Digging Myself Deeper Into a Pit of Nerdiness

This is another homemade shirt further exemplifying my extreme nerdiness. This was made before going to see a 3:30 AM showing of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Why 3:30 AM you say?

1) Midnight was sold out
2) I managed to convince everyone the day before that it would be cool to go
3) I apparently hate sleep.

I'm pretty sure we all fell asleep at some point during the film (for me it was sometime around when they visit Kashyyyk). Star Whore is short for Star Whores which is a porn parody I'm sure exists somewhere.

I'm a fan of Star Wars. I've seen the original trilogy many times (mostly because it was on TV a lot when I was a kid), I named my dog after Chewbacca, and I dressed up as Han Solo last Halloween. If I were to have twins that were a boy and a girl later in life, I'm pretty sure I'd strongly consider convincing my partner to let me name them Luke and Leia. Oddly enough, Star Wars isn't even my favorite film franchise. I actually love the Indiana Jones series more, but I've done fewer nerdy things in the name of Indiana Jones (I don't think I even own one Indiana Jones shirt, gasp!).

Get It: Considering I made this myself the only way for you to get it is for you to steal it from me, and that's just mean. You could also presumably just make your own.

More Nerdiness

Today's shirt is more traditionally nerdy as it features a few members of the Justice League of America. The JLA is like the DC Comics dream team. Curiously this shirt is missing Batman and Wonder Woman who are two of the more prominent members of the JLA. Seriously, Aquaman gets to be on the shirt, but Batman can't? Batman needs a better publicist.

Get It: I got it from Target a while ago and I haven't seen them in the stores in a while. I'd imagine you might be able to find something similar at a more price gougey retailer like Urban Outfitters or Hot Topic these days though.

Go Team!

This is probably the nerdiest shirt I own because I made it. For a concert. Like a teenage girl. It was for the Glee concert that I went to this last spring. In my defense Ali and I were by no means among the oldest people there without kids. By the way, the concert was sooo much fun. Glee totally is the newest incarnation of the boy band/Beatlemania/etc. pop culture phenomena, so making a shirt seemed fitting.

By the way, saying this is the nerdiest shirt I own is quite a feat considering I also own several Star Wars, video game, and comic book shirts.

My shirt is a reference to this shirt
seen here worn by the character Rachel. That shirt in turn is a nod to Twilight. I made mine in support of Rachel instead of Finn because, well, she's prettier.

The reason why I'm wearing it today is because the Emmys are tonight and Glee's nominated for a bajillion awards. Also it's Lea Michele (the girl who plays Rachel)'s birthday. I should also mention that it's my buddy (and fraternity lil bro) Orville's birthday too (since I know him in real life and all).

Get It: You can actually find ones online that people are selling, but it might be easier to pick up iron-on letters and puff paint at Joann's.

Check Please.

Today's shirt doesn't have much of a cool story behind it. It was pretty cool looking and on clearance at Old Navy so I snatched it up. Though earlier I was wearing my crazy 80s shades and crazy 80s boardshorts at Raging Waters so perhaps I was inspired to wear this shirt since it feels very retro surf culture to me. I don't quite remember when I got it and I'm sure it's out of print, but in case you wanted to look at what Old Navy's got to offer you can check them out at http://oldnavy.gap.com/.

But yeah earlier today I went to Raging Waters for the first time. I'd only ever been to a water park once before and I didn't really do anything terribly big and scary when I was there (I was probably 12). Jaime really wanted to go so we did. I kind of have a fear of heights, drowning, and the dark so it was fun(?) that some of the slides hit all three of those fears at once. But I totally had fun even if it was completely terrifying.

Radish

This is one of the new shirts that I just ordered from Threadless during their 10 dollar sale (which is going on till the 30th, yo). If the crazy 90s script is hard to read it says "If I were a vegetable I'd be a radish because I'm only kind of rad". As a general rule of thumb, text tees are terrible and unfunny (i.e. ones sold at Hot Topic and Target and Walmart and other purveyors of cheesy shit). However, I haven't come across a Threadless one that I haven't liked. Oddly enough those are the ones that I'm most likely to snatch up.

Find it: Right here. As I said earlier, their 10 dollar sale is going on until 8am Monday ad I highly suggest giving it a looksee.

Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica

Today's shirt is from Glarkware which specializes in original pop culture themed apparel (mainly tv shows). This one is called "Number One Threat" which is a reference to the Colbert Report and features a giant bear terrorizing several famous American landmarks. You can find it here. Their shirts for the most part are pretty obscure in their references (Veronica Mars) but some are pretty obvious (Star Wars) and some are just balls out random (Bigfoot vs. Abe Lincoln).

Why?: I like bears. I called my big bro a bear because he was big and burly, partly because of this I nicknamed two of my little bros Chocolate and Vanilla Bear (also partly because of Scrubs). Plus Bear's just a fun word to say.

Shirtblog: the Revenge

Welcome back shirt enthusiasts. Today's shirt is kind of a cheat because I wore it on Monday to Sea World, but I figure I'd blog about it today while the memories are fresh. Ali took a photo of me and my shirt in front of the Shark Encounter but I'll have to wait to get that from her to upload it. It's hard to read in my photo but right by the shark's mouth it says "sharks fear the" and it doesn't say anything else. It must be because sharks FEEL NO FEAR.


I think I've found my new favorite mascot. And that mascot is emo shark. There were other stuffed animals in sweatshirts, but the purple sweatshirt on the shark with a worried face immediately made him look emo.

Also apparently red bellied piranhas can be kind of boring during feeding time. There was a big crowd watching them and it took about 20 mins for them to finally go for their food. A guy in the crowd kept yelling "unleash the fury!" It was pretty cool once they finally did start eating, but I imagine it wasn't nearly as much carnage as Piranha 3D would have you believe.

In one of the aquariums there was a GIGANTIC grouper. The girl next to me said "damn, that fish got big Jay-Z lips". Thankfully I didn't laugh right then.

All in all a fantastic day. The sea lions were hilarious, the new dolphin show is ridiculous, and the weather was perfect.

Find It: It's a Mossimo kids shirt from Target.

Gabba Gabba Hey

Um I guess this shirt represents the non-current music that I listen to, that or because it's black it'll match the long sleeve shirt that I'm going to wear over it. I'm doing my best impression of the stars of Rock and Roll High School with the hair in my eyes and dark sunglasses, but my hair's not quite long enough anymore. I listened to the Ramones the most during mid-high school to early college. This is also about the time I discovered The Smiths and The Cure (which are both bands that have had more staying power in my music collection than The Ramones). They're still a fun band to listen to especially during the summer. I feel like they probably get used in amusement park commercials a lot.

Find It:
I actually got it at some memorabilia store at the mall, but you can find it online at the official Ramones store. There's no direct link, but it's about 4/5ths down the page (called their "Standing Logo" shirt).

Embedded Video Bonus Post

I felt the need to supplement today's post with some easily clickable video links so you know just what I'm talking about since I went on pretty long tangent about music. So here are links to all of the bands I talked about in the last post.

This is a pretty cute/funny video. It features little kids fighting over a girl at the playground.


Their video for "Next Girl" is also pretty hilarious. It features a dinosaur puppet and women in bikinis, but the best part is the scrolling text at the bottom of the video.


The lyrics to this song make no sense, but it's cute and catchy. By the way, I mainly checked out this band for their adorable band name alone. C'mon Freelance Whales? That's cute stuff.


Couldn't find very many videos of this, but it's my favorite song on the new Band of Horses album. Super catchy and fun.


I can't actually embed this but at http://www.brokenbells.com/october/ is an interactive video for the song October by Broken Bells (the lead singer from The Shins + producer Danger Mouse). Interactive in this case meaning that the camera will follow your cursor and leave a little trail where your mouse has been. It's kinda neat. Their music is all pretty moody, definitely a night time kind of CD.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Arcade Fire - Ready to Start
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

From their Daily Show performance. Two drummers? Madness.


"Maybe I was born to hold you in these arms..." The Swell Season is a project from the duo that starred in and produced all of the music for the movie "Once". They won the Academy Award for best original song for "Falling Slowly". It's all ridiculously gorgeous.


The previous blog post's title is from this song: It was at one time my favorite song. It's definitely still in the top 5 I think. It's just pretty and acoustic and good for a long drive alone.


Freelance Whales sound like this band:

had a baby with this band:


DCfC went on tour with this band:

which features the lead singer from this band:

but talking about that band I have to include this song because it's just got so much good old fashioned soul: It's one of my favorite female vocal performances ever.

Phew.

"I hung my favorite shirt on the floorboard, wrinkled up from pulling pushing and tasting tasting tasting..."

Today's shirt represents the hipster D-bag Allison that you all know and love today. It isn't entirely accurate to what my favorite band is right now, but I don't actually own a Band of Horses shirt (yet). Death Cab for Cutie is probably the band that I have the most of and have listened to the most. My music recently has been pretty mellow, melodic indie stuff. I'm going to use this as an excuse to talk about music. The new cds that I would recommend would be by Band of Horses, The Black Keys, Broken Bells (huh, lots of B bands), Arcade Fire, Freelance Whales, The Swell Season. The Freelance Whales cd has been getting the most play lately. It kind of reminds me of what would happen if Owl City and Sufjan Stevens had a music baby. Though "Tighten Up" by the Black Keys managed to sneak up and become the song I've listened to the most on itunes. It's a fantastic cd if you happen to be interested in soul/r&b/southern rock.

I got this shirt at a Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins/Death Cab for Cutie concert that at the time I described as "if there a word more awesome than the word awesome, that word would be exactly the adjective I would use to describe how cool the concert was." I went with Elaine and I'm pretty sure that was like part of the year that we became super close friends and went on several exciting adventures. This concert is notable for being one where a frat guy ruined a slow piano ballad about someone passing away by yelling "Oh fuck yeah!" when he heard the opening notes.

Oh and the reason why there's also a picture with Dylan in the background is that he came over for lunch and specifically told me he hates having his picture taken. I of course did my best to get one of him as he of course did his best to hide behind me.

Find it:
To my surprise I actually found it in yellow in the Atlantic Records store. It's only in black at the official DCFC store since it's out of print.

P.S. Threadless is running a back to school sale from now till 8/26. All tees are $10 (normally $18).

Tell All Your Friends

This is another fairly old shirt in the collection. Frankly, I kind of wore it today to get it out of the way. I've had it for a while but I rarely wear it. I got it at a concert my freshman year of college with a friend that became not my friend by the end of the year. She got the same shirt in the same color and everything. Ironically I think I got the same one in an effort to I dunno, feel closer to her or something like that. This blog just took a turn for the depressing. Sorry, dudes.

Coincidentally enough I think the theme of the shirt is all about how ladies are going to hurt you since it features the phrase "You're in for a world of hurt" underneath a depiction of a man proposing. Bitches, man.

Taking Back Sunday's "Tell All Your Friends" album is definitely one of my favorite albums from that musical period of my life. It's still one of the best produced albums that I've ever heard. It's a fantastic album about being angry and moody and pissed at your best friend. Fun Facts: This album is the companion album to Brand New's "Your Favorite Weapon" and there are several sections of lyrics lifted directly from each other. The falling out described in each album occurred after one singer made out with the other's girlfriend at a party. It's like an emo version of a rap battle I guess. I'd say that this would be another weird parallel to my relationship with the girl I bought this shirt with but really every emo album is about that sort of bullshit.

If yesterday's shirt represented the music I used to listen to in early high school/middle school, today's shirt represents the music I listened to in late high school/early college. The music of yesterday's shirt was all pop punk and today's shirt is all emo music and its various hardcore/folk-acoustic/pop/etc. forms. I'll have to find my best indie hipster d-bag band shirt tomorrow I guess to represent the Allison of today.

No handy link to find it today, folks. More than likely it was a concert exclusive. Even if it wasn't, lots of bands cycle through new designs pretty quickly. However, Taking Back Sunday's official shop can be found at this site. I'm quite a big fan of the monster under the bed shirt and the "I used to be in Taking Back Sunday" shirt.

The Oldest Shirt in the Rotation and other things that make me feel old.

This is probably the oldest shirt I own and still wear. It's super faded and the screen printing's all crackly and it's too big, but it reminds me of my roots. My awful, awful roots when I was in middle school and thought I was all punk rock because I put pins on my backpack and wore a leather cuff on my wrist. [*shudder*] I used to be so lame. I'm still pretty lame now, but I like to think that there are some significant improvements that have been made to the 2010 Model Allison.

Anywho, for some reason I can remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I got this shirt from Hot Topic oh so many years ago. It's not a terribly significant shirt other than Blink 182 used to be my favorite band, but still that memory sticks.

Find It:
Wherever old-ass Blink 182 shirts are sold. I'm sure they have newer ones that are still for sale at the brightly-lit Hot Topics of today. By the way, how lame is it that I've had conversations with people that start with the sentence "Why back in my day, Hot Topic used to be blah blah blah...". Also, Blink 182's starting to get some wrinkles. I think I saw Travis going a little gray. It's a weird feeling when your old heroes just start looking old. This must be what baby boomers feel when they look at Mick Jagger.

This is maybe my favorite shirt. I'm wearing it in honor of the fact that I'm going to go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a movie that probably does more video game fan service than the Mortal Kombat movie (and certainly more than Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li).

Find it:
This shirt is from Threadless which is one of the premiere T-shirt companies out there right now. They take submissions from artists and for the most part the designs chosen are based on user votes (there are also some artist exclusives). Whether a shirt gets re-printed or not is based purely on demand. They take complete designs and they also take ideas for text based tees like the one I've featured in my blog today. They often have various design contests running and pretty decent sales occasionally. Definitely worth checking out. This shirt in particular can be found here.

Today's shirt is merely in honor of the fact that the movie The Expendables comes out today. In honor of the fact that said movie is, with any luck, the manliest most explosion filled badass movie of our generation I'm wearing one of my more epicly badass shirts. It's hard to see, but there's a bear on an ATV riding away from an explosion. Bad. Ass. Not sure if I'm actually going to see it today, but I'm hoping to see it soon. It'll definitely balance out the girliness of seeing a musical yesterday (which by the way was fantastic).

Philosophical Tangent Time: I find that I like lots of things that are super masculine like action movies and sports but also enjoy super girly things like hair products, clothes, and musicals. I'm pretty socially anxious but can also be rather gregarious. I'm afraid of heights but I also love roller coasters. I think all of these extremes in my life are all part of this weird system of balances in my personality. I think it's also why I eat so strangely. I eat things in a certain order in a certain way and it's all mainly I think a way to keep everything balanced.

Get It:
I don't know if you actually still can get it, but the entry on the shirt can be found here. Older shirts can be found on their reckoning tab. Here's a larger shot of the logo.

Today's gift is from Emiko. There are a few people in my life who, every time I see them, makes me laugh uncontrollably. She is one of these people.

The reason why I'm wearing it today: Tonight I'm going to the theatre to see a play so I figured I'd wear my most clever, wannabe erudite shirt today. Don't worry, I'm going to change before I actually go out. I'll definitely be using tonight as an excuse to get casually dressy.

Find it:
It's an exclusive at Busted Tees and you can find it right here. There are tons of ridiculously clever, original shirts on Busted Tees and I highly recommend giving them a look.

I've also included a better pic of what the logo looks like. A more professional blogger would just take better pictures of themselves, but instead you've just got me.

Cowabunga, Gentlemen.

The shirt for today was a birthday gift from my friend, Hannah. She wasn't terribly subtle about what she was getting me that year since she straight up asked me one day close to my bday, "Which do you like more, ninja turtles or pirates?" Love you, Hannah. In case it's hard to read it says "Adult Mutant Ninja Turtles", hence the business suits and matching ties. I do love that gray haired, balding (even though he didn't have hair to begin with) Michelangelo still loves pizza.

The ninja turtles is without a doubt the pop culture phenomenon that I loved the most when I was a kid. As someone that is a fan of popular culture, I don't take this statement lightly. TMNT is my oldest and most enduring pop culture love.

A funny story involving ninja turtles and my stupid mouth: Bstark, Elaine, Dylan, and I were on a roadtrip years ago and somehow we got to the topic of I think different baby and kid versions of existing cartoon franchises, e.g. Muppet Babies, Baby Loony Toons, Tiny Toons, The Flintstone Kids, A Pup Named Scooby Doo (one of my FAVORITE cartoons as a child), etc. We got to the topic of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and how there should have been a baby version of that show and my brilliant response was "Yeah, like they'd call it 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Babies'". There was a pause and Elaine said, "Um, I think you mean Baby Mutant Ninja Turtles." [cue hysterical laughter and facepalm] Yeah, I wasn't able to live that one down for a while.

Find it:
It's from Snorg Tees which I think of as like Busted Tees' lil' brother. This specific shirt can be found here.

Today's shirt was a gift from my super fantastic housemates Tim and Sarah. Apologies for the weird face I'm making in the photo. Perhaps it should say, "Proud to be Awkward" instead. Not too much to say about this shirt other than I got it for my birthday a few months ago and that I'm flattered they think I'm awesome. That or they are aware of my raging egomania and know how much I think I'm awesome and feel the need to advertise it to the world.

Find It:
At your local Target. I can't find it in their online catalog but I just saw it at one of their stores a few days ago.

Today is my very good buddy Stefan's last full day in California before he leaves for school in Boston. In honor of him and his epic beardy-ness I'm wearing a shirt of his that I convinced him to hand over to me. I had a cheesy prom party for my birthday this year and he got all whiny about having to dress up, but eventually his girlfriend and I goaded him into going all 80s hair metal guy for the prom. Which worked out for him and his aforementioned beardiness.

Quiet Riot is a band best known for the song "Cum on Feel the Noize". It'll probably be stuck in my head all day now.

Where to find:
Because Stefan loves me, he went as far as to walk into a Hot Topic to purchase this shirt (which is not to knock Hot Topic or anything, Stefan just hates the shit out of that store). It can be found here and it's even on clearance for now.

If you're curious as to where I found my beard beanie it's from www.beardhead.com. It'll keep your head fantastically warm during the winter and keep you looking badass.

P.S. Stefan's aforementioned girlfriend is Elaine, one of my very best friends who was quite peeved that I didn't name drop her. She's in Switzerland right now so she's got a little bit of an excuse to be homesick and crazy.

Ninja Panda Pirate Octopus Battle Go!

This shirt was a gift from my other very best friend, Brandon. Perhaps the theme for these next few shirts will be gifts from best friends. It's from Shirt Woot a site that features "a new [shirt] every day at midnight Central time, sold cheap." Cheap in this case is 10 dollars with free shipping the day it's first sold, then it's like 5 dollars for shipping and handling for as long as they sell it (which is based on demand). I think it's pretty darn reasonable for a good shirt. Shirt Woot is part of the woot family of sites that follow the same model just with different products. It's a pretty fantastic site with lots of really great designs. They're also all printed on American Apparel tees so they're nice and soft.

Anywhoozle, I'm pretty sure Brandon got me this shirt because he is aware of my love for pirates, ninjas, and cute animals. This shirt just happens to have them all fighting too. One appears to be eating some noodles while slicing off a tentacle. He's my favorite.

This post also includes a different angle of my room so eagle-eyed stalkers can spot my box of ramen, my pulp pin-ups calendar, part of my MVP: Most Valuable Primate poster, and the little blue froggie I painted at camp.

Today's shirt was a birthday gift from Jaime, one of my best friends, that I got four years ago. She's the program director at Circus Smirkus a circus themed summer camp in Vermont. This of course means that she can do all sorts of circus things like juggling, unicycling, etc. and is thus most likely more interesting than you are. She's coming back home in two weeks and I am ridiculously excited by this prospect. [WARNING: SAPPY GOOEY MOMENT] I guess I'm wearing this shirt today because I spotted it in the closet and remembered that I'll get to see her soon. Just between you and me, Internet, I miss her quite a bit.

Anywho, anyone interested in checking out the camp store can find it at http://www.circussmirkus.org/htm/shop/index.html.

Even Bears Love Rock Band

I own this shirt for three reasons:

1. It was 5 dollars at Target
2. It has bears on it
3. Said bears are PLAYING ROCK BAND.

That's pretty much all there is to it. The reason why I'm wearing it today however is because two close friends that recently married (Hi, Mark and Stacey!) are having a rock band themed wedding reception today. I joked about wearing a tuxedo, but the shirt will fit in much better I think.

P.S. I ended up wearing the tux anyway. I guess I joked about it enough that my friends wouldn't let me puss out.

Life as a Shirt

I own a lot of T-shirts. I'm not sure how many. It's been something that I've been told is a problem. I've donated away many of them but I still have quite a few. I've started this blog to document them all and to categorize them using those handy tags at the ends of the posts. I've also decided to try to tell the story of each shirt. Where I got it, notable days it might have seen, etc. When it's relevant I'll also include a link to where one might find it.

Some of the shirt stories might be pretty boring and some might include paragraphs and paragraphs of rambling memories. As always, I'll do my best to try to be interesting.

Walk the Dinosaur

This is a shirt that I got on a cross-country road trip that I took with a good friend at the end of summer of 2007. To date that was probably the best summer of my life. I took my first over 21 trip to Las Vegas, I worked at a boating camp with my best friends, and I went on my first road trip to the east coast. My friend got into grad school in Connecticut and I decided to tag along as he moved out there. I believe we spent about 9 days on the road, eating good food that was terrible for us all along the way.

Things I learned on this trip:
-Flagstaff, AZ is temperate and bearable. Lake Havasu IS NOT.
-The difference between the kinds of close encounters in Roswell, NM
-Texas is boring
-Arkansas is gorgeous and green
-Pigeon Forge, TN is like a giant family fun center
-Memphis has the best ribs I've ever tasted
-There's no self serve gas in NJ so don't be too concerned when a sketchy-looking gas station attendant approaches your car as you attempt to fill up
-Philly cheesesteaks are totally better in Philly

The shirt is from Pigeon Forge. All along we way we basically stopped at as many dinosaur tourist traps as we could. There were dinosaurs along the freeway on the way to Texas, "animatronic" papier-mâché dinosaurs at an emu farm somewhere in the southwest, Dinosaurland in VA, and the Dinosaur Walk museum in Pigeon Forge. The museum housed a bunch of sculptures made by the same people that did the models for Jurassic Park so they were all very well done. Then on the outside they had a big T-Rex skeleton just like the visitors center in the movie. They didn't have any good shirts in adult sizes so this is actually a kids XL. It's probably the shortest shirt I own. I felt pretty obligated to get the T-Rex since it was also my camp nickname that summer.

As I said earlier, Pigeon Forge is like a big Family Fun Center/Boomers/Camelot. There were several mini golf courses, go-kart tracks, museums, and other entertainments. It's also home to Dollywood, the Dolly Parton's theme park. I could have easily spent a week there, but we only had a couple hours to explore. There was also a jurassic boat ride but we sadly didn't have the time to stop in. It's a place I'd gladly visit again.