More Foghat

Many folks like to make New Year's Resolutions. I've never been able to keep up with my resolutions past about January 5, so I don't make them and, instead, aim for making changes when I need to make them. That usually doesn't work either, but it makes me feel better not to make resolutions.

I was on Twitter early on New Year's Day when I came across a fellow blogger's resolution:

New Year's resolution: more Foghat, less caring about what people think of Foghat. pic.twitter.com/WeWa7YgP2W

— NightOwlCards (@nightowlcards) January 1, 2016

I am totally on board with making resolutions like this one -- so much so that I'm going to highlight the great pre-Christmas package of cards that Night Owl sent to me using Foghat songs, of course! 

Maybelline

Foghat covered the Chuck Berry classic Maybelline as a B-side on their first album, the first album called Foghat. Looking through Foghat's catalog both on their albums and on their singles, I was surprised as the number of covers that the band recorded and included on their albums. I mean, lots of bands cover songs in concert, but to have Foghat recording "Maybelline," "That'll Be the Day," and "Take Me To the River" (among others) just surprised me. Even one song I associate with Foghat -- "I Just Want to Make Love to You" -- was a cover of a song by Willie Dixon.

In 2009, Upper Deck "covered" the O-Pee-Chee brand with a set that looked like it wanted to be the 1976 Topps set when it grew up. In the spirit of being a cover act, Upper Deck covered the old late 1980s trick of putting cards on the bottom of their boxes. Unlike the 80s versions, though, Upper Deck did not put stats on the backs of these cards.

I appreciate this panel coming from Night Owl particularly since it has his guy Kershaw on it next to my PC Braun. I'm getting pretty close to just going full bore after Braun cards. Close. Not there yet.

Drivin' Wheel

This is the first song on Foghat's sixth album called Night Shift. "Drivin' Wheel" has since been incorporated into a number of video games, including a couple of the Grand Theft Auto games and a NASCAR game called NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup.

Maybe the tie between the song and these cards is the repurposing of things from the past for use in the present. Sure, "Drivin' Wheel" is a bit closer in time to the video games employing it, but these A&G minis are closer in actual reuse than the song.  So, let's call it a draw and say, that they are reasonably equivalent.

Or something like that.

Slow Ride

"Slow Ride" is the song I am probably most familiar with as being a Foghat song. Guess why? A video game. It was included in the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. I used to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band a decent amount when I was single. I'd go out with friends, have a few beers, come home and decide that I wanted to chill out by myself with music by playing Guitar Hero. "Slow Ride" was the first song that you had to play when you started your "tour" in the game.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I also know that this song also appeared in a Grand Theft Auto game and, also, was named as the 45th "Best Hard Rock" song of all time by VH1. It also was Foghat's highest charting US single, reaching #20.

To me, only one item that Greg sent could possibly go with this big hit:

I don't think I'd ever seen a Topps Comic before I got this sent to me. With my love of oddballs, I'm shocked that I haven't seen one before. Hisle's huge 1978 was followed by a torn rotator cuff. It's too bad -- maybe he'd be more remembered and his current charitable work would be more highlighted as a result.

Fool for the City

Foghat was an English band, yet they were one of those oddities where they were more popular in the United States than in their native land. Maybe it's because lead singer, the late "Lonesome" Dave Peverett, couldn't find a good manhole in which he could fish -- as he is shown doing in a New York sewer on the cover of the Fool for the City album.

While the song is cited as being a "great example of the 'boogie rock' genre" using repetitive, driving rhythms and a laid-back attitude "with no sign of being pretentious", I am tying the song to two inserts from 2015 Topps that have to be the very opposite of boogie rock. 

Or, perhaps, Ryan Braun is.

Mumbo Jumbo

This is a song released by Foghat in 2003 on an album called "Family Joules." Before writing this post, I'd never heard of it. But, it was on a live album on Spotify called "Live at the Blues Warehouse" and it fits a group of cards that Night Owl sent to me to a T -- the Mumbo Jumbo of parallels and inserts!



That is a lot of 2011 showing there -- liquorfractors, black parallels numbered to 99 (Weeks), some gold parallels numbered to 2011, a diamond anniversary parallel, and an Attax of Casey McGehee. Of course, there is a Betancourt in there too, as if to remind me that the Brewers in 2013 started Betancourt at FIRST BASE for 68 games thanks to the Mat Gamel failure. As a first baseman, Betancourt made a great shortstop.

Sweet Home Chicago

Considering that everyone whose name isn't blues legend Robert Johnson is covering the song, I shouldn't be surprised to find this in Foghat's repertoire. Literally everyone from Eric Clapton, the Blues Brothers, Stevie Ray Vaughn (who played the song accompanied by his brother Jimmie, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Clapton at Vaughn's last show at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin in his final show before dying in a helicopter crash after the show), Fleetwood Mac, and Status Quo have covered the song.

I think of the Blues Brothers, I guess -- but this Foghat version is a good one.

Speaking of good ones, here's Tim Leary. Okay, what makes it good is the fact that the card is autographed by Leary. Leary himself as a player was a little less than great. His best year was with the Dodgers in 1988, when he put up a 17-11 season with 2.91 ERA (2.75 FIP) with 56 walks and 180 strikeouts. Still, a thirteen-season career is nothing to sneeze at.

Greg, I hope these Foghat songs are a sufficient thank you for some great cards coming my way that I have in this post. 

Remember: it's a slow ride, my friend. Take it easy.

Cards from the Water City

According to the Collections of the Minneapolis Historical Society from way back in 1910 (as linked on Wikipedia, but at least this source is still online to read it), the city of Minneapolis got its name as a bit of a compromise. Originally, the Hennepin County Commissioners wanted to call the city Albion (a word of questionable origin but probably meaning "white" and eventually latinized to "Albany"). A certain Colonel John H. Stevens suggested compounding "Minnehaha" with "Polis" somehow.  

The assembled worked their way through the permutations before settling on "Minneapolis". The "Mni" part that we say as "mini" came is a Dakota (Sioux) word meaning water with, of course, the Greek "polis" that shows up in a number of different city names.  Thus, these cards arrived from said "Water City" when Brian from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary sent these cards my way.

"Why yes, I'll take tortured introductions for $1000, Alex!"

Brian was kind enough to wander his way through my want lists -- which are getting closer and closer to being complete! -- and fill some holes and, at the same time, send me some oddballs.  Oddballs make me very happy. I am an oddball, so that makes sense.

So, let's start with the want-list fillers first:

Before

After

Pitching in the bullpen appears to take its toll on a man.  Apparently, though, bullpen pitchers need not cut their hair.  That is one wicked mullet on the 2013 version of the Ax.

Due to the random nature in which I got back into the hobby last year -- ripping repacked wax like it was going out of style, which led to a lot of random Opening Day packs -- I did not realize that I needed that Segura or that Fielder until I went about putting my want lists together. The want lists focus on base cards, but base cards weren't the only thing that Brian sent my way:

That's the Dave Nilsson silver signature Collector's Choice, the Silver Braun Chipz, and two of those foily things from this year's flagship set.  

And if Brian had stopped with those cards, it would have been a great, fruitful, well-worth-it, awesome envelope.  But then, he took it up a few levels:

It starts with the "First Home Run" Manu-Relic from this year's Topps Flagship. This is a very cool embedded coin card, though I'll admit it -- I'd rather that Topps took the time to go 2 players deeper in the base flagship set than include stuff like this in packs and blasters. But man, it's a gorgeous looking manu-relic.

Odd.  Larry Hisle spent five years in Milwaukee and five years in Minnesota after four in Philadelphia. But, one would think that TCMA might have tried harder to find a photo of Hisle as a Twin for its All-Time Twins set. I mean, I know they didn't have Google Image search available to them back in the 1980s, but come on -- there are plenty Hisle photos from his Twins days.

That said, Larry Hisle is a guy that any one of us should want to be when we grow up. Back about four years ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a long-form story about Hisle's work with disadvantaged boys in the Milwaukee area -- how Hisle -- having grown up poor himself, having lost his father to a brain hemorrhage as a young boy, and then losing his mother to a kidney infection at the age of ten -- plowed his feelings of loss into working harder and harder on the baseball field. When a rotator cuff injury destroyed his career in 1979, he felt cheated out of what might have been with his career. But now, he spends his time mentoring literally hundreds of kids in Milwaukee, and he does it because he wants to help. Not for headlines. Not for money. Because he wants to help.

The man is incredible -- more than words can describe.

After that little interlude, it feels a little weird to talk about a card that came with pizzas. I've always loved Tombstone Pizza, though -- it's from Medford, Wisconsin, and it just tastes better than most frozen pizzas. 

But I never got a Kevin Seitzer card with one.

Going from pizza to a guy that a couple of folks on the MLB Network called one of the greatest players in the post-1970 baseball world -- one put him as the best centerfielder, the other as the best shortstop -- we have this "Cartwrights Magazine" insert called Future Hall of Famers. Cartwrights Magazine called itself the "Journal of Baseball Collectibles."  

Was that peer reviewed?

Trust me, though, this is a very welcome addition.  But, it's not the greatest thing that Brian sent to me.

This is:

This is a porcelain card from some time between 1993 and 2003 from R&N China Co., Inc. in Carrollton, Ohio. It's hand-numbered and everything! I wonder if that is a "52546 out of 100000" type thing, or what.  

Frankly, despite a couple of helpful blog posts from the wayback machine -- a 2010 post from Clyde's Stale Cards, a 2010 post from Collecting the Cubs, and a 2012 post from the Lifetime Topps Project -- I can't seem to find any reference to a porcelain version of this 1979 Topps Paul Molitor card. Yes, he appears in the Danbury Mint's "Hall Bound" Porcelain set from 1998, but that is not this card.  To be fair, none of the bloggers I've linked to above claimed to be comprehensive, but it seems just weird to find something like this.

Still, it does put a song into my head:

Man, I really liked Better Than Ezra in the late 1990s. Saw them at the 40 Watt in Athens for like $8, and it was the first time I went to a show and was so impressed with a band's new songs that I went out and bought the CD the next day.  Considering I was not a rich man -- I was a poor law student living on loans -- that's saying something.

Brian, thank you very much for the fantastic package of cards and for the great head scratcher that the Molitor card is!

A Quickly Delivered, Strong and Vigorous Blow

As a lawyer, I often end up writing words that mean the same thing as someone else has used but changing them either to make more sense, be more descriptive, or otherwise avoiding plagiarism.  So, in my effort not to repeat what others have said, my title is actually a strange way to say that I was Zippy Zapped.  

Yeah, this effort is weak, but I was distracted.  It's time for one of my theme posts -- it's been a little while -- and ZZ provided me with the perfect foil for a theme post: Japanese Idols. Now, I don't begin to understand all the strange sounding write-ups and issues on Wikipedia for a lot of these groups -- I think it's due to Wiki-translations and due simply to my own inability to understand the whole idol culture.  

But Zippy Zappy understands it.  So, hopefully, I won't butcher it too badly.

I figured, heck, let's compare some cards to some of the idol groups.  I did some research (and ask Jaybarkerfan about my research) to come up with a list of idols and gravure idols to highlight and talk about the cards that Zippy Zappy sent me.

1. Morning Musume

Let's start with the basics of both idols and this package.  If you have read Ryan's excellent Blog "This Card is Cool" in which Ryan writes about all of his card collecting, chances are that you have heard of Morning Musume.  They were one of the first "cyber idols" in Japan, or at least that is what Wikipedia told me.  Because of Ryan's blog, Morning Musume is one of the few idol groups I've have heard of -- they are the basic idols to me as a result. 

Here's a photo of what is I think their current iteration.

The basics of this Zapping were 1979 Topps...lots of them too:

Sixto Lezcano looks a little bit seedy with that very light mustache and goatee he has going on there...it's kind of how I feel sometimes looking at some of these idols!

2.  AKB48

According to my sources (Tsunagujapan.com here), AKB48 is the all-time leader on the singles chart for all-time sales for any female group.  Apparently, though, AKB48 could be banned from performing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because the organizing committee thinks they are "Embarrasing" and "the shame of Japan."  Perhaps the best way to describe them comes from the Washington Post, which said:

It is as if Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and the entire cast of Twilight were placed in to a saucepan and simmered on a low boil until nothing remained but the sweet, cloying essence of fame, and if that fame were then poured into pleated tartan skirts and given pigtails.

Really?

Really.

I tend to view Bowman's efforts as similar to this in many respects.  Both Bowman and AKB48 put out new efforts every year. Every year, Bowman and AKB48 try to find the brightest, newest stars -- AKB48 through tryouts, Bowman through the draft. Both mostly feature new stars in their late teens and early 20s.  In the end, though, I don't collect anything from AKB48, but I do collect Bowman:

No matter whether you're talking about teenaged girls or boys, it still strikes me as a little creepy...well, at least if you're talking about kids under 18.  

3. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

In 2013, the Wall Street Journal published a blog post about Kiriko Takemura -- the real name of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.  Apparently, KPP (because I don't want to type that name over and over) grew up with a very strict mother who scolded her constantly for leaving the house dressed as if she was "insane" thanks to her odd sense of fashion.  KPP, though, has more substance than many of the idol groups, and isn't just a singer by being "cute" or "kawaii."  The readers of Muripo voted her the second top idol that Japan would love for the rest of the world to appreciate.  Her breakthrough song was PonPonPon..the very weird video is below. 

Perhaps she is a closet Green Bay Packers fan, or at least a closet Wisconsinite for wearing a Cheesehead in the video.  Please ignore the floating donuts and the flying sharks.

Something similarly sweet and yet more substantive are Kellogg's cards, one of which I was zippily zapped with.  You have to love Larry Hisle.

Okay, let's move on to the "older" women in Japan...the "gravure" idols. Why?  Because ZZ said so:

These four photos of Yumi Sugimoto are the fronts and backs of two cards that led off this package when I opened it.  Yumi is 26 years old, so I don't feel too bad for ogling her just a bit (of course, she's probably like 19 in these photos and I'm still going to hell). I am curious about the "City of Hartsville Public Safety" half shirt she is wearing.  Just strange..

On to the last three categories....represented by the Top 3 Gravure idols of 2014 as selected by Axiommagazine.jp.

3.  Mikie Hara

Mikie Hara is 27 years old.  Her Wikipedia page lists 9 different "Photobooks" that feature her, the most recent of which is called BLUSH Accident which can be purchased on CD Japan for $24.64 plus $8.21 shipping (for the cheapest available shipping). Here she is reading the book to a group of Japanese school children.

Okay, I lied about that last part.

So, at number three in the remaining card countdown, I have a tie between a blue 2014 Museum Collection Ryan Braun parallel (SN99) and a2014 Monte Harrison autograph:

2.  Ai Shinozaki

She's 23 years old and started modeling at the age of 14.  The issue there was that she was a very, ahem, curvy 14-year-old and caused quite a bit of consternation among Westerners who found out about her. She has been able to have a career as an actress, a singer, and even as a wrestler with "Pro Wrestling Wave"...at least, again, that's what Wikipedia says. She is an attractive women, of course:

What is is really attractive?  Well, there are a few items that fall into this category...Sega Card-Gen, of course! Tons of them...and please ignore the small margins my scanner put on some of these:

What could possibly top Sega Card-Gen? It has to be something truly special. Just like it has to be a very special gravure idol to top Ai Shinozaki. 

1.  Risa Yoshiki

I have to say that any time you get a model who holds a university degree, was born in China, produced two music albums, and wanted to be a manga artist, you're talking about someone pretty special. It doesn't hurt that she is a stunning woman as well:

What was the most stunning card that Zippy Zappy sent to me?

That's far easier than picking out a top gravure model.  This one is a no-brainer:

Meet Joe Lake of the St. Louis Browns on a T-206 with a Piedmont cigarette back. How absolutely cool is this?  I mean, this card was issued first when my grandparents were 2 years old! The St. Louis Browns actually represented the first team to move from its original city after the formation of the American League in 1901.  

The Browns became the Browns in 1902 after leaving Milwaukee.  The old AL Brewers were managed by eventual Hall of Famer Hugh Duffy as a player/manager for just one year.  In 1954, the Browns became the Baltimore Orioles -- the year after major league baseball returned to Milwaukee in the form of the Braves.

Zippy Zappings never hurt. They always put a smile on my face.  But this time, it's in the form of a card that I can always show off to anyone and say, "Yup, that's definitely my oldest card!"

Thanks, ZZ!