I give up. This is going to be yet another apparel post, so yeah, I guess this is going to be a Wearables Blog and you all can just kiss my ass and deal.

T-shirt of the moment: My Swedish shirt, blue, with three yellow crowns and the letters SWE.
Sincerity Level: 100%. I love Sweden, and I love this shirt.

So Elephant Larry, my sketch comedy group, has a sketch in which an employee has been wearing his novelty New Year's 2004 glasses for an excessively long period of time (yeah, I know, it sounds very funny describing it), and his boss berates him with a speech in which he says it's like "...wearing a hat that says Planet Earth or a t-shirt that says what month it is." Of course, tonight, on my way home I see a kid wearing a hooded sweatshirt that says Planet Earth and I was amused. :) Granted, it's not a hat, but whatever...on a related note, several Elephant Larry members have taken to wearing shirts that say what month it used to be, since we're no longer doing the show and the shirts used to be props. If I didn't know them and I saw them out on the street, I don't know what I'd think. I'd probably blog about it. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for Mr. Planet Earth, like that it's some totally awesome brand that I haven't heard of. He's probably cutting edge and I'm a total tool.

I was telling Geoff (of Elephant Larry) earlier this evening, as we were sitting on the subway, that I like to recontextualize people's clothing. Case in point: we were staring at a gawky, awkwardly-posed man who was wearing a black shirt that said "Salem, Massachusetts" on it and had an image of a huge cat head, capitalizing on the witchy reputation of Salem. On him - that shirt looked achingly sincere and a little embarrassing. Give that same shirt to a guy with better posture and a few less years and all of a sudden it's cheekier and could totally work. Granted, I'm not a fan of insincere t-shirts (I try to be able to stand behind the sentiment of whatever shirt I'm wearing - I'm awfully post-ironic these days) but as far as fun "place" shirts go, it could be fun. I also do the same thing with sizing. A shirt in XXL that depicts a tribute to Salt Lake City, Utah is nowhere near as cool as a shirt in Medium depicting the same thing.

And just to wrap up, I'll just say that my t-shirt collection is now entirely out of control. It's moved into three drawers now in my 6-drawer dresser and as I was doing laundry last night, it was about 60-70% shirts. I mean, I wouldn't have it any other way, since I love my t-shirts, but goddamn if I'm not amassing quite a bunch.

Here's a tip for all three of you reading this: if you're faced with the choice between buying 8 navel oranges for $1.99 or 6 navel oranges for $1.99 do NOT buy the cheaper ones, because the quality difference is so dramatic as to make you curse your everloving cheapness. The 6for199 variety are juicy, delicious, sweet, and come right off the peel with no problem. The 8for199 are not as sweet, generic and take a generous amount of bitter peel with them as you rip into your orange wedge.

Consider this your last warning. I shall not tell you again.

Okay, I give up. I guess this blog is gonna turn into nothing but posting about T-Shirts. I'll just call it Me!-Shirts or something similarly stupid, and call it a day.

1) Girl, on her way to school, wearing a "Do I Look Like A Fucking People Person To You?" shirt, which just seemed to me to be so New York. Certainly, there's more cheerfully accepted public "profanity" in this city (I certainly don't remember any "Welcome To California! Now Fuck Off!" shirts from back home), so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...but still...to school? I feel like even in the NYC school system, there might be a problem with that. And it's not even a clever shirt. It more seems like controversy for no reason. If there even would be a controversy.

2) Guy, wearing a "Cash is King" shirt. There's something funny about a kid who's obviously not doing anything particularly lucrative wearing this shirt. Unless, of course, it was a Johnny Cash shirt. Which would actually be kinda clever. But, upon refelction, the shirt was yellow with green writing, and any Johnny Cash shirt worth it's salt should really only be in black & white. I'm just saying.

So on the way to work this morning, I spotted a snipe poster that was advertising Metro, the new free daily newspaper for New York (competing, I guess, with AMNY). And it's slogan, in big shouty letters, was: I HATE NEWSPAPERS THAT THINK I HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. Oh. You're right. I am such a busy guy, that I can't personally figure out what news is important to me by using the filter that's my brain -- instead, I should rely on dumbed-down AP articles and headlines so that I can not only finish my newspaper on my morning commute but also get nothing but blipvert versions of news articles. Now I can feel smug and self-satisfied because "I read the news! Like a real adult!" and get my big, overpriced coffee, march into work and be an Important Guy. No. Wrong. Sigh. It just makes me angry the way that if you're busy everything needs to be condensed. There's this sense that if you have a limited amount of time you should do lots of things at a compromised quality, and that will somehow make up for it. Listen. If you really want the news, you need to fucking make it a priority and not pretend like you're a newspaper-reading guy that somehow doesn't have time for actual news.

It just feels like another step in the cranking up of everyday life. Just as I'm trying to slow mine down and take some breaths now and then, somebody steps right in and says "NO! You don't have time! Go faster!" Of course, I do live in the New York, and I barely get through the Sunday Times in a week, but still. Get off my back, you speedhounds.

I love love love tattoos, because it's so endlessly fascinating how people want you to immediately perceive them -- because no matter what people say, the symbolism behind a visible tattoo is probably the first communication of any sort you're going to get from a person. So. This morning, on the subway, I saw a guy, close-cropped hair, all black expensive-looking clothing, good shoes -- and around his left bicep was a ring of friggin' dollar signs. Dollar signs. It's like he was saying "No, really, I may look like I'm all about money, but really, you know, I'm all about money. Did I mention I'm all about money?" If he ever wants to prove that he's not some shallow asshole, this dude's got an uphill battle.

Not to keep posting about t-shirts, but...okay. So I was walking to my Elephant Larry Emergency Meeting (don't worry, it was all about good stuff) and I was passing through St. Mark's Place, where all the tchotchke stores are. Now, if you don't know, these stores basically exist to fill your every novelty/pseudo-rebellious/pseudo-offensive need, from funny sunglasses and wigs to skull rings to shirts celebrating punk rock or the idea that you actually fucked the t-shirt observer's mom. In any case, I usually casually browse the t-shirts as I walk down the street, never really seeing anything new, but this one caught my eye. It was a black t-shirt with the statue of liberty on it, and it said "Welcome to America. Now Speak English." Okay. Fine. Not the most friendly shirt in the world, but the hitch is that every single last one of these novelty are owned by immigrants.
And granted, they do speak english, but damn if that shirt really isn't anti-immigrant at its core. And it's being sold by recent immigrants. I just can't quite imagine the storeowner perusing a catalog (or however they go about picking shirts that say "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck)and being all "Yes. That's the shirt I would like to sell in my store." Curious.

So I saw a girl today, wearing a Von Dutch hat AND a tank top that said Von Bitch on it. It blew my mind. What was she trying to say? She seemed to be commenting on the ubiquity of Von Dutch at the same as she was perpetuating that ubiquity. Of course, I realize that Von Bitch might be a little vague and that most people, upon seeing it, are like "Oh, I get it. It's funny because it's like Von Dutch but dirty." But still -- come on, people. How often do you wear two garments, one of which is making fun of the other? Either this girl is the most self-aware person on the planet, or the least.