Gene Simmons wants to trademark hand sign used by Longhorns? Lol, ain’t gonna work

The lead singer of Kiss (a music group best known for wearing makeup, I think) is attempting to trademark the hand gesture that communicates support for everything from Texas to USF to North Dakota State to Satan (as Texan George W. Bush once learned) to rock music to specific types of rock music to love (if you do it wrong) to the nWo (if you do it wrong).

Simmons claims Kiss has been doing it since 1974. Well, about that, here’s UT’s president.

Now can you imagine how long Satan’s been doing it? I bet he’s got great lawyers, too.

The hand sign has long been a part of heavy metal, but nobody’s gonna take it away from college sports. As with most things college teams do, the point long ago was to get the better of a bitter rival:

In a 2006 interview, [former Texas cheerleader Harley] Clark said he had wanted some kind of hand signal similar to that used by the Longhorns’ rivals at Texas A&M, where the “Gig `Em” sign dating to the 1930s is a closed fist with the thumb pointing straight up. Friend Henry Pitts showed him the Longhorn sign, which Pitts made up while shadow casting.

We even now have a case of a single coach doing it at multiple schools.

It’s so embedded, that flipping it upside down has become a hand sign for Texas’ rival players ...

... rival fans on giant swing rides (see girl in pink) ...

and even a rival coach one time, kind of.

So the makeup man and the devil himself can come try and take it if they want, but it ain’t gonna work.