http://enlighted.com

Now I hadn’t planned on buying ANYTHING when i was in Disney World – i assumed there wasn’t a single item of modern merchandise i’d care to own – but then i saw these EPCOT tees and i went OMG OMG! and bought them all and tried to convince others around me to do the same because these celebrate when the future was the 80’s and EPCOT was still an all-caps acronym about an aspirational global Community Of Tomorrow. Granted the one on black looks like the designer spent about 3 minutes on it resulting in a wrongness that the Silverlake hipsters will think i’m wearing ironically, but no, i really am happy to be working my collection of faux-vintage EPCOT-wear at the home, office, and gym.  (If you’re a medium and like the black one let me know because I bought 2 because i didn’t know which size would fit after washing – so i’ll send u the medium if u want.)

 Not that they were employing me. I just sent them (and a few other companies) my unsolicited design suggestions. I was 11 and living in Fargo but that didn’t mean I couldn’t collaborate with international fashion conglomerates after school. The above is a duplicate I painted at the time. I’d gone to Dayton’s department store (the only place in Fargo that carried ESPRIT) and asked for the corporate address and was very frustrated that the salesgirls weren’t taking my request seriously – didn’t they realize they’d be selling my designs next season? In the response from ESPRIT headquarters Stuart writes “We’ve forwarded them (my designs) to our design department for consideration.” This, like, MADE MY YEAR!  Ugh!, nothing came of it but just to be considered, CONSIDERED! – Someone was listening to me! (Stuart, if you’re out there, give me a call!) The other kids in class thought i was bonkers painting all this ESPRIT stuff, but i wasn’t playing, I was WORKING.

People love to touch real bow ties.

And they attract drunk models.

But they cannot charm certain art-porn filmmakers.

I had this Tyvek paper jacket in high school and wore it to every geography and history test. Teachers would hide the globes, roll up the maps, but no one ever noticed my jacket. Where’s North Korea? Let me scratch my elbow. What’s the capital of Paraguay? I’ll check my belly. I always did well on those tests and I’m sure the kid behind me did too. Found it at that shop on Melrose that used to be Aardvarks.

But a warning to cheaters:  I don’t know if it was the jacket, the teachers edition of the history text book I stole that had all the answers to every quiz, or the test I snatched off the teachers desk – xeroxed – and put back, but until recently I’ve had recurring dreams/nightmares that some “error” was discovered that voided my whole adult life and I had to quit work and go back to finish high school. (Friends have recounted similar dreams – what does it mean?)

Finally, when I was 32, the teacher in this one dream (who was my same age) looked up from her desk and noticed me taking some test with the rest of her class, and said, “What are you doing here? You graduated. You’re done.” And I got up all embarrassed, and left. I’ve never had the dreams since.

Found these in San Francisco this weekend. The Converse are new but the ROOS look vintage. If either were a 14 I would’ve bought them. I don’t know what you could ever fit in the ROOS side zipper pocket other than drugs, maybe that’s why they were so popular in the 80’s.

From the Kansas City Star last week:

“You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting you.”

Chuck Palahniuk chuckles as he says this, steering his pickup down Highway 14 just on the Washington side of the Columbia River. He’s saying you can’t judge an author by his books.

Come to think of it, he’s wearing a black T-shirt that says “Disappointed” in Disney-style script.

Palahniuk (pronounced “paula-nick”) loves the irony of this…

That would be my Disappointed shirt. I gave Chuck one last year after he complimented me on mine at a “Haunted” reading.