January 13, 2012 - Action - Reaction

So who’s afraid of a little abstraction?

Size: XL | Fabric: 100% Cotton | Made by / in: Sportswear / USA
Had Since: 2007? | Price: $13? | Times Worn: ~5

Last night Steve told me not to overthink my shirt choice for today, so when I woke this morning I thought of that and let my mind wander and jump from topic-to-topic to find this shirt.  Thinking of him reminded me of playing the card game Dominion last night, during which he kept saying, “Action - Reaction!” which is a lyric from the Rush song “Roll the Bones”.  That song is from an album called, conveniently, Roll the Bones, which left me with a choice of two shirts: This one or the good one.  I picked this one because I don’t care for it much and wouldn’t be sad to not have the opportunity to wear it again for another year.

And, as luck should have it, today is Friday the thirteenth, a fact I had forgotten until I sat down to begin typing.  Odd that I should arrive at a shirt with dice on it by a completely separate train of thought on a day so closely related to chance and luck (for some people).  …Dang, that’s eerie.

Rush’s 1991 effort, the Roll the Bones album, is not one of my particular favorites from their oeuvre, but over the years it has certainly grown on me.  It’s one of my friend Brett’s favorites, I believe, which makes sense since we tend to compliment each other in our tastes.  We like different parts of the same things - We’re good counterparts.  Roll the Bones was one of the last albums by Rush that I picked up, and perhaps my opinion of it suffered because of that, or maybe it’s just more of a sleeper hit with me - I like it more now than I did five years ago…maybe in another five it will move up even more.  Hard to say, but I will direct you to some of my favorites from the album, as there are a few choice cuts of meat on dem Bones: Face Up, Ghost of a Chance, and Dreamline.

I have no idea when I bought this shirt, not even enough to know what date range to start with if I wanted to go digging through Paypal receipts for it.  I don’t like it enough for all that, so I took a guess of 2007, which is right in the middle of the five year window that it could have been purchased in.  I know I bought it on eBay, thinking, “Well, it’s better than any other Roll the Bones shirt seen, so it’ll do.”  I have no idea how much I paid for it, except to say that it was probably Too Much, even at my $13 guess.  I don’t particularly like the image on the front of the shirt, and people were obviously much thinner (in general) back in 1991, because this XL feels smaller than a few of the L shirts I’ve recently picked up.  The body is not nearly long enough, the sleeves are barely there, and the neckline rides a bit high.  This shirt does have a few things going for it, though: 1) I have no doubt that it’s real, vintage concert merchandise, 2) As my tastes are changing towards a bit closer fit for my shirts, this one is better than I remembered, 3) I dig the back graphic and the snippets of lyrics they chose.

Overall, a better shirt than I remember it being, though still not as cool as my other shirt from this album.  It oddly worked out to be a fitting choice for Friday the thirteenth - Maybe it’ll bring me good luck for the rest of the day!  “So get out there and rock, and roll the bones.  Get busy!”

(Oh, and if anyone finds Watto’s chance cube, he’d appreciate it if you returned it.)