In the years when we were legally adults, but intellectually and emotionally still ‘ripening,’ we cultivated what some of us consider an ‘abiding affection’ for Old Crow, while others of us, if they are feeling euphemistically generous, would acknowledge under oath as a ‘relationship.’
All I know is that during the dark ‘post-college-graduation-scuffling-by-on-part-time-jobs-with-no-real-prospects’ years, Old Crow’s firm place on the bottom shelf was an accessible and fortifying presence.
And ever since, we have reverently and dutifully honored Dr. James Crow for inventing the sour mash process.
There is a loose thread of American history (that we choose not to tug terribly hard at) that believes that Old Crow was indirectly responsible for winning the Civil War.
It was well-known that Ulysses S. Grant fancied himself a good tipple now and again. It was believed that Old Crow was a preferred part of his, um, medicinal regimen.
A story has sloshed around that critics of the general once complained about his drinking to Lincoln. To which the 16th president purportedly replied, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
We’ll drink to that.
Because sometimes it’s more about good memories than good memory.
Also, as anyone who has ever been brave, desperate, or just (like us) poor and dumb enough to send Old Crow down one’s gullet knows … it’s out for vengeance.
In his book “The Social History of Bourbon,” author Gerald Carson relates a tale that, during the Northern Army’s siege of Vicksburg, Grant enjoyed generous nightly nightcaps of Old Crow.
Served neat, of course. (autonomic sympathetic body shudder goes here)
And not to draw a parallel between the Union Army’s 47 days waiting out surrender and us waiting out the last of our adolescence enjoying Red-Hot-doused frozen taquitos from the microwave … but I find it hard not to wax nostalgic when it comes to Old Crow.
Its vague place in our country’s history.
Its humble yet consistent place on the bottom shelf.
Its proud place on this author’s torso.
And its hallowed place keeping us company while we figured — and continue to figure — our shit out.
This one’s brought to you by the 14-year-old boy who lives inside us all.
I’m an unapologetic sucker for a good mashup.
Macho, Elizabeth and Hulk tagging in for Luke, Leia and Darth?
Ringside seats, please.
It’s one thing to have a brilliant idea, another thing entirely to bring it to life with impeccable craftsmanship.
Reverent nod to the designer’s inspired choice to go with a wide-eyed Hogan.
I mean, big leg drop on prone opponent, right there.
Anyone who subscribes in equal parts to The Force, Hulkamania (mid 80’s edition), and Macho Madness (all eras) will find it impossible to stare at this shirt for more than three seconds without thinking, if not saying aloud, “Ohhhhhh Yeeeeeaaaaahhhh!”
Joe Mugnaini’s brilliant cover for the first edition of Ray Bradbury’s incendiary novel.
The book holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, on top of its timeless cautionary tale.
My daughter and I read it aloud together across many Saturday coffee-shop mornings when she was a young teenager, which was my first re-read of it in a good 20 years or so. What a wonderful way to be reacquainted.
And during our re-reading, I was profoundly moved by a passage late in the book when Montag, on the run, encounters a group of kindred spirits living in the woods on the outskirts of town. And around a campfire, he remembers his grandfather. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to this passage since.
Its still glowing embers warm me as much as the campfire that coaxed the words from Bradbury’s typewriter.
It’s not only been medicine to my heart, but I’ve shared Bradbury’s beautiful words with friends and kindred spirits seeking warmth in the darkness of their own loss.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the (person) who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
Always makes me think of the gardeners I’ve known in my life.
If you’ve never been curling before, I have two words for you: proper footwear.
Few years ago while visiting our mothership in Milwaukee, my boss at the time organized an after-work team-building outing. He thought it’d be a good bonding experience for us to go to an ice arena in Milwaukee and try some curling. I’d never been before. After signing a waiver, I remember we got a quick primer, during which the instructor mentioned that competitive curlers have special footwear, which we would be forgoing for our 90-minute session.
We broke into teams. I was paired with our Director of Creative Operations. She’s very competitive.
We were in the middle of our first match, and were nursing a one-point lead over the other teams. It was my turn to ‘sweep.’
As you proly know, way it works is that one person aims the stone towards the scoring rings at the other end of the alley, while their teammate sweeps the ice in front of the stone with a special push broom, which can impact the stone’s direction and speed.
Couple seconds after my teammate launched our next stone, I was dutifully following it down the alley. I remember her voice reverberating in the arena as she yelled … “Sweep! Sweep!”
And I’m sweepin’ like a motherf*cker … when all of a sudden my legs go out from under me … and I face-plant on the ice.
Must’ve blacked out for a second, because next thing I remember is opening my eyes and seeing my teammates’ concerned faces staring down at me while flat on my back.
I had a cut below my left cheek from where I smacked the ice, and was bleeding a bit … whereupon it was decided I should probably get a couple stitches.
My teammates accompanied me to the ER and very sweetly waited while the doc stitched me up.
Pretty successful bonding experience, as far as team-buildings go.
I like to point out that, since we were winning when I went ass over tincups, technically speaking I am undefeated on the curling circuit.
Ever since, whenever I see curling on TV, I instinctively run my hand over my left cheek and say out loud to anyone within earshot …
In the slim chance you are unfamiliar with the reference, watch Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride, or — even better (trust me) — go read William Goldman’s novel on which the movie’s based.
“As you wish was all he ever said to her.
“That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying, ‘As you wish,’ what he meant was, ‘I love you.’”
The perfect choice for weekend chore work in service of one’s Buttercup.
I find that wearing this liberates me from having to say much, which thereby lessens my odds of saying something dumb, and/or something that will get on Buttercup’s nerves.
Spill a little mustard on your shirt for Franktuary, which sunsetted its brick and mortar a few years back, but still operates a food truck here and there I hear.
Reverently prepared hot dogs.
Peter and I used to pilgrimage to their Lawrenceville location for boys day out Saturday lunches.
And like the great philosophers of antiquity, we’d spend the purgatory between our ordering and our munching engaging in spirited, hangry debates over the universe’s cosmic questions.
Does ketchup belong on a hot dog?
Answer: as you will consistently find across both your meat-eating eastern and western religions, the creator intended ketchup for hamburgers, mustard for hot dogs.
Are Franktuary’s fresh cut fries with garlic aioli better than Shorty’s fries with gravy?
Answer: What, in life, is truly objective? Just as Plato and Kant tussled with that hot potato across centuries … Peter and I staged “The Great Potato Debate” across many a table over the years. He was unequivocally Team Frankturary. Me? I was polytheistic on the matter. For the ultimate answer … ask God next time you see her.
Without irony, I believe that you can test the mettle of a good cathedral by the questions and conversations it engenders.
Once, while Peter and I were debating metaphysics, Heidegger, and the nature of being — by which I mean whether honey mustard was a salad dressing (Peter) or a condiment (me) — a father and young son, both dressed in Pirates jerseys, sat down at a booth across from us.
No sooner had they taken their seats when the son, maybe eight or nine, asked his Dad, “Who’s your favorite baseball player of all time?”
Which settled the question of God’s existence for me once and for all.
I imagine the person who designed it going on to an amazingly successful full life — Nobel-Prize-winning scientist or somesuch — and still knows in their heart that this shirt will always be their greatest accomplishment.
Description: Tuscan Raider from the original Star Wars hoisting Lloyd Dobbler’s boom box over its head in homage to the iconic “In Your Eyes” closing scene from the Cameron Crowe-directed 80’s classic Say Anything.
It clicks on so many levels.
For starters, the juxtaposition of the Tuscan Raider’s Gaffi Stick for the boom box? Stop it. Wearing Lloyd’s coat? Get the f*ck out of here. Goddamn landspeeder replacing young John Cusack’s 1976 Chevy Malibu? Punch me in the face already.
Full disclosure I’m on V2 for this shirt.
Wore the first till it completely faded, which Lloyd’s love for Diane will never do.
Couple weeks ago we’re in the kitchen when Karry asks me about a charge on our credit card that looked suspicious.
Read aloud the name of a company she didn’t recognize.
“No, that’s me,” I said.
Was kinda’ hoping that would end her curiosity.
Had the opposite effect … like most of my good intentions.
“What did you buy?” she asked.
“It’s … a surprise.”
As an aside … that’s pretty good for me as far as comebacks under pressure go.
But it was late October. She knows I’m not that proactive with my holiday shopping.
“What did you buy?” she repeated.
“A t-shirt,” I confessed.
She: You bought a $35 t-shirt?
While it might seem like a yes or no question, the answer … was nuanced.
Me: No, I bought a $28 t-shirt.
She: (silence)
Me: Seven bucks for shipping.
Karry tends not to put on her cheaters to appreciate nuance.
For context, I love t-shirts.
My family prefers the word ‘addiction.’
It’s my only one.
Yep, T-shirts and postcards.
And, um, books.
T-shirts are among the reasons I don’t get tattoos.
I’m too easily seduced.
I fall in love too frequently … and fleetingly.
I mean, just when you see a design of a badass skull made up of tiny cats ($28 + $7 shipping), your feed serves up a silhouette of a man’s arm coming into frame to fist-bump a similarly silhouetted cat who looks like one of the cats who live in your house (Viktor).
The family staged an intervention a few years ago.
Unbeknownst to me, they harvested a bunch of t-shirts from my closet and had them made into a blanket … like parents do when their kids leave for college.
They were sneaky. Did it under the guise of my birthday and presented it as a ‘gift,’ … which forced me to suppress my immediate reaction, which was along the lines of, “You did … what ???!!!”
Some (most) of the shirts were still in regular rotation … including one of my all-time favorites: the orange GI Joe “Man of Action (With Lifelike Hair)” number that I found in a comic book store in Houston, Texas many years ago.
Joe’s head on the t-shirt had the same life-like hair as the action figure doll I had in the 70’s.
Glorious.
Over the years many wide-eyed smiles and fist-bumps from kindred spirits, most (all) middle-aged men, most (all) of whom proceeded to lose their sh*t when I pointed out that Joe’s coiffe was, in fact, life-like.
At night, when I am under the blanket, I can sometimes hear Joe softly sobbing.
Since the thoughtful-birthday-gift-slash-intrusive-intervention (still stings), we’ve operated under an uneasy detente.
For any new t-shirt I bring into the collection, I must remove one from my closet.
So I felt cornered when Karry called me out in the kitchen on my latest acquisition.
“It’ll be my last one of the year,” I blurted.
She: Yeah, right.
Me: No, seriously, last one of the year.
She: (silence)
Me: It’s only, like, two months. I can make it.
She: (silence)
While acknowledging that historical precedent would suggest, shall we say, an uphill climb, I pointed out that a little encouragement would, you know, go a long way.
She: You’ll never make it.
__
Couple weeks later, I’m downstairs when I hear yelling from the laundry room.
“Wait, did you get another t-shirt?”
While it seems like a yes or no question, the answer was … nuanced.
At the storytelling thing in the city I went to the night before, Jacob the producer gave me the t-shirt I won a couple months ago. They were out at the time.
I hadn’t bought it, so therefore had not violated the embargo.
I assured her that my t-shirt fast was still holding strong.
Then she did the thing she does sometimes … where she held her gaze a couple extra seconds without saying a word … letting me know she’ll be keeping an eye on me … until midnight strikes on Dec. 31.
Which I received as, you know, encouragement.
Recognizing that I still have about four weeks to go in my fast — which, let’s be honest here, will be brutal for the holiday algorithms ramping up to tempt me at every turn — I thought it’d be healthy to channel my energies away from my feeds and towards counting my blessings, by which I mean the treasures hanging in my closet.
Which history suggests are only ever a stealthy intervention away from being permanently removed from circulation.
So I’m here today to officially launch the TWELVE DAYS OF T-SHIRTS … a celebratory ‘greatest hits’ retrospective befitting, you know, a man of action with life-like hair.
The ones that bring me joy.
The ones that keep me in Cozy Mode as I clumsily navigate the world around me.
The ones that I impulse bought in spasms of poor decision-making somewhere between my second and third Moscow Mules.
Each one with its own story to tell.
Full disclosure: knowing that the odds of my following through to 12 are only marginally better than my resisting t-shirt temptation for the next four weeks … I will be receiving any and all feedback (including silence) as encouragement.
Letters for Maggie 