Canada.

Size: M
Where: Canada



Why: Either my brother or my mother bought this for me from when they went to Canada.

Comment: They also got me some keychains and stuff on that trip.

I give Canada (and Canadians) a lot of crap, but this is one nice shirt that fits well and is one of my favorites.

Lucky MCMXCI.

Size: M
Where: Lucky Jeans, via Doug



Why: Doug gave me this for my birthday one year.

Comment: Weirdly, after I wore this shirt a couple times, I just kind of put it in a drawer and completely forgot that I even had it. I only rediscovered it sometime in the last several months, and since then it's not only returned to the regular rotation but has become one of my favorites, too. It has a nice "weight" to it, I dig the lions, and as I've said before I'm a sucker for a nice ringer-t.

While I've been thinking of doing a t-shirt blog for a long time now, it was rediscoveries such as this one (if not this one specifically) that made me do it for real, and in just the short month since I started I've already dug up several "forgotten" favorites. And I haven't even really begun digging yet.

Wonderful Days.

Size: XL
Where: New York Korean Film Festival production office



Why: Read on...

Comment: This shirt doesn't actually exist, officially. Several years ago, back when I was helping (in my limited way) to organize the annual New York Korean Film Festival, one of the members wanted to move away from the typical festival-logo-name-year-type t-shirts and experimented a little with some different designs. She mocked up this shirt pretty quick-and-dirtily just to see how it would look, and then pretty much forgot about it as more pressing matters came to pass. Months later, during the regular post-festival office cleanup, someone else found the shirt sitting on a shelf and asked if anyone wanted it. I said, "Sure."

The image is from the movie Wonderful Days (aka Sky Blue), which I actually didn't think was all that great (basically a pastiche of the far superior plots, characters, and love-mother-earth themes of Hayao Miyazaki's sci-fi films Nausicaa, Laputa, and even On Your Mark), but for all it's faults I have to admit that it looked great. Most of it, anyway. For its time, anyway.

The shirt is way too big and has an "unfinished" quality - seriously, the design feels like someone hot-glued a color Xerox to the front of it - but I've actually worn it out (and washed it) several times in the past. As you can see, it's suffering: fading, running, cracking. The shirt just sits in a drawer for the most part these days.

Anyway, there's a reason why I'm posting this shirt tonight. I am having a complete Twilight Zone-type of day. This morning I was cleaning out some super-old email archives and found a folder full of old messages from way back in those planning days. As I was flipping through the various messages discussing film deliveries and pointing out typos in the press releases, I couldn't help but wonder, What ever happened to these people?

And sure enough, not an hour later I receive a random spam email from one of the other old members talking about some show she's gonna be in!

And a few hours after that, I crazily, randomly run into another one of the old members on the street!

Maybe not such a wonderful day, per se, but definitely one of the weirder ones.

Raccoon City Welcomes You.

Size: L
Where: eBay seller



Why: Love the cheesy retro "civic"-type design, colors, and font, plus the zombie silhouettes are priceless.

Comment: I originally thought this would be one of those "2%" shirts, where only 2% of the people who saw it would "get" it, but everyone who's seen it seems to get it right away. Or maybe it's just that I only hang around with a "certain type" of people.

I sure am using a lot of "quotation marks" in this post.

Nassau, Bahamas.

Size: L
Where: Old Navy



Why: It was on sale.

Comment: I've been in bed all day nursing a cold, so wanted to post something that reminded me of warm, happy, healthy days in the sunshine.



It's not the most exciting shirt, but I like the colors.

I'll try to post something a bit more interesting tomorrow.

Sparkle Motion.

Size: L
Where: Josie and Gypsy got this for me for my birthday a few years back. I think it's originally from Cafepress.



Why: Sometimes people doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Comment: Now I have a shirt to show everyone that they need never doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Inside.

Size: L
Where: Oddica



Why: Just look at it!

Comment: Seriously, just look at it! On design alone this shirt has the potential to be one of THE great all-time t-shirts.

But it's not.

Why, you ask?

It's the shirt itself. First of all, the pale-baby-robin's-egg blue does not look good on me. It doesn't look good on ANYone, unless you're still crawling around on all fours, wearing a diaper, and just now graduating to solid foods. But enough about last night.

Second of all, the shirt is very thin. Like so thin that when you put it on, the shirt changes color. And do you really want to know what pale-baby-robin's-egg blue turns into when you light it from behind with flesh-pink? Do you?

And lastly, perhaps related to its thinness, the shirt wrinkles like a Stanford professor's brow at the sheer edge of the universe. And if you know me, and if you've seen any of the other pictures on this blog, you know I don't care about wrinkles. At all. So it would have to be pretty bad for ME to mention it. Seriously, it wrinkles if you blow on it. It wrinkles if you look too hard it. It's probably wrinkling right now, as you're looking at the pictures.

So yeah: one of the all-time great designs, yes. One of the all-time great shirts, no.

Gravitation.

Size: L
Where: Right Stuf store (I think)



Why: I wanted a Gravitation shirt.

Comment: In general, I much prefer shirts that don't just have the name of the show written across the front. I originally wanted to get the one that was supposed to look like a Bad Luck tour shirt, but I found it a bit chibi, a bit cheesy. I saw this one and thought the image of Shuichi Shindo and Eiri Yuki to be fairly iconic. The looks on both their faces (especially Eiri's) are priceless, and pretty much sums up the entire series right there.



And of course, the tagline on back. [sigh]

I'd still like to make an English language live-action adaptation of this series for television. 10 hours long, stretched out over five nights (or ten, if the network insists). I've got it all worked out and cast and everything. Ask me about it sometime.

Air Kauai.

Size: L
Where: Kauai



Why: Seemed like a nice souvenir for the tour we took.

Comment: Hawaii week (did ya notice??) concludes with this cool shirt from the Air Kauai helicopter tour. The tour's a bit pricey but awesome and I thought worth every penny. It was my first helicopter ride. Kauai's gorgeous. Someday I will get around to going through all the photos I took on that trip and put them up on my Flickr. Until then I've got this shirt.



If I remember correctly, I originally wanted the shirt in a minty green-ish color, but they were out of my size. In retrospect, however, I believe I came away with the correct choice.

Dive Kauai.

Size: L
Where: Kauai



Why: I don't dive myself (heck, I barely swim!), but I'm a sucker for a nice ringer-t, and this one is exceptionally comfortable and soft.



Comment: The back of the shirt has a nice little map of the beaches (and, presumably, good diving points) of Kauai, including those on nearby Niihau, Hawaii's famous "Forbidden Island". Which I think is kind of mean. Would any divers actually even be able to get to the Forbidden Island? It being, you know, forbidden and all?

Red Earth Road Warrior.

Size: M
Where: Kauai

Why: I'd been looking for a nice red dirt/earth shirt, and this one had a giant embroidered chicken on it.



Comment: There are conflicting stories as to what exactly the deal is with all the chickens on Kauai - some will tell you that they were all freed from farms during a hurricane, others will tell you that imported mongooses were able to take care of the chickens on the other islands while the mongooses intended for Kauai never reached land because one of them bit the hand of the dockworker through the crate as it was being unloaded and he accidentally dropped them into the ocean. Whatever the real story is, Kauai is overrun with wild chickens. Seriously. They're everywhere. You can't turn around or walk more than 40 seconds without tripping over one, or having one trip over you. They're pretty cool, and actually more than a little bit scary.

I read that they've been dying off in droves the last couple years. At first people suspected that they were being poisoned, but I believe the consensus was reached that their population had simply reached the point where something like this just naturally happens. I haven't been keeping up with the story, so I don't know if any new theory has been proposed, or any cause discovered.

Like the wild chickens, red dirt (or red earth) shirts can also be found all over Kauai, and all over Hawaii. They're shirts that have been dyed with the naturally occurring red dirt found all over Kauai and the other islands. The resulting color, as you can see, is as deep and earthy as it is vibrant and rich.

The thing bleeds like a motherf*er though. I handwashed it the first time, I was so afraid that it would turn all my other clothes burnt orange in the wash. I figured I'd do this the first few times until the color set and stopped bleeding, then I could just chuck it in the machine with everything else.

It's been 2 1/2 years, and the thing still bleeds just as bad as the first time.

I don't know that the color would actually come off on all my other clothes. I don't really want to find out.

Waikiki Beach.

Size: L
Where: Oahu



Why: Why not?

Comment: It's not the most exciting shirt in the drawer, but I like it. Something about the blues and pale yellows against the white background just soothes the soul. It's also a shirt that rewards close inspection for details -- sure, everyone can spot the sailboats and may recognize Diamond Head in the distance, but look at the way the designers express the faraway mist, or the reflection of the sun on the water.

So yes, it's just a cheesy tourist shirt. But I happen to think it's an especially nice one.

Maui 07-08.

Size: L
Where: Maui



Why: I like shirts with place names and years.

Comment: I got this shirt in 2007, and had to wait all the way until 2009 for it to be cool.

Manhattan Mayhem.

Size: L
Where: Gotham Girls Roller Derby



Why: I loved the electric orange color, plus it's the Manhattan team. Where I'm from! Represent! (Do the kids still say that? "Represent"?)

Comment: I got this shirt at a bout between the Bronx Gridlock and the Brooklyn Bombshells that Dagfinn and I went to a few summers back. We had a CRAZY fun time, and I strongly urge everyone to go check it out.



I remember the bout we went to was out in Brooklyn someplace. For a long time the league has been having problems finding places to skate. After a tenure in Brooklyn, I believe they moved up to Harlem for a bit before settling at Hunter College. And now from the looks of it they're back in Brooklyn, at LIU.

The problems they've had finding a place to skate, I think, is indicative of the struggle facing the sport, and these athletes, in general. They've all got a supercool punk, DIY ethic, and they need our support (both moral and financial - they are a non-profit organization that takes donations)...and attendance! Seriously, it is super crazy fun and the only reason more people don't know about it is because more people don't know about it, if that makes any sense.

You can even try out, if you think you've got the stones.

Samurai Champloo.

Size: L
Where: seller at New York Comic Con 2006



Why: What why? It's a cool show, and I liked the shirt.

Comment: Posting this shirt in honor of the fact that Vampire Cowboys' new show Soul Samurai begins tonight (and I've got tickets!).



Samurai Champloo was Shinichiro Watanabe's follow-up to his seminal Cowboy Bebop. While not as widely seen nor as universally adored as Bebop, the show still had a lot going for it - the trademark mix of pathos and wild action-fun, an awesome soundtrack, and a unique combination of Edo period setting and hip-hop culture and attitude that, while self-consciously historically inaccurate, just gave the whole enterprise an irrestistable joie-de-vivre.



Seriously, how can you not love this?:



"Champloo", to my understanding, is an old Okinawan word that means "crazy mix-up". Think sukiyaki or a nice big breakfast fry-up. Also, to my ear it sounds close enough to the Korean word "jjamppong" to make me think that there could exist a common root, somewhere.

And in keeping with the food theme, I'm actually kind of pissed off because, looking at these pictures, I'm seeing for the first time that I've managed to drip some giant, digusting oil stains all along the front of the shirt. I don't think it's all that noticeable on the shirt itself. Or that's what I'll keep telling myself, anyway.

Horse Country.

Size: L
Where: Kentucky



Why: Tim got this for me from when he went home to Kentucky. He said it reminded him of Napoleon Dynamite. I kind of agree.

Comment: The horses on the shirt "pop" a lot more in these pictures than they do on the shirt itself. On the shirt they seem a bit faded, a bit faux-vintagey. It's probably the flash.

I like the goofy "Moe" haircut on the big horse. And am I crazy, or does the one jumping left look like a unicorn?

kitaaa!!!!!

Size: M
Where: JBOX.com



Why: No actual reason. I just thought it was cute. These cats obviously know where the party is.

Comment: These cats actually originate from the elaborate ASCII art popular among users of old school, early-Internet message boards, such as Japan's famous 2ch BBS. You can do a google search or read Densha Otoko / Train Man for some really cool examples. So this trio of cats, who seem to always just pop up wherever the party is (necktie-as-headband? COME ON) are collectively known as "Mona Neko", "Neko" being the Japanese word for cat and "Mona" being short for the Japanese expression "Omae mo na!", which roughly translates to "Same to you, buddy!", a popular expression in Japanese message board flame wars. And adding to the party atmosphere, the katakana on the shirt spells, "Kitaaa!!!!!", which means "YES!" Not as in "yes or no", but more in an "Ohmigod! OHMIGOD! YES! YES!! YES!!!" sort of sense.

There is no other shirt on earth that more clearly conveys the idea that the party is, indeed, over here.

Tigerella. (1)

Size: L
Where: Shmat Records



Why: Yvonne from Tigerella is a good friend from grad school, but I would have gotten the shirt regardless because they were a great band, plus I love the "box kittens."

Comment: Sadly, the members of Tigerella have all by now moved on to different things, but Yvonne is still a good friend, I still enjoy their CDs, Shmat Records lives on, and yes, I still wear the shirt.

Duncan Sheik - White Limousine. (1)

Size: L
Where: the store at duncansheik.com



Why: the site store was having a 2-for-1 closeout sale to finish out their stock of shirts from the White Limousine tour. I liked the soft gray color and the simple design.

Comment: I may be biased as a HUGE Duncan Sheik fan, but "White Limousine" is a great album, both severely underheard and underrated, and as relevant a commentary on American life in the mid '00's as you're likely to find in the milieu of popular music. Or something.

Check it out if you haven't.