#113 It kind of looks like the Cowardly Lion's medal of courage

This is a shirt that I got in elementary school (either the second or third grade I think) during a school-wide reading promotion. I managed to be one of the more voracious little readers (read: I spent a lot of time alone and indoors) so I got quite a bit of swag from the campaign. This badass shirt, free pizza coupons, I even got a physical medal like the one on my shirt. When they say "gold medal winner" they aren't playing around (well, the gold part is still a bit of a lie...and they're playing it fast and loose with the word "winner"). I actually had to accept this shirt on stage at an assembly that they had in front of the whole school so they could all laud me for my nerdiness (kneel, peasants!).

#112 The helmet's a nice touch, right?

This is a shirt I got as a gift from Krista way back when. If you can't quite read it because of my boobs (sorry...though you would think that with a girl's cut shirt such as this one they would allow for that) it says "I fergot to run spel chek".

#111 Don't worry. She likes your butt and fancy hair. I know. I read her diary.

I got this kind of randomly as a gift from one of my old roommates. I'm not even sure it was for a specific occasion. I did quite enjoy the movie Lilo and Stitch. It's probably my third favorite kid befriends a creature from outer space movie (behind E.T. and the Iron Giant).

#110 And I'm sure that I've not seen the Christmas lights this bright before...

Copeland was my favorite band when I was 18. All it took were the opening notes to the song "Walking Downtown" and I was immediately hooked.

Their CD "Beneath Medicine Tree" is still one of my favorites. Just lovely, catchy melodic rock. The perfect soundtrack to accompany my languishing teenage heart. I saw them play at least twice in the old teen center/sometimes concert venue in my hometown. Somewhere I've got a picture of me and their bass player/the guy who sold me this shirt.

#109 Your love for me is like a truck, Berserkerrrr

This is a shirt I got at comic con one year. I purchased it during the height of my Kevin Smith mania. It's one Jay wears during Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back a great movie if you're a nerdy teen who loves dick jokes and boobs. The shirt is actually a callback to a minor character that pops up in Clerks who is a Russian immigrant that comes up with a song called "Berserker", a lyrical chef d'oeuvre featuring lines such as "My love for you is like a truck, Berserkerrrr. Would you like some making fuck, Berserkerrrr." Magnificent.

#107 & 108 I either need to get better looking or stop taking pictures of myself.

You may be thinking, "Did Allison just post the same exact shirt twice? That's cheating! I shall report thee to the high council of blogging elders! I demand satisfaction!" But hold your horses there, anachronistic internet so-and-so. They are in fact two different shirts. The first one is black and it's the free Eater Nation shirt that they gave out to all UCI fans in '08. The second is actually Navy Blue (clearly the next thing my blog needs, other than a better blogger, is a key grip) and is the fancy Anteater Band version of the Eater Nation shirt. I guess they allowed clubs to get their own colors and logos on variations of the Eater Nation shirt that year, which is actually pretty cool.

I figured since I missed the blog yesterday I might as well just double post today. Plus what more am I really going to be able to say about the same shirt in a different color. Uh, this one reflects light at a different wavelength than the other.

I don't really wear the shirt out much. Partly because I feel like if you're not familiar with the fact that UCI's mascot is the Anteater and that it shorts to Eaters it just looks like I'm a competitive eating enthusiast (aka a fatty. Though fatties are more like, "I'm going to compete with myself to see how much I can eat of...everything." They're more embroiled in a battle against early onset diabetes. fat jokes!).

#106 Peanuts and Crackerjack

I was born and raised in San Diego. My parents still live in the same house that I grew up in which also completed construction within the same month that I was born. Specifically I grew up in Mira Mesa which is a suburb or township of some sort. There's a large Filipino community there, possibly because there was a U.S. Navy base next door (it's now a Marine Corps base). There's also pretty much just one major street in Mira Mesa (maybe one and a half).

My dad's a big sports guy. He's pretty much your typical dude. He also has had a Magnum P.I. style mustache my entire life. I saw a picture of him once when he was clean-shaven during his Navy days and it freaked me out. His teams are the Lakers, Padres, and the Chargers; so growing up they were my teams too. The shirt I'm wearing today is in the old school Padres color scheme. The shirt curled a bit by the D so now it kind of looks like SB (thanks a lot, boobs). It was just something I snatched up on clearance at Old Navy.

While I still would love to see the Padres do well, I don't really follow baseball or any sports regularly for that matter. Plus baseball's pretty boring on TV. Football's about the only sport I really enjoy watching, but I don't really have a favorite team (the Chargers I guess?). Baseball-wise I also have a bit of a soft spot for the Tampa Bay Rays because they were super fun to watch during the world series in '08. Plus I kind of like being the only person outside of Tampa to even give half a fuck about the Rays. If Old Navy had a Tampa shirt in Rays colors I totally would get one of those too. Unfortunately that wouldn't have made any financial sense at all. Plus no one even knows what the Rays colors are so it would just look like a touristy shirt from Tampa.

#105 If I were to be summed up by one t-shirt, this may or may not be it.

This is one of those shirts that is pretty fitting for me I think. Those who know me best would probably be pretty quick to describe me as indecisive. That or awkward, I'm also pretty awkward. Really, the indecision just adds to the awkwardness.

Anywho, I'm terrible at just choosing stuff and being okay with said decision.

#104 "Because I just dusted off some records that I bought at 14..."

Being young is all about wearing band t-shirts. At least that's the theory I'm going with considering how many of these fuckin' things I own. Anywho I used to love the crap out of The Rocket Summer. If you like sappy pop songs with sophomoric lyrics sung by a guy with a high pitched voice then this is your band. I'm not hating though, that stuff is catchy as all get out.

I don't know what it is, but if I were to be presented with this music today, I'd probably ignore it and maybe hate it. But because I loved it when I was younger, I'd totally listen to it again. I guess that's just nostalgia for you. Shitty things were way less shitty back in the day just because you lived through them.

#103 I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all

This is a shirt that I got from some skate shop in San Diego. It actually might have been a Sun Diego. Don't hate on the name, the stores themselves are super awesome. Though, admittedly it does seem like it would be difficult to branch out of San Diego county with a name like that. Anywho, I got this when I was out Christmas shopping with my folks one year. If you can't read it, it says "WANTED Dead or Alive". I couldn't resist the fact that it's got a big piratey skull and also reminds me of the Bon Jovi song of the same name (Uh, "Wanted Dead or Alive" not "Big Piratey Skull"). Plus there's a bit of a cowboy connection there as well. This shirt's got quite a bit going for it I'd say. It's also super soft and thin (though this has also led to a couple giant holes since I've had it for a while). The shirt brand is Howe which I don't know a lot about, but it seems like a pretty upscale clothing line (at least going by some of the prices, dang).

P.S. Yeah, that's my Han Solo gun. It might be the only toy gun I own.

#102 Lucky

I got this shirt in Florida when I was there for my cousin's wedding. It was just me and my aunts and uncles since a bunch of my cousins bailed last minute on the trip. Sooooo I spent a good amount of the trip playing bingo and going discount shopping. I also ate more blue crab in one week than I'd eaten in my entire life. But it was still an interesting trip. I spent one whirlwind day at Walt Disneyworld and got to visit Georgia and South Carolina for the first time.

So this was something I got on one of the trips to the discount department store. It's not technically a T-shirt, but it's got a graphic on it so I'm going to count it. If you can't read it it's for some sort of fictional horseshoe tournament. I've never actually played horseshoes myself. Not really a common thing these days I think.

#101 Return of the Shirt

I forgot how ridiculously hard it is for me to take a photo of myself and be happy with it. I must have taken and deleted around 10 photos today. I finally settled on this one:

But then I decided I hated that one too and made this face to express my feelings on the matter:

This is all the more reason for me to maybe try the whole vlog thing again. I'm much too self-conscious to be taking this many photos of my ugly mug. At least with the videos I can't think about it too much because of the timed aspect of the thing.

#100 A Failed Experiment

Here are two attempts at a video post. Uh. Not sure what's going on there, but it's weird. Feel free to offer suggestions, helpful nerds.

#99

Oh hey another shirt with a big heart on it. That was unintentional. Anywho, this is another shirt from Diesel Sweeties. Seriously, I wish that comic was half as good as its apparel. This shirt is special because it glows in the dark. (OooooOOOooooh). I'm wearing it today because I'm attending what is apparently a glow in the dark party aka, someone owns a blacklight party. In the dark a hidden message pops up on the heart that says "If you can read this, it's dark and you should kiss me". Thanks Tinker the True Love Tortoise! Find it here.

#98 I Heart Cliches

For a somewhat avid shirt collector such as myself, it seems fitting to snatch up the classics of the genre. It's like a comic book collector owning Amazing Fantasy #15 or a baseball card collector owning a Honus Wagner card. Shirts I would also classify as classics are the "Frankie Say Relax", the tuxedo t-shirt, "Kiss me I'm Irish". There are also your passing shirt trends such and Urban Outfitters classics such as "Everybody loves a _____ boy/girl" and "Jesus is my Homeboy" or passing pop culture memes like "Make 7 Up Yours".

Anywhoozle, I've really only been to New York once for a grand total of maybe 24 hours. I went as part of a trip to the east coast in the 8th grade. Saw the Lion King on Broadway, ate at the All Star Cafe in Times Square (I'm pretty sure those don't exist anymore), went to the top of the Empire State Building, it was a fun time. Oddly enough that's not when I got this shirt. Instead I got this shirt at the end of my roadtrip with Bstark in the JFK airport gift shop before I flew back to California.

#97

This was the shirt that my elementary school band wore when we played at our little concerts. We also were in the Mira Mesa 4th of July parade at least once. I really don't know why this shirt is so big. It's big on me even now. I must have been just swimming in it when I was in the 5th grade. I guess I was already starting to get taller then, but still.

I can't remember much about band in elementary school. I just remember being very excited by the prospect of being able to play TLC's "Waterfalls" on saxophone because that was the song that the director and his friend came in and played for my fifth grade class. At the time it was my favorite song after all. Really that silly story is rather appropriate. I joined band because it sounded like fun and I kept up with it because it continues to be fun for me.

Anywho, the anteater band played at the UCI women's soccer game today and they won 2-0! These women's games are starting to make me come around to the whole idea of watching soccer I think. Somehow I've managed to have fun and stay entertained during a game that I normally loathe. The fact that we're a pretty good team certainly helps. Plus on a more shallow level, soccer players are hot.

#96 More Punny Business

It's a hawk...and it's mowing...so it's a mow hawk...mohawk. Yeah? Yeah. Anywho, I thought it was pretty funny so I picked it up from Threadless.

Um. The end.

#95 CIA MIA?

Sorry for the poor lighting, but I don't really care that much, at least not about a CIA shirt. I believe this one is from my junior year. I never really understood why there was a splashy water pattern behind the CIA logo. Lots of ridiculous things happened that year band and basketball wise. Our men's team was undefeated at home, we traveled to the LBSU pyramid and played at a game there, then we lost to LBSU in the tournament off of a crazy three point shot at the buzzer. That was also the year that I learned that a lot of LBSU fans are kind of dicks.

Tonight the women's soccer team won in the first round of the NCAA tournament (they got a bid because they were ranked 11th in the nation) against ASU. We were down by a goal in the first half but we finally scored about 25 mins into the second half and then got another goal in about five minutes after that. It was actually a really fun game once we finally scored because the crowd was super into it. I mean, I barely give a shit about soccer, but that was pretty entertaining.

#94 Har Dee Har

If you can't quite read it the text reads "WISCONSIN Smell The Dairy Air". Oh, puns. This falls into the tradition of fake souvenir shirts such as "Tijuana: City of Tomorrow", "New Mexico: Cleaner than Regular Mexico", "Caucasia knows how to party", etc.

I think it's time for a haircut soon. I've got a bit of a Prince Valiant thing going on right now. Not attractive.

#93 Stunner

Much like every other little girl I grew up with a love for professional wrestling. Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Randy Macho Man Savage, Rey Mysterio Jr., The Rock, they were all fantastic in my young eyes. I was also into Stone Cold Steve Austin for a while. I don't really know why, he didn't really have as cool a personality as the others. My guess is that like a lot of things I liked when I was younger (South Park, the Wu Tang Clan, basketball) these were things that my older (and thus obviously cooler) cousins liked so I glommed onto them too.

#92 Ew, Chafing

This is a shirt that I got my senior year of High School. I was in the psychology club that year. Not so much because I'm a fan of psychology (though I am) but because a good amount of my friends were in it. One of the things we did as a club was community service and at least twice we volunteered at marathons. This mainly involved handing water to runners and by this I mean mostly getting splashed with water as runners hastily grabbed at paper cups as they ran past.

#91 Wizard What?

This shirt is from a Wizard Rock show that I went to back when I'd only seen the movies. My best friends Jaime and Brandon were super into Harry Potter and found out about Harry potter inspired rock bands (also known as wizard rock) and dragged me along to a concert. It was in this small cafe with a small stage set up and a bunch of couches and chairs placed in a corner. The two bands (which were both single artists) were the Remus Lupins and the Hermione Crookshanks Experience. It was pretty fun. She shirt I'm wearing is for the Hermione Crookshanks Experience. It was her first performance I think and she was pretty nervous and awkward but still pretty funny. So clearly I found her adorable.

Honesty time: For a while I was a snooty snoot snoot about the Harry Potter books. I was never one for reading fantasy novels even as a child and I didn't really see the appeal of a child oriented book to a person older than 14. I was also pretty sick of the whole rabid fandom so that turned me off to it as well. At the time of the concert I was starting to come around to the idea of the books, but wasn't quite sold yet. After the concert, in the grand tradition of doing things in order to impress a cute girl, I read the books. Much to my surprise they were pretty entertaining and I breezed through the whole series rather quickly. I never really did much more that chat her up a little bit online but I'm pretty glad I read the books anyway.

#90 Three Months of Shirts? Madness!

This is a shirt that I got from Stacy after she accidentally dyed it pink in the wash. It also explains why it's a little small on me (though how she fit her chest in it is beyond me, but I digress). Anywho, I spent my morning watching the UCI women's soccer team face off against LBSU. We very sadly lost. I don't normally care that much but I particularly hate losing to Long Beach (their fans are quite mean and scary). I also don't really like when it becomes this thing were fans start cheering against other fans instead of just supporting the teams themselves. Though of course I've totally made signs that make fun of schools and fans which goes against my previous statement, but I'm not one for personally attacking fans. It's just not worth it and not terribly classy (which probably doesn't mean much from someone that makes as many dick and fart jokes as I do, but still).

But hey, enough of that. Who else is excited that Conan O'Brien's talk show starts tomorrow night? He's legitimately my childhood idol (I first watched his show sometime around when I was in elementary school and I watched it any night I didn't have school the next day) and who I want to be when I grow up (much more than like, Indiana Jones or Han Solo or The Green Ranger). Plus Lea Michele is going to be on as a guest. That's just almost too much awesome all at once. Anywho, tomorrow night. 11pm. TBS. Be there.

Alternatively for those without cable it'll also be online at teamcoco.com the next day I believe. So be there as well I suppose.

#89 GEORGE NO!

This is another threadless shirt which you can find right here. It may be hard to see but it's Curious George a la King Kong clutching the man in the yellow hat and fighting an airplane. No real rhyme or reason to wearing or having this shirt, I just think it's cute.

[awkward segue time] In other news I was dragged along to a lesbian bar/club last night. I say dragged along because as one of my friend's put it "Bitch, I will disown you if you don't come." I'm not really one for the club atmosphere (shocking, I know) it's loud and crowded and just a little too crazy for me. But it was pretty fun. There were scantily clad dancers and set times when they would clear the drinks off the bar and dance on it and later choose a random girl to give a ridiculous lap dance. The last dance of the night also included a lot of water getting splashed around. I guess they make it worth the cost of admission there. Oh, and the name of this place was Truck Stop, which even for a lesbian bar is a pretty gay name.

I did totally have fun though. I get pretty nervous and shy around women I don't know so as per several people's suggestions I had some drinks beforehand. Elaine also bought me a drink there and I bought another one after to sort of keep myself drunk. I didn't really slip into a silly drunk state like I usually do, but I blame that on my overwhelming bashfulness around women. I still couldn't really get out of my own head. Various people also tried to dare me to make out with random women at the bar but that probably would have taken much more alcohol and women that were much more forward than myself. But still, I met and hung out with some cool people, got drunk enough to dance and oogled sexy dancer ladies so all in all a pretty awesome experience. I just wish there were more relaxed ways to meet ladies like lesbian karaoke night or lesbian Mario Party game nights.

#88 I'd wear a Back to the Future shirt if I had one

This is another shirt that I thought was funny in high school and quickly got over. It roughly translates to "looking for a Japanese girlfriend". A Japanese student that I knew actually did read it once and became slightly confused but then laughed. The weird thing about it is that Asian girls aren't normally my thing. It's probably because I'm an Asian person who grew up surrounded by Asians and currently lives in a place with a high Asian population. I just needs me some strange.

Perhaps that's why I never wear it these days. It sends the wrong message, haha.

#87 Oh Broken-Hearted-Hoover-Fixer-Sucker Guy...

It's time to hop in the 'ol wayback machine as this shirt is one that I got in high school. It was one of the first designs at the launch of the Atticus Clothing Line which was founded in part by Tom and Mark of Blink 182. The clothing line is named after the father in To Kill a Mockingbird and rather appropriately their logo is a bird lying on its back. They also used to have a women's line under the name Scout after the young girl narrator in that same book (so there's a bunch of shit you didn't need to know about a book that you probably dislike and a clothing line that is barely relevant. You're welcome!).

Um, anywho they apparently still make clothing so you can find their store here.

#86 COOKIES ARE AN ALWAYS FOOD

I can't really remember when or where I got this shirt. Anywho I'm wearing it because yesterday was apparently Cookie Monster day (it's also I guess his birthday).

I may not be big on sweets but I appreciate a good, soft gooey cookie. Crispy, hard cookies can go fuck themselves (well, unless a nice, cold glass of milk comes with them, then they're cool).

#85 Why Back In My Day...

This shirt is the chapter shirt from the first year that I joined the fraternity. The thing that kind of looks like an M near the anteater is UCI's chapter designation, Lambda Alpha. Jaime designed it that year and as was kind of the usual case, it was the only design that was made so it was printed.

Things I remember from that year: There were 17 members when I first joined, the meetings were ridiculously long, my candidate class was super competitive, and Brandon and I were the only regular alto sax players (Kaylene came when she could but there were a lot of games with just the two of us. The year before there were maybe four altos on average at games).

#84 "I've got a twenty dollar bill that says no one's ever seen you without make up..."

Here's another shirt from the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. You can find it right here. It's a mixtape shirt and another one that I got from a girl getting rid of stuff from an ex-boyfriend (but he might not have been an ex at that point, anywho). But yeah, hard to see but it's a pixely version of a tape.

Mixtapes/Mix cds are super cheesy and corny, so rather appropriately I love them. I'm a fan of making them for people and making them for myself. I make tons of playlists with different themes for different moods and moments (currently my itunes has 40 different playlists). I also make good use of the comments section of my itunes to quickly note little things I notice about various songs (if a song is a cover, if it's a demo version, if it's instrumental or acoustic, etc.). Um so there's a basic confession of my compulsions when it comes to music.

In other mixtape news, Sony just recently announced that they halted production on their Walkman line. This has already been said before but, Duh? I would have figured they would've stopped making them much longer ago. I don't think I actually ever owned a walkman as a child. The only tapes I had were a few Disney soundtracks. After that I quickly graduated to cds (My first one? Kriss Kross's Totally Krossed Out).

Shirt # 83 Bum Ba Da Da Dum Superman!

Needs More Zippers

I wish I had time to be funny, but I don't. Let's pretend I said something clever and call it a day.

Brains....

No time to blog properly. Brainsssssss.

p.s. find it here

Sounds like something MST3k would watch

Here's another monster shirt to honor the imminent arrival of Halloween. I wasn't always very excited by Halloween. You don't get any gifts and I was never really that big on candy even as a child. I also never really got to be what I wanted to when I was growing up. Mostly my parents chose our costumes on the years we actually dressed up. One year my brother got to be Peter Pan and I had to be Tinkerbell (you will NEVER see photos of this). I think I went to only one Halloween party when I was in high school (where I went as Punchy the Hawaiian Punch mascot, don't ask me why).

But now that I'm older, Halloween has become awesome. I can dress up as my favorite characters, go to awesome parties, and act like a big kid (which is pretty much my favorite thing to do). As of right now I'm going to three different Halloween parties this year.

The first one was last night. The men of Dexter's apartment have a standing cookies and whiskey party every Tuesday. This week's also happened to be Halloween themed. It was kind of last minute so I just threw on my Marty McFly costume (which is a lot of layers to wear at a party in a tiny apartment). There was also a fantastic Dr. Who costume, but I think he totally should have gotten a fez for it too. The clear highlight of the party was the impromptu Disney sing along. It was going on for a while 'til the girls got bored and put the kibosh on the whole thing.

But yeah up next is a party on Friday, a party on Saturday, and then ? on actual Halloween itself. I might try to convince a few people to go trick or treating or something.

Friendly Neighborhood Shirt Blog

This is a shirt featuring my childhood favorite comic book superhero, Spiderman. I used to watch the cartoon fairly religiously and I had a few of the action figures. As you can see, I had a little fun with the photos today.

Who me?

In continuing the Halloween thread of this week's shirts, this is a monster shirt that I got from Threadless. In it, a big furry creature has managed to set fire to an unsuspecting metropolis. His defense? "i am not a monster!!" The millions of dollars in property damage says otherwise, good sir. I imagine a police commissioner in a helicopter just outside of the scope of the shirt rolling his eyes as if to say "seriously, dude?" and then aiming a bazooka at him.

That's kind of a poor disguise there, Allison

If I were better at photo manipulation, I'd have pixelated my face. If you didn't happen to watch reruns of this on cartoon network or avoided movie theaters the summers of '07 and '09 this is a Transformers shirt, specifically the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime. This shirt by the way has the thickest screen printing I've ever encountered on a shirt. There is also a lot of it. It makes it about twice as warm as a normal shirt on a sunny day.

Sufjan Stevens in concert report: That was certainly way, way cooler and more involved than I was expecting. The tickets ended up being pretty expensive after ticketmaster fees but after the fact it seems well worth it. There were lots of crazy lighting effects and lasers and a projections and a scrim that would descend that would also be projected upon. There were dancers and discoballs and a few bits of choreography and headbands and flourescent visors and a light up wand...it was madness. Also here's a list of the various musicians/random instruments I saw onstage; two drummers, two trombones (and another one that added in occasionally), two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboard/synth player, a piano player, a Casio SK1, a banjo, sleighbells, some sort of flute or pipes, two background dancers/backup singers, and a moog. I might be forgetting some stuff. But it was pretty darn amazing. He comes off as a very eccentric, thoughtful, emotional, sensitive, reclusive artist. Here's some of the fun stuff I remember him saying:

"That song was about heartbreak and the apocalypse. Which are kind of the same thing. The end of the world is a broken heart...I'm sorry, I'm kind of a drama queen."

"Nothing says 'I love you' like a Casio SK1" after a Casio SK1 solo

"Thank you for joining us on this journey of love, loss, heartbreak, and the end of the world."

It also kind of looked like he might have been crying after singing "Casimir Pulaski Day" (which admittedly is the SADDEST SONG IN THE WORLD, don't even try to dispute me on this), but he also could have just been sweaty. Also during his quiet acoustic songs, the entire sold out audience was silent. I've never had that happen before. The entire crowd was just completely riveted. It was pretty fascinating.

I look like Telly from Sesame Street.

Today's shirt is from Theadless.com (they've apparently had handy dandy html codes to aid me in blogging about their shirts all along. Also in theory my streetteam info is already attached to the link. They're so clever.). The reason for this shirt today (other than to continue my streak of wearing shirts that could also be cheap costumes) is that I'm having lunch with my good friend Kaylene. Why does this matter, you say? Who on God's balls is Kaylene? Well, Kaylene is awesome and she's going to med school to become a surgeon one day (Ohhhh). Also, Scrubs (which happens to be one of her favorite shows) featured this shirt as well as Turk the surgeon wore it in an ep.



Tonight is the night of the Sufjan Stevens concert that I'm going to with Janice and Hannah. Perhaps tomorrow or sometime soon I'll feature a cool shirt that I got from the show. I'm pretty excited about the concert. As far as I know he probably hasn't been on tour since around 2004 so I jumped at the chance to get tickets for this tour. I view it as sort of an indie kid pilgrimage. I'm not super into his new CD, but "Come On Feel The Illinoise" is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's very mellow music with lots of interesting arrangements.

P.S. threadless is doing a deal until November 1st that all of their scary tees are on sale for 10 bucks. They've got a decent amount of like zombie and monster shirts to check out if you are so inclined.

faux-to booth.

This is the closest thing I have to a tuxedo t-shirt. It's sort of got like a punk schoolboy thing going on with the funky tie and random pins (which say things like 2 cool 4 school and ACE). My most vivid memory of wearing it was at the barn party at Davis the year that we went as rockstars. Actually, that then makes sense in context because I went that year as Angus Young who pretty much always dresses like a punky British schoolboy.

In honor of Halloween coming up, I think I'll end up doing a string of posts about shirts that are either somewhat costume-y or have monsters on them.

Breather

After how heavy the last post was, here's a much lighter, short post. This is a shirt that I snagged from Brandon when he was getting rid of clothes. It's back when he thought because he was tall he should wear things that are size L or XL [shakes head in shame]. It's a UCI shirt and it's the only non-band, non-eater nation/cia, non-kky UCI shirt that I own.

My very first concert tee

This is the very first shirt that I ever got at a concert. I went to see Saves the Day in concert with my friend Monica. They were my favorite band in high school and for about my first year or two in college. I don't remember who else was playing but I remember it was held at Canes which is this Bar and Grill in the Belmont Park Boardwalk in San Diego. It was a pretty cool venue. Afterward I think we walked along the beach for a bit while we waited for our parents to come pick us up (shut up. we were 16 and didn't have our licenses or cars at this point). I don't remember too much of the concert though I do recall chanting the word "coconuts" at some point because the lead singer was trying to see what sorts of crazy things he could get us to chant since we were all excited.

If you can't read the text underneath it says UBR: Urban Bike Renegades. I don't really know why. Saves the Day's official merch store is here. I've still got at least one other Saves the Day shirt to go so I'll save my favorite concert story of theirs for that one. In my youth (because I'm all old and shit now I guess) I think I saw them four times. Janice just saw them last weekend (with a couple of other bands that I either have loved or still love) and I declined to go. I'm just not into the whole getting shoved around by sweaty kids that I could have babysat-scene.

What are you going to do with a shrubbery? You live in the forest.

This shirt was a Christmas/MLK/Rex Manning Day gift from one Mr. Gerald Tan. I could just say Gerald, but I'm more used to GT and when using his full name I feel obligated to add the Mister. Anywho it's a Monty Python and the Holy Grail shirt featuring a crest with the Killer Bunny on it.

I've actually only see that movie once. I got it on VHS (telling you how long ago this was) as a birthday gift from my friend Kyle one year as he was flabbergasted that I'd never seen it. The day we all viewed it was the only time I've ever seen that movie. Monty Python is a pretty big pop culture blind spot of mine. The only other Python movie I've seen is Life of Brian (which I did love) and I've never seen the TV show. I know a bunch of the more famous bits by reputation though.

We built this city on a concrete foundation in accordance with proper building codes

This shirt is another one from Threadless and you can find it on this page. It probably would have been a cooler picture if I had kept my shiny shiny wristband on from the festival yesterday OR better yet if I had grabbed the drumsticks from downstairs and a headband; also pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnics are what any good blog needs. Groupies would be good too.

Anywho as usual if you end up buying something from Threadless after reading my blog, do me a favor and use this link: http://www.threadless.com?streetteam=allisonrocks to get there since having a profile means I get credit for referrals. It's like a bonus for me for introducing you to the wonders of cool shirts.

My ears are still ringing

So I didn't actually get to keep this shirt so I had Stacy take a quick photo of me in it with my phone before I had to surrender it to the people in charge at the concert. I've never been given a shirt at an event only to have to give it back at the end of the day. It seems kind of weird and cheap and unsanitary. The shirt says TECS BRIGADE which is the name of the group that organized the volunteers.

Thoughts on the Smokeout Festival: This was one of the grossest big events I've ever attended. Litter everywhere, toilet paper and handwashing water were out by late afternoon, zero napkins at the perpetually sticky bar, tons of gross people, minimal security, etc. It was a pretty disorganized mess, which shouldn't be surprising since it's a festival for...marijuana enthusiasts. But it was still a decent time and not nearly as bad as I thought it might be. It also reminded me that Incubus is an okay band. Not super great, but some of their songs are catchy enough to sing along to.

Placeholder

I'm volunteering at some music festival today and I'll be getting a shirt there so since I'm going to be wearing that for most of the day that's what today's blog post will eventually be about. However because I'm getting back late, I probably won't blog about it until tomorrow. So for now, placeholder.