I stumbled across this story over at Boingboing. Blogger Scott Beale at Laughing Squid got himself in hot water with Best Buy’s lawyers for posting on a parody shirt. The shirt, shown above, features the ‘likeness’ of the Best Buy logo tag. Scott received a cease and desist letter for merely posting on someone elses shirt. Seriously. You can read the letter on his site. Best Buy lawyers initially claimed he was ‘promoting’ the shirt, which they deemed to be an infringement upon their copyright and trademarks. Fortunately after a little back and forth their lawyers issued an apology to Scott stating that while they object to the unauthorized use of their logo, they ‘respect the First amendment rights’ of bloggers.

A revised version of the shirt is for sale at Neighborhoodies. It looks like they’ve removed the yellow color on the tag - likely to keep themselves out of further legal trouble. $5.99. View the original Laughing Squid post and the yellow tag version of the shirt here.

Pretty lame misstep on Best Buy’s part. Regardless of issues of fair use, a cease and desist for mere reporting on an event is absolutely ridiculous. No doubt the original prank pulled off by Improv Everywhere (which featured the shirts in question) was covered by countless local newspapers and television stations. Did they receive cease and desist letters for reporting the news? Somehow I don’t think so.

We reviewed Progresswear a while back and they quickly became one of our favorite shops. So we’re more than happy to pass along a couple of t-shirt tidbits. They’ve permanently reduced the price of their women’s shirts and are offering a limited time deal on free shipping. If you’ve got a politically savvy, t-shirt-wearing, gift-worthy friend to shop for this season a Progresswear gift certificate would do the trick.

We’ve posted up a couple of new shirts after the jump. Both great spins on the Christian right. I’m sure I’m repeating some of what I said in my initial review, but Progresswear’s stuff is cut above. There’s a sensitivity to design, and especially type, that is clearly present in both the shirt designs and their web site. I’ve always said I love t-shirt design because it’s an accessible medium for creative entrepreneurs, but there’s a clear difference when you’ve got true designers at the helm. The results are well executed shirts, pared down to their simplest form, yet incredibly impactful.

(more…)

PETA is taking aim at another celebrity for wearing fur. Two celebrities actually. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are the target of a full scale parody campaign by PETA. And of course, as part of any good smear campaign you’ve got your t-shirts. The Trollsen Twins shirts are being sold through a CafePress store and are available in almost 20 different varieties of tees and sweatshirts. Grab yourself a Trollsen Twin tee right here.

Celebs seem to love Ed Hardy tees. We posted Madonna wearing them on more than one occassion. Today we spy Tara Reid in Australia wearing, you guessed it, more Ed Hardy. Don’t think I’ve ever bothered to pass around the official link, so for what it’s worth, here it is: www.donedhardy.com

There’s a funky story on the news wire about a Swiss ski resort where the women are running around wearing t-shirts that say “James Blunt Took My Virginity”. I haven’t managed to locate the shirt yet, but the story is that Blunt likes to frequent the resort, and considers himself to be quite the ladies man. Hard to believe really - both the shirt and that James Blunt gets the girls. Although astonishingly he didn’t manage to snag model Petra Nemcova.
Source

This is one of the best two for ones I think we’ve posted. Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel sporting a fine pair of, ah, tees. Justin’s wearing RVCA’s smoking ape shirt. And while we usually don’t post up beer t-shirts Jessica’s Coors star tee is just fine with us. I didn’t immediately see a way Justin’s tee on the RVCA site, but I did find a bunch on eBay.

Here’s some cool stuff from a UK shop called Love & Tug. Inspired by the likes of Lohan, Doherty and Moss the tees feature the likenesses of today’s popular icons. And of course if you’re going to dive into the world of celebrity you’ve got to have at least one shirt about rehab. Nice spin on the classic Milton Glaser.

Megan Fox hit the red carpet last night for the premiere of Juno. The last thing I’d expect a celebrity to be sporting down the red carpet is a vintage Motley Crue tee. But when you’re as hot as Megan Fox I guess you can wear whatever you want.

PrPhotos

Quick post to start the week before we dive in with some fresh reviews. Threadless.com has got a bunch of stuff on sale from $10. Sale ends Dec. 16th. No coupon code necessary, just the will to shop.