Long-sleeved shirt, red.

Size: L?
Where: I want to say K-Mart, but honestly I have no idea.

Why: Who knows? It's red and it has long sleeves.

Comment: I bought this one at the same time that I bought the matching blue one that I showed you earlier. I do this thing sometimes where I'll buy two of basically the same thing, just because. I don't know what it is, like paying tribute to the inherent symmetry of the world, or something. I think it's mainly because I'm lazy, and if one of them gets a hole in it or something I won't have to worry about going all the way to the store to get another one.

Which reminds me of a site that Laura sent me the other morning, Manpacks - a sort of "subscription" service that will send you socks, undershirts, and underwear in the mail. Because you might forget. I find the whole thing hilarious yet also very useful, and somehow, oddly poignant.

Whisper House.

Size: L
Where: Shan got it for me when she went to see a performance of Whisper House in San Diego.



Why: Both Shan and I are huge Duncan Sheik fans and had gone to see a staged reading of this show at Vassar College last summer. We discussed, vaguely, maybe going to San Diego to see the full production in the winter, but this and that and I wound up not going while Shan wound up doing so.

Comment: Not having seen the actual, full production myself, I can't say whether or not Shan and I are in full agreement about what did and did not "work" about the show. What we do agree on, however, is that the image on this shirt (also used on posters, postcards, the program, official press, etc.) is...pretty bad. Really really pretty bad. When we first saw it on the website, we assumed that it was just some cheesy, stock, placeholder image, something photoshopped together over lunch by a temp (and not even the good temp, but the new one) just so that the website would have something there until the official images came in. Imagine our dismayed amazement as the weeks and months went by, and in the end it turned out that this was the official image?


The Old Globe Theatre logo on the back of the shirt.

Hawaii.

Size: M
Where: ABC Store in Waikiki



Why: I liked it.

Comment: The shirt features the official state seal of Hawaii with the state motto: "Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono" ("The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness"). There appears to be a little confusion as to where the saying came from: most people agree that the words were first spoken by King Kamehameha III in 1843 after a failed British takeover, but there are also those who believe that the words were spoken by Queen Ke'opuolani in 1825, as she was being baptized into Christianity.

I also think it's kind of weird that the shirt doesn't mention Lanai, Molokai, or Niihau in the list of islands above the seal.

Punkature.

Size: M
Where: House of Toth



Why: Another one that Matty gave to me. Matty got it directly from the artist (John Toth), who also cuts his hair.



Comment: "Punkature" appears to be a reference to a famous Vivienne Westwood collection/movement/philosophy - my knowledge of Vivienne Westwood actually begins and ends with the first 5 volumes of Ai Yazawa's Nana. Amazingly, even with that limited knowledge, once I learned the connection I could totally "see" it, in the b&w and the corset logo.



Check out all the different shirts and posters at House of Toth's zazzle store - some pretty amazing stuff in there.

In Case of Zombies.

Size: M
Where: threadless



Why: It made me smile.



Comment: This shirt is both entertaining AND educational. Even if they did misspell "spatial".

I don't recall ever seeing the "move amongst them undetected" thing until Shaun of the Dead. Can anyone give me a historical precedence?


Tag.

The silvery-gray color of the shirt actually isn't my favorite, particularly when set against the fluorescent green zombie-skin, but the cool design more than makes up for any deficiencies in that regard.