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Friday, August 1, 2008

Why oh why did I do this - Americana 2

Boredom is a dangerous thing. It makes you buy stuff like this:


Yeah. I know. What was I thinking? Well, I wasn't really. Allen & Ginter still has not made it's way to retail establishments (or douchebags have bought up all the blasters to flip on eBay) and I just had to rip something new. Plus John Wayne's on the wrapper. John Freaking Wayne, by God. So I got two packs. 11 cards total. Two of 'em were doubles. Not a single card even in the same time zone as John Wayne. On the bright side, I can milk the packs for enough posts to get me to the Olympics, where I have something that's actually interesting planned.

Since celebrities are rapidly infiltrating baseball, it's refreshing to see a set where they are all segregated by themselves. I guess if this stuff sells, Donruss might get their license back. At least that's how I'm going to rationalize buying these packs. I plan to post a card per day from the packs, but tonight I'll give you a three-fer. Specifically the three cards I pulled that most painfully reminded me that I should have just gotten a couple of packs of Heritage and crossed my fingers hoping for a short print I didn't have already. These cards, for the lack of a better term, just plain suck. Here comes the pain...

118 Danielle Harris

Danielle is an actress best known for roles in various slasher movies like Halloween, as well as for being the voice of Debbie on the Wild Thornberries cartoon on Nickelodeon. Not exactly a A-lister, but she looks nice. Or would, anyway if the Donruss photographer hadn't broken into her home and snapped a quick photo using an off brand disposable camera before she had her first cup of coffee. This card illustrates one of the weirder aspects of Americana, about half the photos they use are slick publicity stills and the other half are extremely unprofessional looking candid shots. This looks like a picture I would take. Weird background of somebody's house, a "get it over with already" forced pose and dear Lord, what is up with that shirt? Would you want to be seen on a trading card wearing that shirt? Even worse, what if that shirt's on the relic cards?? Since she is best known as a scream queen, here's her goth chick character from Urban Legend getting horribly, horribly killed while her roommate ignores it all.



178 Dani McCulloch

What. The. Hell. is this?? If I wanted a pack of Benchwarmers cards I would have bought it. Ugh. I don't understand this picture at all. I don't understand the silver jacket with poofy collar and I really don't understand the facial expression that makes her look like she was just pithed like a frog for some inhuman experiment. See what I mean about the slick publicity photos? This one just has a heavy dollop of strange along with the slickness. I can hear the photographer now... "Fluff up that collar and try to look more jailbaity!" Dani is a singer from Memphis who was on American Idol a couple of years ago and is apparently well into the process of getting chewed up and spit out by the music business. Her voice isn't too bad I suppose, but whatever sleazy producer she ended up with made this banal overproduced pile of sludge her first single. There's no money in blues, I suppose. I don't know what she's up to now because information on her is spotty online (nothing on Wikipedia or Amazon) and her website (with similarly vapid photo) hasn't been updated in almost a year. I sincerely hope Dani is back to singing in Memphis clubs and hasn't been sold as a slave to some underground casino in Dubai by her record label. I have no idea why she is in this set.

169 Barbara Bush

Someone I've heard of finally... This one looks like someone snuck a photo with their phone while attending a Bilderberg tea party. Something important is going on, Babs is rocking the three strands of pearls for pete's sake. I don't know, political card fatigue must be setting in, because this is literally the last card I wanted to pull out of a pack. I'm just going to leave it at that, because there is not a direction I can take this post without pissing off somebody somewhere on the political spectrum. Actually, I think it's safe to link (they won't let me embed the video) her appearance on Sesame Street. Everybody likes Sesame Street right?

Thankfully this is the worst of the bunch. Unfortunately, this is probably enough to put some people off Donruss for life. I'll have something really, really cool tomorrow to make up for this.

6 comments:

jv said...

I love Bab's dress. Endless "connect the dots" possibilities!! "Is that a giraffe I see? Wait, no, a pumpkin!"

"Man, it's whatever you want it to be!"

Plus, her right arm appears to be gone. I think the killer from the video might have gotten to her.

I like to think that she's smiling as she watches him beat one of her dimwitted children with it.

--David said...

Wow, we must have been hit in the head by the same DUH-ball! We both bought this stuff on the same day... Too bad we couldnt warn each other first!

dayf said...

I did better than you tough, I only paid $6 and I did get one card I'm very happy with as you'll see soon.

Anonymous said...

Clarification for your comment on Dani McCulloch. Dani is not on a label but rather is an independent artist. The jacket was initially used during the shooting of her first music video, which she paid for out of her pocket. It is around an original song she wrote called "Wasted Raing" that is about a friend of hers that went thru an domestic violence situation. It wasn't a photo shoot. A photographer friend was there shooting random shots during the video so this was captured during the performance part of the video shoot. You can see the video on her myspace (www.myspace.com/dani). She played both the performance role and character role. If you knew Dani I can assure you that you wouldn't be hating on her like you did in your comments.

Scott Schwartz, actor from "The Christmas Story" and "The Toy", approached Dani about creating a trading card on her. He and his Dad own a trading card company and he is a rep for DonRuss. He believes that Dani's career will take off at some point. She is only 20 but has been fronting her own band for over 5 years. She has purposely not signed on with any labels or managers so she can stay in control of her music. If her career ever does take off then maybe your card will be worth something. In the meantime all Dani would ask is for your support in her pursuit as an indy singer/songwriter.

She is a class act and not a sell out. Everyone in the music biz gets chewed up some by the industry so it helps when people can throw support to an artist.

If you are on the Gulf Coast in October come check Dani out as she performs her mostly "all original" show as the opener for Jo Dee Messina at the 2008 National Shrimpfest.

Thx,

DMac

Anonymous said...

Get a life.

dayf said...

You know, you had me until you threw in the needless "Get A Life" comment.