Loud t-shirt Week

This week we’re doing a ‘Loud t-shirt week’ in aid of ‘Loud Shirt Day’ on the 18^th of September. The Loud shirt day is an annual appeal of The Hearing House and the Southern Cochlear Implant Paediatric Programme - two charities who are dedicated to enabling deaf children with a cochlear implant to listen and speak like their hearing peers.

I hadn’t really thought about the charity too much until we started working with them, and since then I’ve seen a news piece on the life of one of these children who was supported by this surgery and the story was compelling to say the least. What these guys do is really awesome, and it’s a more than worthy cause that we’re stoked to be helping out.

As I’ve said, it’s an awesome cause, and over the next week we’ll be running a new ‘loud shirt’ inspired t-shirt, with 15% of each sale going towards the Loud Shirt Day appeal. So keep an eye out and your credit (or debit) card handy over this next week – we’ve got some wicked designs in store for you.

Make sure you get yours in time for Loud Shirt Day on the 18th... and ensure you're not only the loudest, but also the coolest at your workplace.

Daffodil Day

It’s daffodil day today. Give generously; they’re an awesome cause – Cancer affects everyone is some way, and the Cancer Society support thousands of Kiwis every year. We released the Official Daffodil Day t-shirts on Wednesday, and with 15% of each t-shirt sale going towards the Cancer Society, if you’ve already bought one you’ve shown your support.

We’ll keep them on the site till they sell out, so get in quick. I don’t have mine yet, but I’ll definitely wear it – regardless of whether it’s after daffodil day or not – cos it’s a sweet t-shirt. And the money goes to a good cause so don’t think about it, just do it.

Rob and Andy. No Homo

The other day the gayest thing happened. Rob and Andy both turned up wearing the same t-shirt, the same coloured shorts, the same coloured shoes, the same coloured jackets, the same coloured undies, the same coloured skin, the same cheesy smile, and a similar amount of facial hair. A coincidence? I think not. I mean seriously, what are the odds?

We've moved!

As I’m sure a few of you are aware we’ve been talking about moving offices for a while now, and on Friday and over the weekend we FINALLY MOVED!

At times it was quite a painstaking process - with a few ups and downs that I’ll touch on later - but for the most part I think we were all just excited to be finally getting everything done.

We’re not the most organised bunch here at Mr Vintage, and after boxing up all the t-shirts, packing up all the warehouse shelving, and turning off all the computers, it was finally time to arrange the trucks/Vans that we were going to pick-up all of our stuff with. Only problem was, when we got to Hireace they told us we couldn’t hire anything seeing as we all had our restricted licenses. I know what you’re all thinking…. What a bunch of losers, none of them even have their full licenses. But maybe the joke's on you cos we don’t have to pay the extra to get our full license. We just don’t drive after 10 or carry passengers. lol. But it is reasonably funny that there’s 123 years between; me, Hayden, Joe, Andy and Rob and we can’t even muster a full license.

But we got past that by getting my brother and rob’s Uncle in to hire the van and truck respectively. Our problems didn’t stop there however. Maybe hiring vans out to restricted drivers are prohibited for a good reason, as hours later I had scraped the van past Robs shiny black Holden pulling in outside of work. It was a funny angle, what can I say.

Rob's car came off second best with the van after I misjudged a turn horribly.

The Van. Unscathed.

So we’re all settled in now, and we’re getting out all the orders we had to delay while we were moving (so apologies if you were in that group) and we’ll be setting up the showroom as soon as we can. We’re down on Great North Rd, and as soon as the showroom’s open we’ll let you know. In the mean-time, here's a few images from our move. Exciting eh.

There were shit-loads of boxes, but we got there in the end.

The Parnell Showroom. End of an era really.

PC Load Letter

Andy’s had a lot of trouble with his printer for a while now, and been it’s a cause of great frustration for our Muscley Oompa Loompa trainer. It always seems to have a ‘Paper-Jam’, even when there’s clearly no paper jammed in the little bugger. Earlier this year Andrew was luckily rewarded for his years of hard work and service with a brand new printer… and that meant only one thing, we had to destroy that evil machine with our bare hands (and a hammer).

Office Space: Great movie, and they really inspired us to beat the shit out of our asshole printer.

It was quite an emotional time, and in the end it really did feel like the scene from Office Space when Peter, Samir and Michael release their frustration on their ‘PC Load-Letter’ printer. If you haven’t seen it, Office Space is a fantastic movie and that scene’s a standout. We didn’t go to an isolated field though; we just went out on to Falcon Street outside our office and got to the job at hand. After the second throw to the heavens, we all ran inside like we had just broken the neighbors window playing cricket on the street. Man it feels good to be a gangster.

This is why Andy is better than us. He goes to the gym.

Impressive toss from Andy first up.

We were quite surprised it came out relatively unscathed after the fall.

It was obviously clear another attempt was necessary. So up she went for a second time.

That's more like it, the glass shattering was rather loud this time.

Andy proceeded to vent years of pent up frustration on the poor printer using his friend, the hammer.

Andy proudly holds aloft the battered carcass of his defeated opponent. Kinda like Conan the barbarian, except smiley.

Rugby and Restaurants

I asked Andy what I should blog about today, and he said I should just blog about what I know, rugby. He was taking the piss, as no one else in the office likes rugby at all. But I thought I might as well.

I seen all this kafuffle lately with some fight at a schoolboy rugby game between Kelston and Auckland Grammar School. They are making a bigger deal out of it than they need to really, fights happen, and brawls happen in rugby. No big deal, dry your eyes Murray Deaker. I might call him actually and say, “Muwwy, two things; you’re a dick mate, go back to your Team NZ BlackHeart campaign”. Probably won’t though. I’m a man of many intentions and little action. But I did go to Auckland Grammar School, making me a Grammar Old Boy I suppose – and I can assure you that Grammar didn’t start it. It was all Kelston Boys High. lol.

Rugby Brawling. That's fine.

One more thing, I went to dinner the other night with my special lady friend at this Greek restaurant Plato's in Ponsonby. Wouldn’t go there again. It’s a Greek restaurant, Greek themed, Greek menu…. You get the idea. So we get in there, sit down at our table, and then they start blasting the music. Now I’m all for music at a restaurant sure, but they proceeded to play the entire bloody Feelers album. It’s a Greek restaurant; play some Greek music for shits sake. And turn it the hell down so it’s not so obtrusive. Nothing more off-putting than hearing James Reid screaming down your ears while your trying to enjoy a Greek Moussaka! And then their EFTPOS didn’t work. They couldn’t quite figure out why. It’s because their phone line is disconnected – exactly the reason I couldn’t make a booking by phone you shmucks.

Plato's in Ponsonby: Wouldn't go there if I was you. Unless you really like the Feelers and paying in cash only.

Beckham wears GNK Sketch!

Check out this sweet picture that Mel spotted in the NZ Women’s Weekly. She claims she was just browsing and never reads the magazine, but we know she loves shows like Gossip Girl and Ugly Betty. Back to the photo though, there’s David Beckham’s little boy Brooklyn wearing our ‘Goodnight Kiwi Sketch’ t-shirt. Whoever has my dream job of writing the captions for NZ Women’s Weekly has speculated that David may have picked it up while on his last trip to NZ, but we know the inside scoop…. We gave a bunch of t-shirts to Becks’ family and the rest of the LA Galaxy team when they were over last year for their exhibition match against the Wellington Phoenix. How did we get them to Mr Beckham? I think Andy and Rob met him at the ‘Pony Club’ one night out; they were pretty much part of the furniture around that place back then. lol

Brooklyn's a Kiwi Kid. Well he's not but he's got one of our 'GNK Sketch' tees.

The Big Week begins

This week is a very big week – not because Flavor Flav has some very important decisions to make (although he does, and they are in fact very important) – we’re finally moving premises this weekend. Yeah, it’s been a long time coming I know, but we had to paint everything and we’re not professional painters. Painting was quite fun though; we’d sink a few beers, and it kind of felt like the scene from ‘Shawshank Redemption’ when they have the cold brewskies on the roof. I also put some ‘war paint’ on my face, which was fun; it made me look like a real warrior. Sadly we don’t have any pictures documenting our painting efforts, so I’ve added this picture of Flavor Flav.

Flavor Flav: He's such a little cutie-pie.

Blogging

I see that 2 Degrees have now launched, and I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed with their whole marketing campaign and launch…. Using Rhys Darby in the campaign is like fishing with dynamite – the guy’s more bankable than Will Smith. And their plans seem pretty sweet too, Mel has got herself a SIM card, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out – I’m more than interested in jumping ship.

Insert 'Giant Logo' gag here.

To make this blog more of a blog, I thought I’d add a sweet picture for you to look at.

Cute eh. Look how small it is.

Telethon Returns...

Watched some of that Telethon this weekend. Saw that they raised almost $2 million, which is cool, it’s going to a good cause and that’s the main thing. Seems like the young kids really got in to it, and so too did a whole bunch of B-Grade celebrities – just like the old times really. Good shit. Apart from Brooke-Howard Smith, that guy needs to stop yelling so much and chill the hell out. And Toni Marsh (bless her soul) and Hamish McKay aren’t a good team, they were like a couple of virgins bumbling their way about on their honeymoon night – very excited, great enthusiasm, but little end product. Other than that it was a wicked event, and I actually stayed up pretty late watching it. I didn’t get around to building a fort though; I got a dead leg from football and my movement was severely restricted.

Raised a whole bunch of money for Kiwi Kids. Good on ya NZ.

We’re stepping shit up on the facebook fan page now too; we’ve decided to do daily giveaways to our facebook mates, so get amongst that if you haven’t already. I think I’ll probably struggle to come up with lots of little trivia questions by myself, so Andy will prove a helpful ally there. He knows all sorts of crap about everything. He also loves watching documentaries. We may just do it on Twitter also, but I’m not sure the Twitter community would appreciate all the Tweets – they’re more in to networking and ‘Tweet-Ups’, which is cool but it’s just not always for us so much.

Add us on facebook, we're giving away a tee every day.

Model Interviews

I was reading this American t-shirt companies blog the other day, and they had all these ‘model interviews’ on there… just a few words with the models that you see on the site all the time, and it was quite interesting that I was interested in it, usually I’d just look at the pictures. So I think we’ll do some interviews with our models on the blog – that’ll be one to look forward to. Not sure what we’ll ask them though, if you’ve gots any ideas let us know.

Car-Park Twat

Last Friday this Johnson (extremely under-utilised term for penis) parked right in front of our showroom door from about mid-day to after we left work. We could barely get out the door! Hayden kept going on about it being a fire hazard, but it was more the principle of it all. In any case, I just don’t understand what would make someone think that it’s a park; you can’t park in front of a door, that’s ludicrous. Anyway, we wanted to get them towed, but turns out it’s a council issue, and you know they only come with tickets when you don’t want them to. So the bugger got let off the hook. Well, not quite, we did draw some Johnsons (I know, you get it, I like using the name Johnson instead of dick) on the back of his car in the dust. That’s worse than getting towed. Don’t mess with us.

yeah, that's our showroom door. you can't park there. you're a dick mate.



only when we were about to nip up to Hollywood to get a Steak & Cheese did we notice that we could barely get out of the door.



look, that's scandalous that is.

Haven't seen ya in a while, wondering what's been going on...

I don’t really have anything on my mind that I think you’d find especially funny or interesting, so I thought I’d just give you all an update on things here at Mr Vintage. Boring, I know – and there are a few things for me to complain about actually, so if you get thinking, “oh man, these guys at Mr Vintage are such a bunch of pussy whiners”, we’re not usually this bad, it’s just I haven’t blogged in a while and it’s ‘that time of the month’ for me – a while back I decided that just because I’m not a chick it doesn’t mean I can’t use that excuse - so here I am today using it.

So here goes…. Gee whiz, things have been different around here, lots of changes. Not bad different like the All Blacks suddenly being like the Warriors and not being able to catch the ball, but different like the Topp Twins. They’re cool cos they’re weird and they’re yodeling lesbians and all that – and you don’t get that everyday.

The Topp Twins. Lesbos - the good kind.

We’re implementing some new accounting software. While I don’t really know what’s going on there, I know it’s meant we’ve had to re-make and re-load every single product on the website – so if there are a few issues with the website over the coming days, please forgive us, we’re only new to all these systematic practices. If we had it our way, it’d all be on one trusty spreadsheet like back in the old days. But apparently being a full-blown business now we have to make some changes.

New Accounting Software: We're so busy Rob's been working from home too!

All of this is going on while we’re getting ready for our move as well, which is scheduled in for an as yet unconfirmed date. It’s all moving along on that front, I wouldn’t say nicely, but it’s moving along. It turns out we’ve got this grumpy neighbor next door causing a bit of grief and getting up in the builders grill. We might take him to TV show ‘Neighbors from Hell’, probably not though. We’re yet to plan the opening party as well, but we’ll give you more on that in good time.