Stanley Applebaum

Today's Daily Shirt is a bit of an inside joke that all stems from a conversation between Frank and Red. It went something like this:

Frank: You're a big jerkface.

Red: No, you're a big jerk-face.

Frank: No, you're a big jerk-face.

Red: No, you're a big jerk-face.

Frank: No, you're a big jerk-face.

Red: You should put Robert Goulet on Shirty. And you're a big jerk-face.


(Please Note: This conversation is not a direct quote. There was a lot more swearing...)

Speculation as truth: Lies in the service of efficency

Well, today is another one of those days where, honestly, I don't know much of anything about Shirty's head.

Sorry, I'm just not a fan of daytime talk shows - aka celebrity-mongering - as you can probably tell by now. Unless, of course, this is your first visit to The Daily Shirt. In which case, of course you wouldn't know this. How can you know something that you don't know? A knowable unknown, as our friend Rummy (from yesterday) is wont to say...

So, in place of "verifiable facts" and "research," we're just gonna make some stuff up. I think that today's Daily Shirt shirt was born in a rickshaw in Paris, to a nuclear physicist/shadow-puppeteer mother and table-tennis champion father (who, by the way, couldn't pronounce vowels). Her childhood was punctuated social unrest; at 7 she formed a neighbourhood union for her peers, demanding better chore conditions, and she championed a 26% raise in allowances for the neighbourhood over a 5 year period. For her efforts to improve the lot of kids everywhere, she was honoured with a fast-track through the awkward teenage years, spending only 3 of a possible 7 teenage-years as an actual teenager. Known for always wearing an old television on her head in her youth, she was a natural to host her own exhibition of synchophantic behaviour, which is exactly what happened.

And that's the real story that People Magazine doesn't want you to know. Enjoy!

Rummy - Master Murderer, Immovable Idologue

There's so much - oh so much - that one can say about today's Daily Shirt. Don't worry though, I won't type every possible thing there is to type about this person; that list would be far too long and infinately too sad for such a rambunctious space on the cyberweb.

And such a prolific killer deserves a better bio on a better site than the Shirtmaster General can provide anyway.

So, today, we're going to be positive, positive, positive!

Can't you just feel the positivity just oozing from your computer? Look! Right there; it's coming from your CDROM drive. Eew. Don't touch it; who knows if positivity is toxic. No one comes to this blog anyway - I don't need to be killing the few people that do stop by here. I guess that's not all that positive. Sorry.

Well, how about an amusing anecdote about a ship that sunk? No? That famine/war/plague? Not positive either, eh?

How about we all just agree that, from here on in, persons placed in positions of immense power must be intellects not ideologues; following the agenda of state and not private interests.

Ahhh... Much better.

The big 'O'

Okay, you can exhale. This is indeed a new post on The Daily Shirt.

The concensus is that Shirty might be getting sick. Don't worry though. We've got the best medical care for a shirt that publicly-funded, socialised health-care can buy. Which is pretty good stuff. It takes a village to raise a shirt, you know?

So... we need to tell you something; are you sitting down? Well why not? Do you know how uncomfortable it can get just hovering over a computer monitor to read what's on screen? Are you new to the computrex environment? Anyway, now that I've been thoroughly distracted (and probably have left the stove on - thanks assorted non-sitters!), we have to tell you... We're not sure, but it might need a starchenectomy followed by intensive varnishcological treatment.

It actually sounds worse than it is. Ever had a splinter? Well, the level of discomfort is somewhere between that and watching this person's show - a mixture of self-help preachy-ness and nonsensical pop-culture aggrandisement for the Paris Hilton & Dr. Phil's lovechild crowd . Don't say we didn't warn you...or at least look at you funny...

They just eat it right up

Well, it's Thursday time again. And what better way to celebrate the majesty of Thursday than with a brand new head on an...I guess it's a brand old shirt...? But even better than that, it's a new dimension of Shirty.

How's that?

Well, we've done real people, dead folk and fictional characters. We've had cartoons and sculptures and a comic book dude for a head.

But today, marks the landmark first time that a representitive from the video game delegation has taken the floor. And, I'm just realising that this head arrives just in time. With the guests we've had this week, and today's Daily Shirt, it all fits in with the upcoming NerdFest that hits Toronto in a short while. That's right; a comic book/sci-fi/anime gathering of fans of those genres (the biggest and most important one in the universe, with delegations from all the major star-systems, according to their literature).

Okay, so a video game isn't exactly like those things, but it's close enough - and I found a way to promote their thing on my thing. I guess the only thing left is to collect my payment - which I would not like in Superman memorabilia, thanks...

Rhymes with 'freight kazoo'

Long a staple of my cartoon diet as a youngin', today's Daily Shirt was a supporting character on this program; a key ingredient to forming lasting, realistic impressions of life...ummm...in cartoon form.

So, if my life (or anyone else's, for that matter), were actually a cartoon, we'd be totally set!

It's amazing to think about all the cool things that would happen if that we're the case. For one, no one in cartoons gets bills. It's like everything's all taken care of for them. They just need to worry about having wacky adventures. No problem.

No one gets hurt in cartoons, either. Okay, if you count 'pride' or 'ego' damage, than sure, there is hurt. But everyone - everyone - who was part of the G.I. Joe legacy has simply the worst aim ever. Witness that airplanes are dropping bombs, those funny pink and blue laser bolts (?) are flying back and forth and...nothing. Everyone's still there in the end. No matter how much stuff blows up in the intrim.

You can have an anvil dropped on you (or fall off a cliff or get hit by a truck or...) and it's little more than an inconvienence. Next scene comes up, and at best an arm is in a sling or there's a bandaid on the forehead.

I wish I was a crudely drawn animation who is part of a negligible sub-plot...

That's just super...

I'm not a fan myself, but the phenomenon of comic book-based superheroes and their appeal is an interesting sociological phenomenon. That, and the singing of 'Happy Birthday.' Except that superheroes aren't nearly as annoying as that ridiculous song, nor has the tune ever saved the world from a mad genious who's bent on destroying the world with a super-photon radiological disbursement...uhh...penguin. Who shoots lasers from his little penguin eyes...

It seems like superheroes are male (typically - no offense to the females out there who are into this stuff) escapism - complete with the action, adventure and (most importantly) large-breasted and generally impossibly-proportioned females either superheroing or being superheroed that real life is devoid of.

Unless you count the social revolutionaries, leaders of nation-states, religious figures, intellectual visionaries, larger-than-life celebrities in general and a few other catagories of humanity that I'm no doubtedly forgeting, as 'superheroes.' In which case, buy stock in textiles, as the demand for spandex and capes is going to explode...once we figure out a colour scheme for the likes of Vlad Putin, al-Sistani, Francis Fukuyama and Dame Edna...

Flipping off the television

It's quite odd how television, which is responsible for forming so many of our ideas and impressions, has the gall to and is able to get away with presenting highly unrealistic situations as the norm.

Case in point is today's Daily Shirt.

I grew up literally 10 minutes from the elementary school that I attended in those formative years between 5 and 62. But I only went to that school up until the age of 13...long story about graduating from grade 8 that I won't bore you with. Anyway, the point is, I was lucky enough to be able to go home for lunch, and not have to worry about building schoolyard friendships that would last a lifetime. I had television.

And today's Daily Shirt was the father character on the show that I watched while having lunch, that portrayed 1950's midwest America and family life, that, not only had no basis in reality as it pertained to my life, but I also suspect that it had little basis in reality even when it was current programming. It was devastating to see that nothing bad happened anywhere. Was it me? Was my TV broken and only able to show the good, the happy, the idealised?

No, it's that TV, even in the 50's, was about selling illusions, skewing perspectives and generally misinforming people about the real and true deallio behind the visuals; whether it's a family situation, soap commercial or (and worst of all) current world event you were watching on the box.

So, screw you, blatantly idealised television situations. And screw you too, Ward!

Feeling blue

Today on the Daily Shirt, our guests don't include:

A man who says that of all the things in life that he could be doing at any given moment, falling off of ladders is easily his favourite.

A woman who collects samples of irony.

The residents of a town who say that if they that no matter how hard they try, they just can't get a WalMart to move in and decimate the area's small business owner's livlihoods.

The one monkey, who among millions, has managed to write Shakespeare...and his typewriter!

The people who run that website/interesting attraction/cultural pheonomenon about that thing that everyone loves because of their schtick, which is a humerous but poignant statement about things and stuff.

No, today we just have this bit of oddness...

Listing back and forth

Little known fact: Shirty is a audiophile. It's true - whether it's timeless classics like Necrophagist or the unmatched intense brutality of Mozart; the mind-bending experimentation of Barry White or the smooth, soulful sounds of John Cage, tha Shirt got groove.

So today, in honour of the births of the German composer Hans Leo Hassler, Austrian musicologist Leopold Nowak, American blues guitarist Luther Allison, other American blues guitarist Eric Johnson, American singer Belinda Carlisle, Guns N' Roses guitarist (?) Gilby Clarke, Canadian blues guitarist Colin James, singer Donnie Wahlberg, former Nightwish vocalist Tarja Turunen, Norwegian singer Lene Marlin...

...and the deaths of Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, French composer Edmond Audran, early 20th Century American singer Billy Murray, French composer Jean Barraqué and the famous singer and actress Pearl Bailey...

...Here's today's Daily Shirt (whew, that was easy!)

Made Marion

The Lord hath sent us a very special guest for today's Daily Shirt!

And what an interesting character he is. Here we have a televangelist...umm...sorry, 'religious broadcaster,' who has amassed a small fortune through various business deals, strategic investments (see background on the diamond mine investments with the benevolent Liberian president Charles Taylor, et all) and huge book sales.

He's also founded (or had a hand in the founding of) a number of organisations like the Christian Coalition, International Family Entertainment Inc. and Regent University.

Other notable notes include being a global warming convert (quite a coup for someone in his posse), speaking out on the evils of feminism, homosexuality as well as other religious denominations, calling for the assassination of a democratically elected leader, and generally trash-talking anyone and anything that dares expand the boundaries of his myopic little universe.

Oh, and thanks to his 'age-defying energy shake,' he can...umm...leg-press 2000 pounds. Pretty good for a man of almost 80.

Rich, intolerant and super-human. Wow. The Lord is certainly with him; and by 'Lord,' I mean 'Shirt.'

Chattin' her up, yo!

Hey there, Tuesday crowd...

Well, there's not much interesting to say about today's Daily Shirt...just that she's a world renown broadcast-journalist! Could things possibly get any more exciting over here at The Daily Shirt?

A world-renown broadcast-journalist...who's a bit of a pansy when it comes to important stuff, like, you know, journalistic integrity. Don't get the Shirtmaster wrong, she opened up a lot of doors, windows, and various other structural throughways for women in this field, as she's been broadcast-journalisting since the early 60's (with some big name interviews under her belt). But she's been known for taking it easy on interview subjects, serving up some real softball questions, and going for the water-works in an attempt to connect with her audience on a more base, emotional level.

To be fair, she IS a 'celebrity journalist,' which gives her some leeway as it pertains to fluff, so I guess it all balances out. And further to this fairness bit, in the DISTANT past, she has had some seriously high-profile, world-leader types giving her a little of the ol' chatty-chatty. You're lucky, Walters...

Fideling while Rome burns

Howdy weekenders!

The Daily Shirt is like a UN meeting this week - minus all the screaming and crying, fingerpainting and naptime - as Shirty has morphed into yet another playa on the world stage; though this time, it's one who's on his way out.

These crazy leaders; it's like 17 steps forward, 23 steps to the right, 15 steps back and then 36 steps to the left! And if that's not confusing enough, those pidgeons better have the air pressure in the front tires looked at.

So, may we present: The man who, for almost 50 years has presented a relatively successful economic model that runs counter to (and, in fact, flies in the face of) U.S. policy and survived despite ongoing American economic strangulation, has survived an estimated 600 CIA assassination attempts, has developed a murky (at best) human rights record for his country over the same period and who, oddly enough, has a birthday in 2 days.

A load of BS

A strange thing happens to celebrities, and I fear that Shirty - even in it's vast Shirtological wisdom - isn't immune to the cult of personality that forms around otherwise unremarkable folks who just happen to have their stars align once, and then spend the rest of their existence in pursuit of past glory - all the while providing solid distractions for the rest of the world that enables bad people to do bad things under the cover of widespread public ignorance.

Case in point: Today's Daily Shirt. Here we have a person who can't even almost drop a baby without the world freaking out. Why is this important? People almost drop babies everyday. How does some famous person - driving with an infant on their lap - provide anything of value to one's day? These are empty calories for the mind. And we all know what happens to empty calories for the mind; they all go directly to the mind's thigh, resulting in the condition known as fat-head brain-bloatitis. It's true. Saw it on Wikipedia, I did... But don't worry; I'm sure Pfizer will have a slick commercial dealing with this condition in no time.

So what's the point of all this? Ummm...did you miss the title of this post?!? Oh, and the pic is some highly-paid BS too... Seeya tomorrow!

You should see the size of that bunny

Time for another episode of The Daily Shirt - presented in stereo surround-sound.

Such a versatile shirt, so capable of such a great many things... You hear that, regular non-starched/varnished shirts in my closet? Are you happy just being a regular shirt, spending the duration of your existence with only MY head poking out the top of you?

You had so much potential when you still lay unclaimed at the various stores from which you were bought. A Scientologist could have bought you, or a person who serves food at a soup-kitchen, or even someone who would take you home to starch and varnish the living daylights out of you so that maybe, just maybe, one day you might star in your own blog...living the life of famous people, even if it is only for a couple of days, max...

But no... So I'm stuck with a bunch of shirts that are one-trick ponies. Good work, shirts; doing nothing but converge with pants to keep me warm, protected and unarrested. Good work. But can you do this???

Tuesday Morning Il'in

Mornin' Shirtophiles,

You might have noticed through some of Shirty's faces that it has a tendancy to follow world events and personalities - from Condi Rice to Steve-O Harper and the like - because, well, they're just so darn funny.

If you're confused by that statement, please allow me to translate:

Να έχετε παρατηρήσει μέσω μερικών από τα πρόσωπα Shirty ότι έχουν ένα tendancy για να ακολουθήσουν τα παγκόσμια γεγονότα και προσωπικότητες - από το ρύζι Condi στο Steve-o Harper και όμοιοι - επειδή, καλά, είναι ακριβώς έτσι καταριούνται αστείο.

(A big thumbs up to Babelfish for the above bastardisation! Thanks folks!)

Now that we've cleared that up, today's edition of the Daily Shirt is another fun-loving despot (who, by the way, is safe from 'regime change' by virtue of actually possessing nuclear weapons); his birth was foretold by a swallow, and upon his arrival a new star was created along with the occurance of a double rainbow. He (supposedly) loves Rambo, 007 and the Friday The 13th franchise, and has a Micheal Jordan-autographed basketball - I present Dear Leader...in a starched, varnished pink shirt with flowers.

Now it all makes sense...

A February of postings

Well what do I see when I log on today for what's becoming a morning ritual? The Daily Shirt has 28 entries - a February of posts! And no one is more surprised than I that we still have this much time on our hands. It really is a shame...a shame that no one's given us enough money to quit our jobs and do this full-time!

Ahhh February. Normally the Shirtmaster runs in terror from even the merest notion of that shortest of months. And living in the Great White North, that association comes with good reason; whether it's the icy hazards, slushy messes, or frozen hobos, it's just a nasty time of year.

Which is why is surprised me so when, during the course of the most brutal heatwave ever recently, I actually found myself escaping to memories of February just as a respite from the heat (and to indulge a slight hint of sadism). When you're hitting the upper 40's in celsius (that's a hundred and teens for you fahrenheit-readers), well you might as well be in Kazakhstan. Which brings us to today's Shirtalogical Transformative Undertaking Providing Identity Duality (S.T.U.P.I.D.).

Long a fan of his comedic madness, Shirty decided to heducate 'imself on just what it's like to be a Kazakhstani journalist in the land of opportunity. The movie comes out this fall. Re-spek!

The grandma who wasn't

Welcome to tomorrow's yesterday!

Now's the time of year when one can't help but think back to earlier years, and in my case, numerous summer vacations from school wasted in front of the TV. And never is this more apparent then when two specific events converge; the first being me looking at how much work that I have to do (that, in this case, is being latered in favour of updating this thing) and the second is when I all-of-a-sudden get a flashback to some crappy television show that I watched for a summer when I was 13.

And today's Daily Shirt is a relic of one such show.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this program; like so many other aspects of our 'have it delivered' culture, it was there, not demanding to be watched - not even politely asking - just showing up regularly in the early afternoon so as to make it self available for television/viewer relations at my leasure. And if I remember correctly, it was on a low-number channel too, so it required only a minimum of button clicking to get there.

Ahhh...the lazy, mis-spent, soon-to-be-regret-filled, completely wasted, nothing to show for them days of summer...

Fallen from grace (Part II)

We're fast-tracking today's Daily Shirt to the front of the queue, cause, well, it's timely. Makes sense - unlike the decision to run one's mouth about a particularly sensitive topic when one already has developed something of a reputation of having - shall we say - pretty extreme viewpoints on this particular topic.

Now, regardless of what side one stands on the Lebanon invasion or myriad other topics involving Jews, Judaism or Isreali policies toward their neighbours, it should be obvious to all that drunken comments by a public figure at this particularly sensitive time only inflames an already spiraling-out-of-control humanitarian disaster. The crazies in charge of the world (yes, I'm talking to you, US and Isreali administrations and their synchophants) can point to this as the ravings of a lunatic (no dispute there), given traction by the 'liberal media' (which I'll dispute any day of the week); meanwhile the various nutjob factions out there can look at this with quiet approval, as someone makes themselves a mouthpiece for their views to the public at large.

So, consider today's shirting a reprimand; a way for this little corner of the web to smack a little sense into an aforementioned nutjob. If you didn't think you looked like a fool before, you certainly do now.

Now go stand in the corner, Mel Gibson, and think about what you've done.



(Sorry about the above rant; I understand that these blog things are full of people spouting off about any number of things - is this some small way to feel like one is being heard, in a world where individual voices aren't heard no matter what we're led to believe? - and this blog is intended to be fun. So, tomorrow, I promise that we're bringin' back the funny. Stay tuned.)