It’s a sad truth–here I am, in my mid-thirties, and my drawers are overflowing with geeky t-shirts.
Just this week, I had a fit and ordered one to show that I am a member in good standing of the Moscow Night Watch, two DarkTower-themed* ones and one that I got turing my trip to Dunwall.
These will join my several Game of Thrones shirts, my Doctor Who shirt (that I can’t find right now–there’s just too many of them on RedBubble), my time travel crib sheet shirt, and my second coming of Lincoln shirt. I may be forgetting a few here.
And then there’s the other category: shirts that aren’t geeky, just clever or whimsical.
Does anyone share this problem? My ex-girlfriend had it–she pointed me at one of the DT shirts.
*The “Gilead Gunslingers” shirt should be fun. I’m a regular at a Boston bar here in the city, not because I’m a Boston fan, but because they show Game of Thrones there. I should wear it w/ my Yankees hat and confuse 'em.
Mine tend towards the comics, with most of the requisite super-heroes represented. If they wear it on BBT, then I probably owned it before they did. In fact, I think I only own one plain white t-shirt. All the others are either shilling for some brewery I like or proclaim my readership of Marvel and DC and Dark Horse.
Many of mine are geeky vacation souvenir T-shirts–Polar Caves, NH; Clark’s Trading Post, NH; Monticello. . . and geeky hometown ones–Fort Phoenix, Fairhaven MA; Fairhaven Father’s Day Road Race; etc.
I wear black, geek-themed T-shirts at the gym. Most of them purchased at thinkgeek.com, but some purchased elsewhere. My favorites (and remember, this is for a 65-year-old man at the gym)…
“Body By” followed by a picture of a Playstation console
“Insufficient Memory”.
“Keep out of direct sunlight” (someone once saw this and asked me if I was a dermatologist)
I’m currently wearing my metashirt, a t-shirt that says “Dark-color shirt with humorous non-controversial slogan.”
Virtually my entire wardrobe consists of black jeans and black t-shirts with geeky things on them. I have gameshirts, anime shirts, webcomic shirts, and, perhaps inevitably, zombie shirts. (That last one is typically reserved for Monday.) I can’t find a link for my Lovecraft shirt, which may be just as well.
Most of my t-shirts are geeky. I have some Doctor Who, Futurama, Star Trek, Star Wars, World of Warcraft and some general ones like a picture of the solar system with a thought bubble over Pluto that says, “Weak”. (Because it got downgraded to dwarf-planet.) Mostly bought at ThinkGeek.
My favorite. I love the 8-bit Ghostbusters car, in fourth grade I played the Ghostbusters computer game at a friends house, and the blue ghost looking back and probably thinking, “Oh shit.”
I don’t know if my shirts are “geeky” so much as they are “lame.” Half of the tee shirts I own are league shirts from the World Dodgeball Society, and I have entirely too many shirts with Sesame Street characters on them. My favorite tee is a Ghostbusters shirt which elicits compliments nearly every time I wear it. I saw a shirt in target once with an original NES controller captioned “Know Your Roots.” I’m not sure why I didn’t buy it.
Some folks dig the t-shirts–I’ve gotten comments from strangers on the “Communist Party” and my Pinky and the Brain shirt. Some need a particular audience–I’m looking forward to wearing my Game of Thrones gear to the bar when it stars up again at the end of March. But a lot of my crap is so obscure chances are good no one will ever get it. It’s my own personal in-joke with myself, I guess, or something like that. And hey, never know–if I head out to Brighton Beach, somebody might dig the Night Watch shirt.
ThinkGeek has good stuff, but RedBubble has some really amazing stuff. All user designed, and probably rather dubious in the intellectual property department. But so awesome. I mean, here’s my Doctor Who shirt. And there’s the Firefly “Mudder’s Milk,” which I think got a few compliments when I wore it to the season finale of GoT last year. Threadless is good for the odd/clever/whimsical stuff.
This sort of extends beyond the geeky shirts–I run with the Hash House Harriers, and I have evolved into a self-described “haberdashery slut.” Haberdashery is Hash gear–shirts, patches, hapi coats, hats, whatever. If our kennel has it, I have to get it. If I visit another kennel, priority number one is getting their gear–though so far, I’ve only managed to get a shirt from Amsterdam.
Oh good. I like this thread. I always feel like such a jerk with a peter pan complex for having so many tshirts with fun stuff on them. Like MeanOldLady, I have too many (not enough) muppet shirts. I also don’t have enough comic book shirts.
I have plenty of shirts from Threadless, and Woot. I started by getting shirts from Threadless. But, their prices got crazy high, so I stopped. Woot has a lot of awesome shirts. But, they also have this deal once in a while where you can pay 6 bucks for a random shirt. I have done that a bunch of times, and only once got a shirt that I would never wear. Otherwise, I have gotten about a million good ones. (Including this Cookie Monster parody one. I didn’t like it when I first looked at it, since I don’t usually like adult jokes about childhood things. But, I grew to really like it.)
I have been keeping an eye on TeeFury, but I still haven’t gotten a shirt there. LawMonkey, that site you linked to sounds interesting, I will have to check it out.
Oh that reminds me. I have an awesome shirt from Woot that has a mouse in a Portal type portal. Fun!
Anyway, a lot of my shirts are from Woot. I’m really happy they opened up their whole back catalog, so I can waste all my money on apparel, jerks (:p). They also fit me really well, a problem I have with store bought shirts. I’ve been trying to find some jackets and shirts recently and smalls are too short and show my belly when I raise my arms and mediums are too baggy and look like crap, Woot shirts (along with Topatoco) actually fit me well at medium size.
I have several anime T-shirts, two Harry Potter T-shirts (I’m currently wearing my Dumbledore’s Army T-shirt), one MLP shirt with Octavia on it, and a Captain America T I just bought at Target. My brother moved to Boston and left several T-shirts behind, which I plan to appropriate. I’m just now getting into Homestuck, and might buy some of the troll zodiac sign t-shirts from the official websites. My daughter doesn’t like me to wear my anime shirts in public unless we’re attending a gathering or convention, although the HP shirts do pass muster on casual Fridays.
Thisis my geeky t-shirt. I was quite surprised that one of the guys at work got it - I used to think he was a bit of a doofus, but he changed my mind.
One of my favorite non-geeky shirts is one I gave a friend: “Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”
Before I retired, I often told people I was a freekin’ ray of sunshine - one of my coworkers wrote it on my whiteboard. Alas, I didn’t find out until recently that I could have bought a t-shirt with that on it. I’d have worn it to my retirement party!! Oh well…
