365 T-shirts - the reasoning

This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.

I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.

I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.

When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.

The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.

I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.

Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)

Saturday, October 26, 2013

T-shirt #219: Brooks White Sleeveless with Star Trek shirt and patches


T-shirt #219: Brooks White Sleeveless with Star Trek shirt and patches

Damn weather. It's time to start wearing the warm shirts. Today's T-shirt is a sleeveless, moisture-wicking, athletic shirt made by my favorite shoe company: BROOKS (more on this subject in a minute). The shirt I am wearing over the top of the Brooks shirt is a very warm, chamois shirt made of plush, 100% cotton on which I had stitched (or has stitched for me; I do not sew) two United Federation of Planets patches and a very nice Starship Enterprise patch.

The patches on shirts thing goes back to my senior year of high school and early years of college. I like the look of the patches on the shirts, which convey an official feel, as if I am wearing a uniform or some gear issues by Star Fleet or whatever is featured on the patch. I have several different shirts with various patches. Look for more to be featured in weeks to come.

Eventually, I wore out the shirts on which the patches had been stitched (though one still bears elbow patches attempting to increase its longevity), and then for a long time, I did not have any shirts featuring geeky patches to wear. Once I hit my thirties, and was still single, I was a little hesitant about letting my geek freak flag fly, and so I did not put the patches on new shirts and return to wearing such geek-wear outside the house.

Geek was not as cool in the 1980s or 1990s as it has become today. Geeks had to grow up and mainstream geek. Once comic books were not kid stuff any more, once Star Trek fandom was not fringe culture and open to ridicule, then being geeky became cool. Long before Big Bang Theory made the nerdy and geeky thing so popular, long before Comic Con was a massive popular culture event with a whole issue of Entertainment Weekly devoted to it, some of us were geeking it up, though somewhat in secret.

I addressed this "closet geek" thing in T-shirt #21 and shirts you will not see me wear in public. I also wrote about "the closet" back in T-shirt #166. In regards specifically to Star Trek geekiness and hiding that Trekkie (or Trekker but who are we kidding with the name game here?) rabid fan thing, You may recall that I devoted three of my first fifteen shirts to Star Trek (see list below).

I first addressed this issue about hiding my inner geek all the way back in

T-Shirt #4: Original Star Trek - Command - Gold.

This is another one of those times in which I am in favor of copying and re-presentation. Back in the first weeks of the blog, I had not figured out what I wanted the blog to be and how it would function, how I would present content. Check out how shirt it is! Of course, by T-shirt #13 I had figured out how to extend the content to mammoth proportions.

Monday, March 25, 2013

T-Shirt #4: Original Star Trek - Command - Gold

T-Shirt #4: Original Star Trek - Command - Gold



Star Trek! One of those Facebook ads that show up because the social web 2.0 knows I love Star Trek snared me. Now that I am married, I am a lot more comfortable showing my true geek self. Not that I was all that shy about it before I got married. But there was quite a bit of hiding my in the closet, so to speak. I think the "closet" comparison is somewhat apt, not to minimize the way the term is usually applied, which is far more serious. Now, I am more comfortable with who I am. Also , geek (or nerd, if you prefer) has become cool. I always loved these uniforms. Once the ad caught me in its trap, I sprung for the blue and red ones, too. Damn. "Now, would be a good time to beam me up, Scotty..." - 1303.25 9:25

Star Trek has been featured on the blog nine times now, counting today. The list via the Blogger links is worth re-presenting if you, dear reader, wish to perform some exploration. There's quite a variety of subjects here and have fun if you wish to visit or re-visit these. T-shirt #118 helped me write about the Trayvon Martin case and in T-shirt #131 I wrote about classic 1980s arcade games and the awesome Ready Player One.

T-Shirt #4: Original Star Trek - Command - Gold

T-shirt #11: Star Trek Science Officer

T-shirt #13: The Unlucky Red Shirt

T-shirt #39: The UFP symbol: United Federation of Planets

T-shirt #72: Science Blue STNG

T-shirt #81: Starship Enterprise Schematics

T-shirt #118: WWKD: What Would Kirk Do?

T-shirt #131: Starfleet Academy



The content on being geeky and in the geek closet would be enough content for one blog post. I am trying to limit my sometimes gargantuan content and keep things focused and limited.

However, last night I reviewed a production of "The War of the Worlds," the original radio drama from 1938, created by Orson Welles. The show was very good. Expect my review soon.

This show put me in mind of Jeff Wayne's impressive and ground-breaking, progressive rock adaptation of this HG Wells science fiction classic. I found the entire album on You Tube but can't seem to bring up the video here, so this is just the first cut. It's worth checking out. Narration was by Richard Burton.

No one would have believed that in the last years of the 19th century that human affairs where being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few have even considered the possibility of life on other planets, and yet across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

War Of The Worlds (1978) - Jeff Wayne (Disc 1)




Who's ultra geeky now, huh?

- chris tower - 1310.26 - 16:21

POSTSCRIPT - I am a Brooks shoes guy. I always wear Brooks, and now with my foot problems, I need to stay in neutral cushion shoes; Brooks makes excellent neutral cushion shoes. But I decided to make a switch to Saucony as my outdoor shoes for this season. I tend to need to change shoes once a season (every three months). I decided to give Saucony a try as it had a Goretex shoe, which is water resistant, and I had a pair of Saucony many years ago which I dearly loved.

I was assured that Saucony had returned to excellence as I had not liked their shoes at all in recent years, and so I am giving them a try. So far so good.

Here's my anal shoe thing: I have to be in shoes all the time as I have orthotics. So, I have indoor shoes, regular outdoor shoes, and several old pairs for rainy days and work outside and such. Usually when I buy a new pair, I rotate: the current indoor shoes become the new outdoor shoes, and the new shoes become the new indoor shoes.

I bought the Brooks' Glycerins recently, so I decided to keep those as the indoor shoes and move the Saucony shoes to the outdoor shoe as soon as I give them an indoor test drive to make sure I am going to like them. Test drive is almost over, and I am nearly convinced that the Saucony shoes are keepers.

Just a little extra Brooks-related content. And my ultra-geek nature hits new heights (or lows, depending on your perspective).

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