The good news:
I now have the technology to do videos whenever I please and not just when my family is out of the house and I'm not working and it's daytime and really sunny.
The bad news:
I'm now videoing in my basement instead of my kitchen
I now look like a loser who lives in his mom's basement
I really need to clean up this basement like, right now
The new camera has a wider range of focus so everyone can see just how fat I really am
The sound isn't going to be as good as before
I'm still opening random garbage packs
But hey, now I can vlog (did I really just use that word?) at 2:00am when I'm hammered so hilarity will likely ensue.
BUT THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW.
WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT I NEED ADVICE ON WHAT TO DO WITH THIS:
This might be my best pull all year - nay, DECADE As God as my witness, I don't know what to do with it. I need suggestions! Here's what I've come up with so far:
Put it in the Non-Sport Awesome Binder in a place of honor.
Stick it to the front bumper of my car
Stick it on my son's school binder when he's not looking
Mail it to a random blogger who will then mail it to another blogger and repeat the process hot potato style until on a pre-determined date the blogger stuck holding the Montana has to make it their blog background for an entire month
Brand spankin' new right out of the first pack of Heritage High Series I opened.
Oligato House put out a warning about the gum in 2008 Heritage High Series. I couldn't believe that Topps gum would taste bad. Not that it ever tasted really good, but it was baseball card bubblegum flavor. This stuff ain't Bubble Yum, but it's passable gum. Topps originally printed up the cards in order to sell more gum in the first place. Gum is what Topps does. So I ripped open my serial numbered pack of gum and started chewing...
Oh. Dear. Lord. What fresh hell is this???
This is not Bazooka gum. I don't know what the heck it is, but it's not good 'ol Topps gum. this gum has a really weird sour taste to it. Not Sour Patch Kids sour, more like milk that was left in the fridge for two months sour. It has sort of a sauerkraut/fermented goat curds/hákarl combination of flavors to it. I chewed it for a couple minutes before having to spit it out and i still taste the nasty stuff. It's really rancid and I'm not talking about the good kind.
What is going on at Topps? Squirrell cards are silly but I can deal. Adding an unobatinable card 661 to the set is really freaking annoying but I will persevere. But fucking up the gum?? What... how... that's just beyond wrong. I don't know man, there's a sickness... there's a serious sickness in Duryea and I don't know if they're going to make it though this one. I sincerely hope they are just setting up a really elaborate punchline for that Sklar Brothers show, because otherwise it's a sad day in the card community.
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.
