#161 Anteater Band #1

This is the first shirt that Brandon designed to be sold for the Anteater Band. Nice, simple, awesome.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#85 Why Back In My Day...

This shirt is the chapter shirt from the first year that I joined the fraternity. The thing that kind of looks like an M near the anteater is UCI's chapter designation, Lambda Alpha. Jaime designed it that year and as was kind of the usual case, it was the only design that was made so it was printed.

Things I remember from that year: There were 17 members when I first joined, the meetings were ridiculously long, my candidate class was super competitive, and Brandon and I were the only regular alto sax players (Kaylene came when she could but there were a lot of games with just the two of us. The year before there were maybe four altos on average at games).

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 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.

Another Stroll Down Memory Lane

Here's another shirt in honor of UCI's welcome week. This is the shirt that our dorm had printed up my freshman year. I lived in Crickhollow which was in the Middle Earth housing area. I pretty much only decided to live in Middle Earth because it just sounded like it would be an interesting anecdote to tell in the future. I haven't really gotten much mileage out of that one though and I ended up living pretty far from most of my classes so maybe that wasn't the best decision in retrospect. I'll pretty much do anything if I think it'll make a good story later though.

Anywho living in the dorms was interesting to say the least. We never saw our RA and she ended up leaving school before Spring Quarter. One of the other housing people that lived in our dorm filled the traditional RA role and we actually ended up doing a lot of fun activities with her (e.g. iceblocking, snowboarding, volleyball). She remains one of the most amazingly positive people that I've ever met. As bitchy as I am, I've got to respect that. Several people ended up leaving the dorm (e.g. quitting school, kicked out for streaking across the entire campus, baby). And I made a few friends that I quickly lost contact with after that first year was over. So it goes.

Zot You Like A Hurricane

This the UCI pep band shirt from the 2008-2009 school year. Mark actually came up with the original Zotband logo, but this shirt was designed by the lovely Brandon M. There's actually a back to this shirt, but I couldn't for the life of me capture a good photo of it. It's a list of the UCI home basketball games that we performed at listed as if they were concert dates. I wore it today because I went and hung out at the club fair booth with the other band kids.

I met some new people, played catch, sang "Bye, Bye, Bye" at a karaoke booth, forgot most of the dance moves to "Bye, Bye, Bye", and tried not to go deaf with Leon playing the bagpipes in my ear.

Yes. I did say bagpipes. He also started the day with a German flag tied to his bagpipes. To get you up to speed, this is an Asian guy who was also wearing a kilt, playing the bagpipes, flying a German flag. None of that makes sense together. It's sort of like that Starburst commercial, but weirder.

Hopefully we didn't scare too many people off with the bagpipes.

Amended Here's a link to a photo of the nonsensical mishmash of ideas that is Leon http://yfrog.com/my3r5yj.

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.