture has them. The Catholics have them (for their leaders, anyway). The Amish have them, and so do Hasidic Jews. Even Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble have them.
I’ve been thinking there should be meetings every two months, where we gather in our respective home cities and display our efforts at choosing or designing a proper BFH, and then an annual meeting where we converse, confer and otherwise hobnob with each other, with a special session devoted to Big Funny Hat efforts. Probably there would be food involved in these meetings, and some sort of alcoholic beverage. Not enough to inspire Vogon poetry, you understand, but enough to lubricate the flow of ideas.
Now I don’t know if all that’s necessary. Jerry Van Amerongen has pretty much nailed it for me with a single Ballard Street panel.
