So Many Shirts and Only One Body
Where I chronicle the multitudinous array of t-shirts of various pictorials and witty sayings. Also posts of wonderment!
"Put A Shrimp On the Barbie!"
I always thought of Australia as some sort of strange land where winter occurs in the middle of the calendar year and the water spirals differently and it used to initially house criminals and weird creatures like a mammal that actually lay eggs. Oh, wait... it actually is the case. Australia is a dandy place. You get to see Ayer's rock and scoff like an unwanted tourists, "wot? Is that it, then? Well, I'm gonna get me a can of Foster's."
The Land Down Under also hosts artists like Torso, which I'm pretty sure we posted before. The mates at Torso has a better navigation layout but still not enough t-shirts. So buy shirts from them and they'll print more new ones. That's the circle of life, see?
You might also remember People Like Us (again, pretty sure we posted about them before). now they are in the business much longer than Torso, thus their large and eclectic line of shirts. Their summer lineup for 2008 is up. Buy a shirt, save on suntan lotion (though, beware of a farmer's tan).
But you know what I'm waiting for? Pardon My Hindi's new lineup. Their last announcement was "New Shirts Coming Very Soon." This was August 2007. How soon is PMH's soon? Are they living in another dimension where time flows differently?
Labels: new, not made in america
T-Shirts That Will Get You Punch In the Face #5
What I Got - You're So Famous
If you ask me (and you should because I'm a know-it-all), being famous isn't what it's cracked up to be. I read an article about how today's Hollywood stars would dressed and you see images of Leo in a frumpy sweater and baseball cap or Elijah looking like an old lesbian.
I used to remember Cary Grant always looking debonair in a suit or Edie Sedgewick looking mod and smoking a cigarette... OMG, the woman makes cancer sexy.
It used to be that being fashion meant working for it but thanks to the Internet and super-rich people without proper parenting skills, you get your Hiltons and Dohertys parading the red carpet.
Their fifteen minutes has dragged on for infinitum.
While many tries to fight against the tsunami of famedom, You Are So Famous seeks to join them. While taking the piss out of them at the same time.
This incognito-looking package I got from them held my key to being famous.
What? No blackberry?
Anyway, I like to show you their promotional items. This is their promo card.
This is the back of it, where you suddenly lose the power of speech, you can still depend on your dexterous fingers to send texts to your peeps on how cool the shirt is.
Now here's what I didn't understand. Famous is a new site that sells t-shirt so, obviously the key to bringing in sales is getting the word out. One of the true-and-tried method are stickers. You get them when you receive your shirt from the company, you know, so you can spread the word by becoming an informal street teammate and deface government property with the stickers. This kind of advertising is almost free and most of the work is done for you.
The sticker above is the only one I got. And they chose to affix it to a plastic bag that used to house my t-shirt?
I appreciate that Famous prints on Alternative Apparel. The material is soft as though the secret ingredient for the softness are flayed baby angels' skins. I think people should print on more materials like Alternative Apparel.
I also love the slogan. It's witty without being too smug about it. It's one of them "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" situations that you're either in on the joke or not. Instead of an outright rant against La-La-Land superficiality, Famous undermines it by further exposing it to such points of incredulity. And therein lies the joke.
The only concern is a backlash if certain phrases are repeated too often. (I swear I'll bite into the jugular of the next person who quotes "it's niiiice.") As long as Famous continues infusing their own spin to celebrities' sound bites, their fifteen minutes will go a long way.
Labels: alternative apparel, review
What I Got - Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Let's rap about Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (AAMR).
The Philadelphia store takes its namesake from German cultural critic Walter Benjamin's essay title. If you happen to be forced to take art criticism as a minor (like me), you'll know that Benjamin is concern with how mass reproduction could affect the "aura" of the art.
For example, is seeing a picture of the Mona Lisa the same as seeing the real McCoy in the Lourve? Do you still get the same experience? Does copying art change its "artfulness?"
So this was what I got, which I gathered, someone else out there already has.
They probably have the same press kits that I have...
... which contained the same CD of their catalogs or the same press releases or the same artists portfolio of Alex Lukas or Thom Lessner, whose shirt that I'll get into in a minute.
The only thing that was individualized was this lovely card addressed to me though someone did point out to me that the letters of GyroWorldWide (the marketing geniuses behind AAMR) logo is an anagram for ORGY. Sure I could have come up with ROY G. but that wouldn't be funny.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. The shirt.
This is it.
Some of you might be wondering what's the deal with the Rod Stewart tranny? Well, ignoramus, prepare to be schooled. This is an amalgamation of Patrick Nagel and Diamond Dave. It's Lessner's tribute to the 80's. Sure, I might get puzzled stares from the public eye and some might wrongly attribute the person to Axel Rose or a fat [insert any hair metal musician] but that doesn't take away the specialness of the shirt.
What I found weird was the tags of the shirt. You have the AAMR tag sewn onto an American Apparel shirt with the tag still attached... it doesn't seem to mesh. One of them needs to go.
In conclusion, I love the shirt design. Lessner makes pretty cool shit. And you can see from the rest of AAMR's lineup, that the artistic creativity is being pushed to new boundaries. I mean, have you not seen this and not want to punch a hole into space and time and just retrieve the shirt for your ownself?
Not only is AAMR prudent in who they get to design the shirts, they're also professional in terms of getting their name out. The press kit that I got from them tells me that they know what they're doing, it tells you that they're cool to do business with.
And in a time where t-shirt sites are a dime and a dozen, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is one of the few sites that manages to retain its "aura."
Labels: american apparel, music, review
This incognito-looking package I got from them held my key to being famous.
What? No blackberry?
This is the back of it, where you suddenly lose the power of speech, you can still depend on your dexterous fingers to send texts to your peeps on how cool the shirt is.
Now here's what I didn't understand. Famous is a new site that sells t-shirt so, obviously the key to bringing in sales is getting the word out. One of the true-and-tried method are stickers. You get them when you receive your shirt from the company, you know, so you can spread the word by becoming an informal street teammate and deface government property with the stickers. This kind of advertising is almost free and most of the work is done for you.
I appreciate that Famous prints on Alternative Apparel. The material is soft as though the secret ingredient for the softness are flayed baby angels' skins. I think people should print on more materials like Alternative Apparel.
So this was what I got, which I gathered, someone else out there already has.
They probably have the same press kits that I have...
... which contained the same CD of their catalogs or the same press releases or the same artists portfolio of Alex Lukas or Thom Lessner, whose shirt that I'll get into in a minute.
