Couple shirt sightings with Natalie Portman from the Venice film festival. Know them? Name it.

Photo: prphotos.com

We’ve had our watchful eye on Jerkass Clothing for quite sometime. They’ve always managed to be quick to market with funny parody shirts, notable some SNL related winners. P is for Portman and the recent SNL Digital Short with Justin Timberlake, Dick in a Box. Fortunately for us Angela Lee has provided us a little insight into what makes Jerkass tick. Many thanks.

Give us an overview your shop. What kind of merchandise, style, theme, etc
My shop rules. I’ve got something offensive enough for every occasion!

How long have you had the shop / been selling shirts?
The Jerkass Clothing Co. has been online for about a year and a half.

How did you get started selling shirts?
I started in college creating dumb tees for family and friends. I looked into setting up a biz, but the costs and resources needed to store, print, process, and ship items were more than I wanted to take on. It really wasn’t until I found Spreadshirt that I decided to really make a go of it.

Do you have a physical store?
Nope. It’s the internet for me. Thanks Al Gore.

Anything interesting about your name? A story behind it?
Out of nowhere, on a crisp fall day in 2005, my three-year old son called my husband a jerkass. The rest is history.

What are some of your most popular items?
A few of the favs…

Do you have a particular creative process you follow?
Nope. But fruity drinks are usually involved.

What inspires you?
The cast of the View and American Gladiators.

What celebrity would you most like to see spotted wearing one of your shirts? And what shirt?
Tom Cruise wearing my “Scientology – You had me at hello” t-shirt.

Do you have any additional stores or business you’d like us to know about?
The t-shirt bizness is going great. I’ve recently expanded a bit and gotten involved in a new startup called ZingFu. ZingFu.com is a twisted photo-sharing web site that allows users to upload pictures and add them to magazine covers, billboards, celebrity photos and more. Users can add speech or thought bubbles to their unique Zings and easily post them to MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, or anywhere else that 40-year old men pretend to be 14-year old girls.

And of course, you can print your Zings on t-shirt!

What advice would you offer someone starting out selling t-shirts?
Work is a four letter word. Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. If you can create interesting messages and artwork, and if your designs are unique, you’ll succeed.

Hind sight is 20/20. What do you wish you would have done differently? Is there a trend you missed? Marketing angle you were late jumping on?
I just wish I had started earlier. It’s pretty easy to get up and running nowadays. So there is a lot of competition. At the end of the day though, it comes down to the designs. And the Jerkass designs are about as dumb as they come. Cha-ching.

SNL Digital Shorts Spawn T-Shirts
Saturday Night Lives digital video shorts produced some funny and memorable skits and quick working t-shirt shop owners got creative with parody shirts. P is for Portman from Jerkass Tees was a notable favorite, along with the Dick in a Box tee from Busted Tees – based on Justin Timberlake’s Digital Short Christmas song.

2006 The Year of the Crotch
From firecrotch to crotch slips the crotch made news. Brandon Davis made tabloid headlines after he referred to Lindsay Lohan as a firecrotch, and then sported a Team Firecrotch shirt on the streets. Paris Hilton also sported some classic and classless t-shirt slogans.

Going Environmental
Evangeline Lilly recommended we Reduce Reuse and Recycle while Jennifer Love Hewitt was spotted dragging out the trash in a Yoko Ono t-shirt and Jessica Alba was spotted in a Cash t-shirt while dumping the garbage. Paris Hilton promised Club Sandwiches not Seals.

Band Tees
Another popular celebrity t-shirt trend were band tees. We spotted Lindsay Lohan sporting Bob Dylan and Queen. Macy Gray threw on the Cult and Brangelina’s Maddox sported Black Sabbath. Charlotte Church wore the Stones and Mischa Barton wore Springsteen.

So if you’re wondering what Dick in a Box means, you probably didn’t see Saturday Night Live last weekend. If you did manage to catch the SNL Digital Short with Justin Timberlake then you’re probably laughing by now. Leave to the folks at Jerkass Clothing to be one of the first to market with a Dick in a Box shirt. Jerkass was quick to hit last time with a funny shirt for the SNL short P is for Portman. The Dick in the Box shirt is great because it’s one of those tees that either leaves people laughing out loud or thinking you’re totally deranged. All the makings of a great tee if you ask us.

Many thanks to the funny peep over at the Bastardly for posting pictures of Natalie Portman’s SNL outakes. Portman’s shirt is a nice play on the tradional Star Wars logo. Natalie got quite a bit of attention for her fouled mouthed digital short rap video when she hosted SNL a few weeks back. Damn funny I say. Even spawed a shirt from our friends over at Jerkass Clothing.

Here Natalie Portman in a skull t-shirt from her recent appearance on MTVs TRL. Natalie’s SNL rap video has top list search lists lately anc caused enough buzz for t-shirt designers Jerkass Clothing to take note. Check out the P is for Portman shirt inspired by the SNL digital short.

Natalie Portman Raps!. Really. If you missed the recent Saturday Night Live digital video short with Natalie Portman you missed good stuff. Have no fear, the always entertaining Celebrity Crunch has Natalie’s SNL rap video from YouTube.com. And if you’re looking for a matching shirt, look no further than the fine folks at Jerkass Clothing Co.. The P is for Portman shirt is a yet another funny tee from Jerkass and a nice node to one cute, hot, crazy chick. Now shut the F@#K up!