America Is Restoring - Please Wait

Following the election of Barack Obama, making him the first black president in America's history and signifying the end of the Bush administration and eight miserable years of Republican rule, the post-election mood flooding the country and the rest of the world has been one of hope. Our America Is Restoring t-shirt pretty much sums up the post-election mood. Who knows, maybe like every other politician before him Obama may end up an ultimate disappointment, but until that happens here's to hopeful and happier times.

Off You Go You Small Boys

Most of us here at the S.D.F.C. grew up watching and quoting lines from Bill Forsyth's hilarious teen rom-com, Gregory's Girl. Although this t-shirt might not mean too much to our American cousins, (fanny is the word used in the UK to describe a lady's front bottom), we think the gist of it is there for everyone to understand. Growing up in Scotland and the UK this phrase, taken from the movie, was heard countless times in conversations about the opposite sex. But it's the conclusion of "The lot!", which for some reason never fails to crack us up.

Too Much?

We created this t-shirt after a heated office debate about the war in Iraq, in particular the recent figure which showed that more than 4,000 American servicemen had died since the country was invaded. It was suggested by a certain individual in our group, incensed at the actions, lies and betrayl of Bush and Blair that the torch, held by the Statue Of Liberty, should be replaced with "that little f**ker's head on a spike". And the very next day we got to work.
It's probably the strongest t-shirt we've put out so far and we haven't really done a lot of political designs, but we hope you like it nonetheless.

As a point of interest George Bush once said during a conversation with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson about the Iraq war: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties." Gun, shoot, foot.

Dinki-Di Dog Food And Other Updates.

Long before he claimed to own the whole of Malibu, in a time before he referred to police women as "Sugar Tits" and blamed every major war on the Jews, Mel Gibson was actually famous for being Mad Max. In our humble opinion the best installment of the Road Warrior trilogy was the second film and it's from that movie that we drew inspiration from, for our latest film tribute tee.

Dinki-Di dog food is the fictional brand of canine sustenance used in the film which both Max and his faithful four legged companion share whilst trying to survive on the barren wasteland highways of the future. The word Dinki-Di is also Australian slang for "genuine" and legend has it they called the dog food that because Gibson insisted on eating the real stuff, taking method acting to a whole new level. So there you have it an inside, subtle movie reference t-shirt for anyone who ever wanted to dress in leather, drive a supercharged car and eat dog food.

Aside from designing new t-shirts we've also been hard at work on updating the site and in the next few weeks you'll notice a few changes around the S.D.F.C, most notabley a new logo, a gallery section, clickable links to our social network pages and a new section for hoodies. We're also pulling out all the stops for this summer and fingers crossed you may actually see us and our stall at a few of the summer music festivals around the UK.

The Ups & Downs Of December 2007. Part 2: The Ups

Reeling from our missed opportunity with the BBC, (thanks to some clown at Heathrow Airport), we pressed on and distracted ourselves with work. Sifting through the mail one day we came across an unusual letter from a guy called Lyle Christiansen from Minnesota and we immediately recognised him as a previous customer. On opening his letter we found with it a photograph and a photocopy of an article from New York Magazine about the mystery of D.B. Cooper .

This is where things start to get a bit bizarre, as in his letter Lyle explained that he came across our D.B. Cooper's School Of Skydiving t-shirt on our website and felt compelled to buy it because, in his words, he thought it was the best one of it's kind. He also purchased it in memory of his late brother Kenneth who he stated was the real D.B. Cooper.

Now, we've received a lot of weird and wonderful things in the post before, many of which we could never write about, for legal reasons, but this really took us by surprise, especially as it referenced one of our all time favourite unsolved mysteries.
With a fair amount of scepticism we read on and started to digest the accompanying New York Magazine article which Lyle had included with his letter. You can read the whole article for yourself HERE .

To cut a very long story short, it turns out that Lyle's brother Kenneth is now indeed an official suspect in the D.B. Cooper case and aside from the fact that his height and weight may not fit the profile his experience as a sky diver and his past history certainly do. So there you have it on a random rainy Tuesday morning we receive a wonderful letter and photograph from what could be the brother of D.B. Cooper, the only man in American history to carry out a skyjacking and evade capture from the FBI, unless of course you buy into the theory that he died...something we certainly don't!

N.B. As a point of interest Lyle informed us that in the photogrpah, (pictured above), he's wearing one of his brother's wool lined overcoats, which he may have worn for the jump and he has one of his attache cases which he found when his brother passed away.

Are You A Gradute From The School Of Hard Props?

This design is basically a take on the famous phrase School Of Hard Knocks and if you've never heard that phrase before it's usually used to describe a person that looks like he/she had a very hard paper round when they were younger....and if you don't know what that means then there really is no hope for you.

We digress, anyway we came up with this design in tribute to those amatuer rugby players who, although lack cool sounding names and the natural athleticism of the likes of Joe Rokocoko or Bryan Habana, put their bodies on the line every Saturday or Sunday. They do so for two reasons, the love of the game and the fact they have a very strong sadomasochistic streak. Let's face it rugby is one of the last true Gladitorial sports left and it's played by sportsmen and women who have graduated from the School Of Hard Props.

Shaun Of The Dead T-shirt

Probably the greatest Rom Zom Com ever made, if not the only one. Shaun Of The Dead taught us that platonic love between two men could exist and that the best way to kill a zombie was to remove it's head or brain. This is admittedly uncharted waters of geekery and nerdism for us here at the S.D.F.C but I think you'll agree it's a t-shirt which would complete any self respecting Shaun outfit for parties or Halloween , all that's missing is a cricket bat and a bunch of flowers. We can't wait to the see what kind of pics will crop up with this t-shirt.

Howling Halloween Madness

Just a big thanks to everyone who bought a Teen Wolf t-shirt over the Halloween period and were kind enough to send us their pics. Apparently dressing up as Scott Howard in full basketball playing werewolf mode, was the costume to wear this year and it seems our Beavers tee came in handy for the finishing touches.

"We always wanted the t-shirt to be special...but we never expected this."

Every Which Way But Loose - The Black Widows

Anyone who grew up watching Clint Eastwood's cult movie Every Which Way But Loose, (and the sequel Any Which Way You Can), will appreciate our new t-shirt. It's a tribute not to Philo Beddoe or his beer swigging pet orangutan Clyde, but instead to the most inept biker gang ever to grace the silver screen. Led by the hilarious Cholla the Black Widows, through the course of both films, lose their bikes, their hair and eyebrows, their dignity when they are chased by a shotgun weilding 80 year-old woman and are consistently abused by Beddoe's pet ape Clyde. Like the Keystone Cops on two wheels these lovable rogues nearly steal the show. Check out our product page HERE for more details.

What Would John Smeaton Do?

It's been a very busy time here at the S.D.F.C. recently, following the addition of two new t-shirt designs to our website. The first is our tribute to Glasgow's very own have-a-go hero John Smeaton, (the airport baggage handler who helped police restrain one of two terrorists who tried to attack Glasgow Airport), with a simple design and phrase which reads: "What Would John Smeaton Do?" We've been recieving all sorts of feedback from this t-shirt, with people being asked by complete strangers to pose for pictures whilst on holiday or at recent summer music festivals, all because of their John Smeaton t-shirt. One of our customers wrote and told us that over 100 people at T In The Park, were pointing at his shirt and singing "There's only one John Smeaton."

Our second t-shirt has proved just as popular, with a design of Scotland complete with Saltire cross it reads: "Proudly Banjoing Terrorists Since 2007". The word "banjoing" was used by John Smeaton in one of his many, unintentionally hilarious interviews, with the world's press and basically means to blooter someone very hard in the face. The media and online attention these two shirts have recieved has been overwhelming, one of our inmates even ended up on national radio to discuss the tees and their increasing popularity.

We even managed to raise a few hundred pounds for the British Red Cross through the sales of the John Smeaton t-shirt alone and recieved a wonderful letter of thanks, which takes pride of place on Big Jim Slade's oak desk.

NB. Look out for a change of design for our John Smeaton t-shirt, which will be uploaded onto Bonaroo.co.uk, very shortly.

Our Guantanamo Bay T-shirt

Here's our special tongue-in-cheek Guantanamo Bay t-shirt, inspired by those tacky tourist based designs you often see for sale in novelty shops, during your holidays.

Regardless what your opinons are on the so-called war of terror, one thing's for sure whatever happens in Guantanamo Bay, stays in Guantanamo Bay. The detention centre there, dubbed "Camp X-Ray", seems to operate outside of all the human rights laws ever laid down and is surrounded by an air of secrecy.
Wether you're a die hard, right wing republican or a tree hugging liberal, you have to agree that nobody really knows what's going on in there and how many of the so called "prisoners of war" are actually guilty of the crimes that they've been accussed of, (without any proper legal procedure). Here's an interesting statistic for you, as of November 2006, out of 775 so called "terrorists", who have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 340 have been released.

Frankie Is An Asshole

Here's a quick heads up about our latest t-shirt, currently available to buy at the S.D.F.C. If you turn the dial back to the 80s you'll remember there was some fuss made over a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt, printed as part of a publicity campaign for the pop group Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Well here's our take on the design, simply because the original is back in high street stores for a pocket bursting price of £35 ($69), and is now considered somewhat "chic", that coupled with the fact that we're sick of listening to what Frankie has to say!

Alec Baldwin Wants To Straighten Your Ass Out.

Hot on the hells of the Baldwingate scandal, that every celebrity website seems to be obsessed about, we bring you our special Alec Baldwin t-shirt to mark the occasion. We really don't see what all the fuss is about, a frustrated and angry parent saying stuff he'll later regret, who hasn't done that before. It's not like he was caught existing cars flashing his junk, or was snapped with coke spread all over his naked chest, or shaved his head and went nutzoid in rehab, or leaked a hardcore sex tape onto the internet or any other like minded behaviour suited only to those who are idolised and held in high regard by society today.

This Is The S.D.F.C

It's been a busy old time for the inmates at the S.D.F.C recently, as in between designing another batch of tees for your wearing pleasure they've been listening to new albums from Arcade Fire and Kings Of Leon, reading an amazing book called Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner and watching episodes of a cartoon called The Venture Bros, which blows all other animation shows out of the water. If you haven't checked any of these out we urge you to do so ASAP. We've also received amazing feedback from our customers who have purchased our exlusive 300 inspired t-shirt, (Sparta Athletic Dept) we have plans to put the design on sweatshirts and hoddies, in the meantime you can read what T-shirt Watch and Random Stuff had to say about it HERE and HERE