Your PopCulteer, having written this post, then realizing he was going to have to model these shirts and hats to go with it.
The PopCulteer
April 18, 2025
A weird thing happened to me recently. Somehow, without really trying, I became stylish. And I did it without spending much money.
Now, to be honest, I have been accused of being stylish a few times before. I never quite know how to deal with such accusations. Once, maybe sixteen or seventeen years ago, one of the features editors for The Charleston Gazette, the lady in charge of the fashion articles, no less, looked me dead in the eye and sincerely said that I had a definite and strong sense of style.
To this day I still consider that to be one of the most absurd moments of my life.
I’ve always considered myself to be sort of a schlub when it came to style. My fashion sense had always been dictated by whatever was cheapest and most comfortable. I never understood the siren call of exotic sneakers, and to this day I only wear black socks. I did start wearing fedoras about twenty years ago, but that was because my once-unruly hair had departed for less visible parts of my body, and I could finally wear a hat without worrying about hat hair.
Plus, I’m not a big fan of melanoma.
Luckily, it wasn’t too hard for me to find a photo of me looking like hell wearing a T Shirt.
Lately, however, as I have lost weight, I’ve decided that I like button-up shirts more than I like the T-Shirts that had become my Radio Free Charleston trademark during the heyday of the video version of that show. Each show was named after the T-Shirt I was wearing, for the most part. That means I bought more than a couple hundred T Shirts to wear on RFC over the years.
Now, being somewhat slimmer, and not looking too much like the stereotypical fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt, I’ve changed up my look a bit. Part of this is because I’m sort of swimming in my older shirts.
I’ve got a few wonderful shirts from the Fleischer Animation folks and RockinPins, but they’re also a bit hard on the wallet (deservedly so–we’re talking high-quality shirts here). I’m at a point in my weight-loss journey where I’ve dropped a bit of weight, and have likely hit a brief plateau, at least for now. And that means either getting some new shirts, or wearing old T-Shirts that look like muumuus on me now. The problem is, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on shirts that I will hopefully shrink out of in a couple of months.
Blame him! This Rat Fink started it!
Enter Temu. Last December, after making the popular Chinese retail site the butt of my jokes for a few years, I decided to try it out as a source of cheap action figures and accessories. I was stunned at the fast delivery, and the quality of the product.
I mean, I’m sure it’s not all licensed, but cheap is cheap and the lure is strong. I noticed that they had tons of enamel pins, almost all certainly unlicensed, but still cool as hell, and cheap as dirt. Many were less than a buck. None were more than a couple of dollars. They also had some cheap costume jewelry that made Mrs. PopCulteer extremely happy. I even got a really nice Rat Fink figure for two bucks and change.
The way they hook you is to build an algorithm of what you’re interested in, but they also slip in tons of stuff that’s totally unrelated, just to see what catches your eye. I’d get an email offering a huge discount, go to the site and get fed an assortment of action figures and enamel pins, but they’d mix in all sorts of other things.
That’s when I noticed that they had button-up, Hawaiian-style graphic shirts for insanely low prices.
I took the bait and ordered one. I have had very bad luck ordering clothes from China before (don’t get me started on Wish), so I wasn’t expecting much, but I figured I could gamble a few bucks on what looked like a vintage bowling shirt.
It arrived, and fit me like a glove (well, actually, like a shirt). It was comfortable, looked good, and was probably highly flammable, but this was a way to beef up my wardrobe without breaking the bank. These shirts were extremely affordable.
I’m talking, like as low as four bucks and change. I have yet to pay more than seven bucks for a shirt from Temu. If you see one that you like that costs more than that, just keep scrolling, it’ll show up for half that price eventually.
Over the last few months, I’ve ordered close to twenty button-up shirts from Temu. Only once was I unsatisfied, when they sent me the wrong design. They refunded it in seconds and I’ve already re-ordered and received the correct shirt. Plus I got to keep the other design, which is not something I would be seen in public wearing, but it will make a nice gift for a heavy metal singer friend.
Also…some of the shirts need pressing when you get them.
Of course, this puts me in a bit of a dilemma. There are all sorts of reasons that people despise Temu. They have little regard for intellectual property rights. They probably pay their workers slave wages. They have an unfair advantage in terms of free shipping and a (now endangered) customs exemption. And they are the antithesis of shopping local.
I understand all that. However, I also understand that, if I’m going to buy a shirt that I may only be able to wear for a couple of months before I drop another twenty or thirty pounds, I’d rather buy a cheap, flammable one that looks good than spend big money on one that I’ll have to replace soon.
So I don’t feel too guilty about doing what works for me right now. Your milage may vary.
Having explained that, I have to come to terms with another problem. When I wear one of these shirts out to dinner or somewhere else, people stop and compliment me.
I’m not used to that. My gut reaction is to think that they’re having a joke at my expense, or I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe or something. But it’s happening too frequently to be a joke, unless somebody is putting a lot of effort into following me around and paying actors to pull an elaborate prank.
That seems somewhat unlikely.
I’ve even tempted fate by deliberately ordering shirts that are spectacularly hideous. I have one that looks like an AI Hippy threw up on it. Another has a Picassoesque face on it. I wore that one to a talk about rock photography at the Metropolitan Library in Columbus last weekend. My dear friend, John “Sham Voodoo” Estep was sitting behind me, and afterward I apologized for my shirt staring at him the whole time.
Oh, you thought when I said one shirt looked like “an AI Hippy threw up on it” I was joking? Folks…fashion is serious business. There’s no joking in fashion!
They 1980s called. They said they don’t want their shirt and hat back.
it seems that, the more hideous the shirt, the more compliments it gets. Somehow, by living long enough to stop caring about being in style…I have become, at least momentarily, in style. This is absurdity bordering on surrealism.
I told my friend Pixie, in Liverpool, England about my Temu addiction and she thought it was hilarious. She said that I had somehow become a Millennial, and needed to start a Tik Tok channel.
My beautiful wife, Melanie, tells me I look good in these shirts, but as my wife she’s sort of obligated to do that. Thus far she has not forbade me from wearing any of them in public.
Temu also sells hats. That was a dangerous discovery, but it’s hit-or-miss for me because I have such an enormous head. Two fedoras (under six bucks each) fit just fine, and the ballcaps are adjustable (even the one that Mrs. PopCulteer does discourage me from wearing in public), but the bowler hat was too small, unless I wanted to walk around with it pushed forward while puffing on a huge cartoon cigar.
Bluto did it!
I ordered a Captain’s nautical cap with an anchor on the front, but instead of making me look like Captain Action, I look more like Bluto wearing it.
Between the bowler hat and the Captain’s cap, I’m out six bucks and change, so it’s not a huge financial hit.
Of course, all good things come to an end, and our current administration has gotten around to ruining Temu as part of their campaign to systematically destroy all things that might give non-wealthy people any small pleasures.
The current Tariff exemption and postal treaties are set to end on May 2, unless our deranged president changes his mind an odd number of times before then. As a result, Temu, Shein, and a larger percentage of stuff at Amazon than Jeff Bezos wants to admit, will suddenly be tarriffed out of (affordable) existence, as the insane baby-man’s game of “How Fast Can We Cause A Global Depression” continues it’s path of economic obliteration.
We have about a week to order tons of cheap shit before the axe falls.
In the meantime, I will enjoy what should, by all rights, be my very brief life as a fashion plate.
I will be fine returning to living the life of a schlub. Heavy is the head that wears the probably flammable crown covered with AI designs.
That’s this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content every day, plus all our regular features and our sister internet station, The AIR.
The PopCulteer
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