Harrison Ford's Grimace

It was Harrison Ford's birthday the other day, the annual holiday that Rish Outfield always celebrates. I try to get him a present each year on that day, although I'm almost always late. Anyway, Harrison Ford's birthday was creeping up on me this year, and I hadn't gotten Rish anything yet. 

I pretty much buy him some sort of nerdy T-shirt every year, and this year was no exception, but I was keen to make it better than usual. You see, I could do whatever I wanted for this year's shirt. My daughter got a Cricut vinyl cutter last year, and she announced to me that she could make shirts using iron-on vinyl a little while ago. When I discovered this, I started taking advantage of this great possibility.

I had her make me a Blink-182 shirt, a Glacier National Park shirt, a shirt based on the new Utah state flag, and a Foo Fighters shirt.

I thought it would be really cool to do an original shirt that Rish would really appreciate, something more personal than even any of those designs I had my daughter make for me. Something that he couldn't get anywhere else.

My first idea was to make him a podcaster shirt. I remember once, back in 2012 or 2013, whenever the last time we went to the New Media Expo in Las Vegas, we got a shirt that said PODCASTER on its chest from Libsyn, because we ran our feed through their service. It was a really cool shirt that I loved, and I believe Rish was a fan of his too...then again, maybe he wasn't...I couldn't remember for sure, but I thought he did. I could make him a podcaster shirt with my own design. The first idea I came up with was this:

Then I thought, "Would he like this? Does this suck? Is this a shirt that he would ever wear?" I was thinking that he probably wouldn't. Maybe he'd like it, but probably not. I should probably think of something else.

Then I was listening to his Patreon address for July, and he talked about his love for Grimace and how much he appreciates the new TikTok meme where people try the Grimace birthday shake, and then it flashes to them dead on the ground with purple shake oozing out of their mouths. 

Rish and I both have long had a love for Grimace, and particularly the comical idea of Grimace being a profoundly evil character. Once, we planned out an entire student film that we wanted to shoot at the McDonaldland Playplace based on the urban legend of a kid being bitten by rattlesnakes that lived in the ball pit. The ending was based on the finale of Friday the 13th, where the girl is floating on the placid Crystal Lake and then Jason jumps out of the water to sink the boat and pull her down with him. Our ending would just be with a child in the ball pit Grimace jumping out of the balls to pull the kid down to the bottom.

Anyway, I realized I needed to make Rish a Grimace shirt. At first I looked to see what Grimace shirts were available out there, and none of them were very inspiring. I asked my daughter if she could draw a Grimace picture for the T-shirt design, and she took it as a challenge. I told her about the Grimace shake TikToks, and showed her a few of them, and that was enough to set her on the right path.

I went out to find a purple shirt to use, and a few days later, she came to me with three different designs.

Our favorite was the first one, but the second one...a close second, seemed like it would work better on the purple shirt. My daughter was out of black vinyl, though, so we had to run to Walmart last minute to pick some up. While we were there, we found a shirt that would work great with the other design, our favorite design. So, we bought that shirt too.

We made both designs, but the black on purple one didn't look as good. The contrast wasn't high enough, so it was really hard to see just what you were looking at. On top of that, while ironing the design, my daughter messed up, and munched two of the letters.

By process of elimination, therefore, we decided on the other design, which was our favorite to begin with anyway. I packaged it up and sent it off, and it arrived something like a week after Harrison Ford's birthday. I was on the phone with Rish, by chance, when he opened the package, so I got to hear his reaction, and luckily, he liked it.

Turns out that he's been looking for an evil Grimace shirt ever since seeing those TikTok videos. Luckily for us, he had yet to pull the trigger and buy one of his own. So, here you go, the man himself in his one of a kind, specially designed T-shirt.

Happy Harrison Ford's birthday, Rish Outfield. Many happy returns.