The Duba Shirt

It was the summer of 1999. I was a signle white male who recently began a drinking binge in an effort to get over a girl. We went down to the shore, we meaning Triple Fat Matt (now known simply as Matt), Brandon, Ed (from Philly), Big Jim, Anderson, Landis, and Kerr - as far as I remember. We were in some shore town. I cannot identify them because I have been to the shore so very little in my life that I do not know which town is where or why I should care. So begins the story about the greatest $20 ever spent.

We went to one of those t-shirt shops. Anderson wanted to get all his typical obligatory shore t-shirts. Kerr wanted hippy beads. Ed wanted a gun. Landis wanted Big Jim to put him down. I did not really want anything. We saw a thing in the store that had a create your own t-shirt ad. We pondered the idea of putting "Duba" on a shirt. Through the chiropractic mind of Mr. Big Jim it was decided the best option would be to make a shirt with my face on it and "Duba" written underneath. I remember that I was wearing a white base-blue sleeve baseball t-shirt. The picture included my entire face and buzz cut head, my .12 inch neck, and the blue colar of the baseball shirt. I had a big toothy smile and a freshly buzzed head reflect the camera's flash so that I appeared almost chalk like in color. The only sizes available were large and small. So of course I chose small. As this happened, Matt received a Henna tattoo of the chinese word for "Fat" i believe. It ended up looking like a stick figure with a huge unit.

As we left the boardwalk I began walking up to people asking if they have seen the boy who was on my shirt. They looked at me, then the shirt, and said anything ranging from "No...What is that your twin?...HAHAHAHA...You're corny."

The Duba shirt made its rounds to the College of New Jersey. I would wear it almost exclusively there. It became legendary. At one point Landis had the shirt in his possession and many people up there had worn it. However, it only looked natural on one specimen - THE DUBA.