T Shirt

I watched with interest while Mia Hamm reacted to the U.S. women's loss to Germany in the Women's World Cup on Sunday. I was with my 12-year-old niece in Redondo Beach a few weeks ago when we saw Hamm outside her hotel. My niece, wearing a soccer T-shirt and soccer shorts, asked Mia Hamm for her autograph. She responded that autographs are "against team policy." I wondered that day and I wonder the same today. What happened to our American women's soccer team? That women's team that inspired our young girls to believe that their sport and their dream had somewhere magical to take them?

Of the 15 excellent Nick Ut photographs featured in Mark Edward Harris' story ("The Road From Trang Bang," July 23), the one that still sends shivers down my spine is of the young man wearing a peace symbol T-shirt during the L.A. riots. I remember watching TV in disbelief and thinking, how dare he defame this universal symbol of peace and tranquillity on national TV? Ken Harrison Oceanside

Make candy jewelry, paint murals, personalize a T-shirt, or let E! Entertainment's fashion experts do you up. It was all part of the P.S. Arts Express Yourself benefit last Sunday at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. Chris Klein, Rebecca De Mornay, Joely Fisher, Larry David, Albert Brooks and Calista Flockhart all got crafty. 6. Don Cheadle makes puppets.

The ACLU claims that refusing to allow a young man the option to wear a T-shirt with a slogan denies him his constitutional right to self-expression. Where was the ACLU last year when a young man was murdered on campus? Talk about losing the right to express one's self. The Simi Valley School District has enacted a strict dress code that prohibits T-shirts with slogans or pictures of any kind. And rightly so. Educators are busy enough with the tasks of teaching without becoming arbiters of the political correctness of T-shirt slogans.

The recent turmoil in China has been good for Chiang Chu's business. On Saturday, Chu's Postal Plus novelty shop in Irvine started selling 100% cotton, Beijing University T-shirts for $12, plus shipping and handling. The company has already received orders for at least 200 shirts, largely because Chinese students' tragic attempt at democratization has gripped the world's attention. The shirts--which come in white or yellow--feature the Chinese flag and the words Beijing University written in both English and Mandarin.

An agitated 31-year-old man wearing only a T-shirt died in custody early Sunday morning, shortly after Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrested him on suspicion of drug crimes. Just after midnight, deputies found Walter Duarte, 31, standing nearly naked outside a house in the 10900 block of Larch Avenue, Deputy Steve Suzuki said. Duarte, who was uncooperative as deputies tried to handcuff him, began having breathing problems when he was placed on the ground on his side, Suzuki said.

I couldn't help but notice that on the same day that right-winger Thomas' column called for religious conservatives to separate their children from the "failed public school system," there was an article inside Section A telling of a Mormon breakaway school's principal condemning a student for wearing a Penguin (Batman's archenemy) T-shirt. This was seen as a sign of devil worship by this esteemed gentleman. And you wonder why the religious right is so often ridiculed, Mr. Thomas? When will people wake up and realize that religion is the problem, not the answer?

A suspect was arrested Friday night in the fatal stabbing of a Hawaiian Gardens Quickie Mart worker. Michael Seamster, a 41-year-old resident of Cypress, was arrested in that city after residents called in tips to authorities, sheriff's Deputy Tania Plunkett said. On Monday, deputies responding to a robbery-in-progress call found Il Shin Chang, 49, stabbed to death inside the locked store.