We're social media whores..!!

Regrettably I don't get too much time to update this blog. You can find lots of smut, filth, randomness and damn fine t-shirts from Getting Shirty elsewhere on the interweb though.

Follow us on Facebook - Getting Shirty Fan Page

Follow us on twitter - @GettingShirty

Follow us on Tumblr - Getting Shirty Blog

Follow us on YouTube - Getting Shirty YouTube Channel

Buy a feckin' t-shirt - www.gettingshirty.com

Thanks for looking :)

Keep Calm And Put It On A T-Shirt...

In the Spring of 1939, with war against Germany all but inevitable, the British Government’s Ministry of Information commissioned a series of propaganda posters to be distributed throughout the country. ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’ was one such poster and in recent years it’s spawned thousands of parodies.

It only seemed natural that the posters would evolve into t-shirt slogans and while we can all agree that they’ve been done to death, they still do prove very popular.

Getting Shirty jumped on the bandwagon a couple of years ago and recent sales figures show the three best selling t-shirts have been ‘Keep Calm’ parodies.

Based on the British TV show Doctor Who

Who wouldn't need to keep calm when killing zombies?

Based on the British comedy The IT Crowd

Do you have any 'Keep Calm' parody ideas that you think would look great on a t-shirt? Post a comment below and you never know, it may be on a t-shirt very soon!

Duran Duran - Oxford Academy 10th September 2011

This was a practise gig for their upcoming US leg of the 'All You Need Is Now tour'. Seen them before at Wembley Arena and Earls Court, but this was a one off, being such a small venue. A lot of die-hard fans there too as it was initially available to members of the fan club only.

Go to quite a lot of gigs so used to barging my way to a good position at the front or having people barge in front of me. None of that here though. If you didn't have the right colour wristband and tried to get close to the front, you were turned away by security. Quite a good idea, mind. If I was a die-hard fan and queued all day to get my position at the front, I'd be pretty pee'd off if someone pushed in front of me.

Anyway....the music. Not being a huge fan I wasn't too familiar with the more obscure older stuff. Hold Back The Rain from their second album Rio seemed to go down very well. Their new stuff is actually pretty good. The album's produced by Mark Ronson and it sounded very good live. Simon Le Bon's David Brent style of dancing made me chuckle though.

Uploaded a few videos to my YouTube page if you're interested and Girl Panic from their latest album is below, for your enjoyment :)

Pulp - Brixton Academy 31st August 2011

Never got to see Pulp back in the day, so jumped at the chance to see them at Brixton. Mind you, it did highlight the fact that I didn't know as many Pulp tunes as I thought I did. Should have done a bit of 'revising' before going, I guess!

Gig highlights : This Is Hardcore. My favourite Pulp track which sounded awesome live. Jarvis humping the hell out of a speaker while belting out the song was a sight to behold too.

Gig lowlights : I was in a 'people annoy the hell out of me' kind of mood. Especially those people who come to gigs and talk (actually it was shouting!) to each other all the way through it! When I go to a gig I want to listen to what I've paid for, not listen to other feckin' people's conversations!

Anyhoo, video of said gig highlight below....

The best complaint letter ever?

Apparently a survey's suggested that UK shoppers are the biggest complainers in Europe. The survey was featured on the BBC website and it mentioned a complaint letter sent to Richard Branson from a Virgin customer. The question was asked if it was the best complaint letter ever. A quick 'google' unearthed the letter that was sent to Mr B in December 2008. Best complaint letter ever? It's got to be.....surely!

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1]. I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2]? I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn't custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about. Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3]. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird. Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to its baffling presentation: [see image 4]. It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point. Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: [see image 5]. I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6]. Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: [see image 7]. Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff. Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincerely,

XXXX