Christmas is a time of insatiable need, where consumers turn into frenzied piranhas, skeletonising the ox carcass of consumable goods. I do not see myself as anything but piranha #47 happily attacking the flesh, or at the very least pointing out to my piranha family the bits I'd quite like to have if they wouldn't mind getting it for me.
I believe my analogy died somewhere in there.
Beyond the cool stuff that teases me with enticing winks from Uncrate, Threadless, Sneaker Freaker and various cool gadget blogs, there are the one off that people send me or that I happen across. These are usually sports related, more specifically, uniform related.
Pretty Pretty Pretty sent me some very cool tshirts via twitter. The Novel-T World series has the uniforms for a baseball team of literary characters. Naturally the captain is Ahab who pitches to the catcher Moby Dick.
After that I discovered that the pun wasn't exclusive. Novel Tees make tshirts for businesses that only exist in fiction such as High Fidelity's Championship Vinyl.
There's an interesting category of sports shirt that shows your support but also conveys your sense of annoyance at recent changes to said team. For example the shirt that's been on my wishlist for a while is this Meats shirt (for those who don't know it's a facsimile of the NY Mets).
Then there is the very famous shirt that arose from the creation of CitiField: a stadium that was built to house the Mets after the old Shea stadium was demolished and is named after bailout-requiring company CitiBank. "I'm calling it Shea". The New Zealand equivalent would be "I'm calling it Lancaster Park". The shirt has been seen on national television and has numerous spin offs for other corporate-whored-out stadia.
I'm not even going to get to beautiful sneakers.
Something that strikes me about these alternate versions, is that the style of sports uniforms (especially baseball) resonates as actual fashion. But they are always used in a way to convey support.
If I were to say that to you in person I wouldn't look confident. I said before that I find the hordes of people in Yankees caps ridiculous. Worse is the sudden surge in Pittsburgh Pirates caps, where you just want to ask the idiots: "do you know what the hell you're wearing?" In a similar category people wearing mismatching sports team's apparel.
Pffft, kids these days.
I was thinking about all of this as I was jostled about in what would become the mosh pit at Pearl Jam's Auckland concert.
As you can see from Lisa's brilliant photograph above, Eddie Vedder is wearing a Walter Payton throwback (Chicago Bears); a fact I geekily mentioned to my partner who was much more interested in Mr Vedder at the time. But Eddie's shirt while having the correct "GSH" (George Hallas' initials) on the sleeve was missing the name and number on the back. So it wasn't an actual jersey it was just a cool t-shirt.
And Pearl Jam seem to like the look. For their concerts this year every tour stop had its own unique t-shirt based on a local sports team. Seattle had this amazing Seahawks shirt:
That's the back, the front had a larger version of the altered Seahawk logo. And while 21 was the date they played (September 21) it's also a pun on the usual Seahawk fan's jersey with 12 on the back (in Seattle the famously loud fans are the 12th man).
For the record at the Auckland concert it was a version of the Auckland Blues jersey. The concert was held at Mt Smart, possibly for irony.
By the way any of the above links are purchasable and can be sent to me c/o Public Address. Go Team Piranha!