Bow Up

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.

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!

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

Angelic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.