Oh, for a return to the glory days of the Apple retail grand opening! Back when the concept was all shiny and new, Mac fans were so pumped full of adrenaline that they thought nothing of hitchhiking 900 miles with an escaped felon transporting leaky barrels of nuclear waste just for the honor of camping out in front of a store for three straight days with no available food or water, doing battle with hostile mall security guards and wandering grizzlies, and finally crawling across the threshold on opening day (to the dulcet strains of the B-52s' "Love Shack" and the polite applause of the staff) with a great, big grin on their emaciated faces. It was a magical time to be alive. Mostly alive. Whatever.

These days, of course, Apple stores are old news; they're all over the map, everyone's been to a dozen or more, and we're lucky even to hear about the openings before they happen. Indeed, it wasn't until after we got back from our recent non-AtAT-related trip to Minneapolis-St. Paul that we were informed that the Apple Store Rosedale Center celebrated its grand opening while we were sitting in a donut shop less than five miles away, totally oblivious to the occurrence. Pretty much the only unbridled enthusiasm left for the whole "grand opening" hoo-haa rests overseas, where Apple retail stores are still few and far between. That said, we wonder if even the grand opening of the Apple Store Shinsaibashi in two weeks in Osaka will produce even half the turnout of Apple's first store in the country, the Apple Store Ginza. Apple really needs to find a way to rekindle interest in the grand opening dynamic, or else the Japanese are going to wind up as jaded as we are, and probably twice as quickly.

And guess what? Maybe it has. As usual, "the first 1500 people to visit the store receive a free Apple t-shirt"-- but the teensy picture next to this announcement implies that the commemorative garments will not be white, but a far classier black. Now, we haven't been to an Apple store grand opening in a while, and certainly never one overseas, but we've got about two dozen t-shirts from similar past events scattered hither and thither throughout the AtAT compound, and we can tell you in no uncertain terms that each and every one of them is white. In fact, if we knew for certain that the free shirts at the Osaka opening were going to be black, we might actually have to figure out a way to haul our behinds down there and pit our waiting-in-line skills against the legendary queue-up talents of the Japanese. (You have seen the video of the Tokyo line-up, right?)

Black t-shirts. Can it be true? Has Apple stumbled upon the ultimate secret to continued grand opening craziness? If so, here's hoping we can snag one of those puppies on eBay.

In local retail news, as it turns out, Jack has been asked to accompany an eMac-wanting friend to the Apple Store CambridgeSide to take advantage of Massachusetts's first "no sales tax" day; since this is a fella who usually does sleep at semi-reasonable hours, we're now planning on getting there right at midnight when the store opens, and not at threeish as we'd originally kindasorta planned. On the plus side, the earlier start means that, depending on circumstances, Jack might be able to squeeze in a quick middle-of-the-night visit to the Northshore store, too, and maybe even Chestnut Hill, assuming he doesn't collapse in a heap first. If you happen to spot him at any or all of the stores, please say hi and then do something strange to keep him awake. There's a free sticker in it for you if you do.

Oh-- and he'll be wearing a black t-shirt. Natch.