I've become uncomfortable with my own face.

This is a shirt that Ali was just going to donate away since it belonged to an ex-boyfriend. I however snatched it up because it fit nicely and I like a good white shirt ([bitchy gay alert] it really pops against my perpetually tan skin). This I think was a promo shirt for that show where Gene Simmons teaches British schoolkids how to be rockstars (I swear I'm not making this up).

This isn't the first time I've capitalized upon the break ups of others (hmm, upon reflection that just makes me sound like some sort of skank). Um, anyway I just wanted to say that I also have a fancy, expensive down comforter that an ex-girlfriend got from a friend.

Seriously I'm not a slut.

I've got a lot more band shirts than I thought I did

It's at this point I'm realizing that I've got way, way, way more band T-shirts than I thought I did. And like out of all of them I maybe still listen to two of the bands whose shirts I own. Brand New is not one of these bands. I'm just not angry enough for that music these days. Most stuff I listen to is on the sleepy, mellow side. Anwho this shirt is one that I got from a St. Vincent DePaul thrift store back in the day. I also picked up another Brand New shirt while I was there. I like to think some jilted ex-girlfriend decided to donate away her boyfriend's Brand New shirts to punish her ex in a socially conscious way.

No interesting stories today. Today is day 2 of our so far at least 3 day adventure in trying to get connected to a new cable and internet provider. This means I've been stuck indoors for the better part of today and yesterday and depending on when they come by tomorrow, it could be the case then as well.

Oh and I forgot to mention it yesterday but I believe the chum shirt is shirt number 50 for this blog. Kind of hard to believe there's already been that many. There's still plenty more to go.

FRIENDSHIP!

This is a shirt that I got from shirtwoot somewhat recently. If it's hard to read, above the shark it says, "BE MY CHUM!" It makes me giggle. Plus the shark's adorable...even if he is trying to trick you into being his food.

I was having a chat with Janice yesterday actually about how I'm not really one for making new chums. I kind of hate icebreakers and small talk. I'm friendly enough, I just often feel super awkward approaching new people. This conversation came up because we have rehearsal tonight. It's the first one of the year which means it's going to be chock full of people I don't know. A ton of them will drop after the first week anyway, so it doesn't really matter what I say or do. I should just make up elaborate fictions about myself and hope that the people that stick around forget them.

That is a truth fact.

This shirt is one that Brandon had specially printed for him back in the day. It's a reference to a quote on the show [fanfare!] Veronica Mars. It's something that she tricks a rival character into saying on one of the episodes. Brandon was getting rid of it (it's too big for his tiny man frame) so I nabbed it since it'll at least make a good undershirt. I did enjoy Veronica Mars, but sometimes the mysteries and romantic dramas got a liiiiitle too crazy for my tastes. You can't really expect much from the CW (home of Gossip Girl and the Vampire Diaries).

Oh, I got a small digital copy of the photo with Kobe that was taken last week. Here we are. It's a wonder Orville is even conscious.

I'm gonna rock your body 'til Canada Day!

This is a shirt from glarkware. It can be found here. It's a reference to the greatest comedic episode of television ever produced, which is of course, the "Slap Bet" episode of How I Met Your Mother. This episode if also the first appearance of Robin Sparkles a teenage one-hit wonder from Canada known for her song "Let's Go To the Mall". The back has a bunch of tour dates held at Canadian malls.

Here's the music video:

It's just one of the most apt 80s parodies I've ever seen. It's also ridiculously catchy. The creators of the show are also musicians in their own right. [things you don't care about alert!] Their band The Solids wrote the show's theme song (the signatures ba ba ba bas are near the end of the song). They've produced several other songs for the show including a Robin Sparkles ballad and a song that Barney dedicates to his love for suits.

Jaime Sucks.

I have become self-conscious about my face. Jaime has pointed out that I often make the same face when taking a picture so now I just end up in a panic when my photobooth app starts counting down. Also, I need a haircut.

Anywho. This is one of the new shirts that I got from threadless during their mega end of summer sale. It can be found here. If the text is hard to read it says "Cashiers are always checking me out". Fun fact: Jaime's immediate reaction upon seeing it "...You're a dork." So there's a nice insight to our friendship.

Mother Folk-er

This is another shirt from the grab bag that I got in 200?. I generally don't go for orange shirts. It's probably my least favorite color. Well maybe it's not as bad as like safety green or anything, but I'm still not a fan. This shirt's still kind of neat though. It makes me think of Flight of the Conchords (the fourth most popular folk-comedy duo from New Zealand). I feel they would appreciate it. I don't wear it much because a) it's orange and b) it's kind of big on me.

Fun fact about my day yesterday. I met Kobe Bryant. Background: Yesterday around lunchtime I got an email from Eric our band director that the band was just invited to a Q and A with Kobe Bryant that was being held for the UCI Athletics Department. So it was all of the student athletes and then me, Brandon, Adam, and Orville. Orville was flipping out a little bit. It was adorable. We were seated behind the women's soccer team who were pretty friendly. They were like, "We don't recognize you, what do you play?", and our response was like, "uh...drums."

Kobe was pretty cool. Learned some fun facts about him. For example the one that stands out is that he's apparently really good friends with Hilary Swank (actress from Boys Don't Cry and the seminal Next Karate Kid). We got to take a photo with him at the end and afterward I shook his hand. My immediate thought was that his hand is both surprisingly and understandably gigantic. So yeah that was pretty interesting.

Well that's just in poor taste.

This is a shirt that I got at a thrift shop some years back. If you can't make out what's on the shirt because my webcam sucks it's a shirt for a volunteer fire department and the picture is a dog lifting his leg to pee. It's kind of cute I think. Partly gross, but mostly cute. It's how I like to think of myself.

In other completely unrelated news I made Jaime laugh so hard today that her cheeks started cramping from smiling too much. Which of course only encouraged me to try to do and say things that would keep her laughing. Any time that happens is a good time.

In another tangent that has nothing to do with the shirt I'm blogging about, one of the questions that was asked of her today on a standardized test was "What is the best contribution/invention of mankind of the 20th century?" I of course could only come up with ridiculous answers for this extremely vague question. Hot pants. Balloon animals. Cheese fries. Lady Gaga. Unicorns. Condoms.

...this post makes no sense as a whole.

I guess this UCI shirt might be weirder.

This is the shirt that they produced the year after the shirt with Peter and the Batkids. I only know this because it features one of the Batkids riding on the back of a giant anteater. The shirts definitely got less weird after those two years. This shirt was actually only supposed to be for new students only. The reason I have it is because I think Tanya nabbed it for me because this was how they tracked who could get free food at the club fair, so we ended up just taking turns wearing it till we all got lunch.

Another Stroll Down Memory Lane

Here's another shirt in honor of UCI's welcome week. This is the shirt that our dorm had printed up my freshman year. I lived in Crickhollow which was in the Middle Earth housing area. I pretty much only decided to live in Middle Earth because it just sounded like it would be an interesting anecdote to tell in the future. I haven't really gotten much mileage out of that one though and I ended up living pretty far from most of my classes so maybe that wasn't the best decision in retrospect. I'll pretty much do anything if I think it'll make a good story later though.

Anywho living in the dorms was interesting to say the least. We never saw our RA and she ended up leaving school before Spring Quarter. One of the other housing people that lived in our dorm filled the traditional RA role and we actually ended up doing a lot of fun activities with her (e.g. iceblocking, snowboarding, volleyball). She remains one of the most amazingly positive people that I've ever met. As bitchy as I am, I've got to respect that. Several people ended up leaving the dorm (e.g. quitting school, kicked out for streaking across the entire campus, baby). And I made a few friends that I quickly lost contact with after that first year was over. So it goes.

Zot You Like A Hurricane

This the UCI pep band shirt from the 2008-2009 school year. Mark actually came up with the original Zotband logo, but this shirt was designed by the lovely Brandon M. There's actually a back to this shirt, but I couldn't for the life of me capture a good photo of it. It's a list of the UCI home basketball games that we performed at listed as if they were concert dates. I wore it today because I went and hung out at the club fair booth with the other band kids.

I met some new people, played catch, sang "Bye, Bye, Bye" at a karaoke booth, forgot most of the dance moves to "Bye, Bye, Bye", and tried not to go deaf with Leon playing the bagpipes in my ear.

Yes. I did say bagpipes. He also started the day with a German flag tied to his bagpipes. To get you up to speed, this is an Asian guy who was also wearing a kilt, playing the bagpipes, flying a German flag. None of that makes sense together. It's sort of like that Starburst commercial, but weirder.

Hopefully we didn't scare too many people off with the bagpipes.

Amended Here's a link to a photo of the nonsensical mishmash of ideas that is Leon http://yfrog.com/my3r5yj.

Um. I Don't Even Know.

This was a shirt that I got from UCI after performing at their new student convocation, aka an event that they hold at 9am of welcome week I think merely to trick freshmen out of bed. It's one of the most useless things I've ever attended. Anywho it may be hard to see but in front of the random words is the school mascot Peter the Anteater posing with a bunch of kids in Batman masks. I never found out the reason for the Batman masks. It doesn't mention anything on the shirt, there wasn't a Batman-like theme to anything from the associated student body, it's just there. The one from the next year is pretty ridiculous too. I might end up wearing that one tomorrow, we'll see.

Soap Scum

This adorably inappropriate shirt is from Threadless. The design is by Jess Fink an artist with the dubious honor of creating designs that are so good that they are often ripped off by other people (including Hot Topic, Forever 21, and the infamous Todd Goldman). She also designed the Cookie Loves Milk shirt that I featured earlier (which was also ripped off).

If this stuff at all interests you, here are some further links on the subject:

Here's a link to a post about this soap design getting ripped off http://coilhouse.net/2008/02/hot-topic-steals-soap-slips-and-falls-on-it/.

This is about the milk and cookies shirt http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2010/05/20/jess-fink-has-even-more-fans

And this is about Todd Goldman http://www.miketyndall.com/todd_goldman/

Luchadork

This is an older shirt that I think I got from a Paul Frank store. I really can't remember. I love their designs, but this is probably the only Paul Frank shirt I own. Anywho it combines Mexican wrestlers and monkeys which is pretty fun in my book. The names of the wrestlers are Pico Rico, El Fuego, Capitán, Pulga Suave (Smooth Flea), and El Chango (The Monkey).

Nessie and Waffles

This shirt is another one that I got as part of a grab bag set of tees. The most memorable time that I wore this shirt was during the roadtrip I took with Bstark. I was wearing it when we went to dinner at a Waffle House somewhere in the south and one of the servers said she thought it was cool. That or it was the pregnant woman that walked in to see one of the cooks that and said she was in labor and I couldn't tell if she was joking. It was a) the south and b) she was SUPER pregnant. I don't even know how she'd be able to drive herself there. Then one of the female servers was like "watch out, this girl's having my baby". That was a weird Waffle House experience. It didn't help that it was pretty late when we were there. But yeah, the lesson learned is that one should just stick to Cracker Barrel when deciding where to stop for food.

Chestburster

This lovely image of a tiny knight ripping through my torso is a souvenir from my friend Kelly's birthday trip to Medieval Times a few years ago. I knew I wanted to get a shirt, but the cool ones were all in the kids sizes so I got this one. This might be the first kids xl that I ever got. That was also the first and only time that I've been to Medieval Times. It was pretty ridiculous, but it was pretty fun and the food was surprisingly decent (definitely better than the food at the Pirate Dinner Adventure). I ended up wearing this shirt to the party at Kelly's house after Medieval Times so there are some ridiculous ones of with my drunk face playing with her cat Beaker (this was when he could fit into my hat and not like now where he can't even fit in my lap).

Is it weird that I just happen to have a knight's helmet and a sword lying around? Not if you're me I guess. The helmet is from my trip to Las Vegas with my best friends from high school that I took in '07. It's definitely a kids size too, but it was 5 bucks from Excalibur (which was where we were staying) and I was drunk enough to think that was a good idea. The sword is just from my Roman gladiator costume from the Davis trip two years ago.

Fossil Fuels

This is a shirt that I got from either Buffalo Exchange or Deelux pretty much because of the rad looking dinosaur. The bad "fossil fuel" pun and the weird communists in the background are sort of a bonus I guess. Deelux and Buffalo Exchange are vintage/thrift stores that are selective about the clothes they take in (they can be picky about seasons and styles of clothes). Deelux has some items that aren't secondhand though which sets it apart from Buffalo Exchange which pretty much only has secondhand goods. I've gotten some great deals at both stores. Buffalo Exchange has cooler shirts, but Deelux seems to have more stuff as a whole and some better deals.

Anywho the reason I wore this Dinosaur shirt because today I went to the La Brea Tar Pits for the first time. Ali had an interview in LA and I tagged along so afterward we went to Gallery 1988 to check out their 3G (Goonies, Gremlins, and Ghostbusters) exhibit, stopped by the comic book store next door (I got the Dr. Horrible TPB and Sea Bear & Grizzy Shark), and then went to the Tar Pits which weren't very far. When we got to the museum at the tar pits, they also informed us that LACMA (The LA County Museum of Art) which was right next door was free today because it was the second Tuesday of the month (the tar pits are free on the 1st Tuesday of the month) so we stopped by there after the tar pits.

The tar pits were pretty cool, but also pretty stinky. There were some pretty cool fossils at the museum including a huge Colombian mammoth and a wall of dire wolf skulls. There was also a cheesy animated history of the tar pits video that apparently hasn't changed since Ali was a kid. In the video a horse runs away from a lion but lands in the tar and can't run away and then the lion gets stuck too but kills the horse anyway and then the lion dies from dehydration/starvation and some giant condors pick at their remains and one condor gets greedy and knocks the other condor into the tar. Ridiculous? You bet.

Lacma was pretty rad too and I'd also never been there. There was an exhibit of one artist's manly works (boxing, rowing, naked bike riding etc.) and some cool stuff in the modern art wing (including a giant 17ft tall metal balloon animal dog). Also spotted Magritte's The Treachery of Images and one of Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans.

All in all, quite the exciting day.

By Lancers Do They Mean Knights?

Here's another thrift store football shirt. It's weird that I would have two of these. Anywho this shirt is for the La Serna Lancers Coach of the Week. I never really thought about this but is a Lancer one who uses a lance? Wouldn't that just be a knight? Or if it's one who supplies a knight with lances that would be a squire. Or a maker of lancers would probably just be a blacksmith. I mean, wikipedia has a real answer, but whatevs. I can't really be too confused since all of my school mascots have been pretty weird (a poet, a viking, an exploded space shuttle, a marauder, and an anteater).

FOOTBALLLLLL

This is a flag football shirt that I got from a thrift store mainly because it's purple. The back has a number 30 on it, but no silly name or anything, so not terribly exciting. Um that's pretty much all there is to this shirt. I've worn it a bunch just because it's one of the few purple shirts that I own and I can't think of any interesting stories involving it.

I'll talk about my day instead. Ali and I went to lunch and when we went back out to my car, my battery was dead. I called AAA and they came out and everything's all good now. Anywho, the not shitty part of that is that my car alarm went off while the battery was still wonky and it was so low on energy that the horn just sounded really low and whiny and sad. It reminded me of the sad donkey boys from Pleasure Island in Pinocchio. /ramble.

Look at me in my monkey pants!

Today's shirt is from Diesel Sweeties a webcomic that I was kind of meh about but I love a lot of their merchandise (I also feel the same way about Goats but their merch isn't as good as it used to be). It's a pixel comic with a hipster bent I think (it's been a very long time since I've read it). I don't remember it being terribly funny. But I totally love a lot of their store.

I got this back in my monkey loving days. It might be something that I picked up at comic con but I can't remember. Comic Con however is where I picked up my "I'm a Rocker, I Rock Out" bumper sticker which is from this comic. I don't believe they carry this shirt any more. I met the creator of the comic there and mostly what I remember is that he looked kind of like the lead singer for Motion City Soundtrack, just with less crazy hair. Also he drew a robot for me. Pretty sweet.

Oh, and I mentioned this elsewhere already, but yesterday I dressed like Justin Bieber. I figured we already have similar hair (so it was either him or Zac Efron). Plus all I had to pick up for the costume was skinnier jeans and a baseball cap. Pictures forthcoming.

New Vocabulary Words and a Mystery...

Time to learn a new vocabulary word kids! This shirt is an example of a trompe l'oeil. It's kind of like a fancy french way of saying optical illusion but it's specifically one in which a two dimensional image is made to look realistic or three dimensional. Hence the screen printed image of sunglasses on my v-neck is meant to look like a real pair of sunglasses hanging there. Good times.

Anywho, this is a shirt from the Vans store that was on sale so I snagged it up while I was shopping for shoes. I'm wearing it today as sort of part of a costume because my friend Katy is having a favorite celebrity themed dress up birthday party (Happy Birthday Katy!). Feel free to guess who I might be dressed as. If I remember I'll post a picture tomorrow of the complete thing.

Nerd Alert

This shirt is one that I got when I was shopping for gifts for my twin lil' bros for their second degree. So we each own one. I actually got it without knowing there was anything on the back, which kind of makes me like it less, but it's still pretty cool. It's apparently a Revenge of the Nerds shirt which explains why it says "BOOGER" (one of the character's names) but not why it says 69 (other than the obvious cultural connotations of that number).

Other notable times I've worn this shirt is under my nerd costume that I put together for camp. There are pictures online which are pretty epic. I own a surprising amount of nerdy clothing (short sleeve dress shirt, red bowtie, propeller cap). The only things I had to buy for my costume were dinosaur suspenders.

And I wonder why the ladies aren't all over this?

Yak!

This is a shirt that I got a while back from Noisebot.com. They used to have this grab bag deal where you told them your size and the amount of shirts you wanted and it would be 2 bucks. They still have the deal now I guess. It's just jumped up to being 6 dollars a shirt now. http://www.noisebot.com/grab_bag_t-shirt.htm This is mainly to get rid of their overstocked and discontinued shirts. Hence them not actually carrying the yak shirt anymore. There's also a high likelihood that I might have gotten it as a grab bag from The Cotton Factory.com because they also have a grab bag and it's been so long that I can't remember which site it was (their random tees are 7 bucks).

And he's watching us all with the eeeeeeeeye....

No exciting stories here people. It was $5 Old Navy so I snatched it up. It fits nicely and it's a neutral color so I probably have worn it a lot. It's good for days when I don't care about what shirt I have on. It's one of my "meh" shirts I guess for meh days. My shirt is probably a pretty good indicator of my mood. If I'm in a nice threadless tee that means I'm hoping to go out and have a fun and special day. If I'm in a meh shirt that I got for cheap then the nicest place I plan on going to that day is probably Target.

P.S. In other shirt news, Threadless has some sort of 30 hour $9 shirt sale going on today.

P.P.S. If you end up buying something from Threadless, 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 pretty cool.

Space Monkey

This is another band shirt from a band I listened to in High School. I got this one at the first and only Brand New concert I went to sometime during my senior year of high school. This was sometime around when Deja Entendu came out because I remember they opened with some epically long version of Tautou. It was kind of an amazing concert because it was in this crazy tiny venue in my hometown that also doubled as a teen center during the day. This is back in the days when I was perfectly okay with getting smashed in the face with a sweaty elbow while surrounded by 100 other sweaty, yelling teens. If any one place in my youth were to evoke "those were the days" kinds of feelings, that would probably be at the top of the list. This is also back in my "monkeys are awesome" days hence me getting the shirt with a space chimp on it.

I'm totally over monkeys and Brand New to an extent. These days all the kids love dinosaurs, robots, and zombies. They're the new pirates and ninjas. Also, Abraham Lincoln is totally the new Chuck Norris. Mustaches and monocles have pretty much always been awesome though. So there's your pop culture lesson for the day. Be sure to quote me.

Kick It

This shirt is just kind of something that I got in the clearance section of Hot Topic. It's a member of the foot clan from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles destroying a vending machine for no apparent reason at all. It's awesome. There's also no apparent reason that I wore it today. I just kind of like it.

Rawr

This shirt was a gift from my friend Kat from camp (nicknamed Cat). She's awesome because she doesn't always remember to let little kids win little kid games (love you, Kat!). We used to do secret pals (aka secret summer camp santa) each week and then at the end of camp we'd get a bigger gift and reveal who our secret pal was. Kat had me and so knowing my love for T-shirts and cute monsters she got me this shirt. I believe it can be found at Hot Topic, but I can't be sure.

The time that I can remember wearing it most vividly is the last time I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park which was a couple years ago I think. Elaine and I went because we hadn't gone in a while. It was pretty awesome. In case you care, my favorite animal at the Wild Animal Park is the Okapi. I think they're pretty cute.

Milk and Cookies, BFF

This is one of the first shirts I got from Threadless. From the first order I ever made I think. It's just super adorable. I think I got it whenever their first 10 dollar sale was when after I heard about the site from Elaine.

Um no terribly interesting stories about this shirt. I do remember wearing it one of the first times I went ice skating though so there's probably a good photo out there of me in this shirt, flailing around on the ice.

Find it: The direct link to the product is http://www.threadless.com/product/342/Cookie_Loves_Milk. As of this post it's in stock in various colors and styles (including adorable baby clothing).

This shirt might be nerdier

Okay so this shirt might be nerdier than the Glee one. That or it's about as nerdy. I'll at least come off looking lamer at the end of this story. If it's hard to read it says "Support Cedric Diggory the Real Hogwarts Champion" and the back says "Potter Stinks". I made it for a Wizard Rock concert. Wizard Rock is Harry Potter themed music. At the time I was sort of dragged along by Jaime and Brandon as I hadn't read the books at the time (though I had seen and enjoyed all of the movies). Jaime wore her Gryffindor uniform so I guess I decided to make a shirt so I wouldn't feel left out? Perhaps I figured it would help me blend in and look like less of a tourist. Despite not getting some of the in-jokes it was a pretty fun concert and I actually got complimented on the shirt by some of the people there.

I ended up finally reading the books after attending the concert. I was sort of against them for a while because I really didn't see the appeal or care for all of the speculation about the mysteries within them. I did however see the appeal of reading the books after making friends with a girl that I thought was cute at the concert and deciding I should probably catch up (which would somehow be less lame?). Oh, the things that have been done in the name of impressing a girl. In any case, I actually quite enjoyed the books. They're fun, quick reads.

Ma-Ti Suuuuuucks

Another homemade shirt today folks. This one is from Halloween 2006 when I dressed up as a Planeteer from Captain Planet. I wasn't any specific planeteer. Truth be told, were any of them particularly likeable or memorable? Wheeler was a dick, Linka was a bitch, Kwame and Gi were just kind of there, and don't even get me started on Ma-Ti. Fuck Ma-Ti. He's like the Aquaman of the Planeteers; and not like the badass, hook-for-a-hand Justice League Aquaman; but like the wimpy, pretty boy Aquaman from the Superfriends, except more useless. I just want to punch him in the face and take his lunch money and I don't even know why. (I'm having a very Dylan moment right now)

I really don't know why I liked Captain Planet. I can't remember liking any of the characters, Captain Planet was only ever in like 28 seconds of each episode, and even then he had a mullet and a half shirt so he sucks. I'm thinking the majority of my love for that show was just the theme song. That catchy mofo is stuck in my head right now.