Read Blogs, Get Rogered

Those wacky hip-hop clothiers.

New York transport officials were impressed when the hip-hop clothing label Akademiks announced that it wanted to buy advertisements on the sides of buses in the city, promoting the benefits of literacy. But it turned out that the benefits in question weren't the ones the authorities had in mind.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority vowed yesterday to start removing the adverts after being informed that the slogan plastered over 200 city buses - "Read books, get brain" - refers to a slang term for oral sex.

"To me, and I believe to everyone else, while it was done by a clothing line, it would give the impression that it was also promoting reading and literacy," MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said. "It's easy enough to understand how that would get by based upon someone not knowing the expression."

...

The adverts were a semi-public private joke between the company and its youth market, [Anthony Harrison of Akademiks] argued - and in any case he doubted the slogan would be taken seriously even by those who understood it.

"I don't think any kid is going to say, 'If I read A Tale of Two Cities, I'm going to get sex,'" he said.

Hey, it worked for Ellen Ternan.