PWE-Town Tom

Work has been kicking my butt this week. It didn't help that I had to drive over 5 hours yesterday -- leave at 7 AM, get home at 8:40 PM -- for a meeting in Birmingham, Alabama that took longer than I expected and gave a result that could have been better. Sometimes, that is what is required. 

I don't think I ever saw business travel on L.A. Law like that. Still, I'm pretty well paid. I have a good life. To complain about work (rather than Topps Now) would just be petty. 

But, seeing as P-Town Tom sent me two great cards in a PWE recently, I think I'll use this as an excuse to play a couple of songs about work since that's what is on my brain right now.

The Johnny Paycheck classic from 1977, "Take This Job & Shove It", was actually written by David Allan Coe. To be fair, there is another version that really gives more of the feel of how this week has gone:

Dead Kennedys covered the song in 1986 on the album Bedtime for Democracy. That album actually hit number 1 on the UK Indie Chart in 1986. That album didn't have the songs that all the punk kids really liked, such as "Nazi Punks F**k Off" or "Terminal Preppie" from their earlier albums. Nor did it sell as many copies as the 1987 compilation/B-sides album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death with its anthems "Too Drunk to F**k", "California Über Alles," "Holiday in Cambodia," and "Night of the Living Rednecks," among others. That one went gold -- not bad for a nihilist hardcore punk band who had broken up by the time the album was released.

Apropos of a nihilist hardcore punk band is this Upper Deck hologram of Robin Yount. This is the card that led to this PWE from Tom, since I needed a copy of it for my collection. Once you get to the point that a card is more than 2/3 made of a cheap plastic mirror, you've crossed into nihilist territory. Nothing has meaning any more. Nothing.

Once I crossed into punk and started talking about work, it was almost a guarantee that this Joe Strummer/Mick Jones collaboration would make an appearance. There's a line in this song that says, "I won't open letter bombs for you" which is actually a job that Mick Jones had -- opening mail for the government to make sure that the IRA or some other organization hadn't decided to send a little surprise.

Speaking of a little surprise, Tom found this 2007 Topps Update card of Prince Fielder with a buyback stamp on it in some packs he was opening. To be honest, I'm disappointed -- this is my first copy of this card, and it has the extraneous marring on the card. I know some of you just file these away with their original series, but the pedantic in me (remember, please, that I am a professional pedant by being a lawyer) says, "Nope, this is a different card."

I wish I could be laissez faire about this, but I"m a true stickler when it comes to my collection. This is different from a regular issue 2007 Topps Update card number UH207, so, despite all the other accoutrements, it's a 2016 buyback version.

Call me crazy, I suppose.

Tom, thanks for the two great cards!