T-shirt #366, pt-1 - More on Y&R

T-shirt #366, pt-1 - More on Y&R

Reprinting from Sense of Doubt blog.

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #418 - Y&R - 11,000 Episodes

Hi Mom,

So, The Young and the Restless or better known as Y&R is celebrating 11,000 episodes as of September First (this coming Thursday).

Every time I watch Y&R, I think of you, Mom. And I am pleased to tell you that I am caught up. Often I have a huge back log of Y&R to watch. Though I have not watched Friday's (1608.26) episode yet, I am otherwise current with the show.

I often get mocked (criticized) for my Y&R fandom by people close to me, but I no longer care. I am open and leaving myself vulnerable to discuss this nearly daily pursuit of episodic fiction that is near and dear to my heart.

Starting in 1973, we watched so many episodes of Y&R together. Even when I was away at college, The Young and the Restless  is something I watched as often as I could and that we would discuss together when you took me out to lunch.

It was our lunch time thing. For years, I would break for lunch just before 12:30, and we would eat together and watch our soaps (eventually we added The Bold and the Beautiful for a 90 minute lunch time).

When you had your bout with meningitis and were in a coma, I started playing Y&R for you in your Intensive Care room. I hoped that the familiar sounds would be soothing to you, comforting, like they are to me. We continued this practice even after you woke up. For a long time during that hospital stay, you could not talk. But we communicated as best we could, and we talked about Y&R.

Back in 2012, when Y&R celebrated 10,000 episodes (see link at end of this blog entry), we watched much of the celebration together. Checking back in my calendar, I know I spent the day with you on September 8th and again on October 2nd, which was right around the time of the 10,000th episode. We would have Y&R marathons together. I miss those.

At the rate of just about 260 episodes a year (five each week times 52 weeks is 260, but 365 - 104 is 261; 104 is the number of weekend days in a year), it's easy to see how Y&R is gearing up to celebrate its next anniversary with 1000 more episodes to reach the new landmark of 11,000. Since the 10,000th episode both you, Mom, and the grand dame of the Y&R cast, Jeanne Cooper, have passed away.

Before each episode for the past week, Y&R has been showing these interview chats with the cast as they reminisce about past stories and episodes and thank the viewership warmly for its dedication and loyalty. I was tempted to save these episodes on my DVR, but then I found that they are easily available online and so I embedded them here. I also posted the fun promo here as well.

You would have loved all this, Mom. I feel I share it all with you spiritually, but I wish I was sharing it with you physically, in person.

There are big plans for the 11,000th episode. Star Trek vet Nichelle Nichols will play Neil's mother, from whom he has been estranged for his entire run on the show. And Lee Phillip Bell, who co-created the show with her late husband Bill Bell will appear in a scene with her real-life daughter Lauralee Bell, who plays Christine Blair Williams, formerly known as "Cricket."

This is all explained here at SOAP SHE KNOWS - 11000 MILESTONE.

Y&R CELEBRATES 11,000 EPISODES - PEOPLE MAGAZINE - CAST PHOTO BELOW

1st Row (left to Right): Hunter King, Miles Gaston Villanueva, Melissa Ordway, Sean Carrigan, Mishael Morgan, Bryton James, Amelia Heinle, Jason Thompson, Eileen Davidson, Gina Tognoni, Peter Bergman, Eric Braeden, Melody Thomas Scott, Steve Burton, Sharon Case, Joshua Morrow, Justin Hartley, Melissa Claire Egan, Jess Walton, Tristan Rogers, Christel Khalil and Daniel Goddard
2nd Row (left to Right): Robert Adamson, Sofia Pernas, Michael E. Knight, Beth Maitland, Tracey Bregman, Christian Le Blanc, Doug Davidson, Lauralee Bell, Kristoff St. John, Camryn Grimes, Greg Rikaart, Mara McCaffray, Catherine Bach and Kate Linder

Not pictured: Chrishell Stause (current girlfriend of Justin Hartley) as Bethany Bryant.

Here's a great article by Candace Young, of whom I beginning to become a fan. She writes for SOAPS SHE KNOWS.

http://soaps.sheknows.com/the-young-and-the-restless/soapbox/381/deconstructing-yr-writers-seem-unable-to-move-on-from-staid-couples-stale-secrets-and-recycled-scenarios


Generally, I stay away from fan sites, mainly because of spoilers as I am often far behind on both Y&R but especially B&B. I think my record is 120-some unwatched B&B episodes on my DVR. I did not watch them. I would read recaps and watch every 12th episode or so.

So, two days after your death, Mom, I posted the first T-shirt blog post that I have posted in two years:

T-SHIRT #366.

I have been saving up content and ideas to do this HUGE Y&R post for the T-shirt blog, but maybe that's the wrong way to do it. Maybe I need to spread out the content over multiple parts. #366, pt.1; #366, pt.2; and so on. I will cross post this content to T-shirts as #366,pt.2.

I have made other Y&R posts on this blog as part of Hey Mom, but not many.

Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mom #4 - Last Y&R watched together aired Tuesday 1506.30.


Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #12 - I miss you

and then, because you would hate it and I would love to taunt you:

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #281 - Y&R - Victor goes to prison.

I have probably mentioned Y&R at other times that I did not save to the Y&R category. I am sure I have mentioned it as part of my Talking Again series. It's a constant theme in my life as I "watch" Y&R while working, just like we did together for all those years. Y&R is part of the soundtrack of my life. Its cadences and rhythms are a soothing music for me. And I do love it, as I love you, Mom.

But in all of this content and photos and things, there's something escaping me. There's an ineffable significance to this TV program and its place in my life, in our lives, Mom.

Maybe in the next Y&R post I make, I will figure out what it is and find a way to articulate it.

ENJOY these videos.




In case the following videos are ever broken, here's the page from SOAP SHE KNOWS that shares the interview videos.


Lauralee Bell (Christine Williams), Doug Davidson (Paul Williams), Tracey Bregman (Lauren Baldwin) and Christian LeBlanc (Michael Baldwin) are the latest stars to share their favorite memories from "Young and the Restless." Picking a favorite moment out of 38 years is "almost impossible" as Davidson notes. However Bregman jokes, "My hair alone, that could be a storyline just there!"

In the latest "Young and the Restless" video celebrating 11,000 episodes, Jess Walton (Jill Abbott), Kate Linder (Esther Valentine) and Jason Thompson (Billy Abbott) reflect on their favorite moments. Walton looks back on the "most wonderful relationship" she had with the late Jeanne Cooper (Katherine Chancellor) and the hilarious scenes they shared.

In this first video, Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki Newman) and Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) reflect back on the beginning of their characters and their favorite moments. Braeden remarks on a pivotal turning point for his and Scott's characters, "Once I had done that scene, I walked off the stage, I knew that it would open up a Pandora's Box for all kinds of emotional scenes."

Some of the videos were removed, so I had to re-do this on Sunday, June 18 2017.
















From 2012, the celebration for 10,000 episodes. I tried to embed the link to the video on that page, but it failed. So if interested, go to the page and watch the video there.

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 420 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1608.28 - 10:10

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.

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COUNTDOWN TO THE END OF THE BLOG YEAR - ## shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1608.28 - 10:10

Coming soon: T-shirt #366 - Y&R, for my mom

Coming soon: T-shirt #366 - Y&R, for my mom

Readers (and random people who stumbled on this by accident),

When I ceased daily transmission of this blog on Friday, March 21 2014, my plan was to resume after a hiatus with new material on an intermittent schedule as I had more t-shirts to feature.

The hiatus was meant to be short, like a month, maybe. It's been a year and a little over three months.

I was planning for my next post to be the one for this t-shirt, dedicated to my mother about the soap opera The Young and the Restless, which I have watched with her, often daily, since its debut in 1973, which is most of my life.

I last worked on this future blog post on 1309.17.

I will now deliver content on this t-shirt in a series of posts, though it may take me a while to generate it all.









My mother died July 4th, 2015 at 10:10 a.m.


Yeah, yeah, I know we're blurry. Blame my Dad.


Or think of me looking at the photo through my tears.


COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - ?? shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1507.06 - 12:04

T-shirt #345 - Camp Fido - long-sleeve

T-shirt #345 - Camp Fido - long-sleeve

Just pictures today. It's about time I did something simple.

If it's not obvious, I love my dog: Satchel "the boo boo" Paige Tower.

Better known as Poopsy, Poopsy Doodle, the Doodler, Puppyness, Duh Boo, Her Booness, Boo Boo Puppy, and the Sneaky Pickle.

Okay, just a wee bit more text. CAMP FIDO is a great local business. This shirt is produced and sold by CAMP FIDO. It was one of my Christmas presents in 2013.

OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE TEXT OF THE LAST TWENTY POSTS COUNTDOWN: Hi. Thanks for reading. I am posting this "boilerplate" text everyday for the last TWENTY posts in the T-SHIRT blog year, which started on March 22, 2013. I will close out daily transmission on March 21st, day 365 of my T-shirt blog-tastic extravaganza spectacular. I will give myself a short hiatus of total non-transmission or  publication for an as yet undetermined period of time, though I am estimating about two weeks. After my blog vacation hiatus, I will resume T-shirt posts on a regular basis, also as yet to be determined (weekly? Twice monthly?) to finish blogging about all the T-shirts that were not featured in the blog year. At some point, once I feel I am rolling along nicely, I will begin regular posting through my main blog: SENSE OF DOUBT. T-shirt posts will direct to the T-shirt blog from SENSE OF DOUBT. I will continue to post THE WEEKLY COMIC LIST, the features of occasional T-SHIRTS I AM WEARING THIS WEEK, book reviews, comic book reviews, and other popular culture nonsense as I have been for a year now but all will go up at SENSE OF DOUBT and some will direct back here to 365 T-SHIRTS. Ultimately, I will begin Internet publication of my fiction, primarily the comic book satire episodic story called POP! among other projects. So, in summary, 365 T-SHIRTS will continue though intermittently. SENSE OF DOUBT will host my main blog presence and fiction writing as well as links to any T-shirt posts shared here. I hope you will continue to follow me in my journey as a writer and a content provider. Thank you for your kind attention and time you have spent with me on this and/or any other day this year. I am humbled and blessed by your readership. - chris tower, blogger, originated 1403.02

Pictures of me with Satchel were taken by Piper.
Many of the pictures below were taken by my wife Liesel.
Rather than crediting her with each picture, just know that the good ones, those are hers.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 20 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1403.01 - 18:51

T-shirt #326 - Another TPTA Corporate Olympics Shirt

T-shirt #326 - Another TPTA Corporate Olympics Shirt

There's my blurry image in the above photo. Another TPTA Corporate Olympics shirt to go with the entries for T-shirt #307, T-shirt #309, and T-shirt #318.

I was told by a dear reader and a dear friend to focus on brevity.

In the two photos below, you will see the shirt I am actually wearing today. Originally shared this shirt in T-shirt #27: The Iron Fist. It's funny because I originally posted these pictures on yesterday's blog entry, which, as of this writing, is still unfinished, and so I decided to move these pictures today's blog entry.

BETTER ACCESS

We don't say "I wish they made that" or "I wish you could get that kind of thing" so much any more.

This is what I think about when I don the Iron Fist shirt. Back in the 1970s, I would have killed for this shirt. Okay, maybe not literally killed, but I would have loved to have a shirt with the Iron Fist logo on it.


In part, this whole thing with T-shirts may be a way to make up for all those times I said "I wish they made a shirt with the Iron Fist logo" or "I wish they made a shirt that was a kind of replica of the Star Trek uniform" or as I may reveal some day soon "I wish they made a shirt for the Partridge Family."

Occasionally, I still say that sentence. For instance, recently I went searching for a shirt dedicated to Jim Starlin's Adam Warlock from Marvel Comics. There are some shirts with Adam Warlock on them, but none that are specifically JUST Adam Warlock, let alone a cover from one of the great 1970s Starlin comics. I have a Jim Starlin category (check it out). Before I am done with the blog for the year I have to find some way to write about Adam Warlock as he is #5 from my list from T-shirt #322. I will include the Adam Warlock art I have been holding on to. I also need to edit those lists to make clear that I mean ADAM WARLOCK not Warlock from the New Mutants.
I am thinking about revising my entry for Iron Fist.

Is this cheating?


I have more to share about Iron Fist and rather than stick that in a new entry, I might rather revise.

In any case these are more dynamic pictures than the original.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

Just for fun here's a few pictures of other shirts I have worn in the last week. Enjoy the look back. :-)

ADAM WARLOCK BY JIM STARLIN 

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 39 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1402.10 - 19:19

T-shirt #318 - TPTA Corporate Olympics Shirt B

T-shirt #318 - TPTA Corporate Olympics Shirt B

Watching the Super Bowl.

I am blurry.

I am tempted to leave the entry alone with only the text above.

This is the second of two shirts that I have that are the same. My other shirt was posted as T-shirt #309.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

Today, Sunday February 2nd, Ground Hog's Day, was actually a day off. I did NO WORK at all, which is very rare for me.

Since my friend is visiting, we played D&D (Pathfinder) in the afternoon, and enjoyed a lavish food spread created by my wife in the evening as we watched the Super Bowl.

My wife continually proves that she is an amazing human being, and I continually renew my knowledge that I am very lucky to be married to her.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 47 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.02 - 20:32
final publication - 1402.04 - 8:27

T-shirt #315 - The National Air and Space Museum

T-shirt #315 - The National Air and Space Museum - The Smithsonian, Washington DC

I am a space junkie. I can't get enough of books, movies, TV shows, TV news, written news, and especially museums that have to do with outer space, the exploration of space, and other related subjects.

This shirt is a companion to T-shirt #310: Tropical Rainforests as both have a listed copyright of 1988 on the shirt, and I suspect that both were purchased at the same time. Though I am guessing that these were gifts, as I wrote in the previous entry, purchased by my mother and father on a trip they took to Washington DC, a few days has improved my memory. I may have been with them on this jaunt. I was still going on trips with my parents in 1988 as I recall a trip to Milwaukee with them the year When Harry Met Sally came out, which was 1989. I remember a trip to Washington DC, in which I had dinner with my friend John Locke in the Takoma Park neighborhood, and I must have been with my parents. So, it's likely that these shirts came from such a trip.

Pictured to the right, the shirt features a picture of the earth and a caption: "The sphere of the Earth as photographed from Apollo 17 spacecraft during the final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program. The photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to Antarctica south polar ice cap."

I would amend that caption, explaining that the Mediterranean is visible at the very top of the Earth's sphere but the dominant image is Africa and part of Asia. Madagascar looms very large in this perspective. Antarctica is at the bottom of the sphere as it always is and as it is always visible from this angle.


Though I love this and the rainforests shirt, I think both are destined to become pajamas as I have worn neither in years, and with constant wear and washings, the current pajama shirts are growing more worn and thin.

The picture above depicts the The Southern Pinwheel-spiral galaxy M83. I cannot remember where I snagged the picture. I think it was Reuters pic of the day, and it's been sitting in my T-shirts Blog folder for months.

I divulged my love of space and things to do with space science and exploration in the first ten blog entries I posted. T-shirt #5: Do you want to move to Mars? featured a shirt Liesel bought for me after I asked her if she wanted to move to Mars once the Mars One Project gets underway. I was half-serious. I used to fantasize about space exploration when I was a kid and a young man. Not so much as I got older and more settled. After all, I like too many of the comforts of Earth and our life here that would be missing in a move to Mars, where we would not even be able to go outside. If I am feeling cabin fever now with the dangerously cold temperatures this January, I can only imagine how much more intense would be the cabin fever on Mars and enroute to Mars. I should amend my former comments. It's not that I could not go outside the spacecraft or domed-living-environment-pods, but I could not do so without a space suit.

I also mentioned space stuff in my post devoted to Spektrmodule, the Warren Ellis podcast, in T-shirt #75.


I am surprised that I have not written more about space and associated topics given my love the subject. Obviously, my love of science fiction comes from my love of space. The love of space came first. One of the first sets of things I learned were the planets of our solar system in order. I may have known these before I knew the alphabet. Though the "science" category only has three entries currently (and now this one) and none of them really to do with "space" (obviously the two I named already should be grouped there), the science fiction entry contains 29 posts (one of which is still a draft). These contain all the Star Trek  and Star Wars entries as well as ones focused on other print or multimedia science fiction.

APOLLO SPACE PROGRAM

My last point today (and I could make many but I am Grading Robot and I have to keep it short) concerns an apocryphal story I tell. I am not sure if this story is actually true or not. But I have told it so many times that I have made it true. I was about to start second grade in 1969 when the Americans sent the three most famous astronauts in the history of space exploration thus far to land on the moon for the first time (Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins).

My affection for the Apollo Space Program and science fiction surely kept me hoping to explore "brave new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." But instead I settled for being an English teacher, an ultimate player, a husband/father, and a writer. Wait... maybe I am going there, to that place the no one has gone... you tell me. :-) But in the summer of 1969 if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have probably said a superhero, which you would have rejected and made me pick something real and attainable, so my real answer would have been an ASTRONAUT.

Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July of 1969, not long before my sister was born, when my family was moving from Schoolcraft, just south of Kalamazoo, to Richland, just northeast of Kalamazoo, and before I started second grade at Richland Elementary in the Fall of that year. However, there were several Apollo missions after the first moon landing, two of which, Apollo 12 (November of 1969) and Apollo 13 (April of 1970), took place during my second grade year of school. For some reason that still puzzles me today, my teacher was more interested in teaching us subtraction, basic spelling, grammar, and other useless bits of knowledge when AMERICAN ASTRONAUTS WERE LANDING ON AND EXPLORING THE MOON!!!!!!!!

I mean, really, what was she thinking? Her name was Mrs. Tuttle, and she was a strict, disciplinarian. And yet, I was a precocious child. I insisted that we have  a television in the classroom showing the news broadcasts of the Apollo landings. Here's where my memory is a bit murky, and I just have always made up the details to make the story work, much like any good writer of fiction.

For accuracy sake, let's say this is in November of 1969 and the advent of the Apollo 12 project. In my usual version of the story, Mrs. Tuttle cannot do anything to comply with my request, and so I bring my own family's TV to the class to watch the orbits and landing. This is the part that is probably not true. I have a clear vision of television atop a big metal cart in that second grade classroom with Mrs. Tuttle presiding in front of it, attempting to make deals with us for our right to watch: so much subtraction, so much spelling and grammar, so much time watching the TV. I remember the principal also in attendance as this was the first time there had been a television in a class room at Richland Elementary. It was historic.

This was also the year that due to my obsession with the soap opera Dark Shadows that I sold a case or two of plastic fangs to all the students in my classes and others. The fang sale was my first business enterprise as a primary school student though not my last. But that's off topic. More on this one some other time.

I like my version of the story best. We brought in the family TV. It's probably not true, but it shows my overriding focus on the space missions that year, when I was not watching Dark Shadows that is.

Okay, so reprinting T-shirt #5 because it fits this subject, it's short, I am not sure it was widely read, and I like it. :-)

T-Shirt #5: Mars One: Funny thing, my wife bought me a T-shirt. It's not really funny as in laughter evoking by itself. But it's quirky and cute.

One morning last year, I asked my wife Liesel: "Would you like to go live on Mars?"

I was just checking. I wanted to see what she would say. I have always liked the idea of going into space. Moving permanently to Mars is a neat idea but maybe not realistic.

This subject came up because of Ray Kurzweil.
"Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is an American author, inventor, futurist, and director of engineering at Google" (Wikipedia). 

If you like science, Ray Kurzweil runs a great Twitter feed of science news here:

KurzweilAINews

@KurzweilAINews

KurzweilAI is a newsletter/blog covering nano-bio-info-cogno breakthroughs in accelerating intelligence

California/Mass · http://kurzweilai.net

Google has hired Kurzweil to work on AI, which is an exciting proposition.

There is also a great website: Kurzweil Acclerating Intelligence.

I like to follow Kurzweil and watch the news he shares. He sends A LOT of Twitters, and they are always entertaining and informative.

Late last year (2012), he sent this
Mars One plans to establish human settlement on Mars in 2023

No return ticket

Liesel called me a "dork" for asking about going to Mars, but then, she searched the Internet and bought me a T-shirt from the Netherlands based Mars One project and gave it to me as a birthday present.

Kuzweil has updated the search for people to colonize Mars here:

WANTED: MARS COLONISTS TO EXPLORE RED PLANET

At this time, we have no plans to move to Mars, but I do like the shirt.
- 1303.26 7:46


PLEASE NOTE: WHY T-SHIRTS: I am taking a day off from the WHY T-SHIRTS? series as I am at full power as Grading Robot, and this shirt is very much a continuation of yesterday's item, the proof I did something and the promotion of it: I went to this museum, and I love space science.


HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 50 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first pubished - 1401.30 - 20:07
final publication - 1401.31 - 9:58

T-shirt #310 - Tropical Rainforests - A Disappearing Treasure

T-shirt #310 - Tropical Rainforests - A Disappearing Treasure

I cannot remember how I acquired this shirt. I am adding the gift category to today's entry because I think this shirt was a gift from my parents bought for me on some trip they took. I am going to say I was not with them. It's a Smithsonian shirt, and it's copyrighted as 1988, so I think my suspicion may be correct. It was a gift from a trip they took to Washington DC for a conference my father had to attend. My parents took many such trips in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s before my mother came down with the meningitis that paralyzed her.

The text under the image reads: "Tropical Rainforests are places of immense diversity and mystery where nature's grandest possibilities find expression." (Google Chrome does not like the spelling of "Rainforests" as one word, capitalized, but what does it know?)

Obviously, T-shirts have been my thing for some time. A safe gift that my mother (possibly with my father's input though an idea driven by my mother's loving and generous spirit) could obtain in most any gift shop. My mother loves gift shops.

Obviously, many of us understand the need to preserve the planet's rainforests. I do not need to belabor the point. Though the clear cutting of Amazon rainforests to make pasture for raising and then slaughtering cattle for the insatiable hunger of Americans for fast food burgers is disturbing. If you really want to get disgusted and swear off fast food (if you have not already), Google search the following term: "Advanced Meat Recovery." You can thank me later, unless you own, run, or have financial interest in some aspect of the industrial food industry, and then feel free to suppress the urge to post a rebuttal.

WHY T-SHIRTS EXPLANATORY BLURB

I am doing a series of snippets that will add up to a larger whole answering the "Why T-shirts?" or "What's with all the T-shirts?" question. I have also decided to include the previous items in an ever growing list, hence the "previous items" section next.

PREVIOUS ITEMS
#1: T-SHIRTS ARE COOL
#2: I BE BRANDED - CHOOSING TO ADVERTISE

TODAY'S ITEM - WHY T-SHIRTS #3: It's my tattoo

In the last few years, tattoos have become popular and somewhat mainstreamed. Originally markings of tribal significance, such as by the Maori, sailors were the first to introduce the practice to the western world. In my college years, it was still seen as low-brow activity or a mistake that some people made in a drunken night of poor decisions and general debauchery. A few years after I graduated from college, this perception was changing, and today, tattoos are accepted as art forms and are common enough that service workers do not have to hide them anymore, such as the Triforce symbol from the Legend of Zelda game on the forearm of the young woman who rang up my purchase yesterday at Office Depot. Certainly twenty years ago, and maybe even ten, all but the most progressive of organizations would make her cover up the tattoo and may have excluded her from the pool of job applicants had they known of her "skin art."

Our culture is transforming and for the better.

I don't have any tattoos, and I am not going to get any. I don't say this unkindly. Many tattoos are beautiful, and I support people who want to wear art in this way. It's just not for me. My two step kids and my wife all have tattoos. My best friend just added some art to his body. It's just not for me, but I support their choices.

I played Ultimate for years with a guy named Matt Robshaw, who put a great deal of thought into the words he had tattooed on his skin in big, bold, black script. Wisdom and Courage were two of his words. I cannot remember if he was choosing word three or four when I last saw him. He has moved to Minnesota, and I only communicate with him occasionally via Facebook. But his personal convictions and his long deliberation period to choose his words were impressive. After all, if you're having ink injected into your skin in a way that will keep it there, more or less, for the rest of your life, you should put a great deal of thought into your choices.

Not to diminish those who adorn their bodies in skin art, but I think of my t-shirts like tattoos, though hardly as serious of a commitment. Like a tattoo, a T-shirt is ART, and it makes a STATEMENT. It allows me to show off something that is important to me, though in a way much less permanent than a tattoo.

But the future of skin art may be as interchangeable as T-shirts. Combinations of genetic engineering and nano-technology could transform many elements of how we maintain our bodies, the least of which may be changing tattoos as often, if we wish, as we change socks. Already people are selling their skin as billboard space, allowing corporations or organizations to buy their skin for tattoos that advertise something. Obviously, this real-skin-estate is only practical for people whose skin is seen weekly by hundreds if not thousands of people; those in large cities and/or who travel are prime skin estate for those willing to sell. Think of how much more prevalent and interchangeable this commodity will become if science allows skin art to be re-configured in the same way a photo is manipulated in Photoshop, much like how often I change shirts.

In the future, this blog could be "365 Tattoos" and follow the same principle as one dedicated to T-shirts.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

Today I am wearing this shirt (above).

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 55 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1401.25 - 19:11