SITH HAPPENS
The Darth Vader Shirt
I have you now!
This is the latest installment in a recurring segment in which the author debates the merits of his shirts. (See also The French Blue Shirt and The Lime Green Shirt.) The following is a recurring internal argument both for and against retaining a Darth Vader t-shirt with working, blinking lights. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Go ahead. Unleash the hate. It’s a blinking Darth Vader shirt and I love it.
I can see why. You can wear it with anything. It glides effortlessly from day into evening. Office to opera. Slip this on, and voila! you are the Halston of blinking supervillain couture.
Are you done?
Not quite. I can’t decide which look makes a bigger statement. Dressed up with pearls? Or casual with jorts? Black knee socks either way, don’t you think? With blinking garters?
Naturally. OK, I know you hate it but this shirt represents a period in my life. It’s a talisman.
There was a period when you were watching lots of samurai movies, but you didn’t start dressing like Toshiro Mifune.
You’re forgetting Halloween, 1984. I miss that sword.
Even George Lucas hates this shirt. I see it and want to push myself into a locker. Just curious, at what age do we stop wearing Star Wars shirts that light up? 50? 55?
You hate joy.
I don’t hate joy. I just don’t think you can buy joy, especially if it’s the licensed intellectual property of Lucasfilm and the Walt Disney Corporation.
Joy intimidates you.
If this is Joy, why have you kept Joy in the back of a drawer for ten years?
Remember when we bought this? We were at that Star Wars convention thing in Orlando…
….for work. Not voluntarily. Important distinction.
…and some guy dressed in full Jedi robes married a couple, who were also in full Jedi robes. It was a legal wedding and everything. Then everyone sang a song in Wookiee.
Father Kenobi, stop this wedding! I have grave sartorial objections!
Can you imagine their wedding night? Do you think the groom was wearing my Blinky Shirt?
Yep. Plus the helmet. And nothing else.
My point is, they wear clothes that make them totally happy, regardless of what anyone else thinks. A concept you refuse to grasp.
You are part of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor!
That’s why I bought the shirt. It was stupid. It is stupid. And it made, makes, me totally happy. Besides, no one has this shirt. No one.
No one… you want to know. No one whose Vitamin D intake is more than a yearly trip to Phantasy-Con.
What if this was the last remaining artifact of our culture?
The way things are going, it might be. But we’re not curating a little Smithsonian here. Closet space is a zero-sum game. If Blinky Shirt lives, others must die. I am guilty only of being practical.
I might wear it.
You know what the day is called when people walk around New York City in a blinking Darth Vader shirt? Wednesday.
This shirt is populism. This shirt says I am fun and in tune with larger American currents. It says, I am not all Mizoguchi and Bauhaus.
It says, I’m dead. I bet the batteries inside are all corroded.
They were. I replaced them. And now, look…
…It blinks and everything. The Force Awakens.
Still capable of making somebody smile.
Like maybe our 18-month-old grand-nephew in Kansas City.
Little Guy has never seen a Darth Vader Blinky Shirt. If he only knew the power of the Dark Side.
So you’ll pack this up and send it to his folks? Oh please? Oh please?
For you. Yes.
Poor kid. Now he’ll have to find closet space for this hideous thing.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
***
The T. Kent Jones omnibus never closes. Free Parking!
There’s so much comedy behind this blue-eyed cat.
