#106 Peanuts and Crackerjack

I was born and raised in San Diego. My parents still live in the same house that I grew up in which also completed construction within the same month that I was born. Specifically I grew up in Mira Mesa which is a suburb or township of some sort. There's a large Filipino community there, possibly because there was a U.S. Navy base next door (it's now a Marine Corps base). There's also pretty much just one major street in Mira Mesa (maybe one and a half).

My dad's a big sports guy. He's pretty much your typical dude. He also has had a Magnum P.I. style mustache my entire life. I saw a picture of him once when he was clean-shaven during his Navy days and it freaked me out. His teams are the Lakers, Padres, and the Chargers; so growing up they were my teams too. The shirt I'm wearing today is in the old school Padres color scheme. The shirt curled a bit by the D so now it kind of looks like SB (thanks a lot, boobs). It was just something I snatched up on clearance at Old Navy.

While I still would love to see the Padres do well, I don't really follow baseball or any sports regularly for that matter. Plus baseball's pretty boring on TV. Football's about the only sport I really enjoy watching, but I don't really have a favorite team (the Chargers I guess?). Baseball-wise I also have a bit of a soft spot for the Tampa Bay Rays because they were super fun to watch during the world series in '08. Plus I kind of like being the only person outside of Tampa to even give half a fuck about the Rays. If Old Navy had a Tampa shirt in Rays colors I totally would get one of those too. Unfortunately that wouldn't have made any financial sense at all. Plus no one even knows what the Rays colors are so it would just look like a touristy shirt from Tampa.

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.