I'm pretty sick and tired of hearing the word Twitter. Twitter this, twitter that. Facebook this, facebook that. Blogging this blogging that. I'm especially annoyed when the old people at CNN ask me to comment on their blog, twitter, facebook, myspace, digg, delicious, wall, testimonials on Friendster, and gravestone. Stop trying too hard. I appreciate them trying to pander to the younger generation, but figure out a less annoying way to do it. They are clearly uncomfortable doing it, but they're forced to because they don't want to be seen as out of touch. Well I've got news for you, Jack Cafferty will never look comfortable saying "Check out my blog."

Having said all that, Crooked Monkey now has a Twitter page! We're allowed to--we're not over the age of 50, we're not boring, and we're not annoying. We're funny. That's why we make funny t-shirts. We just made our page look pretty awesome, so check it out, start following us. And while you're at it, subscribe to our RSS feed too.

We might start doing some crazy sales using our twitter--like For the next 15 minutes, all t-shirts 40% off. (But that was just a false alarm.) How about this, when we hit 300 Followers we'll do a 40% off for 40 minutes promo using twitter. Tweet tweet.

The MAGIC show in Las Vegas screwed up my schedule of watching this season's 24, and I had forgotten to DVR it, so I was forced to watch it on my computer. Easy enough.

I've done this once before and the commercials were so long and aggravating I almost stopped watching it. With a DVR, you can simply fast forward the commercials. When you watch TV on Fox, you can't fast-forward the commercials, and they're 30 seconds long. AHHHHHHHHHH. That's a long 30 seconds, especially when its for some random product/TV show that you could care less about.

Well last night I had a little epiphany that could revolutionize TV watching and commercial producing.

Weary of my last experience with 24, I had a list of things to do during the upcoming commercial break. But once the commercial commenced, I was so excited and eagerly awaited the next commercial break. It was a commercial for the greatest television show of all time, The Simpsons. The commercials were clever, short (under 5 seconds), and informative. That's what an advertisement should do--it should cater to the individual watching, so it's not a miserable, dreaded experience. (As an FYI, it was advertising for their 20th Anniversary Poster contest)

Here's my new idea, based on my desire to make everyone's commercial watching as enjoyable as mine was last night.

A TV show should give the individual the option of what types of commercials s/he would like to see. It could be categorized by product (Cars, Makeup, Clothing, Miscelaneous), genre (humor, drama, informative), or demographic (Age, Gender, Location). It doesn't matter to me, as long as I can opt out of watching commercials for diarrehea medicine.

It transforms commercials into an opt-in method where the viewer is bestowed a little more control over what s/he is subjected to watching. Its no longer so dictatorial. Come on people, we live in a democracy, our Televisions should acclimate.

Thoughts? Concerns? Ways to make this happen?

Last week was the semi-annual MAGIC tradeshow at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Since we are primarily a wholesaler of funny t-shirts, this is a great spot for us to show our line and introduce our retailers to our new funny and graphic t-shirts.

The graphic shirts, were a big hit at the show, and we'll be introducing them to our website very soon. I love the new graphic shirts because they look awesome. Although they're not funny, they still work within our demographic, and it opens up a whole new market for Crooked Monkey. Pretty soon we won't just be the funniest t-shirt company, but the provider of all awesome t-shirts in the world. Quite a lofty goal, I know, but with your help we can make it happen.The tradeshow itself was certainly less attended than in previous years--there were 1/3 less wholesale exhibitors and probably the same drop in the numbers of retailers attending. We met a bunch of great people out there and got picked up a by few high end stores in Italy. Our shirts will now be in the fashion capital of the world--watch out.

We stayed at the Wynn. If you haven't been there yet, I'd suggest checking it out. It's sweeeet. They've also got a European Pool. The club there, Tryst, is tons of fun--and overlooks waterfalls.

We returned on Friday and are ready to get back to creating awesome shirts, like the one below.

We'd like to welcome all the loyal readers of City Shop Girl to our website. We've got a ton of funny t-shirts on the site that you can choose from and some funny blog posts that you can read. We've even got moving Valentines Day poems to enjoy, or for you to plagiarize.

Happy Almost Valentines Day and let us know if we can be of service to you.

Before we announce the winner I must admit how thrilled we are with the quality of the submissions. Everyday I was oohhed and aaaahhed by the quality and quantity of submissions we received.

Because of the phenomenal response to our Valentines Day Poem Contest, we've decided to have more t-shirt contests, more often. During this recession, we've got to be creative and find ways to help the consumer spend less money. We've already got ideas for contests, but if you've got any, please email us or post the ideas as a comment here. We're building a nice community here at Crooked Monkey funny t-shirts, and we're loving it! Feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed to keep abreast of all contests, funny blog posts and new t-shirts.

Choosing the best poem was quite difficult. We are swamped with tons of work in anticipation of the largest annual tradeshow of funny t-shirts next week in Vegas, but instead of working on that, we spent all day reading and rereading these poems. And after reading all the poems, we didn't feel it was right to just pick the best and leave the rest out, so we chose a top 5. Perhaps in the future we'll give prizes to the top 3 poems, but this time only the winner wins.
Number 5: Eve with "My Sweetest Gift"
Number 4: Kittielee Faircloth with "The touch of your Lips"
Number 3: Heath with "The economy is Bad"
Number 2: Nathaniel with "My Dear Love"
Number 1: Lior Geft with "Romance 101"

The top 5 are all posted as comments under the original Valentines Day Blog Post. So please check them out because they are all awesome in their own right.

We posted Lior's poem as a blog post a few days back, but it still did not do it justice. So if you'd like to view it, please download the poem, in its original format (the poem is written in the shape of a rose and its quite beautiful). We uploaded it to our server.

Thank you to everyone!!! This was great. If you liked the poem contest, subscribe to Crooked Monkey's RSS feed, for future contests.

We've gotten an amazingly great response from our Valentines Day Poem Writing Contest. We had no idea you guys were such hopeless romantics and are impressed and moved by the poems. I guess it answers the age old question, Can you love funny t-shirts and still be romantic.

The contest is over tonight and we'll be posting the winner tomorrow. Good luck to all the contestants. Everyone is a winner in my book. And to honor the poem writing process, we will be giving 15% all our funny t-shirts from now until Valentines Day! Enjoy the sale. (And don't forget that our Buy 2 shirts get free shipping promotion is a staple of our site, and runs simultaneously to other sales).

Feel free to let us know who you think composed the best poem. Just go to the blog post that started it all, and either comment there or email us at poem@crookedmonkey.com

I walked into Subway this morning to grab lunch and saw the $5 footlong sign, and thought nothing of it.

The introduction of the $5 footlong was big for me--I love Subway and I love $5 sandwiches. But when they turned it into a 6 sub promotion, I was somewhat disappointed, but not angry. My sub didn't make it on the esteemed list of 6. But I was still thankful for the opportunity to enjoy my $5 footlong while it lasted.

So today, as I was about to order my second favorite sub (the one that's on the $5 footlong promotion) I reread the sign and noticed that it says ALL SUBS $5. Fantastic!! I had a long convo with the subway artist behind the counter and told him to thank Jerry personally for me.

Thanks Subway for making my day a little brighter and less hungry.

(As a side note, I just searched the title of this blog post and it's not on Google. Add it to the list of phrases you can NOW find on google thanks to the guys at Crooked Monkey Funny t-shirts).

This was submitted for our Valentines Day Poem Writing Contest via email to us and we felt it needed to be posted in its original format. To be honest it looks a lot cooler in a Word document. The stylized nature of the poem forms a Rose. Imagine that while reading it:

Q:What do you get when a Crooked Monkey pounds a Valentine's Day poem from the exit?

A: Romance 101 (aka my submitted poem)

God must really love Crooked Monkey customers. The quickest way for god to give gifts to the world is to make it snow in Montgomery County, MD. Because every time it snows, we give 20% off all our t-shirts. I'm thinking that this is God's version of a stimulus plan.

We'll have to figure a similar way for God to give discounts during the summer. Any suggestions?

And if you're home from school, or bored at work, don't forget to submit your Valentines Day Poem for the contest, either through emailing your entry to poem@crookedmonkey.com or by posting it as a comment to our funny blog. It's the best way to not spend any money this Valentines Day.