#138 Beet it

This is the most recent shirt that I've purchased. I got it on New Year's Eve of 2010. Doug (is it really telling that the word that my fingers started to type when I got to "dou" was douche?) was probably my second favorite cartoon when I was a kid. I dunno, I might have loved it more than the Ninja Turtles. I felt a strange kinship to the daydream-prone dorky kid in the sweatervest in love with the cute blond girl who lives down the street.

#137 So Much Punching

This is a band whose shirt I own, but I've mostly forgotten about. Today is the first day in close to probably 5 years that I've listened to one of their songs. It's not bad. Very emo-pop teen angsty, but pretty catchy. Like the All American Rejects before them, JamisonParker was a two person act that expanded to a full band when the necessities of touring presented themselves. Their name was a sarcastically clever portmanteau of the 80s teen heartthrob first names of founding members Parker Case and Jamison Covington. If their names don't already make you want to punch them in the face, the dark haired one's hairdo and eye makeup will do that for you.

That is a face that deserves some punching. And as you can see if you click the second video, he is prone to wearing his shirt collar outside of his jacket collar. This is NEVER, EVER acceptable behavior outside of say, a disco themed party.

Their debut EPs actually had a very neat little limited edition version where the covers were made of Polaroids that they had snapped themselves while on the road. I actually ended up with two of these since I bought one and won one in a contest. The video for "Your Song" also has a shot of them putting some of the EPs together.

#136 Kiya!

I don't remember when or why or how I bought this shirt. I did go through an old kung fu movie phase for a while. Enter the Dragon is still a super fun movie to catch when it's on late at night on basic cable. I've actually kind of got a bit of a Bruce Lee thing going on with my hair right now.

This shirt is a parody of the "Jesus is My Homeboy" shirts that were made popular by celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Kanye West and sold in stores like Urban Outfitters. I remember there were a ton of variations on this theme back in the day (like '04-ish) and they are still out there now.

#135 Spot the Irony

I got this shirt Tuesday night at the weekly Cookie Whiskey. I can't remember if I've mentioned them before, but Cookie Whiskeys are a standing Tuesday night party held at Dexter, Ohannes, and Cameron's apartment. These are usually themed and this week's was Ohannes themed in honor of his recent birthday. Ohannes is the awkward fellow depicted on my shirt. If it's hard to read the text due to the fancy-times font it says "NO FAT CHICKS". Definitely the shirt to wear if ever you decide to sit in on a Women's Studies class. Cameron had a bunch of these printed up and at one point people pulled off their top layer of clothing to reveal that they were wearing these shirts underneath. It was awesome.

The party was pretty rad. They turned off the lights and just had a blacklight going for a while. There was also a discoball-kinda light going until Drunk Trevor knocked it over and broke it. Oh Drunk Trevor. Who knows what sorts of mischief you'll get yourself into? There was also a swordfight, dancing, Jaws, and an abandoned game of king's cup. There was almost too much party at that party. Almost.

#134

#133 I likah the pizza I likah the pie...

This is a shirt that I got on our first roadtrip up to NorCal. Brandon was like, you have to come to this pizza place it's amazing. So part of our spring break trip was spent in his hometown. The pizza was pretty darn good. The Bay Area's amazing. We spent a day going around San Francisco, spent an afternoon walking along Telegraph and shopped in the thrift stores and record stores, it was lovely.

We spent the other part of our trip in Tracy, CA. Tracy is well not so amazing. It's mostly farmland, but hey, it's got a 24/hour pie place so that's got to count for something.

#132 The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

This is one of my very favorite T-shirts. I mean, I'm pretty much over the whole pirate thing, it's just a cool looking shirt with a neat design. Yesterday Brandon, Tim, and I went on a research trip to Disneyland to take some photos for reference since our theme for the Davis trip this year is Disney/Disneyland. All very scientific, hard work I assure you.

Though it actually ended up being somewhat difficult since it's a little awkward taking a photo of someone that doesn't know you're taking a photo of them. One cast member (which I'm later going to abbreviate to CM) seemed particularly displeased to be the subject of Brandon's shot.

Anywho, while in line for Thunder Mountain we randomly spotted Darrin and Tanya. They were there using their free tickets that we got from the Disney Half-marathon so they were spending the whole day. Me being the hedonist that I am I couldn't turn down a day at Disneyland so I stayed at the park with them when Brandon and Tim went home around lunch time. Darrin and Tanya's friends Tim L. and Cierra (also L.) met up with us along with their two young sons. Now I had heard from various people about how adorable their first son Jack was. I come from a gigantic family so I'm used to being surrounded by cute little babies and toddlers. However, having met little Jack I've got to say, that is one cuuuute kid. I was a little worried he might be a bit put off by my presence since we'd never met before but about half an hour into meeting me he motioned for me to lift him up (well, more launch him into the air) and I happily obliged.

The kids were pooped in the afternoon so Tim and Cierra tagged out and Sarah and Sean tagged in. Pretty standard day though at one point Darrin mentioned that he had never gone on the Grizzly Rapids ride at California Adventure. So because the wait time was 5 minutes we agreed to go on it. We got all the way to the stop before the last drop when the ride broke down. To evac it they had to drain the section we were in, attach a ladder to the raft, and then we walked out through the mountain. Neat stuff. Anywho, they gave us a front of the line/fastpass-y thing to make up for the fact that the ride went down. We got one then while we were chatting with the CM about what rides we should use it on he gave us another one since he had extras. We ended up using them later in the evening. We went on the Matterhorn with one, then went on Peter Pan. The CM that was supposed to take the pass never actually collected it, then while we were chatting with the CM that was running the exit she handed us one to use on another ride. The park was pretty close to closing and we still had to get onto Indiana Jones (which we already had a normal fastpass for) so we decided to use one on the Alice in Wonderland ride just for the heck of it. That CM actually ended up handing the pass back to us again because the line wasn't really that long for it. Apparently you just can't give those things away at the end of the night. Too bad we didn't have more time.

#131 *Throaty Heavy-metal Yell*

So maybe I won't move all of my costumes and props downstairs.

Today is the UCI homecoming game against our rivals Long Beach State. Though really Fullerton is so close that they're kind of our rivals too. And we kind of had an old timey feud with the UCSB Pep Band (they're also perennially lame in general) so we're not big fans of them either. Basically UCI always be hatin' on fools. Uh, but officially we're rivals with Long Beach State (we even call them out on our UCI version of the UC fight song. It's like a really lame uptempo rap battle). What helps fuel the rivalry is that Long Beach fans are often really scary and mean. Historically their band also sucks at making signs so we've busted them on that in the past. I swear one of them looked like it was made with pencil on black paper.

UPDATE: The Homecoming game was amazing. I haven't seen the Bren Events Center that packed in a really long time (apparently it was the biggest crowd in four years). A bunch of fans in the crowd put on afro wigs in support of Mike Wilder our afro-rocking shooting guard. Whenever he would something particularly amazing, they'd start chanting "af-ro thun-der". One of the afro fans also had a Spiderman costume on which is probably really confusing to anyone that doesn't know that Darren Moore our point guard's nickname is Spiderman. It was just a straight-up fun game to watch. Pretty close game, very intense (as is sometimes common with our games against Long Beach, a fight almost broke out on the court), lots of jumping up and cheering involuntarily.

Bumper (aka Angela) from camp was in the crowd (she goes to LBSU and is on their dance team) so it was fun catching up with her. We shared stories about performing for school sports. Mr. Schuester from Glee (aka Matthew Morrison) showed up to the game around halftime and sat on the sidelines. Quite nerdily we ended up playing "My Life Would Suck Without You" and "Bad Romance" which are both songs that they've done on the show. I'm not sure if this was on purpose since we do play those songs a lot, but Mark loves him some Glee so I have to imagine that was at least partly orchestrated.

After we won, Brandon mentioned something about storming the court and I was like "oh, it's on." So after we won and played the intro to the fight song, I put down my saxophone, ran past Eric and jumped around on the court with all of the fans. At one point something large and sweaty brushed past me and I realized that the team had joined in after shaking hands with LB (don't be too jealous, ladies and gays). It was a lot of fun. I expected Brandon or someone else to join me, but of course I was the only one crazy enough to run out. After the fight song, fans started to disperse so I ran back over to the band. Eric was looking at me like I was crazy. He apparently didn't see me run out to join the fans. He was like, "Where the fuck did you just come from?" but, you know, with his eyebrows. I made it back just in time to start playing the alma mater (but it was more like every other note in the alma mater. Running out and jumping around and running back in time for the next song can take a lot out of ya). Most fun I've had at a game in a long time.

#130 Sweetbitter

Is it weird that my room is just littered with props for me to use while taking all of these photos? Perhaps it's merely whimsical (which is to say, weird but in an endearing kind of way). It's a wonder I don't have a girlfriend, right? What girl doesn't love immature dorks that own way too many toys?

Okay that actually makes it sound a little bit endearing.

ANYWHO. I got this shirt and a matching goldenrod one for the friend that introduced me to the band Modest Mouse. Good News for People Who Love Bad News had just come out (featuring the single "Float On") but mainly we listened to Lonesome Crowded West (which, without double checking on wikipedia, is the album I believe this design was created for).

Modest Mouse is kind of a hard band to pin down, I'd say. Their music is generally mellow, melancholy, with occasional bouts of anger. They also have a few more catchy uptempo (but never upbeat) tunes (Paper Thin Walls, Float On, Dashboard).

When I think of their music it usually feels like something that you'd listen to on a roadtrip through the midwest at night. The person sitting shotgun next to you lies asleep, smudging their cheek against the window as the radio confesses everything you wouldn't be able to say in the wheat-colored daylight.

#129 Get to da Choppa!

Yeah I don't know what I'm doing with my hands either. Anywho this is a shirt that I actually can't really remember where or when I got it. It's got a neat pattern on it and I own the gray sweatshirt version of this pattern. Not much to say about this shirt. Uh, it's a nice color.

Today wasn't terribly notable. Well, it might be kind of notable in that I got Dylan to walk into, shop at, and actually buy something from Forever 21. Slowly minions. Slowly but surely I will get you all to be at least slightly fashionable.

You're welcome.

#128 Title!

Today the band played at a mens volleyball game against USC. We got whupped. This is a shirt that long-standing USC rival UCLA's chapter of KKY sold one year as a fundraiser. If I've learned anything from the chapter at UCLA it's that that they take their rivalries very seriously.

#127 Bieber Fever

I woke up today sick of my hair so I went and got quite a bit of it chopped off. So, once again I resemble Justin Beiber in terms of hairstyle (hence the goofy get-up). This shirt has a twin in black that I wore on Katy's birthday. I know that with the hat on you can't actually see just how short my hair is, but I'm okay with that. Really if I wanted to look like Bieber I should've given some sort of super intense stare into the camera. This pose is a little bit too Backstreet Boys circa '97 (I'm the goofy one!).

Fun fact: the tiny splotch of green on my hat is Reptar.

#126 I've never been on a real shrimp boat, but I've been on a real big boat

Another shirt in honor of a friend of mine. It's my good friend Mariah's birthday today and I got this on a random adventure day. She had the day off from class I think and I asked Eric if I could leave work so she and I ran off to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. I'd never been and was excited to see a big aquarium (not counting say, Sea World). There was a baby sea lion and I learned about how vicious sea otters can be and learned about how deadly (well, to other fish) Dory from Finding Nemo could be. Afterward we grabbed dinner at the Bubba Gump's Shrimp at the mall across the street. There I went on to learn that the same fish truck delivers to both the aquarium and the restaurant. It actually stops at the aquarium first.

To commemorate the day I of course bought a T-shirt. A postcard would have been much cheaper, but eh...

#124 Dinosaur!

This is a shirt that I got on my trip to Florida for my cousin's wedding. I spent one day on my own running through all of the parks at Disneyworld. I basically made a list of all of the attractions that I had to see and for the most part stuck to it. Because I was alone I was also able to take good advantage of the many single rider lines that they've got set up. I still need to make another trip out there at some point because there are so many things I still haven't seen. I also apparently went at just the right time of year since I was able to be in Epcot during their food and wine festival which was a cornucopia of delicious international cuisine.

Anywho, this is a kids shirt that I got from the store attached to their Dinosaur! ride (based on their CGI movie, Dinosaur). Dinosaur! is basically the same as the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland except with dinosaurs. So it's basically super duper ridiculously rad. The only way to make it better would be to mash the two rides together so that Indy is squaring off against carnivorous dinosaurs (let's work on this, Science). The best part is that during the point where the big dinosaur chasing you pops out and roars in your face, they take a photo. I didn't know this was going to happen so my face during that part is quite priceless. It's the face of someone that's getting their face rocked off by awesomeness. I totally should've bought it.

#123 Draw 32?! FUCKBALLSANDCOCK!!!

The official game of the Lambda Alpha Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi is Combat Uno. I'm not sure how common the game is outside of our district and the people that the Porter family have drawn into their web of Uno card madness. Kelly Porter is a giant, bird-loving lumberjack who forever changed the course of Lambda Alpha history by teaching us the game that has just completely taken over all fraternity events.

The normal way you play Uno is basically Crazy 8s. For the uninitiated, Combat Uno moves much faster. You can play out of turn, you only have to draw one card if you don't have the right color or number, and you can stack draw cards. It's fast and insane and loud. It reminds me of the Russian roulette scene in Deer Hunter, that's how intense it can get. I imagine that some people probably have war flashbacks about certain Combat Uno games.

#122 Time for another haircut

One year as a bit of an experiment, UCSD decided to hold its own battle of the bands in the fall of 2006 during their open house.

It was a relatively small event and for some reason or another UCSD ended up asking us if we could keep the battle going for longer. Because it was early in the school year we hadn't practiced much music and didn't bring much with us either. So eventually we started playing through our shorties including the 9 second long Woodwind Cheer. We even had the brass players that had memorized the Tetris theme for fun play as the rest of us pretended to be blocks dropping in various shapes in front of them. It was a pretty ridiculous time.

#121 Awah Awah Awah...

Today's shirt is in honor of my good friend Tanya's birthday. I almost typed goof friend Tanya, but changed it back to good, though goof is probably fitting considering the times I've seen Tanya running on very, very, very little sleep. In any case, the reason this shirt reminds me of Tanya is not because she's a pimp, but because it contains an altered likeness of the character Pac Man. Tanya loves her some Pac Man. The most apparent expression of this love is her super ultra awesome car which is decked out with Pac Man decals. It's certainly hard to miss.

Fun story: Brandon and I once became very concerned that someone had stolen Tanya's car because the person we spotted behind the wheel had short blonde-ish hair. We were like "What are the odds that someone else has a white car decorated in the exact same way and would also be in the Irvine area?" Turns out, it actually was Tanya, she just had decided to wear a wig that day for funsies (and now I see how goof maybe was some sort of Freudian typing).

Anywho this shirt is one that I got from comic-con one year. It's actually a reproduction of one that Ben Affleck's music producer character wears in Jersey Girl, a movie that no one saw for very good reason. You can find it here.

#120 Man, I really liked Brand New when I was younger.

This entry is being written whilst sitting in Brandon's evil villain chair in the living room. This is another shirt for the band Brand New that I think I got from the Hot Topic clearance section. The fact that I still have more band T-shirts that I'm going to have to blog about is really striking to me. All the more reason for me to declare a fatwa against shirts.

The weird thing though about recently declaring that I won't be buying any new shirts this year for myself is that I feel like I'm experiencing shirt regret. There are shirts that I kind of regret not snatching up before swearing off of them. Some of the shirts I never got around to getting were a tuxedo t-shirt, a zombie hunters shirt, a Lady Gaga shirt (I'm being absolutely serious about wanting one, by the way), or a Conan O'Brien shirt. Now I've got to talk about the things I like and describe my offbeat sense of humor instead of just displaying these things on my chest (Aww, man!). Oh poop, and the shirtwoot shirt today is super rad (if you happen to be a fan of Tron and/or penny-farthings). Oh well. There's always 2012.

#119 Utensils

This is a shirt I got from a Kappa Kappa Psi Western District convention one year. Boise State made them as chapter shirts the previous year and I was excited to see them selling them the next year. Just a simple, cute, shirt.

The Iota Kappa chapter at Boise State kind of had a reputation for being a little weird. My first convention they had a twister board set up near their merch table. They had modified it with some sort of Halloween theme so you'd randomly hear things like "left hand pumpkin" and "right foot Frankenstein". This might have almost made sense, but convention is held in the spring every year.

#118 Showdown

I pretty much just wore this shirt on the behalf of one Mr. Dexter Stevens. Dexter is a lanky, dorky, white guy (much like our 16th president) who loves him some bearrrs. Upon seeing this shirt, he immediately let out a manly squeal of delight and embraced me.

#117 It's like a security blanket that I can wear

This shirt is like an old friend to me. It's soft, it fits nicely, it's a nice color; I've worn it quite often (as one can tell by the crackling screen print, discoloration around the collar, and the tiny holes worn into various places). It's well loved and by that I mean it's been treated like shit. It's just one of those go to shirts that I'll throw on when I don't really care about what I'm wearing. It's a lazy time shirt. I do have a bit of affection for this one, for no real reason. It's dependable. Can a shirt be dependable?

I've had it for quite a while. I got it sometime in high school when I was out shopping with my mom at Marshalls and spotted it in the clearance section. Baby blue was my favorite color at the time (now it's either green or purple or turquoise, I can never remember which) and I had a Quiksilver backpack at the time so I figured it was kismet.

I have a bit of a weird brand loyalty to Quiksilver merchandise. I've got hats, bags, belts, wallets, sweatshirts, button downs; I just love their stuff. I almost feel bad when I spot something by a competing brand (that also sells surf/skate/California slacker wear) that I also like. Like right now, I'm a bit chilly and I'm going to throw on my Billabong pullover and I'm going to feel like I'm cheating on my shirt somehow.

Alright, I've now passed the funny/crazy barrier for this post. Fin.

#116 Could someone please call a surgeon, who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart...?

This shirt is one I got online I believe from The Postal Service's store. The Postal Service is one of Ben Gibbard's forays into music outside of his time as the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie and ridiculously lucky marriage to Zooey Deschanel. The other half of The Postal Service is Jimmy Tamborello of the lesser known band Dntel. They got their name from how they would pass bits of songs back and forth to each other, Tamborello making the bleeps and bloops and mailing them to Gibbard who would add in the talky bits. Fun facts.

I was going to launch into a story about how I first heard about the band and it's a short tale involving a girl I used to know and peanut butter sandwiches but it's part of Allison's continuing saga of romantic failings and it's not terribly interesting or fun so I'll pass.

Music more than food or smells triggers memories for me. I remember what song was playing in my head while I was taking my AP European History Test. I remember the song they played in the background of my completely unnecessary 6th grade graduation ceremony. I remember the CD I borrowed and played on my walkman during the 8th grade trip to the east coast. Movies can often make me cry, but nothing can make me feel more legitimately sad and moody than a song and maybe it's because of the memories and feelings that get stirred up by them. It's also probably why I like music so much, oddly enough. I'll pretty much seek out anything that pulls some sort of response out of me. I'm addicted to feeling things I guess, even though I often feel things that are shitty.

Uh...Happy New Year! Woo...

#115 Start the new year with a rawr.

I wanted to start off the new year with a new shirt and here it is. It's one from 80stees.com which has a ludicrously huge selection of pop culture shirts split up by various useful categories such as medium and franchise. It's pretty awesome. The only downside is that it's pretty pricey so I have only gotten stuff during their annual black friday sale.

Okay. Just had a thought. I mean this may be because of my still not quite all the way there brain after the party last night, but I don't have any resolutions yet this year and why not set one?

For 2011, I hereby resolve not to buy any t-shirts this year.

This may be a difficult or impossible feat or maybe it'll be really easy, who knows. But starting now, no new shirts for as long as I can stand it. There are still a lot of shirts that need to be blogged about so why get more? I'll at least hold out as long as I've got shirts to blog about. Alright. That's settled.