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.

antourage

Today's shirt is the new UCI spirit shirt for the year. They're now known as the Antourage but I was personally pulling for the A-team (even though it's admittedly less fitting). Tonight's Shocktoberfest which is the kickoff event to the UCI basketball season.

Happy Little Blog

If you can't tell, today's shirt features artist Bob Ross host of PBS's The Joy of Painting. If you've never seen the show I highly suggest it if you feel the need to take a nap in the afternoon. He's just the most mellow, calm person ever to have been allowed to appear on public television. As Patton Oswalt so put it, the guy's like a "walking quaalude". His narration as he was painting was just so soothing and calming. Everything he painted was a "happy little this" or "happy little that" and he would kind of come up with little stories as to why everything was there. He was just the biggest hippie with the biggest afro* and it was amazing.

I used to be pretty addicted to the show. There was something so compelling about watching him take a blank canvas and all of a sudden turn it into this really impressive work of art and then immediately fuck it up by adding a gigantic fucking tree in the foreground. I've seen quite a few episodes and there are very few ones that end without him adding a giant brown pine tree on the side of the painting which ends up covering about a fifth of the work he's already done. Like of the maybe two episodes that I haven't seen him paint a big tree like that, one was because all he painted that day was a giant bunny on a blank background.

*Tangent time: There's a little red line below the word afro in my post. Apparently it's a proper noun as my computer wants me to correct it to Afro. After looking at the wiki it's probably because it's short for Afro-American. Wait. My computer didn't correct the word wiki, but afro is improper? What is this madness?

Soy más macho de ti

I can't actually remember when or where I got this shirt. I know it wasn't from a concert, but that's as far as I've gotten. My best guess is that I got it from Hot Topic on clearance back in the day. It's got to be pretty old because it features the original Taking Back Sunday lineup and the lead singer has his hair cut short.

Anywho the reason for the sad, doughy tough guy pose is that underneath the band name it says "Quien es mas macho?" Judging by the amount of products in my hair and that poor attempt at flexing the answer is most decidedly not Allison.

Run!

This shirt is another from Shirt.woot. The original woot blog post about the shirt can be found here. I recommend reading it if you've got the time because whoever writes copy for woot is pretty hilarious. Often it just sort of goes off on random tangents. Definitely my cup of tea. (In other news, I like bikes!)

Basically I found this shirt irresistible because a) it has lots of dinosaurs on it b) they're all worried (since you know, they're about to be obliterated Indiana Jones style and all) and worried animals are often hilarious/adorable (just ask Elaine) c) it's green (I'm a fan of the color green. It's bright, looks good on me, and I don't have to worry about it being too matchy with my pants like I do with blue shirts. Yes. This is how much I think about my shirts.).

Proper Engrish

I got this shirt way back when from Engrish.com. Engrish.com features fabulously failed attempts at English translations, mostly from Japan. That should be a clue as to why the shirt makes sense. You can find the shirt directly right here. It's apparently been discontinued. The rest of their store features a lot of funny and just downright bizarre designs. I think Trevor and Emiko were probably the ones to direct me to that site in the first place since I'm pretty darn white (you can tell because I just used the word darn). Also I neglected to think to do the squinty peace sign face in my picture and that definitely knocks me down a peg on the Asianity scale (which I assume goes from Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's to Jackie Chan playing the violin in a rice paddy hat).

Okay I'm just going to quit while I'm behind.

Past Pop Meme Mashup

This shirt was a gift from Ali. She got it for me a while back. It features a pirate monkey robot which at the time was like the nexus of pop culture nerdom. Robots are still cool I guess, but pirates and monkeys not as much. I actually also own the companion shirt to this which is a pirate monkey skull and crossbones. It's from the webcomic Goats but they sadly don't sell it anymore. It's cool. It's all about zombie dinosaurs with mustaches these days.

USA USA USA!

This shirt is from a Motion City Soundtrack concert that I went to in February with my good pals Janice, Orville, and Elaine. They were awesome. This shirt was discounted for some reason (probably from an older tour set or something) so I snatched it up. I can't find this particular shirt on their merch site so that lends credence to the probably-from-an-old-tour theory. Motion City Soundtrack is one of my favorite bands. Check them out if you're a fan of fun, bouncy, pop-rock. Their third album "Even If It Kills Me" is my favorite (plus it features tracks produced by Ric Ocasek and Adam Schlesinger of The Cars and Fountains of Wayne fame, respectively).

The reason why I'm wearing it today is because it's about the closest thing I have to a patriotic shirt. It's the first official game of the Pep Band season and it's men's volleyball vs. China. That's right, China. It's their national team. Upon seeing who we were facing, Leon asked at rehearsal on Tuesday "What's China?" My smartassy response was, "It's this country in Asia. Pretty big. It's where Chinese people come from." Anywho, Eric wouldn't let us make any communist signs or anything like that, which is kind of a bummer. But I am looking forward to at some point chanting USA USA USA! I'm also hoping that at some point we play "Kung Fu Fighting".

The Revenge of the Bieber Cut

This is a shirt that I got from Target a little while back. I used to be pretty into Marvel comics when I was a kid. The X-Men and Spiderman cartoons were some of my favorites on Saturday mornings. Anywho the reason why I went for the thumbs up is just because if I didn't, half of Wolverine's and the Incredible Hulk's faces would be cut off due to the fact that I have boobs and this shirt was made for boobless nerds (who apparently also have wide necks and very short torsos because when I raise my arms my midriff shows).

Is this like a gay thing?

This is a shirt that either Emiko or Gillian gave me their freshman year that they got from their dorm. I was pretty jealous of their housing shirts since they were all in different colors. All I got was this lame white shirt with a weird half globe logo that said "It's all about ME (standing for Middle Earth)". So because I said I liked it one of them gave theirs to me (or stole one or had an extra). I don't really know why their slogan was "got pride?" but by the fact that they used the word pride and had shirts in a rainbow of colors I can only assume that it's some sort of gay thing. So I'm all for it.

Tubular

This shirt is something that was purchased sometime in the 90s when I was a kid. It was probably my dad's first and I just swiped it. I love how super 90s it is. That and it's kind of like every generic zoo/animal shirt of that era. Lots of black and basic colors and random pseudo tribal patterns. It's from either the San Diego Zoo or the Wild Animal Park. I'm a big fan of the Wild Animal Park just because of the huge open animal enclosure that you can only see on their tram tour.

Wax a chump like a candle?

This shirt is from Vintage Vantage which is very sadly going out of business. Most of their stuff is now around the 5 dollar range since they're getting rid of all of their merch. I seen a ton of their shirts sold at places like Urban Outfitters so I'm pretty shocked that they're closing up shop. They have had tons of clever designs in the past featuring things like an Indian chief that says "I Have Reservations", two mounties kissing called "French Canadienne", "Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to RUSSIA", "Honk if you love geese", and "New Mexico, cleaner than regular Mexico". They're all really silly and there are tons more funny slogans and I'm sad to see them go. They also have a lot of shirts were the design doesn't really have anything to do with the image, e.g. one with a fighter jet on it that says "Who loves burritos?".

If you do check out Vintage Vantage be sure to check out their sale section because for some reason even though they're all on sale there are some shirts there that aren't in the regular section.

Anywho this shirt is called "Ice, Ice, Baby". If you can't tell, the tiny flag on the igloo says "ice ice" on it. The baby saying "too cold" is also a reference to a line from the song ("Ice, ice, baby. Too cold to hold."). It's also kind of a depressing thing for the naked baby to be saying if you think about it too much.

Maybe the Dumbest Shirt I Own

This is perhaps by far the dumbest shirt I own. The only reason I still have it is because it was a souvenir. I got it my senior year of high school on our band ski trip to Breckinridge, Colorado. On this trip I got sick enough that I threw up the entire night and ended up needing an IV and an oxygen tank. Outside of that though, Breckinridge was a lovely town. It was pretty and it wasn't really that cold at all and it was a nice town to walk through. I did however have the worst chicken teriyaki bowl that I've ever had there though.

I don't even know why I got this shirt. There must have been better shirts there. I blame my former immaturity (yes former. I'm sticking to this). But yeah I definitely would have donated this away if I hadn't enjoyed Breckinridge as much. I might chuck it after this though.

In Space No One Can Hear You Pew.

This is a shirt that I got from Target that I like just because it looks like a shirt that I could have paid much more for had I gotten it from say, Junkfood. Plus it's got X-wings on it [pew pew! Though I guess in space, all you really should be able to hear is ____ ]. I pretty much wore it just because I knew I'd be hanging out with Darrin who is one of the most Star Wars obsessed people I've met (GT might win since he's been to the Star Wars Celebrations).

Today I worked on my guns, saw a chapter get installed, ate way too much pizza, ate way too much ice cream, and now I'm watching the Amazing Race...and feeling sick to my stomach...and sore (Power 90 is no joke).

My Humps

Today's shirt is one of my favorite Kappa Kappa Psi (National Honorary Band Society) shirts. It's a play on the song "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, hence the camel. The back of the shirt says "We don't want no drama. No no drama. No no no no drama," which is a line from the song.

Wide logos are not boob friendly. Allison, on the other hand, is.

This shirt is the first CIA shirt that I ever got from UCI all the way back in my freshman year. CIA (Completely Insane Anteaters) is what the UCI student cheering section used to be called (it's been recently redubbed the Antourage).

Tonight we're playing for our new friends the Women's Soccer team. It rained a little (maybe even less than a little, like only a 'lil) this morning and I'm hoping that's all done for today because it would not be fun to play at a soccer game in the rain (though we've gotten caught in the rain before...with nary a piña colada to comfort ourselves with). Though watching attractive women play soccer in the rain...and the mud...perhaps falling over each other...there's some appeal there I think...for people of a certain disposition, of course.

Really not helping this whole not a skank argument.