COMC Black Friday #4: Ryan Braun

After yesterday's rather sobering history lesson -- one which led me down paths I did not expect at all -- I need a more frivolous post tonight. I'm about to get on a plane tomorrow (actually, 2 planes, connecting through Minneapolis) to go to Palm Desert, California, for one of my American Bar Association trips. 

So, in the interest both of frivolity and of posting some more of the Black Friday cards I got, I thought, "songs about the desert/California!"

Of course. 

I mean, after all, Ryan Braun is a Californian -- born in Mission Hills, California -- so why not? Especially since one of the cards I got is this one:

Let's start with an obvious one:

Hopefully I don't end up on a dark desert highway with cool wind in my hair on this trip. It will mean that something went terribly wrong, I'd say. I do hope, though, to get out and run a little while I'm out there. The temperatures are a bit better than the mid-30s we've had here in the morning lately.

Some buy cards to remember, some buy to forget. I still need about 3 more of this 4-in-1 card from the 2009 Goudey set that Upper Deck put out. I think I still need one more of the 2009 Chrome card too. Those folks hoarding these cards must be living it up.

To be honest, this song is almost more obvious to me to be tied to the Palm Desert area than Hotel California. That's because this song is on the Joshua Tree album. Palm Desert is about 50 miles from Joshua Tree National Park. The only time I've been in the Palm Desert area -- the Coachella Valley -- a couple of friends of mine and I went to the National Park. It's incredible.

That's a younger me amidst some really awesome cacti.

These are Bowman cards of a younger Ryan Braun -- from five or six years ago now. I have trouble at times telling the difference between various years of Bowman cards. Their designs are not memorable or very distinctive, and that makes it difficult to recall whether something is a 2011 or a 2012 or a 2013 card since I wasn't around to learn it the first time around.

So, this song is new to me, though the band, My Chemical Romance, is not. MCR was huge in the era of emo and shortly thereafter -- I mean, their first major label album called Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, an album with a couple of great songs in "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" and "Helena," was 14 years ago. The band broke up in 2013 and released a greatest hits album in 2014. 

If I had to guess, I'd estimate that they will reunite for a money-spinning tour at some point in 2018. Just guessing, though. 

In keeping with my snarkiness about MCR -- and let's be honest, I really enjoyed their music on both Three Cheers and their next album, Welcome to the Black Parade, but they got to be a parody of themselves after a while -- I turn to an old standby of Panini Prizm. I swear, Panini goes through product ideas faster than NFL Games can take.

Perhaps they'll stick with Donruss for a while. Who knows. The way they keep bastardizing old Donruss designs, they'll run out of original ideas at the same time that My Chemical Romance reunites.

I've always liked this song. Yeah, it's "soft rock," but lyrically and musically it remains interesting. It tells a story -- which I always appreciate in my music. Sometimes that story is depressing -- how else do you account for my predilection toward The Smiths? -- but often it's just a song giving a feeling or building a picture. That's what this song always feels like to me. 

These cards seem to fit that "soft rock" mentality. Just as Panini goes careering through card designs like a car on an icy mountain road, Topps seemingly just dredges up old designs from other, more original card makers from years gone by. Perhaps it fits to follow a horse with no name to have the card company with no new ideas.

That's harsh, and not necessarily true. After all, Topps has had a number of new ideas lately -- Topps Now in particular. Okay, I can't come up with any more than that, but that was a good idea.

I hope y'all have a great week, and I'll be back on Sunday.

Other cards from the Card Show

I attended my first card show of the year on Sunday. I even got a box I thought about adding to the Super Traders group breaks (and probably will, eventually)...then I realized that 1992 Fleer Ultra will not have any cards for the Marlins (no loss there), the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, and the Rays. In other words, it wouldn't exactly be a great break because, well, I'd be leaving three people out from the get-go.

And, let's be honest. Bringing 1992 Fleer Ultra to the SuperTraders is sort of like bringing a Yugo to a car show. You can do it, and people might appreciate it for the oddity, but no one goes to a car show looking to see a sweet Yugo. Or AMC Gremlin. 

Still, I'll probably break that box and throw the results into the SuperTraders stuff I mail out. I'm thinking I'll buy a box or two online and throw all three together into one big break -- probably some time around Opening Day, so I can get a couple of good boxes.

Anyway, that digression aside, I want to emphasize that I'm still trading with whomever wants to trade with me. I'm sometimes slow to respond or reciprocate, and I apologize in advance for my inability at times to sit down and put packages together. 

I need a theme for the card show...let's see...let's put my iTunes "Top Rated" on random and see what happens.

"Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)" -- Three 6 Mafia ft. Project Pat, Young D, & Superpower

Yeah, how 'bout them apples. If you've read my blog before, you know that my musical tastes are all over the board. Sinatra to Anthrax, The Clash to The Cure, and sure, there's Three 6 Mafia too.  

What goes well with Lolli popping that body in the club?



My most surprising dime box find of the day. I really should have just grabbed all of the 1998 Pacific Crown Royale cards in that dime box. I could have used them for the SuperTraders! Damn. A missed opportunity. I think I equate these cards with rap music because of the trend in the 1990s -- and apparently still today -- to their use for storing assorted....ahem.... illegal paraphernalia.  

Or maybe that was just the use for Crown Royal bags that I saw on TV shows.

It's time to move on.

"Down Under" -- Men At Work

Like I said before, I'm all over the map. To be fair, I recall very distinctly that the first music I ever bought for myself was this very song on a 45-RPM single record. 

Surprisingly enough, this song has actual drug references in it. The first two lines of the song are: "Travelling in a fried-out Kombi / on a hippy trail, head full of zombie."  As this BBC article notes, that line refers to a Kombi -- an old VW camper van -- followed by "the hippy trail" of dropping out of the rat race in a very 60s fashion. And the "head full of zombie" is a reference to a very potent strain of marijuana, occasionally laced with angel dust.

I'm pretty sure that if my mom realized that that is what the song meant, I probably would not have been able to buy that 45 back in 1982.

What goes with that?



I think these two items qualify. On the left, we have the very weird looking manu-relic of Eddie Mathews in a Detroit Tigers uniform. Mathews had a grand total of 57 plate appearances for the 1968 Detroit Tigers (for which he was paid $75,000...about $525,000 today...which is near the league minimum but in 1968 that was an impressive salary). His final at bats -- and his final hit -- were in the 1968 World Series against the Cardinals, which the Tigers won.

On the right side, we have Larry Pardo. Larry was a minor league pitcher in the 1980s for the Rangers and, later, the Angels. My god were his stats atrocious. In 500-1/3 innings in the minors, he walked 375 guys while striking out 361. In 1987, in the California League at the age of 21, Larry pitched 71-2/3 innings. He gave up 75 hits, 110 walks, and 31 wild pitches while striking out 63. He hit 5 guys for good measure. Larry later became a scout for the Milwaukee Brewers, though. His most notable signings: Michael Brantley and Ryan Braun. So, it has a Brewers logo on it. I bought it.

I'm not proud.

"Your Love" -- The Outfield

This song has always been a big favorite of mine from the 1980s. It's so damn catchy. Then, just like "Down Under," you listen to the words and feel a little skeevy.

As Wikipedia puts it bluntly: 

"Your Love" is written from the point of view of a man who tries to convince a younger female acquaintance to have an intimate night with him while his older girlfriend, Josie, is away on vacation.

Yeah.

Since we're talking about youngsters...sorry, it's all I've got.



I loaded up on a bunch of minor league cards. A fair amount of them are recent, and some aren't -- like 2010 Eric Arnett Helena Brewers card from the Topps Pro Debut set. Eric was old for Helena in 2009, when he played there. The guy was a first round pick out of Indiana University, and well, he was a 100% 1st round bust. He never played about high-A ball in 2012 and 2013 for Brevard County in the Florida State League. He didn't exactly do superbly, either. 2013 was the end for him in the minors -- assuredly he's moved on to something else by now...and he's pocketed his $1.197 million bonus too.

Okay, a couple more songs for a few more songs.

"Soul Meets Body" -- Death Cab for Cutie




In the mid-2000s, I had XM Radio. In my condo, I'd listen to XM, play video games or read books, and drink wine. That was a nice, relaxing weekend night for me. I enjoyed my own company. I didn't mind being alone. Life was good -- not great, sometimes lonely -- but still good.

I found some vintage cards at the show that fit that feel. They are good -- not great -- but good. I paid more than I should have, probably, in light of their condition. But I needed the cards for my Milwaukee Braves collection.



Like I said, good. Not great. Good. The Mathews is the most disappointing, certainly, since someone felt the need to change his affiliation in 1967 for those 101 games he appeared in. I mean, kid in 1967, did you really have to do that to a card from 1963? 

That Lou [sic] Burdette card looks like someone spilled a drink on it too. It was something like $0.50, so it wasn't pricy, but...you know...it could be better.

Okay, last one:

"Famous Last Words" -- My Chemical Romance




Filming this video hurt the band badly. Literally. Gerard Way (lead singer) suffered torn ligaments in his ankle, and Bob Bryar (the drummer at the time) suffered burns on his leg that turned into a staph infection.

Funny thing about this band is that I like their music, but their entire persona was so overwrought and pretentious that I probably would have hated seeing them in concert. In fact, I probably would have hated them personally, even. In fact, I recall seeing them live on some show and thinking, "what a bunch of prats."

Because, pretentious as I was, I would have used some British slang instead of calling them more choice American slang like "C**ts" or "a**holes."

None of that has anything to do with this last assortment of cards, though.



The Fielder rookie was in a quarter box. The autographs were like $2 each. The Hall UD Game Materials was $3. The Braun bat -- which I didn't check to see if I had and, yup, already had it -- was $2. The Lucroy 2014 Update jersey card was $2 also. 

I'll spare you all the shiny Panini I got. After all, there is only so much logoless stuff anyone can take at any one time.

But, I'll leave you with one final song off my playlist.  It doesn't fit with anything else on this page either.




But I like this song by Georgia boy Zac Brown anyway.