#159 The Swiss Army is prepared for any battle

This is one of my new favorite shirts. I'm not sure I'm actually geeky enough to recognize all of the weaponry featured on the geek swiss army knife. What I can distinguish are

• a lightsaber
• Mjöllnir (Thor's hammer)
• Lion O's Sword of Omens
• Harry Potter's wand
• Noisy Cricket
• pistol with a silencer (presumably James Bond's?)
• Frodo's sword
• Star Trek Phaser
• Sonic Screwdriver

With a little internet sleuthing, the ones I missed were Hellboy's big ass revolver, He-Man's Power Sword, and Rorschach's grappling hook (my best guess was that it was maybe Boba Fett's but then I couldn't remember if he even had a grappling hook). Also that's specifically Obi Wan's lightsaber, Frodo's sword is named Sting, and James Bond's gun is a Walther PPK. Not too shabby.

Also my underpants have little mustaches printed on them so I'm pretty much wearing one of my favorite sets of clothing ever. This however will not compare to what I might be rocking later in the evening. More on that tomorrow maybe.

I got this shirt from Teefury. Teefury is a one day only kind of online shirt haberdashery. It's kind of like ShirtWoot except it takes for-waitforit-ever to get your order (Woot takes about a week tops whereas Teefury could take something closer to a month). However it appears the original artist is apparently selling them himself here.

#158 "And if we go down, we go down together"

Here's another Taking Back Sunday shirt. Clearly my love for Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, and Saves the Day was unstoppable in my younger years. The tiny text in the word balloon reads "We have no feelings so you may not hurt them." I'm not sure what these words are going to do to discourage the shark, but more power to you, little pirate.

#157 This Can't End Well

It's hard to believe that I own yet another pirate themed mashup shirt, but here we are. This time we see a ninja and pirate going at it. Presumably they are the each the champion of their respective rival faction and are there to settle the score once and for all. According to Deadliest Warrior (a show for people who love blood spatter and bragging about their dicks), pirates win. The logic behind it seems to come down to, a pirate is just going to shoot a ninja in the fucking face, the end.

I remember I walked into a writing class once with this shirt on and the TA said something like "Do you just own n0thing but ridiculous awesome shirts?" My response was "pretty much, yeah."

#156 Flinging some poop deck

Continuing with the pirate mashup theme of yesterday's shirt, this is a monkey pirate shirt. I think it was from the overcompensating comic store. It was meant as a sort of pop culture meme mashup and it's actually an early version of the pirate monkey robot shirt that I own. Definitely a shirt of its time.

#155 Avast Ye, Cleveland!

This is a shirt that I believe I got from Urban Outfitters. This was back in the heady days of my pirate obsession. I don't know what I was thinking. Mustachioed historical figures are way cooler. I also probably imagined myself as a bit of a rockstar with my emo bangs and pins on my backpack so the guitar crossbones also sealed the deal.

I remember wearing this shirt a lot with my band hawaiian shirt to help keep my uncovered forearms warm I guess.

#154 Alphabet Zoo

Another one from Threadless. This is one of the first ones that I ever ordered from them. It might even be from the first order that I ever made from them. It's the alphabet with an animal for each letter. I'm not sure what the X fish is, but the rest is pretty clear.

It being presidents day I kind of wish I had saved my Abe Lincoln fighting three bears shirt for today. I really need more shirts featuring ex-presidents doing epic things for these sorts of occasions. For another example here's a shirt from glarkware http://www.glarkware.com/adult/bigfoot-vs-abe-lincoln. The url probably makes the content of that shirt pretty apparent.

#153 Old Booty vs. New Booty

Today was the Lambda Alpha 1st (and likely, last) Annual Alumni vs. Actives Basketball game. The Alumni got their butts handed to them. Oh well. The Alumni team had a stat sheet asking which position we'd like to play so I put down that I'd play center since at 5'6" that one seemed funniest. I was doing my best to keep up with the stats on the sidelines and added in whatever color commentary I could. I'm sure we missed a lot. We also wrote in the non-traditional stat of Number of Airballs Shot since there were probably more of them than baskets made. Ryan shot an impressive 7 airballs in total. Clearly he was the MVP...for the opposing team.

Afterward we gorged ourselves on pizza at Lampost and went home and stayed as prone as possible on the couch watching Bones, George of the Jungle, Wipeout, Sabado Gigante, and WWE Smackdown.

Mark and Stacey made all of these shirts for us. One of the original designs we had was simply something that said "Alumni, bitches!" and jokingly the actives were to be given something that said "Alumni bitches". Oh grammar, you make semantics fun.

#152 Pour One Out for Biggie

This Threadless design is inspired by the posthumously released 'Mo Money 'Mo Problems from the Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy and Mace.

I love Biggie. All of his singles were ridiculously catchy. One More Chance, Big Poppa, Hypnotize, these were all stellar hip hop songs. Not too many people in the hip hop game right now have as much of my adoration as Biggie does. His songs are just fun and good to groove to and not terribly angry or filthy.

Notorious B.I.G. - Mo Money, Mo Problems @ Yahoo! Video

#151 Pepto

Tonight was the annual "Think Pink" women's basketball game in support of breast cancer research. This year instead of trusting the members of the band to have pink shirts to wear (which is a little silly since pink is sooooo four years ago) they gave us a specific UCI shirt to wear. I actually kind of like them. They fit better than the antourage shirts that we're wearing right now as a uniform. Plus the pink makes me look mega tan, which is pretty cool sometimes.

The UOP women's basketball team totally one upped us though because their whole uniform was pink. One of the players went as far as to wear pink socks and a pink headband but all that pink just made her look like a Lisa Frank notebook.

Holy shit. Lisa Frank had some weird merchandise. I guess it's not all dalmatians wearing sunglasses. I mean, it's pretty clear from the psychedelic imagery that everyone that worked for that stationary company was hopped up on goofballs, but after looking at stuff like this, I'm also pretty sure this company is responsible for setting children on a path to becoming furries.

#150 I want to go to there

This is a shirt that I got when I was younger from the San Diego Wild Animal Park. For those of you that don't know, the San Diego Wild Animal Park is awesome. It's out in northeast San Diego county on a pretty giant lot of land. The best part of it is the gigantic Africa exhibit that you have to view on their safari tram tour. It's just fun watching giraffes trot around on their awkwardly long legs (perhaps this explains my friendship with Brandon).

Anywho Dino Mountain was an exhibit the had for a while with a bunch of dinosaur animatronics I think and prehistoric decorations and a dinosaur 3d movie ride. I was probably super duper into it when I was a kid since I liked dinosaurs for probably a little longer than was normal (probably right up to middle school).

#149 "I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear"

The Smiths seem like an appropriate band to be listening to around Valentine's Day. Morrissey is probably the saddest of the sad singers out there, though he's in close competition with Elliot Smith and Conor Oberst. Morrissey had a bigger flair for the dramatic though (just listen to his song "Meat is Murder". That man takes his vegetarianism very seriously) in his singing.

I listened to The Smiths a lot when I was all teen angsty (now I'm just 20s angsty so I listen to songs that are sad without being angry I guess). Some of it is still pretty darn catchy but the life and death aspect to the love that Morrissey speaks of seems a little over the top now. Actually now that I'm going through some of my more favorite Smiths tracks, I kind of forgot how much I loved them. They're pretty great, just super duper dramatic.

Exhibit A:

They actually have quite a few surprisingly upbeat songs in their repertoire, at least sonically. Girlfriend in a Coma, This Charming Man, and Panic for example are all pretty bouncy songs, just with off lyrical content. They seem to have mastered the art of the happy sounding sad song.

#148 "Get a job where I tell all of my accounts of someone else."

I first heard about the Get Up Kids through a single that one of my brother's friends had sent to him. I was immediately hooked on the song and went out to get the CD.

The song was "My Apology" off of their Something to Write Home About album. The song's about writing songs about real people and situations and how awkward that can be. I pretty much wore out that CD when I was younger. I was such a big fan of theirs. I also was hooked on the side projects that came out of band such as Reggie and The Full Effect and The New Amsterdams. Reggie and the Full Effect is a solo project from the Get Up Kids' keyboardist that is part powerpop and part parody band. Within Reggie there are a few separate "bands" that perform songs in their respective styles be it Educational Euro-Metal (Common Denominator) or 80s Boy Band Dance Club Lovesongs (Fluxuation). The New Amsterdams is a solo project from the Get Up Kids' frontman and it's an alt-country band (that was a much less complicated explanation).

Here's a New Amsterdam's track. It's one of my favorite songs of all time.

Here's a song by Reggie as Fluxuation:

And here's one of their straight songs which happens to have my favorite music video of all time:

I mean it's got peanut butter and jelly falling in love. What's not to like?

#147 Vanessa Hudgens Sucks

Yes that is indeed a High School Musical shirt. Really this might be girlier than even the Twilight shirt that I own.

#146 Aww, Huggy Hugs

This is another one from Threadless and can be found directly here. If the squanchy text is hard to read, it says "a hug is my favorite adhesive", a phrase that I just find relentlessly adorable.

#145 Damnit, Jim!

This is another shirt from glarkware. If you are someone that has managed to miss the inception of what was one of the seminal sitcoms of our generation, this is a shirt that references the pilot of The Office. Judging by the shape of the mold this is a reference to the American version of the stapler in jello gag (the British one employed a ridged mold for the prank). I am a nerd.

#144 Go Broncos! Wait, what?

This is a shirt commemorating Super Bowl 21 which was apparently held at the Rose Bowl in 1987. I picked this up at a vintage store called Swellagant in Balboa when a couple of friends blindfolded me and took me there as a surprise, knowing I'd love looking through all of the funky merchandise.

The people reading this blog probably already know this, but I love football. It's so much fun to watch. The big plays, the interceptions, the massive hits, all fun stuff. I don't really follow it much, but I at least make it a point to watch the Super Bowl each year. The commercials, the half-time show, the after-bowl episodes, the 7 hour long pre-show, the unhealthy food; it's an American institution. This year I'm getting a dose of femininity with my masculinity since Fox is airing Glee after the game. So it'll be GRAAHHHH! FOOOTBALL! folllowed by SQUEE!!! GLEE!!

As I said I don't follow football at all, but I'll watch it eagerly when it's on. I really don't know anything about The Packers or The Steelers this year (other than something happened with The Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger?) so my completely uneducated and seemingly random pick to win is The Steelers. However, the way I usually pick a side is that I'll watch the first quarter of the game and pick a favorite team after seeing how they're sizing up. Pretty much the reason why I lean toward the Steelers right now is that their mascot's name is Steely McBeam, who is apparently a big jaundiced construction worker who carries an I-Beam with him at all times. As I learned from Conan O'Brien, The Packers disavow knowledge of ever having had a mascot (basically he's the Star Wars Christmas Special of the Packers franchise), but once upon a time it was a character named Packy Pack Packer a fat guy in a helmet holding a bunch of linked sausages. This is one of those times where each element of truth that I've added to the statement makes it sound more ridiculous and false.

#143 Sad Lemon

This is another shirt from the goats webcomic store. It's just kind of random. I mean, why's the lemon so emo?

#142 Jealous, ladies?

This is the girliest shirt that I own. If it's hard to figure out who the broody gentleman on my shirt is, it's Edward Cullen from the Twilight movie series (I'm really more of a Jacob but his shirt wasn't as funny since it didn't show as much awkward chest hair). It was on clearance at the WalMart close to Dylan and Trevor's apartment. I bought this shirt as well as a B-movie sci-fi quadruple feature DVD so clearly this was the worst set of purchases I've ever made. Anywho the reason why I'm wearing it is because tonight is the band girls night. I figure I might as well go all out.

The song in the video below is from the New Moon soundtrack. It's the song that plays in the background as Bella looks out the window and mopes over Edward for seven months or whatever. Their soundtracks are actually much better than they really need to be and usually have a pretty respectable number of exclusive tracks and great artists.

#141 Don't stand so close to me. Don't. Stop it.

In 2008 for my birthday, Elaine Murphy (aka the best friend ever) surprised me with tickets to see The Police in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The Hollywood Bowl is just an awesome venue in general, the stars, the hills, the acoustics, just gorgeous. I've only been there twice. The other time was when I went and saw Holst's Planets suite performed by the LA Philharmonic. It was about as magical as you can imagine. The only sad part was that Pluto was still a planet at the time so it ended with a non-Holst piece for Pluto.

#140 Too Far

This shirt apparently is a design that they discontinued but it was from Noisebot.com. I believe I got it whenever I purchased an Eh Team as a present for Jaime. It's a play off of the Black Eyed Peas' song Let's Get Retarded (Also known as Let's Get It Started for those with more delicate sensibilities aka nice people).

#139 Trailer Trash

It's too bad I already used up my Modest Mouse music post otherwise I'd feel obligated to also link their song Trailer Trash to this post.

This is a shirt that I got at one of the tourist trap-y shops that they have at Belmont Park in San Diego. I got a red one as well but for the life of me I can't remember what was on it and I haven't seen it for several years. All I know is that it was in this same sort of retro 5os style. Bowling perhaps.

Belmont Park is a boardwalk-y area complete with rickety wooden roller coaster and carnival rides. It's one of my favorite places in San Diego. This particular trip might have been for one of my birthdays but I'm not sure. If it was that was the day we had giant slices of pizza followed by giant ice cream cones followed by about 7 rides on the roller coaster. ALL GOOD DECISIONS. This is also the place where the indoor waterpark had an outdoor surf machine/wave fountain thing. My friend Kyle (who is built like a spider monkey) tried it one day and pretty much immediately crashed each time, each fall more spectacular than the last (most likely due to his previously mentioned spider monkey proportions).

If you were to stroll along the shore in the evening, you're likely to trip on boogie boards and sand toys that had been purchased earlier at the souvenir shops. I used to have quite the collection of abandoned shovels that I picked up on trips there.