Arts DEVOté

WEAR THE ART IS Last column, A.D. pointed holiday shoppers in the direction of Faizal Nazaruddin’s T-shirt site (www.amourica.com), and since then he’s gone crazy seeking out unique-T-shirts- you-can-order- for-Christmas- without-leaving-home.

Keeping with the local flava theme, longtime A.D. fave Aye Jay has a couple of his classics—“Crunk’s Not Dead” and “Purple Drank”—for sale at www.gigposters.com (search the classifieds for “Aye Jay”). And, to further help a brother out, scope out his new “Che-Bacca” design (pictured) at www.threadless.com/submission/101790/che_bacca and vote to have it featured for sale on the site.

Speaking of Threadless.com, this is the site you need to go to in order to get the kind of unique gifts that will make you the hippest giver in the house. All of the shirts are submitted by artists like Aye Jay, and for the holidays shirts are $10 apiece!

There are buttloads of sites selling fun T-shirts online these days. There are even blogs devoted to subject. Check www.preshrunk.info, www.iloveyourtshirt.com and www.tcritic.com for your T-shirt nutrition, and then go to www.founditemclothing.com for your dessert. Found Item finds, then designs and sells “shirts from your favorite movies, TV shows and more …” The company was founded because its owner was desperate to own the “I Love Toxic Waste” shirt Val Kilmer sported in Real Genius, so he made one. Now he’s making all of the great shirts from Real Genius (“International Order of Gorillas”), as well those from other ragged classics, such as Caddyshack (“Bushwood Country Club”), Bad News Bears (“Chico’s Bail Bonds”), and A.D.’s fave, Happy Gilmore (“Guns Don’t Kill People, I Kill People”). Ship it!

PIXIL PROPS Computer graphic artists from Chico State’s Media Arts program owned the Animation category at the CSU system’s annual Media Arts Festival at CSU, Channel Islands, Nov. 3-5. Starting at the top with Kenny DiGiordano’s first-place Rosebud Award for his animated film Working Stiffs , Chico State beat out entries from 15 CSU campuses and monopolized the top four spots in the category. Second place went to Rusty Robbins’ Trash Landing ; third place went to Dylan Smith and Josiah Munsey’s Dungeon Seed; fourth went to Andre Nguyen’s Bud.

Artists from Chico State prof Rick Vertolli’s advanced animation class have been ruling the animation category at the Media Arts Festival (www.mediaartsfestival.org) for years, having taken first place in the category nine times in the last 15 years, as well as winning Best in Show four times.

WEEKLY DEVOTIONS
• Reader’s theater: Chico Theater Company is doing a reader’s theater presentation of It’s a Wonderful Life , Sun., Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. It’s free to get in (donations are of course accepted) and it’s free to listen on the radio as Mix 95.1 will be broadcasting the performance live. Old school!

• All Songs Considered: NPR’s online music program discusses the best music of 2006 with national music critics: www.npr.org/programs/asc.