Luke's T-shirt Chronicles

Back in the USA!

2007-10-10T02:38:00.001-04:00

After a two week hiatus in Africa the blog is back in action... And what sweet action it is! I did pick up some gems, like this one. But what youre really gonna wanna stay tuned for is the final chapter; just written in what is perhaps the most unbelievable and heart wrenching, stranger than fiction t-shirt story you have ever heard.

Oliver North

2007-09-25T18:59:00.001-04:00

Oliver North was a colonel who told the democratic congress where they could put their oversight in 1986. He just fought communism while hiding it from the american people and didnt apologize. And this is why He's the best fit for the whitehouse.

2007-09-25T18:40:00.000-04:00

Teodros detail.

5er

2007-09-25T18:36:00.000-04:00

We call this a fiver in the vintage tee biz because because it has 5 more rings than your shirt.

Teodros

2007-09-25T18:33:00.000-04:00

My best friend growing up was named teodros. He was named after this guy. He was a crazy warrior king of ethiopia and the 18th century. He executed a group of brittish doctors because they didn't know how to make a cannon. He also grew his head on top of a map of ethiopia.

The herd

2007-09-25T13:23:00.001-04:00

my mom gave me this shirt from her collection. the most important thing about it is that the herd goes the entire way around the shirt. its also fun because i love zebras. I have a dead one on my wall.

7 outrageous hairstyles

2007-09-06T23:54:00.001-04:00

So this is one of my all time faves. Its so friggin cool! Traditional Ethiopian hairstyles are just so quirky. Especially in line drawings on a black shirt. Isn't it appropos that my hair was doing funny things? I think so.

Cheesy but true

2007-09-06T23:45:00.001-04:00

I was shooting hoops with my boy Brooks, and I wore this thred. He won the first and I the second. looks like I stepped it up to the glory of God! The tension surrounding the tie breaker is thick. Real thick!

Someone just threw up in their mouth.

2007-08-29T23:12:00.000-04:00

Soo that free shirt turned out to be pretty large... I wore it when i played horse today with Erin and Darren. We decided that the best way to show how huge this thing is would be to showcase its nightgown length... On another note, I have some back issues of this blog to update you with. its been a crazy week, but I promise that before the weekend is over, You'll have more material to wade through than any wearer of this tee.

The perfect gift for the man who has 175 t-shirts...

2007-08-22T15:07:00.001-04:00

...One more shirt. So I was at the Germantown Neighborhood Association Meeting, and they had a little 'how well do you know your neighborhood' quiz. Well 2 out of the thirty people there got a perfect score, and guess who was one of them: me! Then I told em, I aint even from ya little 93% white neighborhood. I represent Shelby Park!'

Happy Birthday Zoe!

2007-08-20T22:52:00.000-04:00

I was at Zoe's first birthday party... and since it was her day, I figured it would be appropos to give her the ultimate gift- the privilidge of accompanying me on my t-shirt blog!... NBS she was a sweet sweet gift to all in attendance and now to all who read this blog. And she got bilingual counting marraccas, so I think everyone comes out a winner. Now what about the shirt you ask? Well it was my high school football team's shirt my senior year. And I still have two or three of these bad boys, so I'll gloat about the blue wave's best season ever when I put on this shirt's twin.

I bet Rip Van Winkle had a pretty sweet vintage tee collection.

2007-08-18T18:36:00.000-04:00

Two things are going on here... first, I am waking up from a Rip Van Winkle style sleep. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to take a picture of this tee while this was still very evident on both face and hair. Second, I'm wearing an awesome vintage Nike tee. Its very soft and blue and just has stripes going across the chest ending in a Nike check. I've had it since before Nike started re-issuing their vintage tees, so it carries with it a lot of that authentic vintage collector's value. It also fits great!

Guest Star Week

2007-08-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

Amy was coming through town on her way to Colorado. She not only happens to be family, she also was a huge Tractor Pull fan back in our heyday. Well what better way to thank her for being such a loyal fan of the second greatest Christian punk rock band in Gainesville, FL in the early 2000s than to put her up on the t-shirt blog!

Star gazing

2007-08-18T16:41:00.000-04:00

So here's that shirt I was talking about. Its a map of the stars, printed upside down so the wearer and whoever has their head on his shoulder (in this case, Darren Jennings) can access the information. Also it features glow in the dark paint for all your star gazing activities... My mom gave me this shirt. She made me promise I'd use it for its intended purpose. someday. But for now its just another great vintage tee.

Bow Up

2007-08-15T20:45:00.001-04:00

Time for another guest appearance- Darren Jennings was kinda sweaty and wanted to borrow a fresh tee, so I pulled out this old thing my sister gave me for my birthday back when we were big fans of MXPX -pseudo Christian punk band. Since both of the shirts we were wearing had some serious pick-up potential, we decided to bow up and put out the vibe in case any young ladies were walking by... More on my shirt's smooth operator potential in the next post.

Meanwhile, Back at the Pilot mensroom.

2007-08-13T08:07:00.000-04:00

I took 'Angelic' at The Pilot Travel Plaza West of Chattanooga on I24 after driving for 5 hours almost exactly 3 days ago. And that's almost exactly what happened here. I drove until 2 AM, then pulled over here at my favorite little Appalachian pit stop.

Simon thought it was especially funny that I was photographing myself again in the Pilot mens room... And his snicker caused me to break my magnum pose, and go for this goofy one instead. So now I look dumb in front of all my fans. I think I'll atone for the damages by telling all my readers that Simon didn't wash his hands.

Fun fact about this shirt: It has a little bit of crud over the word 'kids' from when a friend of mine saw an opportunity to put his nametag over that word, in order that the phrase might read, "DARE to keep AJ off drugs." This of course wouldnt have been an issue if I hadn't washed the shirt with AJ's nametag on it, permanently sticking the nametag adhesive to the fabric.

Ethiopian pride!

2007-08-13T08:02:00.000-04:00

This shirt gets a lot of looks... because I don't look very Ethiopian I guess.

Angelic

2007-08-10T01:35:00.000-04:00

This shirt comes from the ceiling of a 400 year old church In Gonder, Ethiopia. It also comes from that same screen printing shop in Ethiopia, where they hired a one armed man to stretch out the tees on the screen printing machine before printing. I may look like i'm tired here because i took this picture in a Pilot travel plaza bathroom after driving the first 5 hours of our all night road trip to florida. I also may appear to have just contracted a disease. This is because I've got some allergy or pink eye or something... And because i'm in a pilot travel plaza bathroom.

Destroy Toy Machine

2007-08-08T20:35:00.000-04:00

This photo includes the following elements: A clever, tongue in cheek marketing scheme by a skate company, a cool camera angle, original artwork by Crystal Groce, my tea berry blossom colored foyer wall.

aged 18 years

2007-08-08T00:02:00.000-04:00

I included 2 images of this one because I'm too happy in one and not happy enough in the other. I think they balance each other out nicely. On a T-shirt related note, I've got this guy and another one for the same event, only 2 years later, and in a really sweet shade of light blue. I really like the colors of the shirts a lot, and I also like that they are for events 18 years ago. Whenever you're wearing a shirt older than kids who are just now getting their start in the tee scene it really shows how much cred you've got. Me, I've got tee cred coming out my ears.

Everyone's Favorite Emperor

2007-08-07T23:53:00.001-04:00

I have a lot of Ethiopia shirts. A significant plurality of them have this man's face on them. He was Ethiopia's emperor for about 50 years. He was also worshiped by Rastas. He started the Organization for African Unity. He was also a short, benevolent, light skinned black dude with a fro and awesome facial hair. Thats right, he was basically P-Rob (I think 2 of my readers know who he is, but the reference is well worth it.)

Sweet Viola

2007-08-07T23:46:00.001-04:00

So about 10 months ago I was holding Nick and Brittany Nye's newborn, Viola. She was so sweet peaceful in my arms, and so friggin cute! Then she found out how to hurl down my shirt. I love babies so much, and I even love having half digested, curdled breastmilk on my shirt, but inside my shirt and on my skin is a whole nother story. Every man has a breaking point... so anyways, Nicholas was nyce enough to let me borrow this shirt for the night... and then the next 10 months. Nick, I've been meaning to give you your shirt back. Perhaps I will, now that all the readers of chronicles are here to hold me accountable.

Dropowtts

2007-08-05T23:14:00.000-04:00

This specimen comes from a little under-appreciated teenage Christian punk band from Gainesville, FL. Since I have deep roots in the under-appreciated teenage christian punk scene in gainesville, I instantly became a huge Dropowtts supporter, attending their shows (where all other attendees were 6 years younger than me or moms) and fund raisers, loaning them microphones, and of course buying their t-shirt.

puff paint

2007-08-05T12:13:00.001-04:00

Yeah. Its made out of puff paint. I bought it at goodwill, and i can only speculate as to why someone made a shirt this awesome. I never saw the movie with pacey in it by this title, but someone must have liked it.

The T-Shirt Driven Life

2007-08-02T22:44:00.000-04:00

So this is the shirt I had in the car. Its a tie dyed shirt from an intramural soft ball team that I played one game for as a sit in left-center fielder. Notice the Jesus fish with baseball stitches, which is actually more original than most christian inspired tees. I picked this title out because I don't have very many Christian tees, but I wanted to get it in there sometime.

I'm gonna bust out with some really good ones on my next post, but it may take a couple days since I'm going away for the weekend. Look back Sunday for a slew of magical tees.

Tee meets Tea

2007-08-02T22:15:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the quality of that pic. I vow to never use my antique mirror in the 2nd floor bathroom for photography again. But I took another one in the kitchen on the way out, so we're ok.

I put this badboy on before going to my Nephew's adoption party. An Abesha is a word for an Ethiopian native, so I thought it appropriate now that he's completely officially an American. Many of my favorite shirts feature an element of unintentional comedy. Many of my favorites also happen to be from Ethiopia. These two facts are not merely a coincidence. For some reason, theres something about making an acronym for your nationalistic term with poorly chosen English adjectives... and a proper noun that is endearing.

And so on the way over to the party I spilled 2/3 of a gallon of sweet tea on the interior of my truck. Many of my favorite books were getting soaked, so i quickly wiped them off on my shirt. fortunately, not a book was seriously damaged. But I did have to switch into another shirt. Its a good thing I'm always prepared.

Every tee has a story... This one's is about Dominic Gratto

2007-08-01T23:10:00.001-04:00

Last fall Dominic Gratto brought me coffee every morning for our 7 AM Old Testament class. One morning, he also brought me this shirt. He said when he saw it at goodwill it made him think of me, so he got it. I have no idea what running ostriches have to do with me, but I do love the color, and just like the three birds, I do enjoy being silly and wearing tees... So when I ran into Dominic at Sojourn's picnic in the park, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to have a post that didn't include my shower curtain. Maybe more of those kind of posts will come! You'll have to check back to see.

Also note that I'm literally grinning like an idiot.

Intimidation

2007-08-01T22:40:00.000-04:00

I put this guy on before playing 2.5 hours of basketball. I think the somali guys I was playing with were intimidated by mongolian shirt that looks like it has Mt Kilimanjaro on it. They were also intimdated by the fact that I can palm a ball and they can't.

I won't bother to flip this image since most of my friends don't read mongolian, (isn't that a cool script though!) but after many requests from ardent Chronicles fans, I plan to take the extra effort to reverse the mirror effect on any shirt that has english script on it from here on out. My first 4 have been flipped as well, so enjoy those guys in their new readable format.

Two good ones!

2007-07-30T16:38:00.000-04:00

And I'm wearing this guy on monday, 7/30. I'm no dad but if I was, I would send my kid to this local traditionally black school. Don't I look mean?

And here we have Ethiopian Tee #1: Musical instruments. Its a fun shirt. I put it on before I went to the Sojourn 9:30 AM service on 7/29. -Hence the sleepy lookin eyes.

The First Post

2007-07-30T16:28:00.000-04:00

...Which is why I showered and got ready for bed and put on my Martin Orthodontics 'Awesome Smile' shirt. One of the oldest in the collection, this one dates back at least as far as 8th grade.

My first t shirt of the journey... Hogan's Heros. It is a classic, dating back to high school. I ended up loading a ton of bricks into my truck right after this shirt was put on... (scroll up for the continuation of the elipsed thought)

Introduction

2007-07-30T13:01:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I was having a conversation with my friend Nathan Quillo about my T-shirt collection, and he encouraged me to do this little project...

You see, I have over 170 t-shirts, and I often run into problems with shirt repeating more than I should. Whats the point of having a half a years supply of shirts if you only bring out 1/3 of them?

Cause A: The clean unfolded laundry basket is in such a convenient location, as compared with the out of sight out of mind folded shirts in dressers on the third floor (that's right, i have multiple dressers for my t-shirt collection).
Cause B: I have favorites.
Cause C: I don't have a good system.

So here's the plan: I'm not going to repeat a single tee over the next 4 months, or however long it takes to go through them all. I wear approx 1.5 t-shirts per day (I'm always playing basketball, working in the yard, driving around in the un-air conditioned Bronco, or just bored with the current shirt)

The rules:

All T-shirts are to be left in the used T-shirt pile until the number of their brothers and sisters that were to be worn is complete (Revelation 6:11)
Collared shirts don't count. I don't have enough to last for 4 months of work.
A picture of me in my shirt will be taken and posted to this blog. (I will use my LG chocolate unless the quality isn't good enough. In which case I will switch to my digital camera.)
I will add any notes that may be pertinent regarding each shirt or the events and people that day that were effected by the shirt.

Please do comment! I think I made it so anyone can comment. But it would be nice if you said who you were when you left your observations.