Passive-Agressiveness: Lesson One. When I went to New York, I planned my T-shirt wardrobe very carefully. The first day, when I was due to meet my old high-school crony Bill, I wore my Chicago Improv Festival T-shirt, as if to say, "Ha! See, I've done INTERESTING things since I knew you!" And for seeing Mike, I brought my Party Time-Mountain Language (an old show we did together in college) shirt, as if to say, "You damn well better remember where you came from, big shot!"

Actually, I chickened out on the latter, mostly because I didn't want to attend an Off-Broadway show in a torn and holey T-shirt.

I've always enjoyed T-shirts as forms of communication. One of my favorites only says "simplicity" across the front; I wear it as an antidote to the Nike or rock band billboards everyone else pays $20 to wear. I once performed a one-man show where I wore ten T-shirts at once, pulling one off for each scene (each shirt represented a different state of mind). I ended the show bare-chested. Surprisingly, no one threw up.

This has been an excerpt from my new book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.