TELEVISION: T-Shirts and Nielsen

or Nielsen and T-Shirts, because I am resurrecting the blog so as to detail my experience with a Nielsen TV Diary, which I will be starting this Thursday, July 1, and completing the following Thursday.

I would now like to focus on the t-shirts some of our favorite characters have been seen wearing on the small screen. Who the hell picks this shit out? Of note are the following:

• Ted Moseby, of "How I Met Your Mother," wearing a Shaker Heights High School t-shirt in an episode I cannot recall at the moment.
• Roy, of "The IT Crowd," sporting a Guided By Voices t-shirt my all-time favorite episode* "The Red Door" (S01E04).
  
• Ray Drecker, everyone's favorite male escort in HBO's "Hung," wearing a Museum of the Rockies t-shirt in the season 2 premier, "Just the Tip."

The first example is the least interesting, as Ted is meant to be from Shaker Heights, Ohio. The t-shirt in question was in support of some sport, but I don't remember what. Either way, being from Shaker, it is noteworthy that a character on a major network sitcom was wearing an authentic 'Shaker Lacrosse' (or baseball, or hockey, or whatever) t-shirt. (I can only assume it was authentic, given that one of the show's creators, Carter Bays, graduated from Shaker High).

The second is the most random. "The IT Crowd," a hilarious British sitcom, is, well, British. How Roy comes to hide a CRT monitor under a Guided By Voices t-shirt is beyond me. Perhaps some of you know GBV, an indie-rock band from Ohio, whom I was lucky enough to see perform at some outdoor music festival in Cleveland sponsored by Case Western Reserve University's student radio station in what must have been 2004. GBV has since disbanded (hence why I was "lucky" to see them live...I really couldn't care less, I'd never even listened to them before), but perhaps they were more popular in the UK than I'm giving them credit for, which would explain the t-shirt's appearance.

And lastly, Ray Drecker can be seen bowling with his ex-wife in last night's season 2 premier of the HBO original series "Hung" while wearing a Museum of the Rockies t-shirt. Whether more people know of the Museum of the Rockies or Guided By Voices I cannot say, but suffice it to say that they are probably equally random. The Museum of the Rockies is a natural and cultural history institution affiliated with Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. Travelers and residents of the Western United States may be familiar with it, but many people may only know of Bozeman thanks to the episode of "The Big Bang Theory" entitled "The Bozeman Reaction" (S03E13), in which Sheldon decides to move to Bozeman after his apartment is robbed, in order to avoid the crime-ridden hell hole** that is Pasadena, California. It's always nice to see Montana represented on the small screen, but said episode of BBT theory doesn't do the state much justice, as Sheldon gets mugged right after stepping off the bus in Bozeman. This is a grossly unrealistic depiction of Montana, as crime in this state mostly consists of incidents such as "area man robs medical marijuana dispensary."

Stay tuned for more TV-related commentary, including the guilty pleasures of VH1 reality shows, a more biting take on "Friday Night Lights" than you will find on Slate.com or the New York Times "TV Watch," and my disappointment that my TV Diary takes place before several highly-anticipated summer premiers, including that of "Eureka," which premiers just one day after I am to return my diary.

*My favorite episode to date. Season 4 is now airing in the UK, and while I don't foresee anything overtaking "The Red Door" in comedic brilliance, it is possible.
**I'm unsure of the extent and nature of crime in Pasadena, CA.