Do you have t-shirts you like so much you can't ever wear them?
In the mean time, I thought I'd share some of my favorites with you.
The picture: As the wife (at the time) of a psychologist, I had to have this tshirt when I saw it. It comes in many languages: we have Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish. You can get the poster at Amazon (see below).
Kliban guitar-playing cat sings about mousies
I gave one of these away a long time ago and I kind of regret it. Famous poem:
Love to eat them mousies...
Mousies what I love to eat!
Bite they little heads off,
Nibble on they tiny feet!
I Am My Own Most Vexing Problem
This t-shirt was created by Caroline, a fellow Yale Slavic Chorus alumna studying to be a Lutheran minister.
It is adapted from a famous quote by Reinhold Niebuhr, the first line of his book The Nature and Destiny of Man :
Man has always been his most vexing problem.
"I am my own most vexing problem" at Zazzle
Caroline only made one of these shirts, for herself, so I am making myself one at Zazzle. You can too. You know, don't you, that you can customize Zazzle items: change the typeface and typesize, the kind of tshirt (or even choose a different item to put the slogan on), the color? Go try it, it's fun, and after you mess with it, you don't have to buy it!Funny Halloween t-shirt at Zazzle: "Zombies eat brains - you're safe."
It's a little bit mean but it made me giggle.
We're Not Too Smart, But We Can Lift Heavy Things
Motto of Bob Simchock, owner of Simchock Stone Masonry in Durham
I've been emailing Bob for a couple of years, asking him if I could please buy one of his company t-shirts. He isn't printing them any more, so I put one on Zazzle and you can buy it:"Don't Worry, Be Crabby"
A boyfriend found me one of these online when I saw one in the street and was just dying for it. Now it's lost, and I hardly ever wore it because it was "too good." I guess I could buy another one but it wouldn't be the same. Crabby Bill's Seafood "Don't Worry Be Crabby" t-shirts.
"The Bob Principle"
I had a yellowed ad cut out from the Wall Street Journal for a decade...
I simply love this phrase and made it into a t-shirt (you can buy one at my Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart Zazzle store). We have a crabby family member (NOT named Bob) who makes us all miserable because the whole world is her enemy. This Bob Principle soothes us. (You can get it on a coffee cup or a greeting card or whatever you like.) "Pirates for Peace" t-shirt, spotted at Wesleyan University
This girl is a friend of my son's and she kindly let me take a picture of her t-shirt (with her in it) on the first day of school their freshman year. I sure want one. The most important t-shirt I ever had: "RELAX!"
This one was given to me at the Spoleto Festival by members of the Solstice Assembly, when we were performing there. I actually think I cut the picture off it when it wore out, and that picture is somewhere in my attic, and I even went just now to look for it, but you don't want to know from my attic...
You can only see a tiny bit of the t-shirt in this picture. It is a rock, and on top of the rock, a snake frozen into an absolutely rigid pole parallel to the ground. It has a very worried look on its face... I guess they thought I was worrying about them too much... Maybe I'll make a copy of the picture someday and post it to zazzle.
How to rescue a beloved old t-shirt
Too awful to wear, too loved to throw away...
The shirt above is full of memories, even though it was a rag I couldn't throw it away. So I cut out the picture - and lost it. Today I found the picture again. I ironed it flat, cut a piece of masonite the size of the picture plus a 1" frame which I may use some day...
... then I used my favorite glue, Yes! glue, and painted the stiff glue onto the masonite and flattened the t-shirt panel onto the glue and wrapped it around and glued the last bit of it to the back.
Next I'll staple a wire onto the back of the masonite and hang it on the wall.
Nice Price Books t-shirt of Elvis Presley as Ben-Hur
Nice Price Books always used to have this great deal: after you had bought $10 worth of used books five times, you could get a t-shirt! They don't do it any more, but they had a great run with this promotion, and they had a wonderful graphic designer.I'm happy that I still have a bunch of their old pseudo-retro things in the house, but I don't like "beefy t" type t-shirts so I never wear this one.
Goddes nuttes, wher is myn abacus?
I think this shirt is hysterical.
Do you think the t-shirts people wear are intended to define them when they go out among strangers? Or do you buy your tshirts for your friends to admire?You can buy this shirt from jurgen9 at Zazzle (see some items from his store below).
From Asheville NC: Pirates in Rafts
When Hannah and I spent a few days in Asheville NC, we went rafting - and we saw this shirt at Huck Finn Rafting Adventures in Hot Springs, NC. I grin every time I think about it.
A de la Vega t-shirt: fish with umbrella
I'm not sure, but I am guessing this t-shirt might be by James de la Vega, a New York street artist. His website is unavailable.This fish with an umbrella captures perfectly those many times when trying to protect yourself from something is futile, because whatever it is, it's all around you.
My son's favorite: Puffin by Greenpeace
This shirt was absolutely worn to a nubbin when my son reluctantly pinned it on his wall because it was too small for him. When I first bought it, it hung to the floor on him, he was so young.Greenpeace used to offer wonderful animal t-shirts for donations, but I couldn't find them on the website just now.
My donkey Jethro has a t-shirt at Zazzle.com!
It says: "Don't Tread On Me," a great slogan for everybody.
"The Fabulous Mr. Fixit"
My dad gave this to my son on one of his very infrequent visits about 15 years ago and Ezra wore it until it was really stained. My dad was extremely handy, I guess he was hoping Ez would turn out that way too. Let's say the jury is still out. Yale Women's Slavic Chorus Reunion t-shirt, 2000
The first time I took my daughter Hannah to a Yale Slavic Chorus reunion, she was 11 years old. We stayed in a dorm room full of empty vodka bottles (she later told me, "Ma, that's not so unusual") and froze in the windy streets.The second time I took her, the year this t-shirt was sold, she was 16 years old. I had taught her the songs and she sang in the chorus. I later found out the current "Slavs" in the chorus had thought Hannah must be "an exceptionally well-preserved alumna," because what else could she be?
"Hetaka-pataka-dum-dum-dum" is part of one of our Bulgarian songs. You can listen to other such songs on my lens on the Laduvane Songbook.
Yale Slavic Chorus Reunion t-shirt, 2005
Well, my daughter ended up going to Yale herself, and not only that, she became a member and then the conductor ("pitch") of the chorus herself. AND if that wasn't delectable enough - she was conductor the year of the reunion!I had the unparalleled pleasure of watching her deal with a lot of opinionated older women saying, "But that's not how we did it in OUR time." She used the Miss Manners approach, blandly saying, "Yes, yes, thank you, that's nice," and then going on to do it just as she had intended all along.
Five years later (well, actually four, but that's another story), she was an alum just like me. We attended together and had a great time.
The famous "Chicken Boy" t-shirt
Chicken Boy has his own website. I learned about him from my bandmate Ken Bloom's sister when I was out in Los Angeles playing in the shadow of the Hollywood Bowl (another story).Chicken Boy was a really, really ugly huge statue on top of a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles. Los Angelinos have a very different view of what's historically significant than most of us - when Chicken Boy was no longer wanted at his original location, a few loyal fans took him away. His body lay in Ellen Bloom's back yard for years, while his head was in the Chicken Boy museum. He's now been put back together, I believe, and has a merchandise line which includes postcards and socks.
Engrish makes for great t-shirts
I've noticed in quite a few foreign countries that some people think it's cool to wear shirts with English on them, but sometimes the English is more peculiar than is absolutely necessary. As in this case? What does it all mean, do you think?
Eno River Festival T-Shirt
Over the years I had about a dozen of these, all different.
Each year the Eno Festival features a different animal. The shirts used to be incredibly beautiful (like this one) but they lost their graphic designer and now they're a bit more prosaic. I played at the Eno Festival, which happens over the Fourth of July weekend, almost every year for decades. We play more rarely now but always enjoy it - there are crafts and parades and many stages and food and it's beautiful and in a good cause - the preservation of natural lands along the Eno River. The park itself is in Durham, NC.I just noticed that there's a picture of my ex- dangling our crabby, noisy, NOISY baby off his arm wearing a similar Eno shirt in a different color. By the way, no babies were harmed in the making of this picture and we all three can still laugh about it.
A Hatteras lighthouse t-shirt
There's nothing special about this shirt, there are millions like it. But it's special to me because it reminds me of my favorite relative, Mary Jane Hodges, my aunt, my mother's twin sister, who lived right next to the Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton for many years. All that lay between her home and the lighthouse was the field where the Coastguard had some sort of water spurting into the air, she called it "Versailles." I miss her like crazy. "How Are You Feeling Today?" at Amazon
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog tshirts at Zazzle
Funny t-shirts at Flickr
Similar lenses by other folks.
I'll probably be adding more shirts to this lens. What's YOUR favorite t-shirt?
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ElleDeeEsse
Nov 4, 2009 @ 3:31 pm | delete
- I totally understand your dilemma and on many ocasions over the years have wrangled with what to do with old favourites that have been loved to death but the motif is still screaming "don't abandon me!"
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alteredkat
Sep 2, 2009 @ 7:56 am | delete
- Some cool and funny t-shirts here! I love funny t-shirts...great advertising billboard too!
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rms Aug 25, 2009 @ 4:16 pm | delete
- I've got t-shirts that I don't want to ruin like my Trueblood t-shirt that my son bought me for my birthday this year. I've gotten some other really cute ones at Threadless.com.
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mbgphoto Aug 25, 2009 @ 10:49 am | delete
- Great selections of T-shirts! Fun lens.
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Some of my other lenses
by ChapelHillFiddler
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