Weirdness: alone and with a group

It's not that I mind being the lone oddball, but sometimes it's nice to have your oddballness validated, to hang with people who share your particular peculiarities. I had a great time at last weekend's big family get-together, but a lot of the conversation revolved around football, basketball and -- God help us! -- golf, so it was good to turn the old XM radio to channel 175 and commune with those who believe as I do that the only game worthy of one's attention is baseball.
And you know I love that neglected and underappreciated artform, the obituary. That's why I am so enjoying this book:

because it's about people like me who haunt the alt-obituaries newsgroup, people who would buy the New York Times even if their crossword puzzles were not the best just because their obit page is awesome, (and awesome is not a word I toss around lightly), people who actually have a favorite obituarist. (Mine is definitely Stephen Miller, but I did just order and can't wait to read "52 McGs. : The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas" cuz McG was pretty darn good too.)
Here's hoping that you never have to be weird all by yourself. (Unless of course that's the way you want to be weird.)

Buck and me

I have a confession to make.
But first let's pay tribute to a great man who passed away over the weekend, Mister Alvis Edgar Owens. Better known as Buck.
This is the kind of man I am: I decided when I was about 12 years old what I thought was cool -- baseball, comic books, country music and girls with dark hair and dark eyes. And I never changed my mind about that. That's still what I think is cool.
My first exposure to country music was subliminal. There was a radio station in the small North Carolina town I grew up in that played pop music all day long, but switched to a country format sometime around midnight. I would fall asleep listening to the Grass Roots and Badfinger and Bobby Sherman but wake up with Conway Twitty, Charley Pride and Waylon Jennings. My classmates fell asleep listening to the radio like I did, but they were horrified at the hillbilly wailing they heard in the morning. I, on the other hand, was entranced. I loved country music and never felt like I had to choose between rock and rockabilly, I just enjoyed it all.
Buck Owens had a syndicated TV show back then that I have not seen mentioned in any of the obits of the Bard of Bakersfield, but I know I didn't dream it. I used to watch it every Saturday night at 10:30. I have to say that although I enjoyed Buck's music he was never one of my favorite singers, and one of the reasons I watched the show was to try and figure out what the hell was up with his lip. Was that a scar or a harelip or what? (Even after watching him for years on Hee-Haw, I still don't know for sure, but I'm guessing scar.)
Single-handedly (and later with some help from Merle Haggard, who started out as a bass player in Buck's band the Buckaroos, before stealing his boss's wife Bonnie Owens) Buck invented a new style of country music named after his adopted hometown of Bakersfield, California. He had a string of hits in the 1960's. But he is probably best known today as the co-host (along with Roy Clark) of the TV show "Hee-Haw!". According to the New York Times Buck had mixed feelings about the success of that show: he thought the persona of "country rube" he wore on that show destroyed his album sales. But I really think that was his persona before "Hee-Haw!" I mean while Haggard was singing about hard times in songs like "Working Man Blues" and "If We Make it Through December" Buck was singing "I've got the hungries for your love, and I'm waiting in your welfare line." While Johnny Cash compared falling in love to being engulfed in a ring of fire, Buck said it was more like having a tiger by the tail. Not a novelty act but certainly more light-hearted than a lot of his contemporaries.
(Although in fairness, it must be said that "Act Naturally" and "Crying Time" were great enough to be covered by, respectively, the Beatles and Ray Charles.)
And here's my confession: when I learn that someone I admire has died, my first thought is compassion for their family. But it's followed closely by "Do I already have his (or her) autograph?" I know that sounds horrible, but in my defense I must say that I always tell the autographer how much I appreciate their work, and I'm glad I got to do that while they were still alive. I mean, I wish I had thanked Don Knotts for being Barney Fife, whether I got his signature or not.
Fortunately, in Buck's case, I did get a chance to thank him for the music and to get his autograph.

Helping verbs

I have no idea why I remember some stuff forever and forget some stuff right away, although I think the more important a piece of information is the more likely I will be unable to hang onto it. And music might help. When I was in the fourth or fifth grade we had to learn all the helping verbs by singing the aptly-named "Helping Verbs Song." It goes something like this:

"Am, is, are, was, were, has, have, had
Do, does, did, can, may, might, must
Shall, will, should, would, could."

The helping verbs, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you very much.

IN SPRING A (NOT SO) YOUNG MAN'S FANCY TURNS TO LITERATURE

Last Spring when the weather started to turn nice (i.e. warm) I abandoned my usual lunchtime ritual of farting around on the internet and instead went outside to the lovely Waterfront Park next door.


Of course I took a book with me. The book was "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger. I'm not sure why I picked up this particular tome, because I didn't like the cover at first, but it turned out to be the best book I had read in a long long time, maybe ever. It's the story of a man with chrono-displacement disorder, a disease that causes him to bounce around uncontrollably back and forth in time, and the woman that loves him and how they deal with his affliction. Niffenegger is a master of words and I had to keep reminding myself that there was no such disease, because it and everything else in the book seemed real, realer than the park or the job I was supposed to be going back to. It blew me away, and it blew me away time after time. I wrote Niffenegger a letter to thank her for the book and I said that books like hers were the reason I kept making time for books and wading through mediocre books and refusing to join the modern subliterate zeitgeist; it's because of the handful of books like this one that you find in a lifetime (if you're lucky) that makes it all worthwhile. When our kids were little if somebody said they loved Persi-Cola or Sesame Street or anything they would say "If you love it why don't you marry it?" I thought of that after I finished reading"The Time-Traveler's Wife" and I told my wife Kim if I weren't already married to her I would marry that book.
In other words, I liked it.


All right, so now the weather's turned nice again. I'm emerging from my winter torpor and heading back to the park. The book under my arm this time is "Love and Other Near-Death Experiences" by Mil Millington It is about a guy who is on the run from Christian fundamentalist terrorists who believe he has cheated God by surviving a restaurant explosion and who intend to help God out by blowing his head off. It may not sound like it, but it is absolutely hilarious. Millington cracks me up on almost every page. And I'll prove it. Opening it up at random I find the protagonist and his new girlfriend in bed after the kind of sex where the sheets need to be "ritually burned on a hilltop exorcism by an especially steely-nerved priest." And he says to her:

"I would never have guessed you'd be so . . ." I gave up trying to think of a word for it and settled for simply blowing air out between my lips. "I mean, you read books. You're 'bookish.' Aren't books and sex pretty much an either-or choice?"
"A notion that could only possible have gestated in the low-ceilinged brain of someone who doesn't read enough books. Just think of Emily Bronte, for example: psychotically bookish -- but was there ever a woman screaming out so loudly for a good f***ing? I even suspect that's why Wuthering Heights carries on decades too long rather than sensibly drawing the curtains a little after Cathy's death. It was Bronte saying, 'Look -- I'm simply going to keep on writing this stuff until someone comes and shags me raw."

It's hard to imagine two books more dissimilar. The only thing they have in common is that they both sent me back to work with red eyes and a warm glow.
And what I want to know is it the park? the season? the book? some combination? Would I have enjoyed these books as much if I'd picked them up in the winter? Could I take a crappy book to the park in March and would it sing to me?

The terrible toll tobacco takes

We've lost some really cool celebrities in the last week or so -- everybody knows Don Knotts, the immortal Barney Fife, who passed away on February 24th at the age of 81, you should know Dennis Weaver who played Chester Goode on "Gunsmoke" and starred as "McCloud," (although you may not remember that he had a minor hit record called "Prairie Dog Blues.") Some of you probably know that Peter Benchley (who died on February 12th) scared the hell out of everybody back in '73 with a book called "Jaws" and you probably know Darren McGavin either as the furnace-fighting father in "A Christmas Story" or as Kolchak, the Night Stalker.
But how many of you know who I'm talking about when I say Jack Wild died ? Not many, I'll wager. Mr. Wild is famous for two things: He played the Artful Dodger in the award-winning film "Oliver!" and he played Jimmy, the kid with a magic talking flute named Fweddie on the no-doubt-about-it trippiest kids show ever "H.R. Pufnstuf." Mr. Wild died on March 2nd at the age of 53. He'd have probably been with us for another twenty or thirty years had he not been such a heavy smoker. The last few years of his life he suffered from mouth cancer and had his voice box and various other pieces of his facial palatte removed. He couldn't talk (or swallow either) which makes it hard to get work as an actor, and he lived with constant pain.
But it was worth it, right? Cuz smoking is so darn fun.
Actually, I can't think of many things less fun than lighting a noxious weed on fire and inhaling the foul fumes.
(By the way, you'll always know as soon as a prominent person perishes if you do like I do and subscribe to the Celebrity Death Beeper. I used to also subscribe to "Good-Bye, the Death Zine" but it's no longer being published, although if you want to read some really cool obituaries check out their archives here.)

Well, I was trying to add this picture to my profile page, but it kept popping up over here as a new entry instead. I fought it for a while, but finally gave up. It's hard to fight when you're laughing and that shirt just cracks me up.

I Love the 80s . . .

. . . not the decade. The temperature range. Come on, Summer!

It may not be readily apparent in this picture, but I am actually – in a small way – striking a blow for freedom of speech and against fascism at home and abroad.
You see, a while back a newspaper in Denmark published some cartoons depicting Muslims and their prophet Muhammad in a not particularly flattering light. (Duh! Flattering cartoons ain’t funny.) It is taboo in Islam to depict Muhammad in any way, but evidently it’s really taboo to depict him with a bomb in his turban. A lot of American media outlets seem to be too scared to run these cartoons, so it’s possible that you’ve never seen them. Here they are.
Ever since then some people have been going nuts, killing people, burning embassies, issuing fatwas. You know the usual things extremists do when you hurt their feelings. Despite the fact that the cartoonists are not Muslim and live in a country where they have freedom of speech, so the whole thing makes as much sense as Hindus, who hold the cow in reverence, rioting and killing because some non-Hindu somewhere ate a cheeseburger.
The US government’s response shows without a doubt that Bush and Cheney and their minions never even got to the first amendment in their reading of the Constitution. They keep saying that free speech is a responsibility and that you should try hard not to offend anyone of differing beliefs.
Well, that’s a big steaming hot pile of B.S. Free Speech is guaranteed to offend people. The founding fathers knew that, that’s why they made the protection of it the first amendment, numero uno.
Anyway, one of the ways that the extremists are trying to punish the Danes is by boycotting their exports. So I have determined to do what I can to show the Danes that there are still some Americans who believe in free speech. According I have switched from Cabot to Danish cheeses (they make a great Havarti) and from Guinness to Tuborg or Carlsberg. I may even buy some LEGOs.
You can read more about the Buy Danish movement here.

I'm a poet -- sorta

Once upon a time all comic books had letter pages where fans and readers held forth on what was going on in their favorite series. They had cool names like "Let's Rap With Cap" (Captain America) and "Greenskin's Grab Bag" (The Hulk). The Internet killed that (along with a lot of other cool stuff.) What with chat rooms and message boards and all that, most publishers began to think of letter pages as something of a dinosaur, so they got rid of them.
Big mistake. One enormous way that letter pages were superior to message boards is that the editor had weeded out all the redundancies and moronity that fill most message boards. (And naturally we did not get an extra page of story, we got an extra advertisement.)
Anyway, some comics are now realizing the error of their ways and are bringing back the letter pages. She-Hulk, already one of the coolest comics out there (thanks mostly to writer Dan Slott) got even cooler when they added a page of letters. They even gave it a cool name -- "Gamma Gamma Hey!" -- which, if you are not a fan of the Ramones and the Hulk family, is hilarious, take my word for it. Even without the letters I'd recommend this comic book. So many writers today just know how to write grim, hopeless ultra-violent stuff. Dan Slott is one of the few with a genuine sense of humor. Greg Horn does the covers and he is second only to the master of modern cheesecake Adam Hughes. (And he's better than Hughes at drawing funny horses.)
The latest issue (#5) has a letter from me in it. Naturally it's witty, charming and insightful, but it's also poetic as they published a limerick I wrote about Shulkie (as she is affectionately known.)
Check it out at your local comic shop. And when I say "check it out" I mean buy it, this ain't no library, bub.

Happy (some but not all of the) Presidents Day!

I know a courier who is a bitter whiny old hypochondriac. She's also a virulent racist. She refuses to take Martin Luther King Day off, even though most of the companies she delivers for are closed, because her late husband (who no doubt welcomed death as a way to get away from her) would come up out of the grave and get her if she ever did anything to honor a man of color and courage and integrity. So she runs her regular route taking nothing to nobody to prove some sort of point, I guess.
I would not want to be like her in any way, but I do want to make it clear that I am taking this day off to honor men like Lincoln and FDR and Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton, but not men who disgraced the office of President like Warren Harding, Richard Nixon and the inarticulate, war-mongering liar currently residing in the White House.
All right?

Oh the Places You'll Go!!! (Well, maybe.)

There are a lot of places I want to go to: India (my spiritual home), Equador (just because -- although I know nothing about the place -- it seems so inviting. I hate cold weather, and Equador wants everyone to know that they are on the Equator; they even named their country after that wonderful imaginary line) The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago, Mexico, Japan, the Emerald City of Oz, Metropolis, Illinois (for the annual Superman Festival) , Gilroy California (for the Garlic Festival) San Diego for the biggest baddest comic convention of all. I want to go to a nudist camp and let it all hang out for a while. I want to go to Mount Airy, North Carolina (cuz it's as close as one can get to Mayberry) and to Belize (which is my wife's dream but it sounds good to me too.) I've just recently added Denmark to the list (if it's ever warm in Denmark) cuz militant Muslims are boycotting Danish goods and services in a fit of pique over some cartoons defaming the prophet Muhammad, and as much as those guys love Muhammad I love free speech, so I'm drinking Tuborg beer and eating imported Danish Havarti cheese.
There are lots more places I want to go to, but probably none more than I want to go to
Stamford, Connecticut.
That's right: Connecticut. For the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament held every year there in March. I've wanted to go for years, planned to go, even paid my 185 dollar registration fee and reserved a room at the Stamford Marriott, but --
But it's in Connecticut. In March. And by the time March rolls around I am so sick of winter and cold weather that I am unable to force my body to go northward. And so every year we wind up going to Florida instead. (Last year in Florida I caught pnuemonia, which is ironic, I guess, in an extremely unfunny kind of way.) This year I was determined to make it, even if I had to drive through a dozen blizzards to get there. But once again the tournament will have to go on without me. I will be in -- where else? -- Florida, celebrating my mother's 70th birthday. And it should be fun, all the family there in the Ocala sunshine, but
I just hope I get to Stamford before I die.

Winter Wonderland and other deranged rantings

I don't hate Christmas.
Honest, I don't.
I hate the fact that Christmas is on December 25th. On that day Winter is only four days old. We've still got to somehow get through 87 and 1/4 days of Mucus Season. So please forgive me if that doesn't make me feel like singing.
And that doesn't mean I hate Christmas songs either. Some of them I love like "O Holy Night" and "Angels We Have Heard on High". As far all that Frosty Rudolph the Little Drummer Boy coming right down Santa Claus Lane stuff, I'm okay with that, but please don't play it before December 18th or after the 25th. A week of it is plenty.
There is another category of song you hear this time of year and not only are these not enjoyable, they are downright disturbing, the lunatic blitherings of poor souls who have gone Winter-mad. These people need help not for us to sing along with them. What about that couple who are planning to get married in a ceremony officiated by a minister made of snow? If that's not madness, I don't know what is. And how about that guy who keeps saying "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow"? Obviously he has obviously given up the will to live and has resolved to freeze to death. And that lady whose favorite thing is snowflakes that stay on her nose and eyelashes. Yeah, me too. And you know what else is fun? Frostbite.
But the worst one of all, the one that drives me almost as insane as these people who think Winter is a wonderland instead of a hyperborean hell, is that madman shouting about how this is the "most wonderful time of the year."
No it isn't, fool, and please find yourself a good doctor. Baseball season is the most wonderful time of the year. Winter is the most wretched time of the year is what it is, but if we all huddle together and drink hot toddies we'll get through it. But please no singing. We need to conserve our strength.

Breathless, Part Deuce

One more song that takes my breath away every time I hear it. And not only am I going to try to convince you that it's a great song. I intend to prove that it is better than "Moby Dick" or "War and Peace" or any other classic novel you can name.
Ready?
Here we go.
The song is called "Austin" and it's by this pearly-toothed gentleman here. His name is Blake Shelton:


I'm not going to link to any of the sites that'll show you the lyrics. You won't get the full impact of the song that way. Go download it. Emusic.com will give you a free 50 song 30 day trial. Download this song and "November Rain" and "Hang on, Sloopy" plus 47 more of your choosing and then quit. Or if you prefer doing things the old-fashioned way, go buy Mister Shelton's self-titled debut CD, which I guarantee is worth the price of purchase just for "Austin" alone, but you also get the greatest prison-break-assisted-by-dogs-in-heat country song ever -- "Ol' Red" -- to boot.


Okay, so now that you've done your homework, let's examine this song and see why I have to pull off the road if it comes on while I'm driving, and why it blows "Moby Dick" out of the water and makes "War and Peace" look like a minor border skirmish.
The girl leaves the guy, goes home to Austin to clear her mind. One year later, she calls him up, gets his answering machine which says that the car he had advertised has been sold, if it's Tuesday night he's out bowling, and if you're trying to sell something then get lost.
And "P.S. if this is Austin, I still love you."
She can't believe it, of course. That's a hell of a long time to carry a torch. Three days later she tries again, gets a similar message about his weekend plans and the exact same coda. This time she leaves her number -- that's it, just a number. He calls her back and now she does a dead-on, heartbreakingly romantic riff on his outgoing message, and then she tells him live and in person that she still loves him. They're reunited, and I'm on the side of the road, emotionally drained and digging around for a Kleenex or something to wipe my eyes with.
Love does last. Axl was right. But this is not the needy clingy dependence that so often passes for love in much popular music, and is perhaps best exemplified in the most overrated country song ever "He Stopped Loving Her Today." The guy in "Austin" is not sitting around, underlining "I love you"s in old letters and waiting to die. He's getting on with his life, fishing, bowling, playing ball, telling telemarketers to go to hell. But the love is always there.
A masterpiece, right? But still just a nice little 3 minute song. Surely it doesn't compare with Tolstoy or Melville, does it?
This is a quote that has stuck in my mind ever since I read it. The only thing I've forgotten about it is where I found it and who originally said it, but it speaks for itself as far as truthfulness:
"Every novelist is a failed short-story writer, and every short-story writer is a failed poet." Because one of the main missions of an artist is to get his point across as completely and as succinctly as possible, because as the Bard put it, "Brevity is the soul of wit." He could have shortened even more: "Brevity is the soul."
In other words "Austin" is what Tolstoy would have written if he could've.

Breathless

"Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away."

I've seen this quote atributed to everyone from Confucius to George Carlin, but I guess it doesn't matter who said it first; it only matters if it's true or not. And I believe it is.
Herewith, in no order other than the order they popped into my head, are some things that take my breath away in the world of popular music. I'll get to art and literature and comic books later.

"November Rain" from Guns N' Roses. Even if the Gunners had never done this song, they would still be one of my favorite rock bands of the last 15 or so years -- (not that there's been much competition, the infusion of rap having pretty much ruined rock and roll. But I digress.) -- for songs like "Sweet Child O' Mine" "Patience" "Don't Cry" and some other great stuff they did before Axl took up permanent residence on the nutjob side of that fine line that separates genius and insanity But this song never fails to blow me away every time I hear it for two reasons. And before I tell you those two reasons I need to tell you two things about me.

1.) I am a romantic.
2.) I hate Winter.

The second one is self-explanatory. Don't all right-thinking people loathe that long, dark season of death and glaciation and no baseball? But I might need to clarify that first point. The zeitgeist of our modern era is cynicism, so if you tell people you're romantic they think you live in some fairy-tale world that you discovered when you buried your head in the sand. That is why as much as I love stuff like the new movie "Just Like Heaven" starring the magnificent Reese Witherspoon where love conquers all, I have a more profound appreciation for works of art that acknowldge the the harsh realities of life without giving them more power than they deserve.

That is why I love "November Rain" so much. At first only the music contains any hint of hopefulness, the lyrics are about how nothing good lasts forever and hearts can change so (it is implied) you might as well give up on the hippie nonsense of Max Ehrrman's "Desiderata" and its tenet of "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world" and put whatever faith you have left into nihilism and the "no warmth -- no cheerfulness -- no healthful ease" of Thomas Hood's "November" But then Axl and Slash and the guys dig a little deeper and discover that the truth is it's the bad things like Winter that do not last, but the real things like love do.

Man, I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

'Graphs from Beyond the Grave

I hope this doesn't sound too morbid, but every time I hear about a celebrity dying -- and I usually hear about it right away thanks to the nice people at this fine website -- one of the first thoughts that run through my mind is "Do I already have his or her autograph?" The world of classic TV lost a couple of icons recently and I was sorry to see them go, but glad that I had already written to them, thanked them for the enjoyment their work has brought me and obtained their signatures.

Words of Wisdom from the Comic Books

"Why are people who hear voices always told to do bad things? Why don't the voices ever say "Do charity work! Give to the poor! Hug a widow!" "
Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise #72

We all do what we can

Like you, my heart has been broken by the recent events in the Gulf States. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the deaths it caused, as well as the deaths caused by the bungled federal response to this catastrophe is just overwhelming. I want to help, but I feel like the little bit of money I can send won't do much -- even though I know that every little bit helps and if we all do a little than a hell of a lot can get done. I just thought of a way I can do a little more. I mentioned that I'm an autograph collector and I have a pretty nice collection. I just put a signed and numberd Michael Kaluta art book up for auction on eBay, and I hope to put more items there with all the profit going to the American Red Cross. Please consider bidding on this book, selling some of your things on eBay and donating the profits to Flood Relief efforts or just sending money to the Red Cross.

Today's Mail

The mailbox was pretty full today, although much of it was junk from Best Buy, Jiffy Lube, Sofa Express and Capital One (who just refuse to believe that I don't want another credit card). I also got some address labels from Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, an invitation to the Virgina Wine and Garlic Festival in October, the new issue of The Week magazine, a new issue of "Busted" which is the newsletter of the excellent censorship-fighting Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a couple of payments for my recent eBay auctions, a gas bill that I am working up the nerve to open, and one autograph.
In case you don't recognize the gent to my right, that's Franklin Cover and he played Tom Willis on the TV show "The Jeffersons" (you know, where "The fish don't fry in the kitchen, and the beans don't burn on the grill!" which doesn't make any sense when you think about it; I mean fish do fry in the kitchen, I've seen it done myself on many occasions -- and what kind of fool would try to cook beans on a grill? That's just a good way to get pintos in your charcoal.)
This autograph presents me with a dilemma I have not had to face before. I don't know if it's technically an autograph or not. I mean he wrote "To Robert Loy" and "Take Care" but he didn't actually sign it.
Hmmm. . .
Oh well, it's going in my autograph collection. I don't have time to worry about it. I've got some beans on the grill.

Thoughts while riding in an elevator

I work in a three story building, that's it, just three stories. On the first floor there's an UP only call button, on the third floor there's a DOWN only call button, and on the second there are both. Makes sense, right? What doesn't make sense is why after I get on the elevator on the second floor I have to push a button to get to the floor I want. I mean if I pushed the DOWN button I must want to get to the first floor, there is no basement. If I pushed UP I must want to go to the third flooor. Why with all of our appliances getting smarter and smarter all the time, why are elevators still so stupid?
I also gotta wonder how come there's elevator music playing everywhere in this building _except_ in the elevator.

Number One Shirt

I used to deny it. I used to call myself a connoisseur, but the truth is I am a collector. I collect comic books (more than 3000 of them in 3 different rooms in my house) autographs (almost 1000) magazines, books, (and autographed books, magazines and comics) postcards, bookmarks and literary references to the song "Macarthur Park."
I even collect T-shirts. But they're a bit of a problem to categorize. My credo has always been that the difference between a collection and a conglomeration of junk is organization. And all of my other collections are neatly categorized and cross-referenced, alphabetized and numericized.
But my T-shirt collection is just there in my closet and my dresser. Oh, there's an aborted Excel file in my laptop called "shirts" but breaking them down by color and size (all XL) and theme just seemed too silly even for me. Probably because the only one way to categorize garments is by the story they tell. And I can't figure out how to get Excel to do that.
This is the oldest shirt in my collection.
I got it on June 4th, 1989 at a record store in Knoxville Tennessee, so it's 16 years old and is retired; I no longer wear it although I still love it. I couldn't tell you exactly what day I bought any other shirt I own. The only reason I know this one is because after I got back from purchasing the shirt, I learned that the Chinese Government had decided to massacre the pro-democracy student demonstrators that had been amassing in Tiananmen Square for several weeks. Something like that kinda sticks in a memory even as shoddy as mine.
I've had other Grateful Dead shirts and they've all gotten old and raggy and thrown out, but the reason this one is still occupying a place of honor in my closet is because of the tenacious way this cheap concert shirt held to life even though I wore it frequently and treated it rough. It didn't get holes or rips in it, but it kept fading and fading until you could literally see right through it. My family would tease me when I wore it and tell me to go put on a shirt because the thing was translucent -- and very soft, I've never worn anything softer -- while still maintaining its structural integrity. If you look closely at this picture of my son Dylan wearing the shirt you can see where it became transparent.
Just when I thought it was some kind of magic shirt and I would be able to wear it until it completely disappeared, it started to break down, got some holes in it, and I decided that rather than wear this old warrior to death, I would retire it with honor. Which is what I've done.
This is still my favorite shirt and not just because it's the oldest. I said earlier that shirts should be organized by the story they tell. This shirt tells me a story about how one should grow old. That is why as I age I intend not to break down bit by bit but to slowly become gossamer.

.