$30 A Week? If I Could Keep to *that* Budget...

I love getting mail from Robért from $30 A Week Habit. Mailers from him often are small but pack quite the punch.

I mean, usually, it's enough of a punch to make LL Cool J jealous. This most recent one was no different.

I'm in a musical mood today too -- I think it was playing an 80s lyrics game on Sporcle during my 20 minute lunch break (it was a busy day...) that got me there. It got that horrible Aerosmith song "Angel" -- horrible because it's an earworm that reminds me of high school -- stuck in my head until I passed it along to my paralegal by telling her about it. For some reason, that worked.

To introduce each card, let's look at some songs that Robért has posted on his blog!

Payola$ -- Eyes of The Stranger

That's a very 80s sound coming off that vinyl. One of the coolest things I noted about that record is that it was produced by the legendary Mick Ronson. Mick was one of David Bowie's backing band members that became The Spiders from Mars, but he worked with Bowie on The Man Who Sold The World and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, among other albums. Then, as a producer, he worked on and arranged John Cougar Mellancamp's first massive hit -- "Jack & Diane."

And, let's also not forget that Ronson also worked with the legendary Morrissey as a musician, songwriter, and record producer. 

Basically, music in the 1980s is nothing without Mick Ronson...

...just like the Brewers of the 1980s were nowhere without Paul Molitor. The worst season that Milwaukee had in the 1980s was 1984. The team finished 67-94, dead last and 36-1/2 games out of first place. Molitor missed most of 1984 thanks to Tommy John surgery. The team only won 71 games the next year, but that year was the year that Robin Yount missed forty games due to back surgery that forced his move to the outfield. The next time the team won fewer than 70 games? 1993, when Molitor left for Toronto.

By the way, a good trivia question is to name the first Tommy John survivor to make baseball's Hall of Fame. You're looking at him (and the only other one as of 2016 is John Smoltz).

Hall & Oates: "Out of Touch"

I don't remember that weird introduction, for some reason. I watched the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction for the band. In retrospect, it's easy to see them as "blue-eyed soul," but at the time, I just thought of them as, well, music. 

Parallels are sometimes like "blue-eyed soul." They purport to be something special -- different, even. In reality, they are just, well, cards.

Golden Earring: Radar Love

In the 1980s, Golden Earring had a pretty big hit with "Twilight Zone." I liked that song a lot. But, when I heard "Radar Love," it really hit me in a more visceral way. "Radar Love" seemed more original -- almost dangerous, at times, with its driving bass line and minimal guitars. Yes, there are plenty of guitars, but the song is really the bass line, along with the drums.

However, the lead singer's attire in this video is positively embarrassing for future generations to see. And, the crowd here looks bored to death. Some even look pissed off. What's all that about?

Because I barely pay attention these days to any checklists -- especially checklists for retail exclusives -- I sometimes miss out on things like parallels of retail exclusives. Like those "First Home Run" cards last year, for example -- I don't think I could tell you what the parallels were or who had them or whether I have any parallels or not. So, when I saw this card, I thought, "dang, I just got that card from The Card Chop!"

Then I looked at them side by side and realized that the one from Idaho is either a gold or bronze parallel (don't know which, to be honest) and this one is the silver version. So, there we go.

The Who: Won't Get Fooled Again

A few weeks ago, I saw that The Who's concert from Hyde Park from last summer was on some random TV station that appears on my cable listings.  The Who played -- okay, definitely Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend played. Townshend still windmilled a bit, and Daltrey swayed around some on stage. 

I suppose I'd like to see them in concert, if only to say that I have. The show was decent, but it was a little sad to see the now 70-year-old Pete Townshend giving little hops on stage as a sort of homage to his more acrobatic past.

A straight-forward homage to the past from Topps here. The great thing about baseball cards is that though they get older, the faces of the men on the front are almost always between the ages of 18 to 43. In other words, these are guys in their prime, for the most part, and our mind's eye remembers their prime as opposed to what happens as they age.

Though it might be fun to revive the Senior Baseball League and allow everyone to take as many drugs as they want.

Billy Joel: New York State of Mind

I have times when I really like Billy Joel, and other times when he just gets on my nerves. Getting a video of Joel with Tony Bennett playing "New York State of Mind" at Shea Stadium, though, is never a bad thing.

Just like getting a new Ryan Braun card is never a bad thing for me either.

And, finally:

Triumph: Magic Power

Robért mentioned this song in a text-only post in 2011. The blogosphere must have changed in the past five years; these days, the only way you get away with a text-only post is either when you are quitting as a blogger or when you are pimping someone's contest.

My best segue here is to say simply that it is always a triumph for me to get a card package from Robért. To get a nice blue swatch of Prince Fielder from Allen & Ginter is especially cool.

Thank you very much, Robért -- your generosity is greatly appreciated, and I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for 1959 cards for your set at my next card show that I attend!

A PWE from 2x3 Heroes and Contest, Part II

First off, thank you to the folks who have already entered the card show Contest. I started thinking about the fact that there are a lot of folks who may never have been to a card show, and that I should try to make an effort to include them in some ways.  

Let's do that here: if you have never been to a card show, comment on this post and tell me what card or cards you would look for at a card show.  I'll do the same prize here as well -- $10 spent at my local card show trying to help you live out your card show dreams.  Please note: you are only allowed to win one time -- either on this post or the other one.  

Last week while I was roaming around the country's midsection, I received a PWE from JediJeff at 2x3 Heroes. I was happy to see it because I now can confirm that I am in his PWE club, in which he randomly sends out a PWE based on your collecting interests.  Jeff is the kind of guy who will take those miscuts off your hands -- yes, he collects them, and he even spelled out his criteria last year as to what it takes to be a true miscut.  He also tends to put songs on each of his blog posts, which is always a big win to me.

Songs? Sure, I overuse the song-introducing-a-card posts here, but dadgum it, I'm a big music fan. So, using whatever songs catch my ear today, here are the Brewers that Jeff sent my way.

2008 Upper Deck Ryan Braun

Wholly appropriate song to go with the card that popped into my head?

One of my wife's favorite artists:

The song is called "Before He Cheats," though I can't be sure that this card came before Braun cheated.

Carrie Underwood sure is easy on the eyes. The first concert my wife and I attended together was in Milwaukee at Summerfest in 2010, and it was Carrie Underwood. My wife was then just my fiance, and she had not met my family in person. When I saw that Carrie was playing the last day of Summerfest, I jumped on the tickets and made that our gift to ourselves for going to Wisconsin.

Oddly enough, that was the last show that Carrie did before she came to Georgia and Lake Oconee and got married to hockey player Mike Fisher at the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation.

1991 Topps Tom Edens

What fits this card?

So, when I think of 1991 and the name Edens, I think of going back to college for my sophomore year at Vanderbilt. My drive to Vandy from where I grew up took me south on I-94 (eastbound, officially) from Milwaukee to Chicago before cutting into Gary, Indiana. I-94 in Chicago is the Edens Expressway.

What does that have to do with REM? Well, in the spring of 1991 and as happened every spring, the Southern Baptist Church has some sort of big get-together on campus at Vanderbilt and they rented out the 15,000 seat Memorial Gymnasium for it. It was my first time seeing that big meeting there.  As I was walking back to my dorm from that side of campus, I walked by the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. Blasting from their speakers was the entirely appropriate "Losing My Religion."

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Jeff Suppan

I'm not a Jeff Suppan fan. But, I'll make the best of this:

The Soup Dragons biggest U.S. hit was "Divine Thing." I listened to this song a ton a couple of years after it was released because the "New Rock" station in Milwaukee in 1994, New Rock 102.1, had this song in constant rotation at that time. 

It's still a pretty good song, I think.  It holds up well...and a lot better than Suppan did as a Brewer.

2000 Upper Deck Mark Loretta

I have few strong memories of Mark Loretta. He was a Brewer around the time they moved to the NL, and then he became an Astro.  Based on his Twitter feed, it appears that Loretta is drawn more to the Padres than anything else.  Loretta is only about 4 months older than me, and yet, he feels like he belongs to a distant past.

I guess if I were a pro athlete, I'd belong to a distant past as well.

When I think of Loretta, though...

There's only one Loretta Lynn. Even though she is 83 years old, the Coal Miner's Daughter from Butcher Hollow (that's pronounced "Holler", by the way), Kentucky, is still touring -- playing casinos and theaters from Tyler, Texas, to Tarrytown, New York.

Personally, I'll be lucky to make it to age 83.

Okay...last card to share, even though Jeff sent a bunch more.

2013 Topps Mike Fiers

Yeah, I had this card already. But I always get a particular song in my head whenever I see a card of the Astro's no-hit thrower:

I didn't start the Fiers.  He was always burning since the world's been turning.

Jeff, thank you very much for having me in your PWE club. I'll be on the lookout for some good Chisox to send your way.