If anyone can find a worse one, I'd sure like to see it.
Seriously, what in the hell is this??? Now, I'm not averse to maps on cards, the Pro Set Desert Storm set did it pretty well actually, but swiping a satellite image from Wikipedia and then sending it through a retroizing Photoshop filter is lame. Say what you will about Goodwin Champions and their three levels of short prints, at least there isn't anything as awful as this in the set.
Ok, the Al Gore card is kind of traumatizing, but at least it doesn't look vaguely pornographic if you squint at it.
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.
