#183 Pa-pa--paparazzi

I've come to regret the decision to include my face in these picture posts.

Anywho, I got this shirt from Stacy. I believe it was part of some skit she had to do for German class in high school. Apparently that's all they did in her German class because one of the other big stories I've gotten from her also involves a skit in German class (if you haven't heard it before, the punchline is that Stacy had to play the ugly one). Kind of a meh shirt. I pretty much just wore it as a black undershirt.

Instead of talking about the shirt, I'll relate how I spent last Monday. I perhaps foolishly spent the day at Disneyland in the rain. However, unlike last year I was infinitely more prepared this time around (and the rain actually let up in the late afternoon). Highlights included singing along to "Part of Your World" with Nuno for no apparent reason and going with it anyway, riding on the swinging ferris wheel cars with people that are terrified of it, and riding the roller coaster twice with the rain whipping us in the face (I'm pretty sure it was also raining the hardest while we were on it too).

#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.

#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.

#113 It kind of looks like the Cowardly Lion's medal of courage

This is a shirt that I got in elementary school (either the second or third grade I think) during a school-wide reading promotion. I managed to be one of the more voracious little readers (read: I spent a lot of time alone and indoors) so I got quite a bit of swag from the campaign. This badass shirt, free pizza coupons, I even got a physical medal like the one on my shirt. When they say "gold medal winner" they aren't playing around (well, the gold part is still a bit of a lie...and they're playing it fast and loose with the word "winner"). I actually had to accept this shirt on stage at an assembly that they had in front of the whole school so they could all laud me for my nerdiness (kneel, peasants!).

#107 & 108 I either need to get better looking or stop taking pictures of myself.

You may be thinking, "Did Allison just post the same exact shirt twice? That's cheating! I shall report thee to the high council of blogging elders! I demand satisfaction!" But hold your horses there, anachronistic internet so-and-so. They are in fact two different shirts. The first one is black and it's the free Eater Nation shirt that they gave out to all UCI fans in '08. The second is actually Navy Blue (clearly the next thing my blog needs, other than a better blogger, is a key grip) and is the fancy Anteater Band version of the Eater Nation shirt. I guess they allowed clubs to get their own colors and logos on variations of the Eater Nation shirt that year, which is actually pretty cool.

I figured since I missed the blog yesterday I might as well just double post today. Plus what more am I really going to be able to say about the same shirt in a different color. Uh, this one reflects light at a different wavelength than the other.

I don't really wear the shirt out much. Partly because I feel like if you're not familiar with the fact that UCI's mascot is the Anteater and that it shorts to Eaters it just looks like I'm a competitive eating enthusiast (aka a fatty. Though fatties are more like, "I'm going to compete with myself to see how much I can eat of...everything." They're more embroiled in a battle against early onset diabetes. fat jokes!).

#95 CIA MIA?

Sorry for the poor lighting, but I don't really care that much, at least not about a CIA shirt. I believe this one is from my junior year. I never really understood why there was a splashy water pattern behind the CIA logo. Lots of ridiculous things happened that year band and basketball wise. Our men's team was undefeated at home, we traveled to the LBSU pyramid and played at a game there, then we lost to LBSU in the tournament off of a crazy three point shot at the buzzer. That was also the year that I learned that a lot of LBSU fans are kind of dicks.

Tonight the women's soccer team won in the first round of the NCAA tournament (they got a bid because they were ranked 11th in the nation) against ASU. We were down by a goal in the first half but we finally scored about 25 mins into the second half and then got another goal in about five minutes after that. It was actually a really fun game once we finally scored because the crowd was super into it. I mean, I barely give a shit about soccer, but that was pretty entertaining.

#92 Ew, Chafing

This is a shirt that I got my senior year of High School. I was in the psychology club that year. Not so much because I'm a fan of psychology (though I am) but because a good amount of my friends were in it. One of the things we did as a club was community service and at least twice we volunteered at marathons. This mainly involved handing water to runners and by this I mean mostly getting splashed with water as runners hastily grabbed at paper cups as they ran past.

#90 Three Months of Shirts? Madness!

This is a shirt that I got from Stacy after she accidentally dyed it pink in the wash. It also explains why it's a little small on me (though how she fit her chest in it is beyond me, but I digress). Anywho, I spent my morning watching the UCI women's soccer team face off against LBSU. We very sadly lost. I don't normally care that much but I particularly hate losing to Long Beach (their fans are quite mean and scary). I also don't really like when it becomes this thing were fans start cheering against other fans instead of just supporting the teams themselves. Though of course I've totally made signs that make fun of schools and fans which goes against my previous statement, but I'm not one for personally attacking fans. It's just not worth it and not terribly classy (which probably doesn't mean much from someone that makes as many dick and fart jokes as I do, but still).

But hey, enough of that. Who else is excited that Conan O'Brien's talk show starts tomorrow night? He's legitimately my childhood idol (I first watched his show sometime around when I was in elementary school and I watched it any night I didn't have school the next day) and who I want to be when I grow up (much more than like, Indiana Jones or Han Solo or The Green Ranger). Plus Lea Michele is going to be on as a guest. That's just almost too much awesome all at once. Anywho, tomorrow night. 11pm. TBS. Be there.

Alternatively for those without cable it'll also be online at teamcoco.com the next day I believe. So be there as well I suppose.

#84 "I've got a twenty dollar bill that says no one's ever seen you without make up..."

Here's another shirt from the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. You can find it right here. It's a mixtape shirt and another one that I got from a girl getting rid of stuff from an ex-boyfriend (but he might not have been an ex at that point, anywho). But yeah, hard to see but it's a pixely version of a tape.

Mixtapes/Mix cds are super cheesy and corny, so rather appropriately I love them. I'm a fan of making them for people and making them for myself. I make tons of playlists with different themes for different moods and moments (currently my itunes has 40 different playlists). I also make good use of the comments section of my itunes to quickly note little things I notice about various songs (if a song is a cover, if it's a demo version, if it's instrumental or acoustic, etc.). Um so there's a basic confession of my compulsions when it comes to music.

In other mixtape news, Sony just recently announced that they halted production on their Walkman line. This has already been said before but, Duh? I would have figured they would've stopped making them much longer ago. I don't think I actually ever owned a walkman as a child. The only tapes I had were a few Disney soundtracks. After that I quickly graduated to cds (My first one? Kriss Kross's Totally Krossed Out).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.