Life comes at you fast. The perfect statement to sum up Crooked Monkey. Not only does the phrase make up an irreverently funny tee, it is also a good description for the rise of Crooked Monkey. These guys should serve as inspiration for all the budding designers out there. In just two short years they’ve managed to land themselves in the likes of Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom, Lord and Taylor, Kitson and Fred Segal . Plus another 500 or so retailers.

Our review tees really tell the story well. Quality shirts. Funny, kind of vintage styled graphics and a little bit of harmless edginess create the perfect mix. Hit em up. www.crookedmonkey.com.

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Offering tees in limited editions is quite popular these days. Let’s face it everything is printed in some finite quantity, nothing new, but a lot of shops are choosing to use that as a marketing angle or selling point. So be it. Here’s one more thats being sold in very limited quanitites. The Transmitter - Receiver tee will be available from April 14th through the end of the month. Roughly $25 US, it comes out of a shop from Australia and is designed by Scott Robinson. Hit it here. The shop is part of Red Bubble, which I honestly had not heard of before. Have to explore that one futher. Anyone else selling on Red Bubble? Drop us a line.

Sponsored Post:
T-Shirt Monster is yet one more interesting contender in the design online custom t-shirt arena. The site offers the ability to design tees online using a slick Flash based tool they call the Design Lab. Choose your imagery from a pool of clipart, or upload your own images. Add type, select a style of shirt and you’ve got yourself a personalized creation. You can then offer the tee for sale in their Gallery and earn a commission based on how much you mark up the base price.

As an added incentive T-Shirt Monster runs a design contest where you can win as much as $1,500 in cash and prizes. All you need to do to enter is upload a design using the Design Lab tool and Exhibit your creation to the community where users can vote on it.

These community style t-shirt sites, and contest such as this, are great vehicles for budding designers to gain a bit of recognition. The community aspect and lure of a prize help draw plenty of eyes across designs - more so than designers might not be able to generate on their own. And even if you’re not into becoming the next Christian Audigier you can also just use the site to create custom t-shirts for yourself or friends.

T-Shirt Monster Design Lab

This is the second time we’ve thrown some Vintage Vantage on our backs. And our backs couldn’t be happier. Same goes for the front. Our samples tees were the Army Men and Vice Versa. We marveled in our last review at the softness factor, and these are just as good. We also noticed that the Vice Versa shirt has gone tagless. Hopefully this is will become standard, as our only complaint was that the tags were a bit on the prickly side. The printing is great and the fit is kind of a vintage thing without being feeling too tight. These tees literally as so soft they kind of melt around you anyway. And now without a tag it’s perfection.

As a little incentive to check them out we’ve got a coupon code to take 21% off. Use coupon code: tshirtwatch. www.vintagevantage.com

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James Denton hit the red carpet for the 7th Annual Comedy For A Cure event. His black V-neck bears a striking resemblance to Affiliction’s stuff - of course do does a lot of stuff these days. Or is that Affliction looks like everything else? Chicken or the egg? Oh well, know the tee? Comment, please.

Few picks for today you should give a look. From the top:

Dead Metal Clothing - The name itself tells the story pretty well. Wicked illustrations and no shortage of cranial containers.

Split Reason - Random tee from a batch of new stuff from Split Reason. Always something to address our inner geek.

Hans and Fras - Newly launched, these guys are printing all of their stock by hand.

Human Giant Threadless Contest - Collaborative contest tee designers should not pass up. Deadline is April 15th.

Loyal reader Alex dropped this one in our lap. Great catch. It’s the always goofy David Arquette sporting an Artcotic Tee.

Wow, our second political post this week. It is an election year after all. The folks over at Progresswear.com have put together a promotion to mark our 5th anniversary in Iraq. The LIERAQ tee is $5 off through the end of April. Plus a portion of proceeds go to the Veterans for Peace organization. Good cause, great shirt.

Can you name the celebrity bad boy? The tats should give it away. Answer after the jump.

Click here for the answer