87 Murphy Squirrels

MOvember 2010 -- Final Update

2010-11-30T22:36:00.001-06:00

Today is the final day of MOvember, which meant that I finally shaved off my mustache. Moments later, the month-long kiss-embargo which had been imposed by The Wife was rescinded, which was nice. Very nice indeed.

Before I shaved off the 'stache, I had the wife snap a couple of pics. And I'm not sure which is tougher, growing a mustache or trying to get a decent photo of the damn thing.

I call this one "Winter Guy."

On a side note, I got both the hat and coat at Old Navy recently. Both were on uber-sale. The hat has a Hamm's Premium Beer patch on the front (which I love) and the coat is the warmest coat I've ever owned (the combination of down-feathers and synthetic fabric work wonders in the frigid Nebraska winter air).

This next picture is titled "If I could grow a mustache as well as I can grow a nose, I'd be Tom Selleck".

I also thought of naming the above picture "Pointing at a $350 Mustache." That's right, my family and friends love me enough (or feel enough pity on me) that they donated $350 toward prostate and testicular cancer research because I grew a lousy mustache. What I lack in mustache-growing ability, I make up with the greatest family and friends on earth.

This next picture is probably my favorite. I call it "Puzzled in Black & White".

Everyone who was kind enough to make a donation this MOvember will be receiving their own copy of this wonderful picture (unless they would prefer one of the others, which I'll gladly send their way) along with a thank you note as my way of saying thanks for donating.

The Wife and I spent the past month trying to think of a way to top last year's end-of-MOvember photo shoot, but we realized that we'd never be able to do so, so the above pictures are what we settled upon. I'm a little disappointed that we were less creative this year, but I'm still very pleased that all of this year's photos of my MO were enhancement-free (i.e. I used no mascara or mustache dye. It's all natural, baby.).

Thanks again to all who donated. And if you've been waiting to see the final results of my mustache growing adventure before you donating, I'm sure the MOvember people would be happy to accept your money. Please GO HERE to make a donation.

Once again, this year I raised $350.00, which exceeded my personal goal by $50.00.

Team MOrthern Colorado raised $492.00 which helped contribute to the $5 million plus that MOvember participants in the US collected. Who knew that something as simple as a mustache could raise so much awareness and money?

Thanks again for your support this past month and the countdown to MOvember 2011 has officially begun.

MOvember 2010 -- Week 3 Update

2010-11-23T19:33:00.000-06:00

Does anyone know if the FBI ever got around to catching this fella?

If not, I may want to choose my outfits very, very, VERY wisely from here on out.

Thus far, I've raised $300 for prostate and testicular cancer research this MOvember, and Team MOrthern Colorado has raised $422.

But worry not, there is still plenty of time to donate if you would care to do so. Just go HERE. Thanks for your support.

Autograph Pickups

2010-11-20T10:08:00.000-06:00

I'm a bit behind on posts about my Luke Hochevar collection, so here are some recently (which means I got them anytime within the past 7 months) acquired autograph cards.

First up is a 2008 SP Legendary Cuts Future Legends Signature card which is serial numbered 69/99. I really like this card because it is one of the few on-card autographs I have. Most of the others are sticker autos.

Next is a 2008 UD Premier Rookie Signature card serial numbered 206/299. This autograph is on a sticker (the outline of which you can see on the card). It's not the biggest problem in the world, but on-card autographs just look so much crisper and cleaner.

Next we have a 2009 Topps Career Best Autograph. This is one of the handful of autograph cards that I have which isn't serial numbered.

This 2008 SPx Rookie Signatures is another of the non-serial numbered autograph cards in my collection.

This may be one of my favorite autograph cards in my collection. This is a 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Stroke of Genius card. Here are some of the great aspects of this card:

On-card autograph
Eye-pleasing card design. I like the "Stroke of Genius" logo and font.
The picture is an "action" picture.
This card has great texture. It has a "canvas" feel to it, because the "Masterpiece" series of cards is supposed to remind the collector of a masterpiece painting.

All in all, a well designed and executed card.

The final card is a 2009 Triple Threads Emerald card, serial numbered 9/10. The Triple Thread series catches a lot of flack in the card collecting community, but I don't hate the design as much as other people. One of my favorite aspects of this particular card is the multi-colored jersey section. More often than not, the jerseys are all the same color. But not mine. Mine has a white jersey swatch, a red jersey swatch (although I'm at a loss as to where on a KC Royals jersey there is red material), and the "CK" section appears to be the jersey label. Pretty sweet, in my humble opinion.

Recently, my Hochevar collection hit the 150-card mark. Not too bad considering I've only been actively collecting his cards for the past seven or eight months.

Joey Pos

2010-11-18T22:12:00.000-06:00

Before I get to the reason for this post, I want to make a couple of admissions.

First, I am not a very good writer. (The fact that I've rewritten this post about a dozen times would be proof enough of this fact, at least in my mind.) It's not that I don't enjoy writing, I do. But when I sit down at my computer to compose a blog post, I get often get frustrated that the thoughts bouncing around in my skull do not end up coming out as I want them when I attempt to put them to paper (or in a blog post). And that bugs me and often keeps me from posting as often as I'd like to my blog.

Second, of the nearly 4000 songs in my iTunes library, I do not own one single Bruce Springsteen song. I love classic rock, but have never found Bruce's music to be enjoyable.

So when I read an essay such as this, by my favorite blogger, Joe Posnanski, I am both inspired and depressed. Reading this post makes me wish I had one-tenth the writing ability of Joe, but knowing I never will write this well is quite depressing. At the same time, I am inspired to keep trying to reach the bar that Joe has set so very high.

Joe is a guy who can take a topic with which I have no interest and keep me interested. I am jealous of his gift, yet am so very glad that he shares it with his readers. I have no idea how the guy can make me cry with a topic as simple as a Bruce Springsteen song, but I am so very thankful that he did.

(And I may have to give Bruce another chance and buy one of his cds.)
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SONG: "The Promise" by Bruce Springsteen

CARD: 2010 Allen and Ginter Mini Luke Hochevar Yellow Printing Plate, serial numbered 1/1

MOvember Update: Mustaches That Inspire Me

2010-11-15T21:43:00.002-06:00

Week Two of MOvember is in the books, and I'm pleased as punch with the results.

Team MOrthern Colorado has raised over $400 for prostate and testicular cancer research. We are almost half-way to our goal of $1000 for our team, which is good. Hopefully, as the mustaches are beginning to take shape, many people will become inspired to donate. If you would like to help our team reach our goal by making a donation, please go HERE. Every dollar counts and every dollar is important.

Relatively speaking, my MO is coming in quite nicely. When I first participated in MOvember four years ago, I didn't have this much growth for the entire month. In fact, back then, most people couldn't see the mustache until Thanksgiving. Not so this year. This year it has some nice color and texture. See for yourself.

Which brings me to this week's Update Topic: Mustaches That Inspire Me.

These are the men and mustaches that have inspired me to take up this quest to grow a soup strainer.

RUNNERS-UP:

Charlie Chaplin
Ron Burgundy
Freddie Mercury
Helen Thomas
Giraldo Rivera
Craig "The Walrus" Stadler
Mike Ditka
Borat
SNL's "Super Fans" (you know, "Da Bears!")
Graucho Marx
Tom Sellek
Rollie Fingers
Gene Shallot
Mike "Fluff" Cowan
Hulk Hogan
Alex Trebek

10) Cowboy, poet, and humorist Baxter Black

9) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band era Beatles

8) Consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author, libertarian columnist, and television news-magazine anchor John Stossel

7) Theoretical physicist, philosopher, and author Albert Einstein

6) Gunfighter, lawman, and gambler Wild Bill Hickok

5) Late 80s and early 90s baseball players.
(Picture borrowed from my favorite baseball card blog Night Owl's Cards).

4) Radio personality Bob Kevoian (Incidentally, Bob's mustache was born on June 18, 1969)

3) Detective Dan Stark from television's "The Good Guys"

2) From the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department, Ron Swanson

1) Postal worker, former volunteer fire department Chief, mechanic and handyman, woodworker and carpenter, youth basketball and baseball coach, church leader, hunter and fisherman, outdoorsman, golfer, photographer, and, most importantly, my Dad.

I hope to one day be able to grow half the mustaches that these men have grown.

Two videos and a card.

2010-11-13T16:12:00.000-06:00

My brain has been in a bit of a funk and I haven't been able to finish a written blog post for over a week. I have a half dozen unfinished rough drafts sitting on my blog-desktop that remain unposted because I can't seem to find the motivation or passion to finish them.

So, I thought I would get up a post that is less wordy and more picturey and soundy.

First, a cat video.

Second, a music video.

See more funny videos and Music at Todays Big Thing.

And, finally, a picture of a recent trading card purchase.

This card is a 2007 Bowman Sterling Duel Autograph of Luke Hochevar and David Price, serial numbered 83/275.

MOvember Monday Update: Week 1

2010-11-08T20:22:00.000-06:00

I've been growing my 'stache for a little over a week and I've got to say that I'm relatively pleased with the results thus far. I can remember the first year I participated in MOvember, back in 2007, and most people didn't know I was growing a mustache until the third week. Pretty lame.

But this year, I've had a few coworkers comment on my growth within the first week of growth, which I will consider a small victory.

Another victory is that the above picture was taken without the performance-enhancing techniques (i.e. mascara on the lip whiskers).

And, probably the biggest victory of all, I reached my personal fund-raising goal of $300 within the first week of MOvember. I have the most generous group of friends and family. I would like to thank my Wife, my Mom, my Mother-in-Law, my cousin Darcey, and my aunt Linda for their donations. You guys are the greatest.

If you would like to donate to my mustache (and to prostate and testicular cancer research), please go HERE. My team, MOrthern Colorado, has a goal to raise $1000, so while I've reached my personal goal, I'd still like to get my team to our goal.

Thank you for your continued support in this journey to raise awareness for men's health.

Using words to prey on people's ignorance is fun.

2010-11-01T22:00:00.002-05:00

I saw this video over at Althouse's blog.

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SONG: "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby. I didn't go out today, but we are now in November, which everyone knows is the start of the Christmas Season, so I'm assuming they have started playing Christmas music in stores to get shoppers in the holiday mood. I thought I'd get in on the fun.

EXCITING NEWS OF THE DAY: One word -- McRIB.

CARD: 2006 Just Minors Duel Signature Luke Hochevar/Dexter Fowler, serial numbered 2/2.

I was able to use some of the money from the sale of my Strasburg Printing Plate to fund the purchase of this card. I was super excited to find this card on eBay, since it has the autograph of the two players that I'm currently collecting. I was also glad that the seller accepted an offer that was 1/3 less than their listed asking price.

Gonna try to win me some cards

2010-10-30T00:23:00.000-05:00

I stumbled into this "contest" at one of the card collecting blogs I read. I love when bloggers offer up free cards as incentive to get more people reading their blog. In this case Georgia Mindset has offered a free hobby box for anyone who will follow their blog and will give a shout out about the contest.

Well, Georgia Mindset, your plan has worked perfectly. I am now following your blog and have added you to my daily-read list. Thanks for the contest and I hope to be the lucky winner.

And the nice thing is, any other bloggers who are interested can enter the contest as well. Just head over to the Georgia Mindset website for more details.

_________________________________________________________________

CARD OF THE DAY: 2010 Topps T206 "3-Card Mini".
I love the ToppsVault store on eBay. They put out unique (and often times, 1/1) trading card memorabilia on a daily basis and their starting bid prices are quite reasonable. I've picked up three unique Luke Hochevar cards for my collection from them. Two of them are labeled 1/1 and all of them have "blank backs". This particular card is of three T206 mini cards, but they haven't been cut apart. Also, this card has a "blank back" which makes it interesting and unique (at least to me).

1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner

2010-10-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I strictly collected basketball cards. Every once in a while I'd buy a pack or two of baseball or football cards, but my true passion was collecting basketball cards. And, more specifically, I collected the cards of current players.

This was for a few reasons. First, I lived 90+ minutes away from the nearest card shop, which meant that I had little to no access to previously released cards. Second, it was cheaper and more fun to try to pull my favorite player's card from a pack. Also, by constantly buying packs of cards, I had a nice stockpile of cards to use as trade-bait with my friends. Third, vintage cards were too expensive for a kid to try and collect. The best I could hope for was to find some old cards in my grandparent's basement, and that never happened, unfortunately. In all the years I collected as a kid, I cannot remember ever buying an individual card. I always felt that I could get more bang for my buck by playing the lottery of ripping packs of cards.

Yet, as a modern-day basketball card collecting kid, I still knew of the legend of the 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner baseball card. This card was the first "short-printed" card of importance. For one reason or another, very few Honus Wagner cards were printed for this series, with some estimating that as few as 200 cards were produced.

Fast forward 80 years to when I was a kid, and these rare cards of a famous and important baseball player were the most highly coveted cards in the industry. Whenever I was thumbing through a Beckett Magazine for updates on the value of my modern cards, I would always check out the vintage cards to see how valuable they were, and this card always took the cake.

Today the news spread like wild-fire throughout the card collecting world that another one of these cards had surfaced and was up for auction. Apparently a man had one of these cards in his safety deposit box since the 1930s and left it to his sister, a nun living in Virginia, after he died. Current bidding for the card is currently at $180,000, even though the card is in less than mint condition.

Sadly, I was born many years too late to have my card collection increase in value like past generations have enjoyed (damn "Junk Card" era). But it's cards like the 1909-11 Honus Wagner T206 that make this hobby so much fun.

And cards like the Honus Wagner are one of the main reasons why I love tracking down cards that are serial numbered 1/1. I love knowing that I am the only person in the entire universe with that particular card. If I can't own a piece of history by shelling out thousands of dollars for a vintage card, then I'll make my own history by owning a unique modern-day card (like the one below), which makes me very happy indeed.
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SONG: "Hometown Glory" by Adele

CARD: 2010 Topps T206 Bronze "Blank Back" Luke Hochevar, serial numbered 1/1

MOVEMBER: In the past two days I've received $150.00 in donations, which means that I'm halfway to meeting my personal goal of $300, and MOvember hasn't even started yet. I couldn't be happier. Thanks to my wife, my mom, and my cousin Darcey for their donations. You guys are the greatest!

MOvember 2010 Slogan Pitch

2010-10-27T21:53:00.002-05:00

It is almost November, which can only mean one thing: MOVEMBER!!! That's right. Everyone's favorite mustache-growing charity is about to kick off. For the uninitiated, here is a quick explanation of MOvember from the MOvember website:

The Mo, slang for moustache, and November come together each year for Movember.

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.

Yes, I will once again be growing a mustache for 30 days (although I usually start early, since my facial hair growing skills are less than stellar). You may ask yourself why I would put myself through such an ordeal? To raise money. "How will the money be used?" you ask. Great question.

The funds raised through Movember’s US campaign benefit the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) and LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The PCF uses the money raised by Movember to fund research that is accelerating the discovery of better treatments and ultimately finding a cure for prostate cancer. One such program is the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center’s research, which has recently made a significant breakthrough. They identified 24 different kinds of prostate cancer and how aggressive each is. This should enable scientists to soon be able to answer the agonizing question facing men with prostate cancer: does their cancer need immediate treatment, and if so what is the best treatment, or can it be left alone?

LIVESTRONG uses the money raised by Movember to fund important programs to support young adults and their families battling and surviving cancer. These programs include:

•     Fertile Hope, an initiative dedicated to providing reproductive information, support and hope to cancer patients and survivors whose medical treatments present the risk of infertility.

•      My Planet, an online community of peer support that allows young adults to find and communicate with other young adults whose lives have been affected by cancer.

•      Continuing Nursing Education program on Young Adult Cancer Survivorship. LIVESTRONG encourage nurses to know the warning signs of cancer, understand what types of cancer for which young adults may be at risk, and learn about cancer screening.

The success of Movember can be directly attributed to the more than 627,000 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas who have supported our cause since 2003. Movember is sincerely grateful for their efforts and appreciates all they do.

For those of you new to Movember, we challenge you to join us in changing the face of men's health.

This is my favorite charity to support. It's a serious issue being addressed in a fun and unique way. In addition to growing a really creepy and lame mustache, I thought I'd help the MOvember people out by coming up with some catchy slogans that they may or may not want to use in the future.

MOvember, because every man looks better wearing a lip sweater.

MOvember, because the 5K-fundraiser idea was already taken.

MOvember, because it's not like there is anything better to do in November.

MOvember, because no politician approved this mustache.

MOvember, invented by drunk Australians.

MOvember, because Justin Bieber can't.

MOvember, a trending topic on Twitter since 1987.

MOvember, the only holiday that Hallmark hasn't bastardized.

MOvember, because a month with a mustache is easier than being stuck in a Chilean mine with 32 other dudes.

MOvember, at least it's not "Merkin-vember".

MOvember, because a month with a mustache beats receiving text message pictures from Brett Favre.

MOvember, recommended by 1 out of 2 members of Hall and Oates.

MOvember, because your nose hairs need a friend.

MOvember, if it's good enough for Tom Sellak, it damn well had better be good enough for you.

Hopefully the fine folks running MOvember will take these into consideration.

If you or someone you know would like to join our team, "MOrthern Colorado," go here and sign up:
http://us.movember.com/register/121110

Last year Team MOrthern Colorado raised over $700. This year our goal is to raise over $1000.

If you or someone you know would care to donate to me and my Mo, go here:
http://us.movember.com/mospace/138927/

Last year I raised $266 for the cause. This year my personal goal is to raise at least $300.

Thank you in advance for your support, whether you choose to donate or grow a Mo. Every dollar counts and every dollar is important in the fight against prostate and testicular cancer.

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SONG: "Feeling Alright" by the Black Crowes

Honesty is the Best Policy

2010-10-25T17:51:00.001-05:00

Let the record show that I do not enjoy nightly walks with my wife and my dog. It's not the wife and dog part I do not like (indeed, I like them very much), it's the walking part. I am a 29 year-old man who does not enjoy walks. I know I had previously posted on this blog that I enjoy evening walks. That was not true then and it is not true now. I said those things in an attempt to make myself look good. Thank you for your time and I will work harder to be at all times honest within my blog posts in the future.

Sincerely,

The Writing Staff of 87 Murphy Squirrels

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SONG: "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band

CARDS: my recently completed 2010 Topps Chrome Luke Hochevar "rainbow."

Treasures from my Grandma Eva

2010-10-24T23:14:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, my Grandma Eva began asking what items from her house we would like to have once she had died. While none of us were looking forward to that inevitable day, I believe it gave her comfort to know that some of her worldly possessions would be in the homes of her family.

The only item I asked my Grandma to give me was her dinning room table. Of all of her possessions, this one carried with it some of my fondest memories. In my mind, if I could no longer enjoy a home-cooked meal from my Grandma (man, that's a tough set of words to type out), then I want to forever be able to sit at the table where those meals were presented.

After Grandma passed away back in July, my wife and I stayed in Grandma's house the nights before and after her memorial service. It was a bittersweet night. It was tough because she was no longer there with us, but it was a very important way for me to cope with her death.

After Grandma's memorial service, my parents mentioned that my wife and I should take a few items home with us if we wanted. That night before bed we took a moment to look through the house and picked out a few items to take home with us.

First we selected a set of blue canisters. For as long as I can remember these four canisters sat on Grandma's kitchen counter holding her flour, sugar, and other cooking items.

We would later find out that these canisters were made by L.E. Smith and are quite the collector's items. Since we found these canisters, the wife and I have tracked down a few other L.E. Smith items, including these:

Another item I picked out that day was the candy jar that always sat upon Grandma and Grandpa's refrigerator. I always loved sticking my little arm deep inside this jar and pulling out a treat.

As you can see from this picture, this jar will continue to house my favorite candy treats.

When I went back to Colorado for Grandma's memorial service after her remains were cremated, the family spent a few hours at her house digging deep into her closets and cabinets and I discovered some other gems that I brought back to Nebraska to enjoy.

I added a few more glass items to our collection.

I also laid claim to this glass container that Grandma always kept vinegar in for use at the dinner table. Whenever Grandma made "California Blend" for dinner, I would douse the veggies in vinegar using this jar.

While digging through Grandma's bedroom closet, I stumbled upon this picture of her and her parents and siblings. I love this picture and will display it proudly. Grandma Eva is in the center of the back row.

I also found this electric football game in her basement. I found out that my father and his brothers would spend hours playing this game when they were kids. My Dad said that the only thing missing from the game was the piece of metal that was used to kick field goals. It will look so cool in my "man cave".

Finally, my sister and I found this notebook in Grandma's kitchen. Inside it were pages and pages of hand-written recipes. What an amazing piece of family history. I can't wait to recreate some of the foods for which Grandma was so famous.

Grandma Eva was not a wealthy person, but being able to have some of her possessions in my house is more than priceless. These items would be worthless to anyone who was unfortunate enough to have known her, but to me they contain a lifetime's worth of memories.

For My Sister

2010-10-23T00:34:00.002-05:00

These are songs you might like.

MODERN

Edwin McCain, "Walk with You"

Stephen Curtis Chapman, "Cinderella"

Carrie Underwood, "Mama's Song" (kinda works)

Darius Rucker, "It Won't Be Like This For Long"

Tim McGraw, "My Little Girl"

Sheryl Crow, "Sweet Child O' Mine"

Loudon Wainwright, "Daughter"

Rodney Atkins, "Cleaning This Gun" (for a good laugh)

Ingrid Michaelson, "Maybe"

CLASSIC

Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely"

Bob Carlisle, "Butterfly Kisses"

Joe Cocker, "You Are So Beautiful"

To be or not to be

2010-10-19T22:55:00.001-05:00

This week "My Wife Asks..."

Based on your love of theater in high school, did you ever consider doing something professionally in that area?

When I was in elementary school, I was certain I was going to be in the NBA. I spent hours at the basketball court across from my house practicing to become the next John Stockton. My friends and I would spend hours having dunk contests on their back yard basketball hoops. Our junior high basketball team was pretty good.

Then came my freshman year of high school and everyone around me got taller while I remained short and skinny. Everyone became faster, stronger, and better than me in sports. This was a very unwelcome wake-up call to me that my dream of playing professional basketball would remain just that, a dream.

During my sophomore year, on a whim, I auditioned for the school drama club Fall production of M*A*S*H. I had no illusions of getting a role. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I hoped that I was rooting that I wouldn't get a role. I am pretty sure that I only auditioned because my cousin Brian was trying out and I was with him at the time. Yet, for some reason, the drama teacher cast me in one of the lead roles as Hawkeye Pierce.

And somehow I was good. And I loved being on stage. I loved getting laughs. I loved the costumes and learning lines and rehearsing with my friends. I especially loved being able to escape and hide behind all of the characters I played on stage.

As high school progressed and I still wasn't growing as quickly as my peers, I found that in drama, my size and speed and strength were irrelevant. I found that I had a previously undiscovered knack for theater. And my insecurities were dulled with this success. On stage, my wise-ass, theatrical, do-anything-for-a-laugh personality was not only encouraged, but I received praise and accolades. It was a win-win situation.

The summer before my senior year of high school, my friend Brad and I put together an improv/variety show with members of our community. As much as I loved scripted drama and comedy, I really found my wheel-house with improvisational comedy. I loved thinking quickly on my feet. I loved being able to showcase my wit and sense of humor without being restricted by a script (even though I would often go off script during drama productions just for fun and to see how my co-actors would react). We continued our improv acting in college when we put together a show with some fellow thespians. It was great fun and my love for getting a laugh never waned, even though it would end up being my last stage performance.

Yet in all of those years, it never occurred to me that I might be a wise decision to try to earn a living in theater after college. As with sports, acting was always just something fun for me to do. So while I still enjoy comedy, going to the theater for the occasional performance, and might dabble in community theater sometime down the road, I am certain that I'll never have the drive or ambition necessary to do it professionally.

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SONG: "This" by Darius Rucker from his newly release album, Charleston, SC 1966. A great song from a great sophomore solo country album from Darius.

CARD: Luke Hochevar 2008 Bowman Chrome Magenta Printing Plate, serial numbered 1/1.

Card Chase, the Dexter Fowler Edition

2010-10-18T23:10:00.000-05:00

Last month, while The Wife and I were busting boxes of 2010 Topps T206 baseball cards, she noticed that one card was really cool. It was a Dexter Fowler Piedmont Mini card. Here is the card:

One aspect of the T206 series of cards is that they put the player's last name followed by the location that the player plays. In this case, it was "Fowler, Colorado" which, oddly enough, is the name of my hometown. At that moment, I knew I must start collecting Dexter Fowler baseball cards.

I liked the idea because Dexter is a relatively young player (which means he doesn't have a ton of cards already out, which means it should be easier to get caught up), he's not a big name player (which means his cards aren't out of my price range), and he plays for the team I rooted for as a kid, the Colorado Rockies.

I looked through some of my older cards and found that I already had one of his cards, a 2009 Topps T206 Piedmont mini.

I then found a handful of his cards on eBay, which I quickly bought using some of the money I made with the sale of my Stephen Strasburg printing plate card.

While browsing through eBay, I noticed that Dexter is one of the players who have Autographed Patch Letters in production, which I've always wanted to collect, but have never had a reason to do so. So far, I have three of the letters of his last name. I can't wait to have his whole name. It will look great on my card collection wall.

I'm very glad to have a new player to collect, thanks to my wife's eagle eyes.

What I Like and Dislike

2010-10-11T19:28:00.000-05:00

Things I really dislike a lot at this moment:

Public Service Announcement commercials;
Jillian Michaels;
press conferences;
flavored iced tea;
sweet tea;
Allison Krauss;
the phrase "on a scale of 1 to 10";
my alarm clock;
national holidays that fall on a Monday;
carrier pigeons;
the word "whom";
GoDaddy.com commercials (especially ones that star Danika Patrick);
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (especially Ty Pennington);
picking up Brodie's boom-booms;
one-word text messages;
ball-point pens;
Yoko Ono;
people who don't hate cancer enough;
exercising;
60 Minutes;
diet soda;
every other person in the grocery store;
GLEE;
humidity;
the "Green" movement;
Sean Hannity;
Keith Olberman;
facebook memes;
John Lennon's song "Imagine".

Things I really like a lot at this moment:

Chick McGee;
Dirty jokes;
Calvin and Hobbes comics;
Gold Bond Medicated Powder;
Movember;
Justin Timberlake on SNL;
buying polo shirts at thrift stores;
Chris Turkelton and Johnny Dorian;
Brodie eating watermelon;
iced tea;
home-made fruit pies;
pulled pork;
my snowblower;
eBay;
free golf;
Stana Katic;
shredding junk mail;
Modern Family;
Rob Huebel on Twitter;
Charlie Day;
comedy club names;
podcasts on my iPod;
Amazon.com's MP3 Daily Deal;
Tootsie Rolls;
when you go to a Hall and Oates Tribute Band concert and it turns out to actually be Hall and Oates;
President Obama hasn't quit smoking;
YouTube videos of puppies;
1980s Bobcat Goldthwait;
KC Chiefs kicker Ryan Succop;
former NBA player Mitch Kupchak;
Dr. Pepper;
Yakity Sax;
the wagon my wife's draggin';
UFC;
poker;
"Love the Way You Lie" by Eminem w/ Rhianna;
Phil Dunphy quotes.

Gay Marriage and Me

2010-10-06T23:19:00.001-05:00

This week "My Wife Asks..."

It seems to me your views about gay marriage may be changing. Is that true? If so, what’s up with that?

Hmmmm, how to tackle this one?

Let me first tell you where I sit, before I tell you where I stand. I am a small "L" libertarian, which means that I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal (the former more so than the latter). My first principle is to support and promote fiscal responsibility in government: balanced budgets, low deficits, low tax rates, low spending, etc. Notice I didn't say "no" deficits, tax rates, spending, etc. I said "low" because I believe in small/limited government (I'm not an anarchist), and even a small/limited government needs money.

My second principle is to support and promote independence, liberty, and freedom, both in society and economically. I believe that I know how best to live my life and spend my money. I am a Federalist, which means that I believe that our Founders intentionally created a government where power is SHARED between national and state governments. I believe that the federal government has enumerated powers expressly laid out in the Constitution (and that they long ago overstepped on those powers). I believe that our Constitution was created to limit government, not as a tool to limit it's citizenry. As Edmund Opitz once said, "No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words “no” and “not” employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."

Finally, I wish that the Founders would have put the 10th Amendment first (Pop Quiz: Without looking online, say aloud the 10th Amendment). If you don't remember, the 10th Amendment states

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

With all that said, I have come to the belief that there are many, many, MANY issues that are better left in the hands of state governments to handle, and gay marriage should be one of those issues.

In my world view, marriage would be seen by the federal government as a contract between two consenting adults. In the government's eyes, all marriages would be civil unions.

I would first eliminate the federal Defense of Marriage Act, as I believe it is an example of the federal government meddling in an issue that is not theirs to decide.

This would then leave it up to each individual state government and their citizenry to define which consenting adults could enter into the marriage contract. States would decide how old both parties would need to be. Some states would allow two 16 year olds to marry. Others would set the age higher. But it would be up to each state to decide.

In the same way, some (and, I would hope, eventually all) states would recognize all marriages, regardless of the gender of the parties involved (and, hopefully, they would do so legislatively, as Vermont and New Hampshire have done, and not rely upon judicial fiat to decide the issue in their state). Some states might never recognize same-sex marriage. My remedy to those gay couples who live in such a state would be for them to convince their fellow citizens to change their mind or, as a last resort, move to a state that does recognize same-sex marriages. (Similar to how some people leave a state that has too high of a tax rate and move to a state that has a lower tax rate.)

Also, I would like the federal government to switch from an income tax to a consumption tax as a way to eliminate the need for the federal government to get involved in the matter. This would eliminate tax breaks and incentives for married couples, thereby eliminating the current bias in favor of hetero marriages.

Is my solution perfect? No. Are there flaws within my proposed solution? Yes there are (probably more then I can currently see). But my solution would be wholly consistent with my libertarian and Federalist principles.

Thoughts, comments, and critiques are welcome in the comment section below. And feel free to leave your comments anonymously if you would like.

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ALBUM: Boston by Boston -- with such hits as "More Than a Feeling," "Long Time," "Rock and Roll Band," "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," and "Peace of Mind," it's no wonder that this is the second-best selling debut album of all time.

NETFLIX: The Ultimate Fighter: Season 11 -- I just finished the first disc of this season, and it was fantastic. Thanks, in large part, to UFC President Dana White, this series gets better and better with each season.

BOOK: "Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle with Tiger Woods at the US Open" by John Feinstein and Rocco Mediate -- I recently purchased this book on eBay. I am excited to read the story from Rocco's perspective and compare that to my memories from watching the event on television.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!: With regard to the television show "Castle," I've discovered that a vast majority of the time, the murderer is the character (who isn't one a regular on the show) who speaks first. Feel free to try out my theory the next time you watch an episode.

Gibson.com's Top 50 Guitar Solos

2010-10-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

I heard about this list on the Bob and Tom Show last week. I'm not too sure I agree with most of the list.

As best as I can tell, the Gibson.com Top 50 Guitar Solos list was put together by "musicians Bart Walsh (David Lee Roth) and Jeff Cease (Black Crowes), and Gibson.com’s entire editing and writing staff."

Here is their list.

1. “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
2. “Eruption,” Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen)
3. “All Along the Watchtower,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience
4. “Hotel California,” Eagles (Don Felder, Joe Walsh)
5. “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd (David Gilmour)
6. “Free Bird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd (Gary Rossington, Allen Collins)
7. “Layla,” Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton, Duane Allman)
8. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” The Beatles (Eric Clapton)
9. “Johnny B. Goode,” Chuck Berry
10. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Queen (Brian May)
11. “Crazy Train,” Ozzy Osbourne (Randy Rhoads)
12. “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” Jeff Beck
13. “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses (Slash)
14. “Hot for Teacher,” Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen)
15. “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
16. “November Rain,” Guns N’ Roses (Slash)
17. “Mr Crowley,” Ozzy Osbourne (Randy Rhoads)
18. “Whole Lotta Rosie,” AC/DC (Angus Young)
19. “Like a Hurricane,” Neil Young and Crazy Horse
20. “Sultans of Swing,” Dire Straits (Mark Knopfler)
21. “Texas Flood,” Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
22. “One,” Metallica (Kirk Hammett)
23. “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young and Crazy Horse
24. “Rock Around the Clock,” Bill Haley and His Comets (Danny Cedrone)
25. “Sweet Jane” (live), Lou Reed (Steve Hunter, Dick Wagner)
26. “Purple Rain,” Prince and the Revolution (Prince)
27. “Heartbreaker,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
28. “Jessica,” Allman Brothers Band (Dickey Betts)
29. “Machine Gun,” Jimi Hendrix
30. “Crossroads,” Cream (Eric Clapton)
31. “Time,” Pink Floyd (David Gilmour)
32. “Are You Experienced,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience
33. “Race with the Devil,” Gene Vincent (Cliff Gallup)
34. “Don’t Believe a Word,” Thin Lizzy (Brian Robertson)
35. “Purple Haze,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience
36. “Besame Mucho,” Wes Montgomery
37. “Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones (Keith Richards)
38. “Blue Sky,” Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman, Dickey Betts)
39. “My Sharona,” The Knack (Berton Averre)
40. “Marquee Moon,” Television (Tom Verlaine)
41. “Hitch a Ride,” Boston (Tom Scholz)
42. “The End,” The Beatles (Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon)
43. “Whole Lotta Love,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
44. “Train Kept A Rollin’” (live), Aerosmith (Joe Perry)
45. “Highway Star,” Deep Purple (Ritchie Blackmore)
46. “Dirt,” The Stooges (Ron Asheton)
47. “Off the Handle,” Rory Gallagher
48. “The Great Curve,” Talking Heads (Adrian Belew)
49. “The Messiah Will Come Again,” Roy Buchanan
50. “Beat It,” Michael Jackson (Eddie Van Halen)

They also had their readers create a Top 25 list. Here are their selections.

1. “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
2. “Free Bird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd (Allen Collins, Gary Rossington)
3. “Blue Sky,” Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman, Dickey Betts)
4. “Layla,” Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton, Duane Allman)
5. “Eruption,” Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen)
6. “Whole Lotta Rosie,” AC/DC (Angus Young)
7. “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman, Dickey Betts)
8. “20th Century Boy,” T. Rex (Marc Bolan)
9. “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses (Slash)
10. “Rude Mood,” Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
11. “Hotel California,” Eagles (Don Felder, Joe Walsh)
12. “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd (David Gilmour)
13. “November Rain,” Guns N’ Roses (Slash)
14. “Back in Black,” AC/DC (Angus Young)
15. “Whipping Post,” Allman Brothers Band (Dickey Betts, Duane Allman)
16. “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
17. “Machine Gun,” Jimi Hendrix
18. “Crossroads,” Cream (Eric Clapton)
19. “Let There Be Rock,” AC/DC (Angus Young)
20. “Statesboro Blues,” The Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman, Dickey Betts)
21. “Keep Yourself Alive,” Queen (Brian May)
22. “25 or 6 to 4,” Chicago (Terry Kath)
23. “All Along the Watchtower,” The Jimi Hendrix Experience
24. “Heartbreaker,” Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)
25. “Landslide,” Fleetwood Mac (Lindsey Buckingham) and “Dreams,” Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman) (tie)

I liked some of choices on both lists, but there were also some they left off. Here is my list of the Top 25 Guitar Solos.

1. "Free Bird," Lynyrd Skynyrd (Allen Collins, Gary Rossington)

2. "Eruption," Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen)

3. "Have A Drink On Me," AC/DC (Angus Young)

4. "Hotel California," The Eagles (Don Felder, Joe Walsh)

5. "Wish You Were Here," Pink Floyd (David Gilmore)

6. "Stairway to Heaven," Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page)

7. "Bridge to Better Days," Joe Bonamassa

8. "Sweet Child O' Mine," Guns N' Roses (Slash)

9. "La Grange," ZZ Top (Billy Gibbons)

10. "Jessica," The Allman Brothers Band (Dickey Betts)

11. "Soap on a Rope," Chickenfoot (Joe Satriani)

12. "All Along the Watchtower," The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix)

13. "Long Time," Boston (Tom Scholz)

14. "Won't Get Fooled Again," The Who (Pete Townshend)

15. "Who Did You Think I Was" John Mayer Trio (John Mayer)

16. "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" Creedence Clearwater Revival (John Fogerty)

17. "You Really Got Me," The Kinks (Dave Davies)

18. "Purple Haze," The Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix)

19. "Black Magic Woman," Santana (Carlos Santana)

20. "Right Now," Van Halen (Eddie Van Halen)

21. "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo," Rick Derringer

22. "Thunderstruck," AC/DC (Angus Young)

23. "Crush," Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds

24. "Rocky Mountain Way," Joe Walsh

25. "The Lumberjack," Jackyl (Jesse James Dupree)

Day in the Life

2010-09-28T22:37:00.002-05:00

This week "My Wife Asks"...

What does a day in the life of Eric look like?

6:45am -- My first alarm goes off.

6:47 - 6:49 -- I finally awaken enough to get up and hit the snooze button. (Which means that the alarm has been repeatedly beeping for a solid 3+ minutes, which gives my wife an interesting soundtrack while she is getting ready for the day in her bathroom. If she ever gets around to murdering me, this will be one of the top reasons for doing so.)

6:50 - 7:10 -- repeatedly hit the snooze button, with the hope that the Rapture will occur during this time so I can skip work.

7:10 -- drag my lazy butt to the shower. During the shower, it is my hope that the Rapture will occur so that I can skip work.

7:20 - 7:40 -- eat breakfast, let the dog outside to do his business, stop the dog from eating students from the nearby high school, check my email/eBay/Facebook/Twitter, sync my iPod, all the while hoping for the Rapture.

7:40 -- fight rush hour traffic to work, flipping between AM radio stations hoping that one will announce the impending Rapture.

7:59 -- arrive at work. Resign myself to the fact that another Rapture-free day is upon me.

8:00 -- arrive at my desk. Spend the next five minutes shuffling papers, checking that my stapler is full, emptying my two-hole punch, etc.

8:05 - 10:59 -- wander around the office asking coworkers for work, especially work that is VERY time consuming and menial. Such work includes breaking down old files, shredding old paperwork, stuffing envelopes, making copies, putting together new file folders, and preparing mortgage files to be sent out via UPS. Occasionally I'll be sent downstairs to the bank to get cashier's checks and to pick up the mail. During this time I listen to the previous day's Dan Patrick Show podcast.

11:00 - 12:00 -- drive home for lunch. Let out the dog to do his business. Yell at him to stop sniffing the grass and to come inside. Listen to the Jim Rome Show. Eat lunch, check my email/eBay/Facebook/Twitter/blogs, sync my iPod, get the recently delivered mail, open any recently delivered packages containing baseball cards, log said cards into my Excel spreadsheet, talk to my friend Burt Near Denver about the Jim Rome Show via Twitter, grab a couple of sodas, and drive back to work.

12:00 - 5:00 -- repeat the morning routine, but this time I listen to today's podcast of the Bob and Tom Show and the previous day's Mike Rosen Show podcast.

5:00 -- fight rush hour traffic home.

5:15 -9:00ish -- make and eat dinner with the wife. Watch any newly arrived Netflix. Take an evening walk with the wife and the dog. Watch more Netflix and/or television.

9:00ish -- tuck the wife in as she goes to bed.

9:00ish - 11:00ish -- surf the web, monitor my email/eBay/Facebook/Twitter. Also, during this time I'll go outside and check for a blue moon. If I see one, I'll head back inside and write up a blog post.

11:00ish -- crash into the bedroom. Startle my wife out of her deep slumber. Assure her I'm not a killer. Let her curse at me for a minute or two. Fall asleep immediately.

Thus completes a day in my life.

Favorite Nonfiction Books

2010-09-21T22:56:00.000-05:00

At the Category Thirteen blog, my friend Joe listed the best nonfiction books he'd personally read. I love lists, and his list had no mention of Tom Wolfe, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents on the subject.

13) Give Me a Break -- John Stossel -- this book was my written introduction to "classical liberalism".

12) The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections -- Tom Brokaw -- really powerful collection of letters from WWII

11) The Life of Reilly -- Rick Reilly -- a great collection of Reilly's Sports Illustrated articles.

10) Tales from Q School -- John Feinstein -- Making this list reminded me of how many golf books by Feinstein I still need to read. The man is a machine, churning out at least one riveting sports book each year.

9) Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court -- John Wooden and Steve Jamison -- this book taught me more about being an effective teacher then I learned in five years of college.

8) Freakonomics -- Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt -- interesting book that challenges conventional wisdom.

7) Blind Side -- Michael Lewis -- much better than the movie (but aren't they all?).

6) Everything is Wrong with Me: A Memoir of an American Childhood Gone, Well, Wrong -- Jason Mulgrew -- funny memoir written by one of my favorite bloggers.

5) Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test -- Tom Wolfe -- the second best book I was assigned to read in college.

4) The New New Thing -- Michael Lewis -- the best book I was assigned to read in college

3) Who's Your Caddy -- Rick Reilly -- the funniest sports book I've ever read.

2) Friday Night Lights -- H.G. Bissinger -- hands down, the best sports book I've ever read.

1) Mere Christianity -- C.S. Lewis -- my favorite book by my favorite author.

While surfing through Amazon as I was trying to jog my memory as to which books I've actually read in the past decade, I stumbled into tons of books that I really need to read. I think I'll order a few with the little bit of money I have leftover in my Amazon account from my birthday. I'll probably grab one of John Feinstein's many golf books that I've yet to read and I'll pick one from Joe's list. If I do so, I'll surpass my personal goal to read five books this year.

Seasoning

2010-09-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

This week "My Wife Asks..."

Summer, Fall, Spring, or Winter: Pick one season and tell us why.

For the first half of my life, the answer would have been Winter, hands down. During that time, the main draw of winter was the snow. I loved skiing. I loved sledding behind my dad's motorcycle. I loved building snowmen. I loved building snow forts and throwing snowballs. I loved eating handfuls of snow and writing my name in the snow. I loved staying home from school because of a snow day. I loved pulling the emergency brake and cranking the steering wheel for a perfectly executed "Batman" in a snow/ice covered parking lot. Heck, I even loved shoveling sidewalks, since back then, a cleared sidewalk equaled money in my pocket.

For the first half of my life, I experienced winter only as the holiday season. Winter meant Christmas presents, Christmas decorations, Christmas lights and trees, Christmas dinner, and Christmas vacation. What's not to love?

But over the past dozen plus years, I have experienced winter as the season of work. I no longer get the luxury of experiencing everything great winter has to offer, I actually have to work for winter. Winter now means scraping ice off a windshield, shoveling a sidewalk and a driveway, and applying proper brake pressure when trying to slow down my passenger vehicle so as to not lose traction with the road. Winter now costs money: snow tires, coats and gloves, shovels and snowblowers and sledding equipment all cost money from my pocket.

Winter now takes planning. What's the best route home so I don't get my car stuck in the snow? What presents am I going to buy? At what speed can I ski that will be slow enough to prevent personal injury, yet fast enough to not be considered an old man by my sister? Do we get a real or fake Christmas tree? Or do we forgo a tree all together since it takes so much care and maintenance to ensure the tree doesn't create a fire hazard? Do we save up all of our vacation time for a long Christmas break or split it up throughout the year?

Finally, as a younger man, I would relish the cold of winter. Not any longer. You may remember a winter poem I published on this very blog a few months ago. It went something like this:

WINTER

By Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

Shit it's Cold.

The End

Truer words were never spoken. So, all of these factors have contributed to the waning of my love of winter. But, I believe I would still love winter, despite these new nuisances, were it not for one word: GOLF.

Winter makes it really difficult to golf, especially in Omaha. So, I would say that at this time, I prefer spring, summer, and fall, or as I like to call them -- Golf Season.

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SONG: "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" by Meat Loaf.

Today, as I was eating a lunch of leftover spaghetti and meatballs, I started pondering which I preferred more: meatballs or meatloaf. Which made me think of the singer Meat Loaf. To which I wrote the following Tweet:

Can't decide which I like more: meatloaf (the food, not the singer) or meatballs (the food, not the movie).

Which I then modified a bit to come up with the following Facebook status:

Can't decide which I like more: meatloaf (the food, not the singer famous for the "Bat out of Hell" trilogy of albums) or meatballs (the food, not the 1979 movie directed by Ivan Reitman and staring Bill Murray). Discuss.

Which then reminded me that I should see if any Meat Loaf songs are worth buying since my sister sent me an Amazon gift card that I wanted to use to buy new music. The "I Will Do Anything For Love" song was my favorite, especially for the overriding riddle of what in fact it was that Mr. Loaf wouldn't do for love.

2010 Topps T206 Stephen Strasburg Mini 1:1 Printing Plate

2010-09-15T22:45:00.001-05:00

One of the best part about being a kid who collects trading cards was cracking open a new pack of cards. It was basically the lottery for children. You throw down a couple of bucks (back then) and roll the dice. Occasionally, the pack would yield a bunch of junk cards. But more often then not, the pack would give you enough cards off a want/need list to keep you coming back for more. There is nothing better then ripping open a pack of cards and finding your favorite player or a rare insert card. Today, my wife and I recreated a little piece of my youth by ripping open a box of 2010 Topps T206 cards.

When I started noticing a bevy of T206 Hochevar cards popping up on eBay, I decided to forgo the easy route of buying up the cards that other people had pulled and instead try and pull my own Hochevar cards. And I was very pleased with the results.

The box contained 20 packs of cards, with 9 cards in each pack. My wife and I each opened 10 packs. At about pack 5 for me, I pulled the one of the cards I was hoping to get, my first Hochevar pull. While it was a base card, after finding it, I considered the box a success.

Each box also contains one autograph card and one relic card. As luck would have it, my wife ended up finding both of these cards. It should be noted that she found both of these cards before I pulled the Hochevar card. I'm not going to lie, I was a little bummed that she was the one to find the "hits" of the box. She ended up finding a Grady Sizemore Game Used Bat relic card and a Gregor Blanco Autograph card. Both cards are quite nice, but neither would be considered huge "hits" within the baseball card community.

We ended up getting about 120 base cards, which have whetted my appetite to attempt completing the base card set. Along with the Hochevar base card, my wife ended up finding a Stephen Strasburg rookie card.

We also got 6 "short print" cards, which are different from the regular base cards because the players are wearing baseball caps (the base cards are unique due to all the players being hat-less) and the backs only contain the player's name (where as the base cards have a little blurb about the player). Here are the short print cards.

The box also contained 20 or so mini cards. The fun thing about the minis in this set is that there are five different styles of backs. I ended up getting at least one of each back style. Here are the five different styles.

The "Cycle" card is serial numbered 21/99. Too bad it wasn't of a more well known player.

At around our 18th pack, and the ninth pack that I opened, I was under the impression that we'd found all of the "hits" that the box would contain, with which I was content, and I was just hoping to score a Hochevar mini card with the remaining packs. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this gem.

As the back of the card explains, it's a Stephen Strasburg 1:1 Magenta Mini Printing Plate card. When I saw this card, I was overcome with joy. This has to be one of the most coveted cards that can be pulled from a pack. One might think that a Strasburg autograph card would be a bigger pull, but they didn't put any of his autographs in the packs. Instead, a person would find a "redemption" card in the pack, which you then have to mail off to be redeemed by the company, and then they mail you the actual card. So, in actuality, I ended up pulling one of the rarest cards of one of the biggest names in baseball card collecting today.

I hate to imagine how much this card would fetch on eBay if Stephen was not hurt at this time (and his future in question). With that said, I'm still going to try to flip it for as much money as I can get to help fund my future card purchases.

As much as it probably scares my wife, because of this box of cards, I may have been bitten by the pack-ripping bug. What a fun box to open and what a nice set of cards Topps has put out. If my Strasburg card brings enough money, I'll definitely be opening another box of the T206 cards and I'll be chasing more Hochevar cards for my personal collection.

Trading Cards

2010-09-13T19:12:00.003-05:00

One of the best parts about collecting cards when I was a kid was trading cards with two of my friends who also collected. We were constantly sorting through each others collections, finding cards we needed and wanted, and offering up trades. There were offers, counter offers, and counter-counter offers. It was a great way to spend countless hours in our boring little town.

Now that I've decided to reenter the card collecting game, I find it's the experience I miss the most. There is a comradery that develops between card collectors who trade with each other. By getting most of my cards on eBay and Check Out My Cards.com, I find myself alone on a card collecting island.

So imagine my excitement when I discovered that Night Owl of the blog "Night Owl's Cards" was trying to make a through-the-mail trade with a person from each of the 50 states in the Union, and Nebraska was one of the states with which he'd yet to trade.

Since I've been out of the card collecting game for so long, I don't really have many cards that anyone would want. But I do have a giant box of old cardboard from the 1980s and 90s. I spent an evening sorting through my piles of cards looking for Dodgers. I then compared the Dodgers cards that I had with Night Owl's check list of cards he wants and needs (I should totally get one of those), and found five cards that Night Owl did not already have. Score!

To make it a trade, both parties need to send cards and since I only collect Hochevar cards at this moment, I asked that Night Owl send any Hochevar cards he had my way. Here is what he sent:

The top four cards were card I already had in my collection (but I am also working on a set of duplicate cards that I hope to one day get personally autographed). Of the one hundred plus Hochevar cards that I have, the bottom card ended up being a base card that was missing from my collection.

While neither of us hit the motherload with this trade, both of us filled a gap in our collections. More than anything, I wanted to do this trade not for the cards (although I'm very glad to have a new card and am even happier to have helped Night Owl out with his personal collection), but as a way to network within the card collecting community. I wanted to make connections with people who have the same hobby as me, and I've taken an important step in that direction. I was also hoping to get a plug for my blog on his blog which has a nice following of trading card enthusiasts, and did I ever get a plug. Night Owl chose his second year anniversary post to write about our trade. I'm sure his post will get a few newbies to my blog, which is awesome.

This trade with Night Owl has inspired me to find more people with which to trade and create a list of the cards that I want/need in my collection. So, if there are any baseball card enthusiasts out there who would like to get rid of some Luke Hochevar baseball cards (or John Stockton basketball cards for that matter) let me know with an email to brodie.dog87@gmail.com.

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SONG: "Settle for a Slowdown" by Dierks Bentley. My aunt-in-law sent me an Amazon.com gift card for my birthday. If there is anything that I enjoy more than searching for cards on eBay, it's searching for music on Amazon. My computer runs at about half speed because it is bogged down with more music then I'll ever need. One of the albums I bought was Dierks Bentley's Greatest Hits. I've been eyeballing this collection of song for a long while, and, as luck would have it, Amazon had it on sale for $5.

LETDOWN: A day after I finally tracked down a box of 2010 Topps T-206 baseball cards on eBay, I got an email from the eBay authorities stating "to help protect you, we removed this listing so we can confirm that the seller is not putting you or other eBay members at risk." They also told me that I needed to open a case against the seller so that I could get my money back. I will have to wait 7 days for the case to be closed and I can get my money back. Bummer.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: Playing in a four-man scramble with my former coworker Brandon this Saturday. We'll be playing at one of Nebraska's finest courses, Quarry Oaks. Apparently the other two guys are good golfers, so hopefully we'll win our flight.

Happy 29th Birthday

2010-09-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

Today is Eric’s birthday. He is turning 29. In the grand spirit of celebration, please enjoy a few memories of Eric’s 28^th year.

Eric turned 28 in September of last year. That same month, his cousins traveled from Denver to visit him.

In October, Eric’s dad and sister came to visit.

In November, Eric competed in his Movember challenge.

In December, we went home to Fowler for Christmas.

Eric’s mom always makes Christmas such a blast.

We have been in Omaha since 2008 while I attend law school. Because we were in Omaha in January, that meant we lived our lives under three feet of snow. Eric was in charge of snow removal, and after more snow shoveling than one man could stomach, he bought himself a snow blower. I believe he would say this was his best purchase in 2010.

While all that snow stuck around, Eric decided to take advantage of it.

My family came to visit us in April. We all drove to Sioux City, IA to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday. Eric looked especially fun in the sombrero.

I am not exactly sure what month Eric began collecting baseball cards, but I know it happened. Eric truly loves the hunt and getting a great deal.

Eric loves our sweet dog Brodie and likes to entertain him as much as possible.

We decided to spend our last summer in Omaha exploring everything the town had to offer.

We spent time in Fowler for Eric's 10 year high school reunion.

We also went to Mt. Rushmore.

Happy Birthday, Pal. I hope your 29th year is as full as your 28th.

9/10

2010-09-11T00:42:00.000-05:00

In 2001, I was a sophomore in junior college. One of the best parts about my two years in junior college was that two of my best friends were my roommates -- Brad my freshman year and Brian my sophomore year. One of the perks about having a life-long friend as your college roommate is that he is morally obligated to get you a birthday present. While I have no recollection of what Brad got me as a gift in 2000 (probably booze), I will never forget the gift I received from Brian.

Brian's grandmother (my great-aunt) and grandfather were Denver Bronco season ticket holders for as long as I can remember. I remember, when I was in elementary school, going with my dad, Brian, and Brian's dad to a Bronco game at Mile High Stadium. I have no memory of the game itself, just that the four of us went. Traveling to the big city of Denver was a rare occasion in my youth, and attending a Bronco game was even rarer.

So, imagine my surprise when Brian told me that he, along with my great aunt and another cousin, would be taking me to the Denver Broncos' season opener for that season. Not only that, but this game would be the first game played in the new Mile High at Invesco Field. And, to top it all off, this game would be the first Monday Night game of the NFL season. What a great present.

My memories of that night include:

The atmosphere at the stadium was electric. People were excited to get inside and see the new field. At the gate, we received a commemorative ticket lanyard and bought a commemorative Game Day program (both of which I still have, boxed up somewhere in my garage). On the way through the stadium corridor we saw one of the Bronco cheerleaders talking to fans and signing autographs. So, of course we ran over and got our tickets signed.

The stadium was beautiful and the seats were amazing. We were on the north 40 yard line on the visitor's side of the field, about 15 rows up. Outstanding seats. (Incidentally, years later my wife would get us tickets to the game through her work which were in the first row, and while being that close is pretty cool, it's actually not the best place to watch the game. You really need to be a bit higher to see the action on the field well.)

I remember that the Broncos were playing the NY Giants. I couldn't tell you what the final score was (I'm pretty sure the Giants won), and the only part of the game I still remember was the play when Eddie McCaffrey broke his leg. As I remember, it was a brutal hit and when Eddie didn't immediately pop up after the tackle and the stadium crew didn't replay the play on any of the screens in the stadium, I knew something bad had happened. I didn't actually see the play happen until a few years later when I looked it up on YouTube.

Not a ton of memories, but I know I had a great time. It was a night game, and Brian and I had class early the next day, so we didn't have the option of staying the night in Denver. Since our drive home was so late at night, the four of us spent the more than 3-hour drive home talking. I have no idea how the topic was brought up, but one of us asked my great aunt about Pearl Harbor (I imagine we were talking about movies and since the movie "Pearl Harbor" was released earlier in 2001, we asked her about it). I don't remember what she told us about it, just that we spoke about the topic for a little while.

I doubt that I'd have remembered half of this information as well as I do, but the next day, September 11, was (and always will be) my birthday. Brian and I followed our usual morning routine, with Brian awaking before me and showering, and once he was out of the shower, I showered. Brian would always turn on the television and watch the news as he got dressed and I can distinctly remember him telling me to come watch the television. This is what we saw:

As I sat down onto the bed and we watched the coverage about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center building, we witnessed the second plane fly into the second building live.

My memory of the rest of my birthday that day is fuzzy. I believe Brian and I went to a high school volleyball game to watch our sisters play and then had dinner with my parents at a Mexican restaurant. I'm pretty sure my parents gave me a television for us to use in our dorm room as a present. But other than those two facts, what would normally have been a happy occasion for me, instead became anything but happy.

So, each year, on September 10th, I fall asleep replaying that 24 hours over in my head, wondering why, of all the topics we could had talked about that night, we happened to talk about one attack on America just hours before another attack would occur. I know the two are unrelated, but my mind still wanders back to that night's events. Tomorrow morning, as America morns the horrible tragedy of that day, I will be celebrating the passing of another year of my life.

Marathoning

2010-09-08T22:03:00.003-05:00

This week "My Wife Asks..."

Would you ever consider training for and running a marathon?

The short answer to this question is a definitive NO!

But, since I can't stand to have three sentence blog posts, I'll elaborate. I don't like physically exerting myself. I find it tiresome and tedious. There are a few exceptions to this rule, such as walking while I golf (if it'll mean saving enough money to fund an extra round of golf), walking the dog with my wife (which I actually enjoy, even if I give my wife a hard time about it when she tells me it is time to go on our nightly walk), mowing the lawn, etc., but for the most part, I will do almost anything to avoid raising my heart rate.

So, while I enjoy many sports (golf, skiing, basketball, baseball, etc.), I don't enjoy running. I can think of no worse way to spend my time then running. To me, running is torturous. It is tedious. It is tiresome. And one of the best parts about being an adult is that I don't have to do something that I don't enjoy. I don't see any upside to running. There is no incentive for me to run. There are a bazillion other activities that I'd rather spend my time doing. So, I don't run. And I don't see my position changing any time soon.

For me, running a marathon is like playing tennis or playing a guitar. Could I do it? Sure. Will I ever take the time to do it? Probably not. I'll stick to the activities I do well, activities I enjoy, and activities that are not very tiresome.
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SONG: "Rock & Roll" by Eric Hutchinson

NETFLIX: We've been on a nice streak of watching quality television shows lately. Usually we'll get a new show from Netflix, watch the first disk and dislike it so much we don't get any subsequent shows. So, when we find a handful of great shows to watch, it's a very good thing.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the following:

"Deadwood" -- I can't say enough good things about this show. It may be my new all-time favorite drama (knocking "Six Feet Under" and "Dexter" down a notch). The acting is spectacular, the story-lines are well paced, and the writing is dry and witty. I'm currently working on Season 3 and the show keeps getting better and better. Not an easy feat.

"Band of Brothers" -- This show is growing on me. I thought the first episode was a bit boring, but the following two episodes were spectacular. Extremely gripping plots and great acting make this show a must see. I'm excited to see what the rest of the series brings.

The wife and I have enjoyed watching the following together:

"Castle: Season 1" -- while the gist of the show (a civilian assists a cop in solving crimes) is similar to another of our favorite shows, "White Collar", this one is unique enough to keep us interested. This show has enough plot twists to keep the viewer guessing about who done it. And the chemistry between the two lead characters is a nice touch.

"Dexter: Season 4" -- we both have loved this show since my bro-in-law introduced us to it in the shows first season. While seasons 2 and 3 had their weak points, we were happy with the addition of John Lithgow's character.

"The Closer: Season 1" -- another cop show that is fairly entertaining. It has some nice plot twists in each episode. It'll be interesting to see if it gets too predictable or if it can stay fresh as the season progresses.

We recently finished the following shows:

"True Blood: Season 2" -- great, fun show. We cranked through this season in a couple of days.

"Project Runway: Season 7" -- probably not the strongest group of contestants, but we kept watching because my pick to win the show stayed in (and eventually won) the competition.

Looking forward to the release of "Fringe: Season 2" and "The Ultimate Fighter: Season 11". I'm also excited about rewatching "Modern Family" and "Community" on dvd. Both are really well done comedies.

Kids

2010-09-02T23:14:00.001-05:00

In the past couple of weeks, two of our best friends and their spouses had babies. The wife's best friend M and her husband M gave birth to little J.H. And my cousin B and his wife K had an early surprise when their son E.C. (also my initials. Coincidence? I think not.), was born a few weeks earlier then expected. Both parents are now home with their new sons, and everyone seems to be healthy, happy, and doing great. One of the hardest parts about being in another state is not being able to share in the joy of new babies in person. Pictures and phone calls are great, but it would be so much more fun to be there with them. And, while they never say it out loud, with the arrival of new babies in the family and friends circle, I'm sure many people are wondering why the wife and I are babyless (that's a word, right?).

In my circle of friends and family my age, I was one of the earliest to get married. And six great years later, I'm one of the last holdouts in the baby making category. So, why have we waited so long, and why are we planning on waiting even longer before we have kids? (I'll give my Mom a chance to pick herself off the floor after a panic-induced heart attack after the last part of that last sentence.) Four main reasons come to mind.

1) Financially speaking, we are not in a great place to have kids right now (and probably won't be for a couple of years).

Of the six years we've been married, we've only had one year where we were probably financially stable enough to consider having kids. When we first got married, I still had one year of school remaining, and the wife was just starting her job. We lived in a 1-bedroom apartment and drove less then reliable cars. Kids didn't make much financial sense. Year two I was starting a new job and we'd just bought a house. Kids still didn't make sense at the time. During year three we were a two income family with a house and two cars, so, financially speaking, we could have had kids and been fine. But we didn't (mostly because of the reasons explained below). Year four, with no kids, we decided that we were in a good place to be able to leave for law school, which bumped us back into the "it's not the wisest time to have kids financially speaking" category for three years. After law school, we'll (probably) be moving back to Colorado and reentering the job market, so it may be a few years before we're back to a financially stable situation.

2) We've never really had a long enough period of time of calm in our lives for the subject of having kids to make sense (or, life's stresses have always gotten in the way).

Year one was filled with learning how to be married, my finishing school, and the wife's new job stresses, so throwing the a kid into the mix would have been a big overload. Year two was filled with my being in survival mode as a first-year teacher (and the wife was overcome with the stress of being married to a first-year teacher. I think she got the tougher burden to carry that year.) and buying and fixing a house.

At the beginning of year three, we were in a less stressful phase of our lives, which lead to us getting a cat and a dog (usually the gateway drug for baby making). But, eventually the wife's job stagnated, so we spent a year preparing for law school, and goal number one of that preparation was staying baby free. The following couple of years were filled with the stresses of moving, law school, my new job, my being unemployed, my finding a great new job, etc. All of which would have been much more difficult with a child.

3) Married life without a kid is a ton of fun (or, less responsibility is a ton of fun).

One of my favorite comedians, John Heffron, has a bit about how he was at a point in his life where he had to choose between having a kid and buying a jet ski. And he chose the jet ski. At this point in my life, if I had to choose between having a kid and golf, baseball cards, nights at the ball park, weekly poker games, going out to eat as often as possible, spur of the moment trips/vacations, shopping sprees, hours on the couch watching tv and movies, blogging, etc., I'm going to pick the latter choices every time. Would it be possible to do those things with a child in our lives? Sure. But it is so much easier to do them, and to do them more often, without the child.

4) We're still relatively young and the so called "biological clock" hasn't really begun ticking.

Because we got married as youngsters, we were given a larger window in which we could have kids. We live in a time where it's not imperative to have kids at an early age. It's both scientifically possible and socially acceptable to have kids at an older age then ever before. My parents were both in their thirties when they had my brother. So the wife and I are in no hurry to have kids, biologically speaking.

With each passing year, the choice of having a kid becomes less and less appealing for many reasons, especially those listed above. Will we have kids in the future? More then likely. But right now (and for the next couple of years), it just doesn't make sense for us.

Mail Bag

2010-08-31T23:10:00.000-05:00

Recent additions to my card collection.

This first card is a 2007 Bowman Draft Futures Game Prospect Game Worn Patch, serial numbered 34/99. While the card doesn't have the "Refractor" tag on the back of the card, it is shiny (hence the blue color in the scanned picture), which is odd. This card is my first "patch" card, and the part that caught my attention is that the patch has part of the "KC" in the KC Royals logo. Nice addition to my set.

Card number two is a 2010 Topps Heritage Stamps card, serial numbered 11/50. The "stamps" are actual stamps that are held in place and protected by a thin piece of plastic. The other player featured is Jeff Francouer of the NY Mets. I like odd cards like this one (as well as my "silk" card and the mini cards). They add a bit of variety to my collection.

Speaking of mini cards, my third addition is a 2010 Allen and Ginter Mini Black Boarder card. I'm a big fan of the Allen and Ginter set and this card is a nice parallel card. I like the little details on the boarder, which add to the old timey feel of the set.

I'm piecing together the master set of Hochevar cards and as I add cards, it's getting tougher and tougher to track down the ones I'm missing. So, I think I'm going to enter the box breaking aspect of the hobby. I'm watching a few eBay auctions for boxes filled with packs of cards. If I can get a box cheaply, I'm going to crack open some packs of 2010 Topps T206 cards. There are a handful of Hochevar cards from this set popping up on eBay, and I'm going to see if I can pull any from a pack of cards, which I have yet to do.

Also, after a couple of months on the disabled list, Luke made his first start since June and, as luck would have it, he made the start in Omaha, so my friend Andy and I went and watched. It was great seeing him on the bump (even though he was only allowed to throw two innings). Luke's making his second of three rehab starts with Omaha on Thursday, which gives me a good reason to go to the final baseball game at Rosenblatt Stadium. Hopefully Luke's arm continues to heal and he'll be able to join the KC Royals soon and finish the season pitching in the big league.

While at Saturday's Omaha Royals game, I got to see the Royal's latest prospect, Mike Moustakas, in person. And the guy is legit. He hit a homer in Saturday's game and followed that fine performance up with a 11 RBI and 3 home run game in the Royal's 23-5 victory over the Round Rock Express. I'm excited to see what he can do in the majors next year, as the Royals will not be calling him up to the majors this season. Kansas City has a lot of young talent (Hochevar, Gordon, Greinke, Butler, Moustakas, Ka'aihue, Getz, Wood, etc.) and they've been able to get rid of some aging veterans who were holding the team back, so I'll be interested to see if they can be successful in the coming years.

"Stop criticizing President Obama for playing golf."

2010-08-23T23:20:00.000-05:00

So says David Kopel over at the Volokh Conspiracy. David points out that another President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, spent a lot of time out on the course during his presidency. It has been estimated that President Eisenhower golfed upwards of two times a week. He concludes that,

"President Eisenhower demonstrated beyond any doubt that there is no inherent contradiction between being a good President and being an avid golfer. Indeed, golf helps clear the mind, and hardly any sport is better at fostering humility in participants. So unless President Obama’s critics are willing to state that President Eisenhower golfed too much, they should stop carping about President Obama’s golfing."

I completely agree with David's analysis. I have absolutely zero problem with any President decompressing on the course once or twice a week. I may never agree with President Obama's ideology or politics, but I will never begrudge him playing a round of golf, or shooting hoops with his staff, or even lighting up a cigarette. Life (and the presidency) is hard. Might as well find a few avenues to work off some stem or decompress. And that goes for the low hanging fruit of political pundits in mocking a Presidential vacation, whether it's a trip to a Texas ranch or a week in Martha's Vineyard.

So the guy likes to golf. Big whoop. I can think of worse ways for a sitting President to spend his time (chasing intern tail springs to mind).

Which brings me to my weekly question from my wife.

This week, My Wife Asks...what would you do if you had no money constraints?

This hypothetical exercise reminds me of how my junior college golf teammates and I would pass the time on our long bus trips. We spent one 6+ hour bus trip dreaming up scenarios of how we would spend vast amounts of money (fortresses, fantastic vehicles, dream houses, etc.). I was really fun hearing different people's ideas of pure fun. It was also great to add features to another person's fantasy, as well as debating the merits of some ideas (example: what is the best way to fortify your dream home from intruders?).

So, what would I do if money with no concern for the cost? I would buy a great luxury RV, pack up the wife and dog, and travel the US playing every golf course we stumbled upon until the money ran out.

This idea would combine my love for golf with my enjoyment of visiting new towns across this great land of ours. In my mind, there is no greater way to spend a road trip.

The beauty of the roadtrip golf tour in an RV is multifaceted. First, my wife hates flying. And if I'm going to get her onboard with this plan, my best bet is by land.

Second, I love road trips. I have since I was a kid. I love the slowness of road trips, and yet I hate the slowness of the hurry up and wait attitude of air travel. I love the little things that a road trip brings. We would stop at every diner, drive-in, and dive we stumble upon for our meals. On the road we can take detours, shop antique shops, visit popular destinations, see historic and notable sites, and just take it easy.

Third, an RV road trip would make over nights so much easier because finding a pet friendly hotel is a pain in the neck. An RV also would give my wife and the dog more room to be comfortable while we travel mile after mile. We would also save a bundle sleeping in our RV, because even though money would not be an issue, I still love a bit of frugality.

Fourth, and foremost, there are so many great golf courses that I've never (and may never) played because they are out of the way and/or are not within our current budget. Take for instance The Prairie Club in Valentine, NE. This beautiful links style course was recently ranked the number one course in Nebraska, and I may never get to play it because Valentine is in the middle of nowhere. There is basically no reason to go to Valentine, except to visit this course. And there are hundreds of courses like it. My mind is racing just thinking about the possibilities.

So, there you have it. The day after we hit the big payday, we're hitting the road.

2008 UD Baseball Heroes rainbow

2010-08-21T13:24:00.000-05:00

I am 95% sure I have completed the rainbow for the 2008 UD Baseball Heroes set (although the checklist claims there is a seriel numbered to 10 beige autograph card, so I'll keep my eyes open for it).

The cards I have are:

Charcoal autograph -- 21/50
Aqua -- 83/99 (received in the mail today)
Navy Blue -- 34/199
Red -- 172/249 (received in the mail yesterday)
Gold -- 283/299
Charcoal -- 205/399
Green -- 6/499
Black
Beige

Collecting a "rainbow" of parallels didn't really exist when I was a kid, as there were usually only one or two parallels in a set (usually gold and/or silver). Had a set like this Baseball Heroes set been around when I was 10 yrs old, I know I would have spent a fortune buying boxes and packs of these cards, trying to track down all of the different colors for my favorite players. These types of serial numbered parallel sets are a huge improvement over the junk wax era in which I grew up.

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SONG: There is a Fatboy Slim greatest hits album on sale on Amazon that I'm pondering buying. Its full of songs I know, but I can't decide if I'll ever listen to them over and over (thereby making it worth the purchase price). Since I'm indifferent on the choice, I'll just enjoy Fatboy Slim's best music video for free (and it's a very good song to boot).

Ground Zero Mosque -- Part Deux

2010-08-21T01:11:00.001-05:00

In the comments of my previous Ground Zero Mosque post, my bro-in-law mentioned that maybe, for the first time ever, I agree with President Obama on an issue. Well, I like to think that the President, for the first time, agrees with me. Because I've been right all along, and the President is just now realizing it.

Well, I'm going to have another first, I'm going to recommend, and agree with, a Jon Stewart monologue.

I've never really cared much for Stewart. I've never found him or Colbert to be funny. If I stumble upon one of their clips while scrolling through the blogosphere, I'll rarely ever watch the entire clip. And my laughing at one of their bits is even rarer. But Jon Stewart's monologue about the whole mosque uproar was fairly on point in my opinion.

I've attached the video at the end of this post, and I highly recommend watching all nine minutes, but if you are like me and don't like his schtick, then here are the interesting (to me) points that he makes.

First, he plays a portion of Laura Ingraham on Fox News from last December in which she says, "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it. Bloomberg is for it. You got rabbis in New York saying they don't have a problem with it. (...) I like what you're trying to do and Ms. (unintelligible) we appreciate it."

Now, I'm going to assume that this clip is what they purport it to be and it has not been edited down so much as to be out of context. And I haven't listened to Laura's show with any regularity for many years, so I don't know if she's maintained her support for the project or if she's decided to change her position. Jon doesn't offer up any more clips of Laura speaking against the mosque, so I don't know her current thoughts on the mosque project, but since Laura is a figurehead within the conservative movement, it's interesting to see how much has changed (in the conservative movement, in general) in six months. Interesting, if not informative.

Jon then shows a smattering of clips from cable news talking heads from the right talking about the insensitivity of the mosque's location (a position I completely understand, but do not support). He tells some of his (unfunny to me) jokes, makes a few (again, unfunny) puns, and gets some giggles from the audience. He continues the clips/jokes/commentary portion of the monologue for a few minutes. Jon then singles out one particular guy on a FoxNews morning show, paying special attention to the man's homemade cue cards and conspiracy theories. You won't miss much if you skip over this part. Nothing ground breaking or particularly funny.

Then, at the seven minute mark his argument starts getting more effective. If you can't stomach Stewart and don't like what he says, I would contend the last two and a half minutes of the video is REQUIRED viewing.

Jon says, "This whole thing has gotten crazy. In our panic, we've lost sight of something very important. If only someone could step up and cut through all this political posturing and fear mongering and remind us what America is all about."

(NOTE: the first time I watched this video, I assumed that Jon was going to take another swipe at the people with which he disagrees. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the clip he actually showed. I guess I shouldn't always assume the worst of people and should give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.)

After making the above statement, Jon shows a clip of a speech by Charlton Heston in 1999. Please do yourself a favor and listen to Charlton's wise words.

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Charlton Heston: Tragedy has been and will always be with us. Somewhere right now evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it. But each horrible act can't become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us.

Powerful words from a great man.

Jon goes on to point out that Mr. Heston's speech was given soon after another very tragic event in our Nation's history, the shooting at Columbine High School. He also points out that that speech was given at an NRA convention that the left had demanded not take place in Denver because it was too near the site of that tragedy. Jon even makes the observation that he was probably one of those people calling for the convention be moved.

He ends the segment with more of Heston's speech.

Charlton Heston: America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. When an isolated, terrible event occurs, our phones ring, demanding the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because this story needs a villain. That is not our role in American society and we will not be forced to play it. If you disagree, that's your right. I respect that, but we will not relinquish it, or be silenced about it, or be told, do not come here, you are not welcome in your own land.

I'd like to give credit to Jon Stewart and his staff for digging out the Heston speech and giving it the respect that it deserves. That speech and those words are just as appropriate and meaningful now as they were when they were first spoken. And so is the sentiment those words were intended to evoke. It feels like I'm in a bizzaro-world, where people like Jon Stewart are using clips of Charlton Heston speaking at an NRA convention to support their argument and people like Rush Limbaugh are playing personality politics and throwing around conspiracy theories. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

It is my hope that my friends in the conservative movement will set aside their (rightful and deserved) anger and will think about the principles that make their movement so strong and important to America. Such principles as rugged individualism, property rights, a prudent government, the imperfectability of man and government, the opposition of involuntary collectivism, the restraint of government, and the reconciliation of permanence and change. These are the principles of a strong and vibrant conservative movement. Not impulse and emotion and populism. And impulse, emotion, and populism are the traits I see in many of the people most opposed to the Ground Zero mosque. And it saddens me.

Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-18T22:30:00.002-05:00

So the latest Facebook meme floating into my news feed goes something like this:

"If you think putting up a mosque 600 ft. from ground zero and having the inauguration on the anniversary of 9/11 is immoral and inhuman. If you think it shows a complete lack of respect for the memories of all that perished there and if you think that politicians are doing a grave injustice to those fallen heroes, thei...r families and all the people of New York City, THEN PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THIS TO YOUR WALL"

Assuming we ignore the countless grammatical errors (and every one I've seen so far has these errors), I have a few problems with this particular sentiment.

First, if 600 feet is too close to ground zero for these people's taste, then how about moving the mosque 1000 feet away, will that work? If not 1000 feet, will 2000 feet work? How about a mile? How far away from Ground Zero would be acceptable? Is it acceptable to even have a mosque in the same town? State? Continent? Hemisphere? Where shall we draw the line for acceptable locations for places of worship for the people of Islam? Well, according to this NYTimes article, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and California are all still too close to Ground Zero for some people to allow a mosque.

Same for the "inauguration" date. If September 11th won't do, how about September 10th (when the acts of 9/11 were, I'm assuming, being finalized). Does a September 10th inauguration still show a lack of respect? How about September 12th? September 21st? I'm assuming they shouldn't do it in August out of respect for the people who died in the US Embassy bombing. And October is out due to the USS Cole bombing.

So my question is when and where can Muslims build and open a mosque?

Finally, the above meme uses the collective "all" when talking about victims of the attack, fallen heroes, their families, and New York, which is a rhetorical device that I find unpersuasive. Whenever someone uses the collective all/we/us/them, their opinions lose weight in my mind. There is no way that the memories of "all" that perished there could be disrespected by the mosque, as there were hundreds who died there who were Muslim. There is no way that "all" of New York could be victim of this "grave injustice", as there are presumably New Yorkers who will attend this mosque regularly. As a firm believer and proponent of "rugged individualism", I much prefer specifics and tend to reject generalities (when it comes to labeling people).

And it's not just my friends on Facebook who are (in my opinion) in the wrong on this issue. Today, on my drive home for lunch, the Jim Rome Show went to commercial so I decided to tune into the Rush Limbaugh show for the first time in a couple of months. Here is a transcript of the part of the show that I heard:

We got people on our side saying, "We gotta be very, very careful here, we don't want to overstep on this, could really hurt us in November." Who's saying this? The Democrat ruling class people and the media are saying it, and typically people on our side in the ruling class in the Beltway, "Oh, yeah, they're right, we don't want to make them mad." The left, you know, they like to hold Joe McCarthy out as some kind of unbalanced commie hunter. Look at Pelosi. Look at her massive ego, her massive power grabbing, the way she runs the House, her statements about investigating those she disagrees with. She is McCarthy, she is Watergate, and all the rest of it combined. The only voices who will object to Pelosi are ours, conservative voices. They're not going to find anybody in the Republican Party hierarchy upset with this. No, it's just Pelosi being Pelosi they'll say. It's just usual inside-the-Beltway stuff. That's just Pelosi being Pelosi, that's just Reid being Reid, oh, that's no big deal, that's just the Democrats being who they are.

You let some Republican, say a speaker of the House, start talking about investigating people who are funding certain leftist causes and you see what happens. This is a tipping point. Is Pelosi gonna investigate Harry Reid? Harry Reid's opposed to the mosque. Now, granted, he's been given special dispensation on this. But is Pelosi gonna investigate Reid? And it looks like dissent isn't patriotic anymore, is it? It looks like what Hillary said about dissent and opposing the administration, that was the new patriotism back during the first and second terms of George W. Bush. But, now, no, no, no, no. Even Chris Christie's getting on this bandwagon, (paraphrasing) "We don't want to overplay our hand here, this could go a little bit wrong. We gotta be very, very, very, very careful. Others are warning us not to shout about this, don't go out and say what you really want to say." I'm sorry. These are not the people who tell me what to say and what not to say. They have never been, and they're not going to start being now.

Notice that the Muslims' right to freedom of religion trumps our freedom of speech. We're being told to shut up 'cause it might hurt Republicans in November. We're being told to tiptoe, be very, very, very, very careful here. Well, they can cower all they want in retirement. I'm going to continue to do and say what I think is right, because, folks, there are millions of Democrats, and there are millions of independents and others who are on the correct side of this mosque business, and buying into the Democrat template, that this is about politics, this stuff, is dead wrong. This is not politics as usual.

I find myself doing this more and more, but I disagree with Rush here. He's all over the place in this monologue. He's hitting all the hot-button buzz words: Pelosi, Reid, Democrat ruling class, Beltway, etc. I listened to this 5 minute block of his show and I was happy when I got home so I could shut it off. As I didn't listen to the rest of the show, I'm hoping he took some time to logically explain why he opposes the mosque. But one aspect of his monologue really grabbed my attention:

Notice that the Muslims' right to freedom of religion trumps our freedom of speech.

And this is where he completely lost me. To me, this is not a "freedom of religion" issue. To me, this is not a "freedom of speech" issue. Both of those freedoms are alive and well. This is, to me, an issue over property rights. Should an owner of a property be able to develop that property as they see fit (within the guidelines and requirements set forth by their local municipality)? I say yes, regardless of how this new development upsets some people's sensibilities. And this goes for mosques, casinos, porn stores, strip clubs, liquor stores, Planet Hollywoods, lingerie stores, Starbucks, WalMarts, Scientology centers, and any other building that bothers people. I say let them all be built. Get that portion of New York back in business. Let the market place decide.

And I'm quite disappointed in Rush for not recognizing the property rights angle. For example, a year ago Rush talked about the city of Chicago turning away a WalMart, and had this to say, "Where there are new jobs to be created in the private sector, Democrats somewhere are standing in the way of it, all because of an irrational hatred of a retailer called Wal-Mart and all because Wal-Mart is not unionized."

Rush wants the government to stay out of the way when it comes to Walmart or any other group of people/company opening up shop, so why is he unhappy when the government for once does the right thing and stays out of the way? So it would be ok for a JC Penny to open its doors to the public, but not an Islamic Mosque? All of the 9/11 hijackers were men, so would there be the same reaction if a Big & Tall Men's store was being proposed? Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Should there be a boycott every falafel cart in the city?

To me, the fact that these people are going to build a place of worship on land that they have purchased, and are following all the necessary legal and zoning regulations, trumps any questions of sensibility. And it troubles me that I'm apparently in the minority opinion on this subject in conservative circles. It troubles me that some people's gut reaction and emotion over a tragic incident in the past is clouding their judgment and principles. It troubles me that the movement I grew up with, the one that supported property rights and rugged individualism, now has a religious litmus test on who can and cannot develop their property and for what purposes. I guess I should just be happy that I'm of the correct religious background of the majority and I should just go about my business until I become the minority.

Mail Bag

2010-08-18T19:09:00.000-05:00

A few recent arrivals.

I added my fifth 1/1 card to my collection recently. This one is a 2007 Bowman Chrome Yellow Printing Plate. This is my favorite printing plate because it's the only one I have where the card picture is the mirror image of the regular cards. The other "printing plate" cards that I own have the same picture as the regular cards, which makes me think they weren't actually used in the making of the other cards.

I bought these two cards together (along with a duplicate red jersey card, for a total of 3 cards in the lot). I was excited to get both jersey colors at the same time. They are both 2004 SP Prospects National Honors Jersey cards. These cards are the oldest jersey cards that I own.

This final card is a 2007 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Aspirations card which is serial numbered 31/100. It is hard to see from the scans, but this card is die-cut, which chunks cut out of each side in the shape of the background pattern. This is the only die-cut card in my collection so far.

With these additions, my collection is now at 111 cards. I'm getting there slowly but surely. (I agree, but quit calling me Shirley!)

Happy Blog-aversary

2010-08-16T22:01:00.003-05:00

Well, technically, my 1st Blog-aversary isn't until the 18th, but being married to my wife for 6 years has corrupted me to the point that I can't wait until the actual day to open my presents.

Last year, around this time, I was chatting with Friar Tuck on Facebook and he suggested I start a blog. I told him that I'd started a blog a few years back, but, as with most of my childhood pets (frogs, lizards, turtles, etc.), I grew bored with it after a few weeks and my parents were forced to take care of it. Unfortunately, my parents didn't know the first thing about how to care for a blog, so they took it to a nice farm out in the country where it still lives to this day, right Mom?

Friar Tuck suggested that I give it another try. So, I reestablished "87 Murphy Squirrels" on August 19, 2009, with the following words:

It's finally time for me to get off the sidelines and finally put my opinions where people can read them, critique them, and challenge them. It is my plan to make a blog entry at least once a day.

I have enjoyed being able to use Facebook & Twitter status updates to express myself, but have always felt limited by space.

I also apply a heavy filter to my Twitter and Facebook writings due to the audience. I do not feel like alienating my friends and family by forcing my views/opinions/thoughts onto them via their news feed. I would rather have people show up on their own, when they want, and if they want.

So..............here goes nothing.

A year later, I feel I have accomplished everything I set out to accomplish with my blog. Over the past year I have written 160 blog posts (a bit shy of my idea to post daily, but not too bad). My blog has allowed me to express my thoughts and feelings about politics, movies, music, and golf. It has allowed me to brag about myself, my wife, and my dog. It has been an outlet for my frustrations, sadness, and anger.

I tend to have obscure hobbies and interests (i.e. baseball cards, golf club building, eclectic music, among others), and writing in my blog allows me to explore those topics in my own way (and hopefully educate others about the things that I enjoy).

Also, over the past two years, my wife and I have been living far away from our family and friends, so my blog (as well as Twitter and Facebook) allows anyone of those friends or family members to know what has been happening in our lives. It's a nice lifeline as we float along in this scary world.

Towards the later months of this past year my blog started running out of steam. I'd grown sick and tired of politics (and sick and tired of how angry my political posts had become). I'd said nearly everything I've ever wanted to say about golf in general. My movie and television reviews and recommendations had become cliche and trite. And while I'd found a new hobby in card collecting, those posts were slowly morphing into "look at these pictures" posts (which are not much fun for anyone other than me). In short, my blog was getting stale and boring. I had lost the passion and fervour that my posting once contained.

So, imagine my surprise when I found a "Happy Blog-aversary" card on the counter from my wife (and don't worry, there is still plenty of time for everyone else to send me and my blog something to celebrate our day. Not much time. But, technically speaking, there is still time. But not much. So hurry.) I opened the card and found this note written inside.

As much as I love reading your blog, I grow a bit tired of posts about golf, politics, and Luke Hochevar baseball cards. As such, I am giving you this gift of inspiration. Each week I will ask you a question for you to answer on your blog. This answer can be one word or one thousand words, but you must answer my question, and you must do so weekly. If your readers have questions they would like answered, please have them post the questions in the comments of your blog and I will work them in as the weeks go by. Hopefully, you will get at least a weekly blog post out of this deal and I will get to know more about you at the same time. I'll even help you with the name of this feature, "My Wife Asks..."

--- Your Wife

I am so very excited by this present. For me, the hardest aspect of maintaining a blog is finding topics that interest me enough to spend time writing about. And I can't believe I missed the most interesting topic there is for all of this time -- ME! And, since this is my party, I'll open one more present. This one is my Wife's first question.

My Wife Asks... what is your all-time favorite song?

There are thousands of songs that I love. I have favorite country songs, favorite rock songs, favorite DMB songs, favorite oldies, favorite hymns, favorite instrumentals, favorite rap songs, favorite classical pieces, and favorite heavy metal songs. But if I were forced to pick an All-Time Favorite I would have to pick

"Right Now" by Van Halen.

I love Van Halen and I love everything about this song. In my mind, every aspect of this song is perfect. Musically speaking, this song is awesome. This piano solo should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Add to it the world's greatest guitarist, a fantastic drummer, and an under-appreciated bass guitarist, how could you go wrong? But as good as this song is instrumentally, the lyrics are what nudge it to the number one spot. Give the song another listen, and read these lyrics as Sammy sings them.

Don't wanna wait 'til tomorrow
Why put it off another day?
One by one, little problems
Build up, and stand in our way. Oh

One step ahead, one step behind it
Now ya gotta run to get even
Make future plans I'll dream about yesterday, hey!
Come on turn, turn this thing around

(Right now) Hey! It's your tomorrow
(Right now) Come on, it's everything
(Right now) Catch your magic moment
Do it right here and now
It means everything

Miss a beat, you lose a rhythm
An nothin' falls into place. No!
Only missed by a fraction
Slipped a little off your pace. Oh!

The more things you get, the more you want
Just trade in one for another
Workin' so hard to make it easy
Whoa, got to turn. Come on, turn this thing around

(Right now) Hey, it's your tomorrow
(Right now) Come on, it's everything
(Right now) catch that magic moment
Do it right here and now
It means everything

Pure genius.

If I was stuck on a deserted island and could only listen to one song the rest of my life, this would be that song. I have listened to this song hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times, and it always feels fresh to me. There are songs that I greatly enjoy the first couple dozen times I hear them, but soon they soon tire. Before long, I'll hear the first few bars of the song and hit skip on my iPod (or change the station in my car). But not this song. This song, I listen to the entire song, every time.

When I was in high school, I would listen to this song, and only this song, when I was in my car on game day. Before football games, I would drive to Loaf 'N Jug to buy a Gatorade just so I could listen to this song multiple times (I wouldn't have been able to finish the piano solo at the beginning of the song if I'd have driven straight to the gym from my house) and I wouldn't leave my car until the song ended. I am pretty sure that my playing this song over and over at a very high volume blew out a couple of speakers in The Celebrity. To this day, just like Pavlov's dog, my adrenaline starts pumping while listening to this song.

For the past 12+ years, "Right Now" has been my favorite song, and I don't know how any song will be able to overtake it.

Omaha Metro Golf Championship -- Day Two

2010-08-15T23:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was bumming after shooting an uninspiring 92 on a golf course that is, all things considered, not very tough. Of all the courses I've played in Omaha, I would say this course is one of the easiest.

Because I posted such a lousy score yesterday, I was basically out of contention for prize money, as only the top eight places get paid (more on that in a moment). I entered day two of the tournament tied for 19th place (out of 26 players). So, I entered day two with two main goals -- post a lower score than yesterday and win day money. "Day money" is paid to the lowest three scores of the day of the people that are 9th place and lower.

DAY TWO GOAL 1) Post a lower score than yesterday.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Today I shot an 80. That's right, I improved by 12 strokes. Today I played golf. Today I kept the ball in play (except for one errant tee shot that found the water). Today I putted well. Today I played to my handicap. Today I posted the lowest score in my flight. Today was great.

I started the day on the back nine holes. I had 5 bogeys, 3 pars, and 1 birdie on the back nine holes for a score of 40. I followed my game plan. This nine holes was how I typically play golf. The front nine holes was similar, with 5 pars, 3 bogeys, and one double bogey when I hit my tee shot into a water hazard. That one hole was my only "blow up" hole of the round and, relatively speaking, it wasn't too bad. I shot a 40 on the front nine holes for a total score of 80. Not too shabby.

DAY TWO GOAL 2) Earn day money.

My total score for the two days was 172, which moved me from a tie for 19th place to 11th place, which was not enough to earn prize money, but did earn me day money. Which brings me to a point of contention with the way this tournament was structured, in that the prize money was pretty lousy.

Last year I was annoyed with the way they flighted the lower flights. Last year there were too many low handicapped players in the bottom flight. It didn't seem fair too me. This year, they did a better job of placing players in our flight, as most everyone shot in the mid-80s.

With that said, I was quite disappointed in the prizes. The players who finished in the first four spots received Callaway golf gift cards instead of cash (1st place received $250, 2nd received $150, 3rd $100, and 4th $50), while places five through eight (and the three day money winners) each received a certificate for a complimentary round of golf at the course for two people. Now I'm not certain what a round of golf for two people costs at the Council Bluffs Country Club, but it couldn't be more than $60, which puts the prize money for our flight (and the three middle flights) around $900. Yet each flight brought in over $3000 in entry fees. Only the first and second place finishers received their entry fee back. The math just doesn't seem right to me.

So, after two days of golf, only two players (out of 26) in my flight are home tonight with a profit. That's not a very good way to run a tourney in my opinion.

But I am happy with how I performed today. So I have that going for me.

1981 Topps Basketball Set

2010-08-14T23:30:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to move some of my stale product (basketball cards) to earn some money to buy some new product (Luke Hochevar baseball cards), I've listed my Topps 1981 basketball set on eBay HERE.

This set has 66 base cards that were released nationally. There are also 44 "regional" cards that were released in three regions (that is, 44 unique cards for each region, or 132 different cards total) -- East, Mid-West, and West. My collection has all of the 66 base cards, all 44 East cards, and all 44 Mid-West cards. If I also had all of the West cards, I might think twice about listing them, but since I don't mind listing them on eBay with the hope that someone will buy them for a very high price and I'll be able to increase my Hochevar card collection.

The interesting aspect of this (to me) is the fact that I'm not terribly sad about selling off these cards. I bought them off eBay a few years ago, so I don't have a very strong connection to them. I didn't invest any blood, sweat, and tears equity into them like I did with, say, my John Stockton collection.

It's funny how much of a connection can be created between a person and their cards by merely extracting them from a wax or foil wrapper.

____________________________________________________________

SONG: "I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins -- as made famous in the movie Caddyshack. I've decided that this song will be playing on a loop in my brain as I play my round tomorrow. Hopefully it'll put me in a chipper (pun intended) mode as I cruise around the course. Also, I highly recommend you watch the linked video. It's a live performance of the song from 1981 and Kenny's orange jumpsuit is worth the price of admission.

LIVE COMEDY: Last night the wife and I went to dinner and a show. Dinner was at Biaggi's and it was fantastic as usual. Then we went to the Omaha Funny Bone for an evening of live comedy. The opening act was funny, although I can't remember the guy's name. The middle act was a fellow by the name of Dave Landau and he was outstanding. He delivered a rapid succession of jokes that were top notch. The headliner was Tommy Johnagin. If you watched this season of Last Comic Standing with any regularity, then you know who Tommy is and that he's a funny guy. I highly recommend that you see his live show if he is in your area.

2010 Omaha Metro Golf Championship -- Day One

2010-08-14T22:37:00.001-05:00

Day one of the Omaha Metro Golf Championship has come and gone and I find myself sitting in the middle of my flight with TONS of ground to make up if I want to be in the money tomorrow.

I am not very happy with my performance today. The other day I mentioned that I had five goals for myself for this tournament. Lets see how I did.

GOAL 1) No 3 putts.

This was one of my weaknesses today. I did not putt very well. I could not get a read on the greens. I believe I three putted two holes on the front and one hole on the back. I also 4-putted the final hole of the day. I was super pissed about that one. By the time I lined up the first of four putts, I was already mentally checked out. I wasn't in the moment and my score paid the price for my lapse in concentration. No more of that tomorrow.

GOAL 2) Shoot between 82 and 86 each day.

Well, I shot a 92 today. I did not strike the ball particularly well today and I believe my score could have been 5-7 strokes better, but for two poor swings and some poor putting.

GOAL 3) To help me keep my composure during play, I am going into each day "knowing" that I'll probably have one blowup hole, and if/when it happens, I will not lose my temper.

You know, the thing about this goal was that I was not expecting my blowup hole to happen on the second hole of the day. After a par on the first hole, I shanked my tee-shot on the second hole (a simple par-3) out of bounds. The fact that I shanked it caught me so much by surprise, I immediately was fuming. It happened so quickly that I didn't have time to remember that I was expecting this to happen and that I needed to keep my cool. So, a quad-bogie later, my day was pretty much shot. Two holes later, I slice another tee-shot out of bounds and chalk up a triple bogie. I ended up shooting a 47 on the front side. My back nine holes actually went a bit better, with a string of bogies and my getting to the final hole with the opportunity to shoot under 90 (which at that point would have been a victory for me). Four putts later, I closed with a 45. I sulked to the clubhouse, knowing my shot at winning money was gone.

GOAL 4) I will go into each round with a game plan and will not "press" myself if things do not go as planned.

When my round went flying off the tracks, I was happy that I didn't start pressing. I played probably 13 quality holes in a row, but was not striking the ball well enough to make up for the two early bad holes. And I lost my concentration on the final hole, which was not good.

GOAL 5) No matter what my Saturday score, I will attempt to shoot a lower score on Sunday (even if it is only a one stroke improvement).

I believe I can definitely improve my score tomorrow. Last year I shot a 94-88, so hopefully I can do it again. The nice thing about tomorrow is that I have no pressure. I am pretty much out of contention for the money, so I don't need to worry about my score. I can just go out, swing the club, be the ball, and hopefully quality scores will follow.

In the Mail

2010-08-10T20:01:00.000-05:00

I've received a few cards via email over the past few weeks that I'd like to showoff.

The top left card is a 2008 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor which is serial numbered 38/150. This card is the seventh parallel card of the 2008 Bowman set that I have, which is notable because it is the first set of cards that I have that fills up more than one row of my card display.

The bottom card is a 2006 TriStar Farm Hands autographed card. This is the earliest autograph card I have so far. This card has a "book value" of $50.00 and I bought it for just $0.50. I almost felt bad getting it for so cheap. Almost.

The top right card is a 2010 Allen & Ginter Blank Back 1/1 card. As you can see from the picture below, this card has nothing but a Topps halogram and a 1/1 label on the back. This is a unique card that the Topps Vault was selling in their eBay store. Every day the Topps Vault puts out dozens of 1/1 cards that have "blank backs". They also dig into the archives and put up for sale old photos (which were used to make their cards), "proof" cards which were used early in each card's production, and original pieces of art that were commissioned from various artists to be used to make cards. It is my favorite eBay store to look through.

My card collecting has slowed down quite a bit since most of the cards that I now need for my collection are the more expensive autograph cards and the harder to find lower numbered serial numbered cards. But, the chase continues.

However, I have come upon a novel idea. One of my favorite card collecting blogs is Hey, That's Mine! The interesting (to me) aspect of this blog is that its author has a side hobby of creating his own, home-made cards. The ones that I've seen are fabulous. So, I contacted him earlier this week and asked him if he'd make me a custom Hochevar card using a picture that I personally took. He said he would. (You can see some of his other creations HERE.) I can barely contain my excitement at the prospect of owning a card that was created from one of my pictures.

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SONG: "Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass -- Who knew a trumpet could be so fun?

LOOKING FORWARD TO: playing in the two-day, stroke-play Omaha Metro Golf Championship this weekend. While my goal is to win my flight, I could live with a top three finish. I also have some smaller goals this tournament which I hope will contribute to my winning my flight.
1) No 3 putts.
2) Shoot between 82 and 86 each day. With my 12 handicap, I should shoot an 84 (so I'll +/- 2 strokes). Last year, I went into the tournament not worrying about shooting the course par, but instead focused on shooting my "handicap par", which allowed me to accept the inevitable bogies and (hopefully less inevitable) double bogies. That mindset was very successful for me, so I'll do it again.
3) To help me keep my composure during play, I am going into each day "knowing" that I'll probably have one blowup hole, and if/when it happens, I will not lose my temper.
4) I will go into each round with a game plan and will not "press" myself if things do not go as planned.
5) No matter what my Saturday score, I will attempt to shoot a lower score on Sunday (even if it is only a one stroke improvement).

LOOKING FORWARD TO (part 2): the 1-year anniversary of my blog. It will be a great time to reflect on what has (to me) been worth writing about over the past year.

Memories of Grandma

2010-07-29T23:39:00.000-05:00

We're on our way to Fowler for Grandma's memorial service on Saturday. We decided to not wear ourselves and our dog out by making the trip in one day, so we drove halfway this evening, checked into a motel, and will finish the trek tomorrow morning.

My mom asked me if I'd like to read Grandma's obituary during the service. I'm assuming it will be less of an obituary and more of a review of the timeline of her life (birth, marriage, kids, jobs, etc.). I gladly accepted the offer.

I'm not sure it will have much room for anecdotes and odd memories, so I figured I'd list some of them that have been floating through my mind the past couple of days.

Grandma was (and probably will always be) the best cook I've ever known. I was spoiled as a child by being able to eat her home cooking every Sunday. After church the family would head to her house for a wonderful meal. Some of my favorites include chicken and noodles (the noodles were handmade), meatloaf, braised ribs, and fried chicken (especially the drum sticks. Major battles were had over who got the last one). And her homemade blueberry pie will never be topped. Also, a couple times a month she'd make me a bowl of "California Blend" which was steamed carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli (I'd later learn it was simply a frozen bag of the veggies from the Schwan's van that she'd microwaved, but to this day I've never been able to replicate how great her's always tasted.) She always had a bottle of vinegar that I'd use to cover the veggies. Odd, but I loved it.

Grandma always had the best hand canned fruits and veggies. Green beans never tasted as good as those that she canned. I think it was the pieces of bacon that she put in them. Yeah, it was definitely the bacon. The woman was a genius with a mason jar and a pressure cooker.

I will always remember how her voice sounded when she'd answer the phone.

My first job was mowing her lawn. She'd pay me $5 and give me a soda when I was finished. I spent an entire summer mowing her lawn and used the money to buy my first stereo system.

I loved running through the clothes that she'd have hanging on her clothes line, especially her sheets. They had such a distinct smell.

Grandma was always so tall. I don't remember when I out grew her, but I know even then that I still looked up to her.

I remember as a youngster, the only place I was allowed to eat a bowl of dry Fruit Loops while watching TV was at Grandma's house. I also remember watching Nick at Night at their house. I would sit on their bed for what felt like ages watching Get Smart (for the longest time Grandma and Grandpa were the only people I knew who had a television in their bedroom).

I remember once Mom, Grandma, and I were playing Scrabble at our house. It was Grandma's turn and she turned beet-red. Finally she apologized numerous times because "sex" was the only word she could play. It was hilarious.

One Christmas, my mom, my sisters, my wife, and Grandma all put temporary tattoos on their arms. Grandma's skinny arm looked so funny with a heart tattoo on it, but she was so proud of it.

Grandma was always so embarrassed whenever we'd give her gifts for Christmas or her birthday. Even the simplest gifts like a book or a sweater would make her get choked up and teary-eyed. She was such a sweet woman.

Those are the ones that stand out, and I know there are countless others that will come to mind, especially when the family gets together to reminisce this weekend.

Grandma Eva

2010-07-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

I got a call this morning from my dad. When I saw that he was calling from his cell phone, I was pretty sure it wasn't good news. He told me that my Grandma Eva (his mother) had passed away. He said that the nursing home had called him at work to let him know that she wasn't doing so well, so he was able to be with her during her final moments.

Over the past year, her health had been rapidly declining. I'm ashamed to admit it, but when we were in Fowler earlier this month, I couldn't get up the nerve to go visit her in the nursing home. I couldn't bear to see her in such a fragile and frail state. I know it was selfish, but I didn't want my last memory of her to be a sad one, and I know that it would have been sad.

When we were home for Christmas, she was living with mom and dad. I am certain that most of the time we were there, she didn't know who I was. At that point she still had all of her long term memories. She spent much of our time together telling stories (often times they were the same stories she'd told me just an hour earlier). She told me about her childhood. She told me about growing up in Fowler.

It was bittersweet listening to her talk. I would see her fade in and out, from past to present. One moment she was smiling at me, telling me about her childhood. The next moment I could see an emptiness in her eyes. It was devastating seeing a once spry and energetic woman living in a shell of herself. I don't know if they ever officially diagnosed her with Alzheimer's disease or if it was a different form of dementia, but whatever was destroying her once vigorous mind, it was ruthless.

And I couldn't bring myself to see the results first hand. So I chose to sit this one out. I decided to let the stronger members of my family deal with the situation. And they dealt with it head on. I have no idea how my parents, my cousins, my great aunts and uncles, and my extended friends and family were able to do it. But I am so happy that they did. Even if Grandma wasn't cognisant of their presence, I know that she was surrounded by love.

A while back, Grandma's pastor posted an encounter he had with her onto his blog. Reading it again is tougher this time then when he first posted it. Yet I am so grateful for his kind words. I hope he won't mind, but I'd like to post it in its entirety.

Eva's Song

Last Tuesday, I went into Pueblo to visit a member of our church. The member's name is Eva, and she was suffering with a bout of pneumonia. Eva has had a rough go of it lately. When I arrived here about two years ago, she was recovering from an injury that would not allow her to walk as much as she needed to. This frustrated her, but she rarely complained, and if she did complain it was to blame herself for not being able to heal fast enough or work hard enough.

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

Around October, Eva had another visit to the hospital. It was decided at that point that she would stay with her son Roger and his family. Eva would hold the babies during the day care her daughter-in-law ran. She eventually got sick, and her illness quickly turned from a cold into pneumonia. She was taken to the hospital.

When I visited Eva Tuesday, I spent a little time visiting with her, and a lot of time visiting with her son Roger. Roger and I talked vacation and golf, and about life in general. It was a good chat. When it came time for me to leave, I asked Eva if I could pray for her. Her poor hearing led her to believe that I was requesting that she pray for all of us. She told us to bow our heads, so we did. She told us to close our eyes, and we did that too. Then Eva began to pray.

Some people might be grieved by Eva's prayer. As she prays, it becomes clear that her mind is not as clear as it was months, or even weeks ago. She got stuck in a loop of prayers. For many this loop would be sad, for others a dark comedy. It has elements of both these things. But most of all, the prayer was beautiful.

It was beautiful because when Eva could not think of anything else, and she did not have the intellectual capacity to pray in the way you know she could in earlier years, she kept repeating the same word. That word was "thank you".

"Thank you Lord for this day....thank you....thank you Lord for our friends and family...thank you...thank you for providing us the food we ate....thank you....most of all Lord we thank you for Jesus, who loved us enough to make a way for us to spend eternity with you....thank you..."

She kept saying her thank you's over and over again. She would note God's work in creation. She would note God's love for us. She would thank God for Jesus. Not just once, or twice, but over and over again. I left the hospital after I finished by praying for her. On the drive home I found myself fighting back tears. And I was not fighting back tears because she is dying. I was fighting back tears because of her testimony. When her mind could not think through a paragraph, her heart kept saying "Thank you Lord, thank you, thank you!"

In one of my internships in seminary I visited a Alzheimer's clinic with a mentor/pastor named Charles. As we wandered through the clinic, we sat with a member of Charles' church in the cafeteria. Around us people screamed outoud, "Lord, why? Lord, why?" and "Please God just let me die." as the top of their lungs.

To be honest, I can't blame them. I hurt for the people in the Alzheimer's clinic that day. That is why I was so moved when Eva said, "Thank you!"

Through the week, I wondered if this was simply an anomaly. On Thursday, Eva's sons Richard and Roger moved Eva to the Fowler Nursing Home. I went to visit her. It took a while for her to understand who I was and why I was there. We chatted a little bit. Then she started singing

"Allleluia, Alleluia. God is so good. Alleluia," Eva sang.

Eva kept singing "alleluiah's" until she sang herself to sleep. I said good bye to the sons chatting at the door. I walked out to my car. Eva could hardly recognize me. We could hardly have a conversation. But as I walked to my car it was my turn to mumble to myself, "thank you, Lord, thank you for Eva."

It kills me that her health deteriorated so quickly. It kills me that I could not have been stronger and gone and visited her. But I am so thankful that I got to spend so much time with such a wonderful, strong, and Godly woman. I was spoiled by her love. My mind is packed full of memories of her.

I love you Grandma and you will be greatly missed.

New Additions

2010-07-27T09:42:00.001-05:00

My wife gave me an early birthday present and let me go wild at Check Out My Cards and I left that website 43 cards richer. I've also had a nice streak of wins at eBay. I spent all of last night scanning the cards and adding thumbnail pictures to my card collecting spreadsheet. I have over 100 cards, but recently found out that there have been 600+ Hochevar cards produced, so I am still a little far from completing my set. In any event, here are some of my favorites cards that I've recently received.

This first card is a 2007 Just Minors Triple Signature Black. The three signatures are of Alex Gordon, Luke Hochevar, and Billy Butler, and it is serial numbered 2/3. I usually prefer to get a card from an auction, but I made an exception for this card because I liked it so much. I bought it via eBay "Buy It Now" and probably gave too much for it, yet I am super happy to have it in my collection. It is nicely designed card and the autographs are very crisp.

The next card is a 2008 Topps Finest Gold X-Fractor rookie card. It is serial numbered 13/25. I like this card a lot. I made the seller an offer that I felt was more fair than the price he was asking and thankfully he accepted. As far as I know, this is the toughest find in this series, so I'm glad I found it when I did.

This card is a 2010 Topps Series 2 Platinum card and is serial numbered 1/1. When we were in Colorado earlier this month, I was attempting to win this card via eBay auction but someone kept outbidding me. As I got to my bid ceiling, my mom and wife could see how frustrated I was that I was losing this card. After I'd left the house to go golfing, they conspired to win the card for me. So mom made a monster bid and won the card for me. She's the best.

The final card that I'll show off today is a 2010 Topps Series 2 Silk card. It is serial numbered 34/50. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see that the card is a mini card and is printed on a piece of silk. The mini silk card is housed in a clear window inside of a red and black frame.

So, as you can see, I've made some nice additions to my collection. I'm fairly close to completing a couple of "card rainbows" which is when I have all the differently colored cards of a set. Once I complete my first rainbow, I'll post a picture.

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SONG: "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart --- I spent this past weekend in Denver for my cousin's wedding. On Saturday night I went to dinner with three of my cousin's and two of their significant others. We met up at a Mexican restaurant. The dinner was great, but it paled in comparison to the conversations that pitcher after pitcher of beer encouraged. Stories were told. Jokes were told. Lies were told. It was great. At one point, near dusk, two of the participants decided to continue wearing their sunglasses even though the street lights and patio lights were on for the night. Classic.

Cardboard Couture

2010-07-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

I've been spending some time perusing the interwebs reacquainting myself with the card collecting universe.

One of the big topics in the card blogs is the recent release of the 2010 TOPPS Allen & Ginter cards. The A&G cards are one of the handful of throwback "tobacco" cards that have become popular with today's collector.

The original A&G cards were issued in the late 1800s in cigarette packs. Today's A&G cards remain true to the original in their card design, with the front being a simple picture of the player in front of a pastel colored background, like this:

And the backs of the cards have an old timey feel to them, like so:

This series is facinating to me because it seems to meet the wants and needs of the many different types of card collectors. The way I see it, there are a few basic styles of collectors who remain in the market for cards:

The Set Collector: This person is a throwback whose main goal in card collecting is putting together an entire set of base cards from a company. With 400 "base" cards to collect, along with a variety of parallel sets to go after, A&G meets this person's needs.

The Chaser: This person's main goal is to chase the short-printed, rare cards. Whether they prefer relic cards with game used materials or they prefer autographs, A&G is chock full of these cards.

The Flipper: This person buys cases of cards with the hope of hitting a rare card and then flipping it on eBay.

Player or Team Collectors: This is the category I would fall. If your favorite player is an all-star, rookie, or well-known veteran, you'll have a great time collecting the dozen or so different cards of your player in this set (base, mini, auto, relic, wood, printing plates, etc.) Unfortunately for me, my player is not featured as prominently this year as he was in years past.

The Allen & Ginter series also contains some oddities in the set. The base set contains non-baseball players (this year's set included the likes of Tony Hawk, a frisbee-disk catching dog, magician David Blaine, just to name a few), mini cards, and non-baseball player parallel sets (this year included "Lords of Olympus", "National Animals", "World's Greatest Word Smiths", etc.).

Oddest of all, this year's set included "DNA Relics" which were cards that contained a piece of hair from some historically famous people -- Beethoven, Lincoln, JFK, Dickens, etc. Weird, but kinda cool.

Another interesting feature of the A&G series is the "Crack the Code" contest. Each year, A&G hides a code within the set and whoever cracks it first receives a set of 1/1 CodeCracker autographed cards and their own A&G trading card in the next years set (both prizes are insanely awesome). News broke this week that last year's winner also was the first to crack this year's code. (GO HERE for an explanation on how he cracked the 2010 code).

The Allen & Ginter set elicits nostalgia with it's simple design and pastel color wheel. It's as if the Barnum & Bailey Circus or the HBO series Carnival has been condensed and put onto cardboard. The old style of cards and collecting has become fashionable and, with a few twists and innovation, has become modern. These cards are cardboard couture.

So, with all this crazy card collecting goodness happening within the Allen and Ginter brand, why have I not bought a pack or two? Because my primary focus within the hobby is to complete my Hochevar set, and diverting money away from that goal is not fiscally prudent. Once I have all my Hochevar cards on my display case, I imagine the creative and innovative Allen & Ginter cards will be the first ones I buy.

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COMEDY: Tommy Johnagin has been killing it on Last Comic Standing. If you haven't been watching, I highly recommend you start. The format of this year's competition is much better then in years past (contestants don't live together in a house, for starters. I will be so happy when that "plot device" works it's way into the trash heap of reality show bad ideas). I've heard Tommy numerous times on the Bob and Tom show, so when I saw he'd be on LCS, I was pumped. I was even more pumped to learn that he'd be showcased at the Omaha Funny Bone in August. I can't wait to see him live. Here he is on the Bob&Tom show.

New Arrivals

2010-07-14T23:39:00.003-05:00

After the wife and I got home from our vacation in South Dakota and Colorado, I had a pile of card packages waiting for me. I was like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning.

My Luke Hochevar card collection more than doubled after all was said and done. I had won two "lots" of base cards (one with 13 cards and the other with 9 cards). I also added a handful of autograph cards and serial numbered cards to my collection. Here are some highlights from my haul.

These first two cards are some nice autographs that I bought.

The top card is a 2008 TriStar SignaCuts Autograph card serial numbered 3/5. I was mildly disappointed that this one was a "sticker" autograph and not a "cut" autograph like the name of the card might suggest. (The difference? The "sticker" kind is an autograph on a clear sticker that is attached to the card. The "cut" variety is an autograph on a piece of paper that is "cut" and placed inside the card. Not a big difference, but a difference none the less, especially considering that there is no picture on the card.)

The bottom card is a 2008 Upper Deck Premier Signature serial numbered 37/45. A sharp looking card in my opinion.

These next four cards are also quite nice.

The top left card is a 2008 Topps "Rookie Stars of 2008" Chrome card serial numbered 166/1959. It is super shiny and is one of the few cards that lists his hometown as Fowler, Colorado (rather than Denver, CO).

The top right card is a 2006 Bowman Sterling "Prospect" Refractor Autograph card serial numbered 15/199.

The bottom left card is a 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes Grey Autograph card serial numbered 21/50. This card is fun because I have four other "parallel" cards from this set, each one with a different background color -- Green, Brown, Black, and Yellow. They look great together as a set. And looking around eBay, I see that there are one or two more that I need to complete the series.

The bottom right card is another 1/1 card that I've added to my collection. It is a 2010 Topps Series 2 "Yellow Printing Plate" which was used in the printing of the base set (which would explain the lack of color). The "card" is basically a sheet of aluminum metal. I'm in the process of adding all of the cards in the series for which this printing plate would have been used. I have the basic base card. I also have another 1/1 Platinum card coming that my wonderful Mother bought for me (and I'll be sure to post a picture of the card once it arrives). Some people might wonder why I'd want such an unattractive card. That's easy. Because I'm the ONLY person with that ugly card.

Once my collection started taking shape, I decided that I needed a way to display the cards because keeping them in a pile on the kitchen table just wasn't cutting it. I looked around on eBay for display cases, but they were all either too expensive or too bulky. I decided to build my own display and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Here is a picture of the finished product in action holding my current cards.

On the top row is a ticket stub from one of the many KC Royals games I've attended.

The middle eight rows are my Hochevar cards. (Notice the colorful series of cards I was talking about above in the third row.)

The bottom two rows are my favorite basketball cards, including some Micheal Jordan, Shaquille O'Neil, Karl Malone, a 1992 USA Dream Team card (the first cool card I got out of a pack when I was a kid), and a bunch of John Stockton Jersey cards (the very bottom row). I may need to scan the basketball cards some day.

My wife and I discussed where the best place to hang the display in the house and it was decided that the basement would be ideal. I think we made a wise choice.

(The display is on the wall behind my drum kit and my electric guitar and amp.)

Because the display turned out so well, I've decided that when we're done with law school and get moved into our next house, I'm going to turn one of the rooms into a "Man Cave" and decorate the walls with numerous displays like this one. Then I can get my 225 other John Stockton cards out of a binder and out into the open, where every card should grow old.
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SONG: "I and Love and You" by the Avett Brothers -- One of the great things of having a sister who is hip to the music the kids are listening to these days is that she tips me off to great songs by great bands. Like this one. Awesome song.

TELEVISION: Chuck: Season 2. I'm finally catching up on Chuck. I enjoyed the first season, but lost track on it. I've been watching Season 2 on NetFlix and the one thing that has caught my attention is that this show has a great soundtrack, probably as good if not better than Scrubs. (Although Scrubs focused on Indie music and Chuck has a lot of 1980s Pop Rock.) Also, it's a fun show. And, were it not for my friend Andy, I'd have never known that the Chuck theme song is the instrumental part of "Short Skirt Long Jacket" by CAKE (which is a GREAT song, by the by).

LOOKING FORWARD TO: August. I'll be attending a wedding of a friend and his lovely fiance. I will also (hopefully) be playing in the Omaha Metro Golf Championship for a second year. This year it's being held at the Council Bluffs Country Club, which should be fun. I also hope to use my "Tee It For Ten" card to play The Player's Club of Omaha and Arbor Links Golf Course in August. Also, by August, our local farm market should be keeping us well fed with farm fresh produce.

USA! USA! USA! USA!

2010-07-13T22:58:00.000-05:00

The wife scored us another set of free sporting event tickets through her school for the dozenth time this summer. This time, it was for the USA vs. Sweden Women's Soccer game. The game was played at the Creighton University soccer field and was the first time that Team USA has played soccer in Nebraska.

Since kickoff wasn't until 8:00 pm, we only stayed for the first half of play. It was our first experience with a soccer game in person and we both left pleased that we'd went, but sure that we never would have gone had the tickets not been free.

Everyone knows soccer is a low-scoring, high-boredom game with sporadic bursts of excitement.

Not once did I see this:

Nor did this ever occur:

Or this.

So, during the 40 minutes of down time during the 45 minute first half of the game, I decided to be a problem solver and come up with some ways to make soccer more exciting.

Option 1: "The Duel"

This option is fairly simple: every game would now be played with TWO soccer balls in play at all times. We may need to tinker with the number of players on the field (probably add 2-4 players per team), but there should only be one goalie on the field. That is non-negotiable.

Option 2: "The Red Rover"

At any time during a game, two teammates can connect hands, yell "Red Rover", and run at an opposing player who may or may not be in possession of the ball at the time. If the two Red Rovers can knock the opponent to the ground, they take over possession of the ball and get an immediate free kick from the spot the opponent was knocked to the ground. However, if the opponent can break through the Red Rover attack, that person gets an immediate penalty shot, one-on-one versus the goalie.

There may need to be a few caveats to add in later, but the gist of this rule change is solid in my opinion.

Option 3: "The Freezer"

Each team would have a player (who we'll call the Freezer) who is on the field the entire game. This player will wear a brightly colored jersey to differentiate them from the rest of their team. The Freezer will wear a special contraption that straps their feet together in a way that forces them to hop around the field. At any point during the game, if the Freezer touches an opponent, that player is frozen in place until the soccer ball passes through their legs. (We may need to have the Freezer's hands be covered in chalk or paint or something else that would prove that they touched an opponent). Also, the goalie could never be frozen. That would just be crazy.

As you can see, there are many different ways to spice up the game of soccer without compromising its integrity, but these aren't the only changes that can be made. What kind of changes to the rules of soccer (or any other sport) would you like to see?

The latest "amazing kid musician" video

2010-07-11T23:28:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows I loves me some adorable animal internet videos. Well, I also loves me some adorable kid musician videos. Here is my latest favorite such video.

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Trading Cards

2010-06-29T23:29:00.002-05:00

I guess my blogging hiatus was a bit too long. It took about ten minutes of searching before I could remember/figure out the log-in information for my blog.

Over the past (almost) two months of being between jobs I have had zero urge to blog. Previously, my blogging bread-and-butter was the political genre. But, being between jobs, I had way too much time on my hands and spent most of that time reading political blogs, which ended up being not very healthy. My brain became over-saturated with politics and my "give-a-shitter" went on tilt. So, I got away from it. Lately, my blog reading has been 75% sports and pop-culture and 25% politics/news of the day. This way, I still know the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but I don't get so bogged down in this realization.

I have also given up political radio/podcasts. When I do listen to the radio, it's 100% sports-talk. And the only podcast I'm subscribing to now is my daily dose of The Bob and Tom Show.

And I am in a much better place mentally (hence the blog post).

Then what do I do all day? Well, for a few weeks I obsessed about my golf clubs. I ended up buying a new set of iron heads from Golfsmith for $50. The building of these clubs ate up a nice chunk of time and energy (and in the future I'll write up a post on them, as it was a fairly intricate process that I'd like to document for posterity's sake, but the details of which are much to lengthy and would side track me from the main point of this post. See what I did there? I gave myself motivation for a future post.)

Which brings me to my new (renewed) obsession: TRADING CARDS.

I've previously written about my childhood passion for collecting basketball cards, so you know I have an interest in the subject. My interest was renewed when I started surfing around on ebay and found out that there are thousands upon thousands of trading cards that I have missed out on collecting.

Since I don't have a favorite team and I don't have a favorite sport, I decided to restart my collection by focusing on my favorite current athlete: Luke Hochevar.

At the same time that I started hunting down baseball cards (and window shopping for John Stockton basketball cards -- I got out my old basketball cards and discovered that I have about 225 unique John Stockton cards. Since I haven't collected for over a decade, there are a ton of Stockton cards out there that I'd love to have, but I'll wait to collect them until a later date.), I discovered a new corner of the blogosphere: trading card blogs. The interesting thing about most of these blogs is that they post scans of their latest finds/pulls/purchases online. I like the idea so much that I thought I'd do the same.

Here are my latest ebay purchases:

If these three cards look the same, it's because they are, kinda. The card on the left is a 2007 Bowman Chrome Rookie BASE card. A "base" card is the standard card that each set is built with. The middle card is an insert card, in this case a 2007 Bowman Chrome REFRACTOR Rookie card. These insert cards are made in smaller batches, which means they are more scarce than the base cards, and, therefore, more valuable. The card on the right is even more scarce. It is the 2007 Bowman X-FRACTOR Rookie card. This card is marked with a serial number, 241/250, which means that there were only 250 of these cards produced. The smaller the serial number, the fewer were made.

Other cards from this series that I'll need for my set are ones that are AUTOGRAPH (which is self-explanatory), GOLD series (in which the frame of the card is gold), ORANGE series (frame is orange), RED series (red frame), and then have them be REFRACTORS and X-FRACTORS of each series. As you can see, this may take a while, especially as each series is more and more scarce and valuable (which means more expensive).

These two cards are autograph cards. The left card is a 2008 SP Authentic AUTOGRAPH Rookie card (serial numbered 719/798). The one on the right is a TriStar Authentic AUTOGRAPH card (28/50) from when Luke played for the minor league Wichita Wranglers.

Finally, this card is the crown jewel of my collection thus far. It is a 2009 Topps Triple Threads "Rising Stars" PRINTING PLATE. There are three parts of this card that make it great. First, it is autographed. Second, it has a game-used jersey under the cutout "1st Pick". Finally, it is serial numbered 1/1 with the words "White Whale" on the back. It is considered a "White Whale" because of it's scarcity. The front of the card is actually the PRINTING PLATE that was used to make the other cards in the set (which explains the lack of color on the front of the card). Needless to say, I love this card.

(And here is the back of the same card.)

My long-term goal is to own every Luke Hochevar baseball card that has been made. It will be tough, but I believe it is a reachable goal because he is still young in his career. The majority of his cards have come out in the past 3 years. It would be a much more difficult goal for me to go back and track down all of the cards of someone at the end of their career or who's retired (like John Stockton).

But, one of the difficulties in reaching my goal is that modern card collecting has changed from when I was a kid, in large part due to autograph cards and "game used" cards. These inserts (extras) are more valuable than the base set due to their scarcity, which will add to the difficulty in collecting them.

Even more difficult will the "1/1" cards (an example of which is above). These cards are the most rare (and most expensive) cards because, as their name implies, there was only one card like it made. And I am in love with hunting these "white whales". I've already bagged two (the one above and one which is being shipped) and another has slipped through my finger tips. I believe the ability to be the ONLY person in the world with a particular card is one of the greatest feelings a card collector can experience.

I have a handful of other cards that I've won one their way. Look for posts of those in the coming days and weeks. Also, I'll be updating my blog list on the right to show my current tastes and will be listing all of the great trading card blogs that I've discovered over the past week.

So, I'm back to collecting pieces of cardboard. And, I'm back to writing in my journal.

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SONG: "Here Comes the Hotstepper" by Ini Kamoze -- a great rap/reggae song from my youth. My friend BJ and I spent an entire weekend at his mom's house when we were in junior high school calling MagicFM to request that they play this song. I can't remember if we ever got through, but it was fun trying. I'm also 98% certain we never new any of the words to the song (and still don't to this day).

LOOKING FORWARD TO: the rest of the cards I've won on ebay to arrive in the mail.

TELEVISION: "Deadwood" on HBO. I've been watching this show via Netflix and it is highly entertaining. The cast is great, the scripts are well written, and I always daydream about what it would have been like to live in the Wild West after watching an episode. I highly recommend it.

You know what's stupid?

2010-05-12T11:50:00.000-05:00

I was sitting here applying for unemployment insurance coverage and the thought occurred to me that my car insurance was unaffected by my job loss. It has no idea that whether or not I have a job. Yet my life, health, and dental insurances were all lost once I was asked to not show up to work. That's a pretty stupid system that we've got there.

You know what else is a pretty stupid system? The War on Drugs.

I had mentioned last week that the video of the drug raid in Missouri really pissed me off. Well, on that subject, Radley Balko has an outstanding piece ("A Drug Raid Goes Viral") which makes the interesting point that "despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine."

The closest I've ever been to illegal drugs was when I would drink beer before I was 21. I've never done marijuana, meth, crack, etc. It's just not my style. With that said, one of the greatest failures of the 20th and 21st Centuries has to be the War on Drugs. Prohibition never has and never will work. With the War on Drugs, the cure has been far worse than the disease. And the video of the "routine" drug raid in Missouri should give every citizen pause to think about what we're really doing here. As Balko points out,

According to surveys of police departments conducted by University of Eastern Kentucky criminologist Peter Kraska, we've seen about a 1,500 percent increase in SWAT deployments in this country since the early 1980s. The vast majority of that increase has been to serve search warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes. SWAT teams are inherently violent. In some ways they're an infliction of punishment before conviction. This is why they should only be used in situations where the suspect presents an immediate threat to others. In that case, SWAT teams use violence to defuse an already violent situation. When they're used to serve drug warrants for consensual crimes, however, SWAT tactics create violence where no violence was present before. Even when everything goes right in such a raid, breaking into the home of someone merely suspected of a nonviolent, consensual crime is an inappropriate use of force in a free society.

The overwhelmingly negative reaction to the video is interesting. Clearly, a very large majority of the people who have seen it are disturbed by it. But this has been going on for 30 years. We've reached the point where police have no qualms about a using heavily armed police force trained in military tactics to serve a search warrant on a suspected nonviolent marijuana offender. And we didn't get here by accident. The war on drugs has been escalating and militarizing for a generation. What's most disturbing about that video isn't the violence depicted in it, but that such violence has become routine.

As horrifying as the video from Columbia, Missouri, is, no human beings were killed. The police got the correct address, and they found the man they were looking for. In many other cases, such raids transpire based on little more than a tip from an anonymous or confidential informant. Nor is it unusual for raids just as violent as the one depicted in the video to turn up little in the way of drugs or weapons. (Whitworth wasn't exactly an outstanding citizen—he had a prior drug and DWI conviction. But he had no history of violence, and there were no weapons in the home.) Surveys conducted by newspapers around the country after one of these raids goes bad have found that police only find weapons of any kind somewhere between 10-20 percent of the time. The percentage of raids that turn up a significant amount of drugs tends to vary, but a large percentage only result in misdemeanor charges at worst.

Shooting the family's dogs isn't unusual, either. To be fair, that's in part because some drug dealers do in fact obtain vicious dogs to guard their supply. But there are other, safer ways to deal with these dogs than shooting them. In the Columbia case, a bullet fired at one dog ricocheted and struck another dog. The bullet could just as easily have struck a person. In the case of Tarika Wilson, a Lima, Ohio, SWAT officer mistook the sounds of a colleague shooting a drug dealer's dogs for hostile gunfire. He then opened fire into a bedroom, killing a 23-year-old mother and shooting the hand off of the one-year-old child in her arms.

The Columbia raid wasn't even a "no-knock" raid. The police clearly announced themselves before entering. The Supreme Court has ruled that police must knock and announce themselves before entering a home to serve a search warrant. If they want to enter without knocking, they have to show specific evidence that the suspect could be dangerous or is likely to dispose of contraband if police abide by the knock-and-announce rule. As is evident in the Columbia video, from the perspective of the people inside the home that requirement is largely ceremonial. If you were in a backroom of that house, or asleep, it isn't at all difficult to see how you'd have no idea if the armed men in your home were police officers. The first sounds you heard would have been gunfire.

[...]

The militarization of America's police departments has taken place over a generation, due to a number of bad policy decisions from politicians and government officials, ranging from federal grants for drug fighting to a Pentagon giveaway program that makes military equipment available to local police departments for free or at steep discounts. Mostly, though, it's due to the ill-considered "war" imagery our politicians continue to invoke when they refer to drug prohibition. Repeat the mantra that we're at war with illicit drugs often enough, and the cops on the front lines of that war will naturally begin to think of themselves as soldiers. And that's particularly true when you outfit them in war equipment, weaponry, and armor. This is dangerous, because the objectives of cops and soldiers are very different. One is charged with annihilating a foreign enemy. The other is charged with keeping the peace.

To me, one of the most disturbing aspects of the video from Missouri is how the officers are dressed. They are wearing every available piece of armor and equipment imaginable. They are in full riot gear (minus the shields) over marijuana. This is what it has come to, a weed is so important that we must be at war with it.

It's called "mission creep" and it is as reliable as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Every government program starts with the greatest of intentions (and everyone knows what the path to hell is lined with). "It's for the children," they'll say. Or, "think about our society." Or, "it's for the public good," or every other platitude that politicians sling about year after year.

And as a government program creeps along, the tentacles of it's mission stretch deeper and deeper into the lives of the citizenry, until one day, 30 years later, it's become "ok" for militarized cops to break down a door, fire a couple of rounds into a dog or two, and terrorize a man's wife and child, only to find that the "tip" they received about a man being a drug distributor was a bit of an exaggeration. And I'm supposed to believe that the man with the "drug paraphernalia" is the bad guy? That the man with the marijuana is the danger to society?

That's stupid.

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SONG: "Hip To My Heart" by The Band Perry --- great song (with a fairly lousy video) from a great new band with an odd band name. It should also be noted that the rest of their debut EP is really great.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: Watching two of my siblings graduate from their respective schools. It's going to be great to see all of the family.

Things that have made me happy today.

2010-05-05T23:30:00.001-05:00

The wife is officially done with her second year of law school!!!

I walked into the kitchen to find my dog's head buried deep into the trash can that I had mistakenly left out. The look on his face after being caught red-handed was priceless. We stood looking at each other, both dumbfounded at what the other is seeing, for a beat. Then I said, "What are you doing?" He responded by sending himself straight to timeout down in the basement. It was flipping hilarious.

Found a great deal on KC strip steaks at the local grocery store. And they were delicious.

Got a call back for one of the jobs for which I've applied. Alas, it's only part-time, so I'm not certain I'll take it. Yet I was still pleased to get a nibble on one of the lines I've cast.

I'm up $15,000 in play money on online poker.

Watching this video:

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Things that have pissed me off today.

2010-05-05T23:13:00.003-05:00

I'm usually a fairly positive guy, but there were many things that pissed me off today.

1) Video of a SWAT raid in Missouri. As REASON's Radley Balko points out,

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family's pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.
They found a "small amount" of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.
So smoking pot = "child endangerment." Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone's safety. Just so we're clear.

2) The reason I found out about this story is because I was able to read most of today's tweets on Twitter. The reason I was able to read most Twitter tweets today is because today was the first day of my new job search. I had to make up a resume and have sent out about two dozen applications. That pisses me off.

3) As I was listening to sports talk-radio, one of the hosts announced their poll question of the day: "Should Cinco de Mayo be a national holiday?" Are you freaking kidding me? Seriously? There are people want to make a national holiday out of a date that gets limited (at most) celebration in Mexico?!?! I imagine that these same people who would make it a U.S. national holiday are the same ones who mistakenly believe that May 5th is the Mexican Independence Day. Those idiots piss me off.

4) While I'm in that same ballpark, another thing that pissed me off today was that ‘Los Suns’ Join Protest of Arizona’s New Law. From the NYT,

The Phoenix Suns delivered a powerful statement Wednesday night with a relatively subtle gesture: a three-letter addition to their uniforms.
Their jerseys said “Los Suns” — a Spanish-English combination intended to acknowledge the Cinco de Mayo holiday and, more broadly, to express opposition to Arizona’s new law dealing with illegal immigrants.

You have got to be kidding me. I'm sure that the people who see this act of solidarity by the Suns would be completely horrified if the owners of the Washington Wizards had pulled out their old "Washington Bullets" jerseys to show solidarity after D.C.'s handgun ban was struck down in the Heler case. Bringing politics into sports pisses me off. Can't I have one escape from politics?

5) My iPod pissed me off when it re-synced my entire library just as I was trying to get out the door to walk the dog with The Wife. I about threw it across the room, I was so pissed.

Honorable Mentions:

Only 4 people showed up for Tuesday night Volleyball, so we had to borrow players from other teams. Freaking weak.
Our culture is so intrigued by "sex scandals" that even B-level celebrities like David Boreanaz get press for cheating on their wives.
My best Facebook update/tweet of the week got very little reaction, which pissed me off because I thought I was such a genius for thinking of it:

I'm waiting for Alan Jackson to come out and say what everyone is thinking about the flooding in Nashville: President Obama hates country music.

Hopefully the rest of this week is better. I feel that after identifying the items that are causing me to be in a pissy mood, I can get on with the rest of my life.

______________________________________________________

SONG: "Sante Fe" by Drive-By Truckers --- I just got this album by DBT and I love it. This band is what would have happened had Tom Petty been the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Great stuff.

MOVIE: Young @ Heart --- this is probably the most powerful documentary I have ever watched. Touching, inspiring, and entertaining. Whether you rent, buy, or steal it, you must watch this movie.

Here is the trailer to give you a taste of the Young @ Heart group:

TELEVISION: FRINGE: Season 1 -- The Wife and I have started watching this show on Netflix and it is very interesting and entertaining. I knew I would want to watch this show one episode right after the other. I knew I'd never be able to stick with it watching with a week between each episode, but back to back viewings are quite entertaining. This show is a Sci-Fi version of Bones and/or House, which is a good thing.

Draft Talk

2010-04-25T11:34:00.001-05:00

I'm not much of a football fan. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch games and I root for the Broncos when they are on broadcast television, but I couldn't tell you who their left tackle is, nor could I tell you who is their offensive and/or defensive coordinator. I don't follow the team (or any sports team for that matter) very closely.

So, when I heard through Facebook and Twitter (no way I watch the draft, since it's both on cable television, which I don't have, and really boring) that the Denver Broncos selected Tim Tebow, the "controversial" quarterback from Florida, with one of their first round draft picks, I didn't really care one way or another.

Some people were disappointed in this selection because apparently the Broncos already have two young quarterbacks (I only knew of the one quarterback, Kyle Orton, because he was there last year, but I have come to find out that somehow or other a fellow by the name of Brady Quinn is also a Bronco QB). Since the Broncos are not desperate for a young quarterback, some people felt that the pick could have been used more wisely.

Other people like the decision to take Tebow. Some like his character and leadership characteristics. Some like that he is one of the most athletically gifted guys to come out of this years draft. Other people feel that this selection will create great competition at the quarterback position, which they hope will lead to the emergence of "The Next Elway".

But me, I really didn't care one way or another. At least I didn't care until I read this story in the Boston Herald:

A Boston sports-radio host yesterday likened former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow’s NFL draft party to a “Nazi rally,” a remark one media observer called an “amazing double standard.”

Fred “Toucher” Toettcher said yesterday on 98.5 The Sports Hub, “It looked like some kind of Nazi rally. . . . So lily-white is what I’m trying to say. Yeah, Stepford Wives.”

And I am now a Tim Tebow fan. Did the sports jock misspeak? I'm sure he did. But anyone who can get some pissed-off liberal (I assume) sports-talk Mass-hole flustered just for being alive is a friend of mine. I may be compelled to get a Tebow Broncos jersey just for the divisive properties such a jersey would hold.

And it is especially fitting that the person who wore the #15 Broncos jersey last year, Brandon Marshall, was an amazing athlete but possessed and/or displayed little to no leadership abilities throughout the season, despite his being one of the most important offensive position players on the team. So the Broncos traded Marshall and will be replacing his #15 with another #15 who is, in the minds of many, will be a greater leader/character than he will be an NFL quarterback, Mr. Timothy Tebow.

The older I get...

2010-04-22T22:14:00.000-05:00

the more I wish I'd have been able to see George Carlin live. This little bit of wisdom from the late, great genius seems fitting for ~~Future Enviromentalist Indoctrination~~ Earth Day.

(And, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you can expect some salty language in this piece.)

"An island unto himself, surrounded by water but dying of thirst."

2010-04-21T22:23:00.001-05:00

This is the analogy that Pete Landry used in his "The Masters - A Tale of Contrasts" post to describe Tiger Woods, and it is by far the best description of Tiger's personality. Mr. Landry is the author of the great golf blog "Golf Grooves" and he attended this year's Masters tournament. While at the Masters, he encountered two of the main people of Tiger's entourage, his caddy and his mother.

As I meander behind the 14th green, looking up toward the clubhouse, I notice Steve Williams walking in my direction. In his trademark Valvoline blue tee-shirt, Tiger's caddie is checking on the course and taking notes in preparation for the final round of the Masters. We are, for a short moment, alone and in close proximity to each other.

When Williams is only a few feet away, I say "good luck to you and Tiger today Steve"...

With that, he brushes by me. He is obviously avoiding eye contact; close enough to shake my hand, but choosing instead to totally ignore me. Like a man raised in a barn, he did not acknowledge me or my words. A simple nod would have sufficed. Had it been someone else, I might have been insulted or surprised, but this is Steve Williams after all. What else would you expect? In my life, I've met heads of State, shared meals with Hall of Fame athletes, and had conversations with some of the top business people of our time. So, a snub from the guy who carries Tiger's golf clubs is certainly not a traumatic experience. I simply shrugged it off and chuckled at the ignorance of the man.

Hours later, on that same 14th hole, I would be standing against the ropes nearly half way down the fairway, at a spot where you can see the players hit their approach shot and also clearly see the green. We had all just cheered a great iron shot by Fred Couples and were waiting for Woods and Choi to arrive, when I noticed Tiger's mother walking behind us. She was surrounded by her usual entourage and clearly looking for a spot from where she could see Tiger play the hole. I signalled to her bodyguard that she was welcome to stand on the rope in front of me. She is a tiny woman and wouldn't block my view, but I knew she wouldn't possibly be able to see Tiger from behind the crowd. At our invitation, she slipped in front of my father and I.

Anyone who watched the Masters on Sunday will recall that Tiger had a rare brain cramp on that 14th green, three-putting from close range. When she saw that, Tiger's mother yelled "Oh! He is pissed off!" The moment was surreal.

My father and I looked at each other in shock and amusement. You just wouldn't expect that kind of language from a tiny older lady... Then, as if she had been entitled, she left without taking a second to thank us for making room for her up front. In fact, just like Steve Williams had done, she basically ignored me and the people around her.

All this to say that life has a way of repaying people for how they treat others. These are not major trespasses, but the way these people act shows a basic lack of upbringing and social grace. As the saying goes, money does not buy class.

Despite the fact that I am not a fan of Steve Williams, I was courteous enough to wish him luck when I came across him. Having been raised to respect people and to yield to a lady whenever appropriate, I was only happy to make room for Tiger's mother. Both Williams and Mrs Woods repaid me with ignorance and bad manners. Surrounded by the likes of these people, is there any wonder that Tiger Woods is such a miserable man who feels a sense of entitlement and that the rules of decency do not apply to him?

Mr. Landry then compares his encounter with the Tiger clan to how Phil Mickleson treated the fans as he worked his way to winning this year's Green Jacket.

Faced with a potentially devastating miss that could have cost him the lead, Mickleson was gracious with fans, politely asking for the gallery to make room, thanking everyone and acknowledging his fans when he successfully hit the shot. In similar fashion, his caddie "Bones" was polite, saying please and thank you repeatedly. How difficult is that? For most civilized people, it is second nature to be courteous.

While he has played inspired golf during this tough stretch of life, with his wife and mother both battling cancer, Phil Mickleson has taken the title of "Fan Favorite" on the PGA Tour. It's a case of the underdog working his way into the hearts and minds of the average golf fan by pairing his great skill with a likable and pleasant attitude toward the fans. For all the thanks and smiles that Phil gives to the galleries, they repay him double. For being truly thankful for their support through his difficulties off the course, the fans double their support for him on the course.

Tiger was always the cut-throat competitor, and while he was always cold toward the crowds that followed him around the courses, the fans greatly respected him because of his awe-inspiring skills on the course. But that was before his private life became tabloid fodder. Now, Tiger and the people closest to him, are going to need fans if he wants to cement his legacy as the greatest golfer to ever live (rather than just being the most successful golfer of all time), and they'll have an easier time if they are using honey rather than vinegar.
______________________________________________________

SONG: "On the Run" by Gangstagrass (the theme song to the tv show "Justified")

TELEVISION: "Justified" on FX (and Hulu). Timothy Olyphant plays a U.S. Marshall who returns to his childhood hometown and is attempting to clean up the town with a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. It is an old western set in modern times. Great, great show.

LOOKING FORWARD TO: Dinner and a show this weekend with The Wife to celebrate the end of her 4th (out of 6) semester of law school. We are going to eat dinner at the Upstream Brewery and then are going to the Orpheum Theater to watch the off-Broadway production of "Legally Blonde: The Musical". It should be a great night out with my pal.

Baseball Card Bubble

2010-04-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not an economist, but I play one online. One of the things about economics that fascinates me are "bubbles" within an economy.

My wife and I barely got out of the recent "housing bubble" just before it burst and the housing market went to hell. While we ended up losing around $2000 (if not more, I don't remember the numbers at this moment) on our house, at least we got it sold before we came out to Omaha. We got lucky and we made a wise decision, because in all reality, we could still be the owners of a home in different state than the one in which we are living.

So, while I have a little bit of life experience with regard to "bubbles", I should probably have more. I missed (or wasn't paying attention) to the "Tech Bubble" of the late 1990s, nor did I feel much pain within the current financial recession/bubble. With that said, there was one "bubble burst" that occurred during my lifetime that has had a lasting and impacting effect on me personally: The Baseball (and, in my case, Basketball) Card Bubble Burst of the 1990s.

Last month, Slate printed an excerpt of Dave Jamieson's book Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession. While Mr. Jamieson's book focuses on the baseball card bubble, I can attest that the same thing was happening in the basketball card market, which is where me and my friends invested our money during our preteen years, and, unfortunately, we had entered the market when it was in its decent during the mid-90s.

By the '80s, baseball card values were rising beyond the average hobbyist's means. As prices continued to climb, baseball cards were touted as a legitimate investment alternative to stocks, with the Wall Street Journal referring to them as sound "inflation hedges" and "nostalgia futures." Newspapers started running feature stories with headlines such as "Turning Cardboard Into Cash" (the Washington Post), "A Grand Slam Profit May Be in the Cards" (the New York Times), and "Cards Put Gold, Stocks to Shame as Investment" (the Orange County Register). A hobby bulletin called the Ball Street Journal, claiming entrée to a network of scouts and coaches, promised collectors "insider scouting information" that would help them invest in the cards of rising big-league prospects. Collectors bought bundles of rookie cards as a way to gamble legally on a player's future.

Unfortunately for investors, each one of those cards was being printed in astronomical numbers. The card companies were shrewd enough never to disclose how many cards they were actually producing, but even conservative estimates put the number well into the billions. One trade magazine estimated the tally at 81 billion trading cards per year in the late '80s and early '90s, or more than 300 cards for every American annually.

Precious few collectors seemed to ponder the possibility that baseball cards could depreciate. As the number of card shops in the United States ballooned to 10,000, dealers filled their storage rooms with unopened cases of 1988 Donruss as if they were Treasury bills or bearer bonds. Shops were regularly burglarized, their stocks of cards taken as loot. In early 1990, a card dealer was found bludgeoned to death behind the display case in his shop in San Luis Obispo, Calif., with $10,000 worth of cards missing. A few weeks later, Bob Engel, a respected National League umpire, was arrested for allegedly stealing more than 4,180 Score baseball cards, worth $143.98, from a Target store in Bakersfield, Calif., and attempting to steal another 50 packs from a Costco.

(...)

In 1989, the Upper Deck Co. would transform the industry with flashy, high-priced cards aimed at investment-minded collectors. As the sales of new sports cards swelled to more than $1 billion a year, children began to flee the hobby, turned off by the pricey packs and confounding number of sets. The baseball strike of 1994 ushered in an industrywide hangover that still hasn't ended. Revenues from new sports cards have fallen to around $200 million a year, roughly one-seventh of what they were at their peak. While vintage cards like the T206 Honus Wagner and the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle have continued to soar in value, baseball card's boom times produced no such valuable merchandise. Those 1988 Donruss cards, once considered a savvy investment, can now be bought in bulk for around 1 cent apiece.

{Emphasis mine}

Mr. Jamieson brings up some very important points that take me back to my card collecting hayday.

He says that "unfortunately for investors, each one of those cards was being printed in astronomical numbers." Even as a kid, I had figured out that many of my cards could be worth more money if it they weren't so easy to come by. I would open pack after pack of cards, only to end up with maybe one or two unique cards and a boatload of duplicates.

I collected basketball cards fanatically for about 4 years in the mid-90s, and the fruits of that labor has been distilled into one shoe box of cards that I consider to be worth keeping around. I continue to drag that box around mostly because of sentimental value and not because I hope that one day they may become monetarily valuable. (Ah, who am I kidding? Of course I hope that I'll be able to take that box to the Antiques Road Show and be surprised when one of those cards is appraised at thousands of dollars. Every kid who ever collected cards has this hope deep down inside of them.)

And, as Mr. Jamieson points out, I was one of those children who fled the card collecting market because I was being priced out of the market. And, looking back, it kind of pisses me off that that happened. In the years before I left, the lure of finding a "gem" of a card (rookie, autograph, etc.) was the driving force when buying pack after pack of cards. By the time I'd left collecting, the trading card companies had taken all of the work out of getting these cards by pulling them out of the standard packs, and instead sold packs of cards that were "guaranteed" to contain one high priced card. But, the catch was that these packs of five to ten cards cost $20 or more.

In addition to being priced out of the "unique" cards of the time, the market was also getting completely saturated with card companies. During Michael Jordan's rookie season, there was one card company, which meant that there was one Michael Jordan rookie cards, which meant that it was a rare and valuable card. However, ten years later when Kobe Bryant was a rookie, there were at least six major card companies (and each with countless different branches/brands within a company) putting out Kobe Bryant rookie cards, which meant there were literally hundreds of different Kobe Bryant rookie cards in the market. And it was like that for every other player in the league.

As I've mentioned before, my favorite player in the NBA was John Stockton, which meant his cards were the ones I sought out the most. I have a couple hundred unique cards of his, and I didn't even collect during the final 10 years of his career. (I have however picked up a few of his later cards in the past few years.) The only cards that I would actively seek to purchase would be one of his rookie cards or an autograph card.

One advantage to collecting his cards and not those of, say, Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or Lebron James, is that I would hypothesize that his smaller fan base lead to a reduction of John Stockton cards in the market. Where everyone who has kept their cards over the years made sure to keep their Jordan/Bryant/James cards, if they ever did throw out cards, 2nd tier players would have been the first to be thrown away. And every Stockton card that is taken out of the card collecting community makes mine that much more valuable.

Just as in baseball cards, the basketball card market tanked in the late 1990s due to over-saturation and artificially high prices ("unique" cards that weren't really that unique) and a dwindling fan base. I would say that there was a correlation between my fandom of card collecting and my interest in the NBA: when I stopped collecting cards, I stopped caring about the NBA.

It's a terrible shame, but a great lesson in economics: the card companies were short sighted and thought that interest in their product would continue forever. Rather than building their industry with the idea of "life-long collectors", they sought to increase their current sales no matter how it affected their futures.

Getting away from the business side of card collecting, I wonder if the internet has improved or ruined the personal aspect of card collecting. When I was a kid, the only people who I could trade cards with were the only two other people I knew who traded cards, my friends BJ and Eric. We would haggle, barter, and trade cards for hours at a time. I wonder if anyone does that anymore when you can put your cards online for the world to bid on. Then again, it has never been easier to get into contact with other collectors, even if they never come face to face.

I will admit that writing about my card collection has lead me to go dig them out of a box in the garage. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to relive my youth for a few moments as I look through my inventory.

The Taxman Cometh

2010-04-14T21:55:00.002-05:00

As you tuck yourself into bed this Tax Day Eve and lay there staring at the ceiling already thinking ahead toward next year's Tax Day, worry not. According to the Washington Examiner's Grace-Marie Turner, ObamaCare will make every day feel like April 15th.

New taxes on investments, taxes on medical supplies, taxes on drugs and health insurance, and taxes on you if you are just breathing… the list of taxes Americans will face just got a lot longer thanks to ObamaCare.

The health overhaul plan just enacted represents the largest tax hike in U.S. history - $569 billion over 10 years through a dizzying array of taxes and fees that promise to frustrate taxpayers at every turn. ObamaCare will make every day feel like April 15^th.

And despite President Obama’s campaign promise that no one making $250,000 or less would see a tax increase, Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation confirms that these tax hikes will hit millions of middle- and working-class families who are struggling to make ends meet.

She goes on to explain how these different taxes to which we will soon become accustomed will affect our day to day lives.

And if, after all of these new taxes are put into place, you feel like you're still not quite contributing enough dough to Uncle Sam, worry not, for there is also talk of bringing a Value Added Tax (VAT) to the U.S. economy. As Veronique de Rugy explains at REASON Magazine,

Widely used in Europe, the Value-Added Tax (VAT) has always seemed a non-starter in the United States. That may be changing given apparently insurmountable structural deficits and fear that the financial collapse of Greece could happen here if revenue isn't increased. These days, the VAT is being taken seriously even by pro-market conservatives and libertarians. A VAT is a consumption tax which is levied at each stage of production based on the value added to the product at that stage.

So, along with the many, many, MANY other taxes we pay every day, we might also get to look forward to paying taxes on all of the products we consume. They are going to get us coming and going. Sheesh, it's like these people want to take from each according to their abilities and distribute it to each according to their needs.

So, this April 15th, I hope that the Taxman is kind to you and yours, and remember:

Let me tell you
How it will be.
There's one for you,
Nineteen for me,

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five percent
Appear too small,
Be thankful I don't
Take it all.

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car,
I'll tax the street.
If you drive to city,
I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold,
I'll tax the heat.
If you take a walk,
I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for,
(Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson.)
If you don't want to pay some more.
(Uh-uh, Mr. Heath.)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

And my advice to
Those who die.
(Taxman!)
Declare the pennies
On your eyes.
(Taxman!)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman,
And you're working for no one but me.
(Taxman!)

Through a Dog's Eyes

2010-04-14T21:18:00.003-05:00

Be sure to set your DVR on April 21st (and probably grab a box or two of tissues) because this documentary on PBS is sure to be a gem.

(And be sure to check out their website.)

I'm on a Highway to Lipitor*

2010-04-13T23:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if the internet is healthy for me. Sure, I've learned much more information from online sources than I ever learned in school, but then I encounter such items as the ones following, and I'm certain my blood pressure doubles, which can't be healthy.

(*And yes, I know that Lipitor is for cholesterol and not blood pressure per se. But I couldn't find any recognizable name brand blood pressure medicines that would work for my title.)

First, I watched this video today.

This must be some footage from an Iranian protest, right? Or maybe it's file footage of Socialist Soviet abuse of it's citizenry? Well, if not those, then it must be video of protesters or rioters from some foreign, third-world nation?

Actually, according to the Washington Post:

The FBI is investigating an incident last month in which three Prince George's County police officers in riot gear used their batons to beat an unarmed University of Maryland student after a basketball game -- an event captured on video and aired nationwide on Tuesday.

(...)

The FBI probe is the third investigation by authorities into the beating and the criminal charges filed against John J. McKenna, 21, and Benjamin C. Donat, 19. Charging documents filed against the two students are contradicted by the video. Prosecutors have dropped assault charges against both.

Are you freaking kidding me? SERIOUSLY? Assault charges were brought against the students? Why, did they break one of the officer's batons with one of their skulls? Did one student's face break one of the officer's hand? Did one of the officers throw out his back while slamming his riot shield into the obviously dangerous and threatening student who happened to be skipping by? And, yes, prior to being turned into a modern day Rodney King, that student was skipping down the sidewalk. Oh, the horror. Thank God the police were there the squelch the madness.

I've watched that video a handful of times, and I just couldn't help but imagine what an uproar there would be had a group of the students cornered one of those cops and put an equally punishing beating onto him. It would be a national scandal of epic proportions.

Un-freaking-believable.

So, my blood has been boiling all day. And then I read this article from the Boston Review in which Colin Dayan discusses "breed bans, euthanasia, and preemptive justice" with regard to dogs.

I've always been a philosophically opposed to breed bans for dogs and Mr. Dayan makes some great points in his article.

The seizures, detentions, and exterminations of pit bulls—sanctioned by laws in many states—expose the statutory logic for making preemptive justice constitutionally permissible: canine profiling supplies the terms for inclusion and ostracism, and even the suspension of due process rights. No criminal conviction of the owner is required for state seizure and destruction of property. In other words, the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the government from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” can be suspended for the public good without evidence, without trial, by classification alone.

In legal rationales, realities are created. Old inequalities and radical discrimination are repackaged in unexpected forms. In breed-specific legislation, the taint and incapacity of the disenfranchised live on. At a time when our government is labeling certain persons as threats—alleged terrorists, enemy aliens, illegal immigrants, ordinary people who want to get on airplanes—we need to ask how the seizure and destruction of dogs deemed contraband becomes a medium for the intimidation and debasement of humans in turn. Who should suffer deprivation without redress so that we can live in reasonable—safe and secure—consensus? And who gets to decide?

Those are some mighty fine questions.

And how did it get this way (at least, according to Mr. Dayan)?

Pit bulls were once known as “America’s Breed”: RCA’s “Nipper” (pictured head cocked while listening to “his master’s voice”); Buster Brown’s “Tige”; “Pete the Pup,” part of the Little Rascals gang in the Our Gang comedies; and the pit bull pictured on the celebrated World War I poster proclaiming: “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.” Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated dog in military history, fought for eighteen months in the trenches, saved several soldiers’ lives, and captured a German spy. Now the pit bull is the most demonized breed, the poster dog for dogfighting, the herald of criminality and drug-dealing, the mauler of children.

In 1987 Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine all ran articles featuring pit bulls. Rolling Stone’s “A Boy and his Dog in Hell” reported on pit bulls used in street fights by gangs in North Philadelphia. Valued as proof of their owner’s mettle, the dogs were subjected to unimaginable torture and death if they lost. The cover of Sports Illustrated showed a snarling pit bull with the headline “Beware of This Dog” and branded these dogs with the locking-jaw myth and “a will to kill.” It was bested by Time’s “Time Bombs on Legs,” which compared the pit bull to “the vicious hound of the Baskervilles.” According to the Time article, the pit bull “has seized small children like rag dolls and mauled them to death in a frenzy of bloodletting.”

Since then the pit bull has been the media’s choice for horror stories about dogs labeled “four-legged guns” or “lethal weapons.” Citing pit bulls’ “vicious propensity,” hundreds of towns large and small throughout the United States have adopted the first ever breed-specific dog bans. Regulations vary from one city to the next, but once a ban has been enacted, any dog considered a threat to public welfare can be summarily seized and put down. This despite the fact that other breeds of dogs also bite, but we hardly ever read about them. “Dogs that bite people,” as Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, “are vicious because they have owners who want a vicious dog.” That is, what predisposes a dog to bite is not its nature, but its environment. The most loyal dogs are the most abused. Ever ready to please, these dogs become victimized by those they love most. They are either the tools of human-initiated aggression or, as Karen Delise writes in The Pit Bull Placebo, the targets of “every type of positive or negative emotional and physical circumstance humans are capable of imposing on dogs.

[Emphasis mine]

Which is one of my biggest pet peeves, so to speak, about breed-specific legislation, the fact that these laws rarely take into account the bigger problem than a dog's genes: shitty owners. Many of these dogs are raised to be vicious. It just turns out that the pit bull is the dog of choice for these horrible people who train, torment, and torture the dogs into fighting machines.

Mr. Dayan also walks through the legal history and case law with regard to dogs. Are dogs property? If so, what legal protections are they afforded? Is a dog's breed the index for his disposition? Or can we look past its looks and instead focus on its actions? He notes that, "Nowadays, dangerous-dog hearings decide if dogs live or die. Vicious-dog law, or what some simply call “dog-bite law,” usually precludes any legal challenge—especially if the offending animal happens to be identified as dangerous simply because of the breed."

(NOTE: while I am in agreement with much of the author's thesis throughout the piece, I must take issue with his decision to close the piece with an analogy that includes the word "Nazi" as it is way too much slippery slope/straw man argumentation for my taste. That final paragraph nearly destroys strength within the rest of the article, and for some people it may undercut it entirely.)

So, what's the point? I guess I don't like it when police brutalize the citizens they are entrusted to "serve and protect". I also don't like it when legislative bodies enact laws breed-specific dog laws that make judgments about "big schweeties" based upon their genes and not their behavior. And now you know where I sit on these two extremely specific issues.

Pulitzer Prizes

2010-04-12T22:47:00.000-05:00

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners were recently announced and one of the most gripping, riveting, and heart wrenching stories that I've ever read won this year's prize for Best Feature Writing.
I remember reading Gene Weingarten's piece last year about parents who unintentionally kill their children by forgetting them in their car. And after rereading it today, I could not imagine that any of the other entries could have stood a chance at winning this award.

Reading the accounts of parents who have accidentally killed their children, such as Miles Harrison, whose heartbreaking picture of him clutching his child's toy accompanies the story, it is difficult to imagine a sorrow deeper than theirs. Their stories are fairly graphic, yet are told as a warning that this can happen to anyone: parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend, etc.

"Death by hyperthermia" is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just... forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.

Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world.

Mr. Weingarten presents some of the legal questions such events pose: to prosecute or not to prosecute. Is this a crime? If so, can it be a felony if there is no intent? And, if it's not a felony, isn't the parent's internal punishment going to be greater than any that a misdemeanor might carry? If a case goes to trial, is a jury going to convict?

I'm certain that Mr. Weingarten began this piece intending to focus on the law and order aspect of such a rare event. But the strenght of his writing, and what probably lead to his ultimately receiving the award, was how he treated these parents. Another writer may not have been so kind. Mr. Weingarten expertly allows some of these parents to explain how they are able to cope with the mental and psychological tole such a loss takes on them, their spouses, and their marriages. Some parents put up a fight. Others take flight. Some parents avoid, others embrace.

I began this story wondering, "how could someone forget their child in a car?" I ended this piece wondering, "would I have the strength that these parents have displayed and be able to face the rest of my life?" Because he was able to get readers like me to move away from being judgmental of others and instead become introspective of themselves, Mr. Weingarten is $10,000 and a Pulitzer Prize richer.

Inspiration

2010-04-08T22:30:00.002-05:00

If this doesn't inspire you, I don't want to be your friend anymore.

See more funny videos and Sports Videos at Today's Big Thing.

American Idol 2010 -- Top 9

2010-04-06T21:25:00.000-05:00

Tonight is Lennon and McCartney (the Beatles) Night on American Idol.

(As I found the song list on the Vote for the Worst website, I’ll be forecasting what I think will happen with each performance, and then comment on what does happen.)

Aaron - The Long and Winding Road – One of my least favorite songs by the Beatles. It is such a drab and dreary song that plods along. And this song is even more unappealing to me coming from Aaron. Please let this be the song that sends him on the “long and winding road” home.

(ASIDE: I really wish the judges would ignore the people in the crowd. Nothing slows the show down more than having Simon turn around and look at who “boo-ed” him after he told someone they did a poor job. Sheesh.)

Katie – Let it Be – One of the most cliché songs by the Beatles. It has been played to death. Not looking forward to this performance one bit. She’s trying to “make it her own,” which is always important to the judges, but she took no real risks on her vocals. She did nothing to hurt or help her position in the competition.

Andrew – Can’t Buy Me Love – I’ll be interested on what kind of arrangement Andrew does with this one. If he sings the Beatles version, he’ll be quickly forgotten. If he can somehow modernize the song without completely destroying it, he could win the night. Andrew tried to pull the song out of the 1960s, and only managed to get it to the 80s. It wasn’t great, but it was much better than if he’d have tried to make it exactly like the original.

Mike – Eleanor Rigby – this should be a hot mess. Ok, it wasn’t a complete hot mess. He turned it into an R&B song and it kinda worked, but he could have done the same thing to some different song and it probably would have translated better (maybe something like Sgt. Pepper’s LHCB?). But, it was probably better than I’ve giving it credit, because I don’t like R&B for the most part.

(ASIDE: I’ve been muting the show between songs so I could listen to the Beatles songs in my iTunes library, which means I’ve been missing tonight’s video packages. Well, I just listened to the package for Crystal, where all the other contestants talk about one person, and it was kinda creepy. It felt like a memorial tribute one might make to honor someone who’s just died. Creepy.)

Crystal – Come Together – The second most cliché Beatles’ song being performed tonight. She turned it into a Country version (with some dude playing a didgeridoo beside her which is odd). This was probably the most entertaining song of the night.

Tim – All My Loving – one of the earliest Beatles songs being sung tonight. It will either be really good, or really bad. I’m betting it’s the later. Ummm…..hmmmmmm………uhhhhhhhhh. Ok, imagine if Jason Mraz and Brian Setzer reproduced and their kid made it to the Top 9 of American Idol. Got that in your head? Good, because I’m pretty sure that was what Tim was going for, but, unfortunately he just fell short of his goal. At least he still has the Vote for the Worst crowd’s support, because he’ll need it.

Casey – Jealous Guy – I was unfamiliar with this song, so I listened to it on youtube. This song does not have a guitar on the recording I listened to, so maybe Casey puts the 6-string down for once, which should be quite awkward. Nope, he did it with the guitar. He was wise to pick a relatively unknown song, because then he could get away with singing it exactly like the original, although I don’t remember Lennon being quite so liberal with goat-vibrato in his version. This guy is a joke.

Siobhan – Across the Universe – I didn’t recognize the song from the title alone, but after listening to it online, I remembered it, and it fits Siobhan’s personality to a “T”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate through the television. It was a dud, in my opinion. The song had zero personality or flair. I hope her off-stage personality will keep her in the competition for a few more weeks. She needs to step her game up.

(ASIDE: Ughh, they are obviously stalling for time because there is 15 minutes left for one performer. They are asking the contestants beauty contest-style questions and allowing weirdos from the audience to come on stage. All of this filler is insufferable, and it makes me long for the return of the 1-hour shows.)

Lee – Hey Jude – My favorite Beatles song of the night by my favorite contestant remaining in the competition. I’m cautiously optimistic. (Note: I would promise to vote a hundred times a week if Lee would learn how to properly wear a stocking cap). He’s doing an adequate job with the song, but he went to the chorus way too early. And what the hell is up with the bagpipes? Totally distracting, totally unnecessary, a total gimmick, and, ultimately, they ruined the song for me. Which is a bummer, because he was on track to be my favorite of the night.

Disappointed that no one sang the following songs, all of which are better “performance” songs than most of the ones done tonight.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Day Tripper
Lady Madonna
Ballad of John and Yoko
Get Back
Help!
Drive My Car
With a Little Help from my Friends
Yellow Submarine, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, or I am the Walrus – any of which I would have preferred Siobhan to have sang instead of the borefest that was Across the Universe.
Anything from my favorite Beatles album, “Rubber Soul”, could have easily been updated and modernized and knocked the judge’s and audience’s socks off. Lee could have killed The Word. Crystal would have nailed In My Life. Aaron might have pulled of Drive My Car. Siobhan could have screamed her way through I’m Looking Through You. Andrew might have pulled off Michelle. Kinda bums me out that no one attempted a song from this album.
Also surprising was that no one attempted any McCartney/Wings songs. No one wanted to do Maybe I'm Amazed, Live and Let Die, or Band on the Run? Hard to believe, unless they weren't allowed to choose from those songs, which would be odd during "Lennon and McCartney" night.

After the replay, I’d have to say my order tonight was:

TOP: Big Mike, Crystal

MIDDLE: Lee, Katie, Casey, Siobhan

BOTTOM: Tim, Aaron, Andrew

After the reply, I'm also convinced that this year's contestants are horrible at song selection. Why no one has called me to come produce this show is beyond me.

Regulators (and a new Warning)

2010-04-04T23:09:00.002-05:00

While eating our Easter lunch at Taco Bell today, the Wife, the In-Laws, and I were discussing one of the public initiatives within ObamaCare that will have an immediate effect on our lives (considering that the health care/insurance stuff doesn't fully kick in until 2014, well after our next presidential election and into the 2016 election race): chain restaurants will have to provide nutrition information on their menus.

Some highlights from the discussion:

Most of us seemed to be in agreement that it was a ridiculous requirement.
I noted that many stores had already been proudly displaying these facts in full view of their paying customers (Subway was the first that came to mind).
The Bro-in-Law noted that most people already know that quick/cheap/convenient food (usually) = high in calories
And then the Wife noted that most people will probably become desensitized to the information overload.

And she's exactly right (as usual).

Think about all of the "Cover Your Ass" legalese that we encounter everyday and (for the most part) completely ignore. I have a pile of small-engine yard and garden equipment user manuals in my garage filled with warnings that I've never read. There are thousands of "small print" explanations and warnings that I've glossed over in my lifetime. Warning signs on cigarettes, slippery floor signs, caution signs, speed limit signs, prescription labels, and the list goes on and on. All of these are supposedly for "my own good," yet I ignore them (or at least pay them no heed).

One of the main selling points for me about small/limited government is that it puts an emphasis on personal responsibility and common sense. With this bombardment of warnings and cations comes a sense of "well, my government (or this company) is looking out for me, so why should I worry?"

Today, Glenn Reynolds wrote in the Washington Examiner about "The Knowledge Problem" inherent in government regulations.

Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled "command economies" were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew.

In his "The Use of Knowledge In Society," Hayek explained that information about supply and demand, scarcity and abundance, wants and needs exists in no single place in any economy. The economy is simply too large and complicated for such information to be gathered together.

Any economic planner who attempts to do so will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.

Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.
Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can't possibly be smart enough to make them work.

Hayek's insight into economics and regulation is often called "The Knowledge Problem," and it is a very powerful notion. But recent events suggest that it's not just the economy that regulators don't understand well enough -- it's also their own regulations.

(...)

The United States Code -- containing federal statutory law -- is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117 pages long and composes 226 volumes.

No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can't be aware of all the real-world complications it's producing, it can't even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it's doing.

There's good news and bad news in that. The bad news is obvious: We're governed not just by people who do screw up constantly, but by people who can't help but screw up constantly. So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or "better" rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system.

The good news is less obvious, but just as important: While we rightly fear a too-powerful government, this regulatory knowledge problem will ensure plenty of public stumbles and embarrassments, helping to remind people that those who seek to rule us really don't know what they're doing.

Mr. Reynolds hope is that these public stumbles will increase the public's skepticism toward Big Government (and I hope that too, but like the saying goes: hope in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first). Instead, as I've pointed out before, there are now three things you can take to the bank: death, taxes, and the growth of government.

Each regulatory failure rarely leads to a paring back of previously enacted regulations, but instead, new "fixes" are trotted out and piled on to previous regulations. And these new regulations usually compound previous "fixes" ad nauseum.

My solution? I propose every ballot come with the following warning:

Voting for this candidate and/or referendum will, in all likelihood, lead to a reduction of your money and liberties and freedoms.

Because one more warning can only help, right?

UPDATE: The following picture was featured in a recent Hit & Run blog post at Reason.com about "the Nanny State." The picture displays two points about over-regulation and nanny statism:

When annoying noises are outlawed, only outlaws will make annoying noises. It is quite annoying to me that these types of regulations are on the books, so the only logical conclusion is that there out to be a law against these types of laws, right?
This sign also helps prove the point about becoming desensitized by information overload. I did not make it halfway through the statute before my eyes glazed over with boredom and annoyance. (Also, the fact that this sign has not been defaced makes me wonder about its legitimacy.)

_____________________________________________________

SONG: "Wonderful" by Everclear

LOOKING FORWARD TO: Opening Day for the 2010 MLB season tomorrow. (Sure, the Yankees and Red Sox played tonight, but no one cares about those team, right? So, the season starts tomorrow). And it looks like my man Luke Hochevar is going to be the #2 starter for the KC Royals for a while.

What I Learned Today -- 4/1

2010-04-01T20:50:00.001-05:00

Today I tried to pull some April Fool's Day pranks on my online friends via Facebook. With the advice of my wife, I decided to forgo the typical April Fool's jokes that we're pregnant (nothing funny about that one), that I've quit or been fired from my job (no need to jinx it), and/or weather related pranks (which is something only my grandma would find funny, and I'm pretty sure she's been banned from Facebook to help cure her FarmVille addiction).

So, this morning before leaving for work, I hastily jotted down the following "joke":

I can't believe that they aren't going to allow on the course spectators at the Masters this year because Tiger didn't want people watching him. The guy is a diva. And the people running the Masters tournament are a bunch of wimps for caving into his demands.

At the time of my writing it, I thought it would be good for a chuckle or two, but I now realize it was too much of a niche joke (and not all that funny in hindsight). One of my friends believed it was true, but it didn't bring me too much joy to point out that it was my April Fool.

So, the first lesson of the day: make sure to keep your audience in mind when concocting a prank.

When I got home for lunch, I decided to give it another try and came up with the following:

You know, the more I've read about it, the more ObamaCare sounds like a good idea.

This joke still brings me much pleasure, because anyone who knows me or has been reading my blog knows that very little is going to convince me that ObamaCare is a good idea. I also liked that it was more personal than the first joke, which lent more credance to it's credibility. And, it is a controversial topic, so I figured it would chase out a few people who were happy for my conversion and others who would be pissed about it. I ended up getting one of each reply. I also recieved a challenge from my cousin JB for me to prove on my blog that it's a good idea. Another friend questioned whether it was an April Fool. And my Mom gave me a "Oh, that's rich" reply, which is exactly the reaction that makes me happy that she's my Mom.

Lesson number 2: personal pranks are better than celebrity news pranks, those of political nature need to be crafted by a master jokesmith to be effective (and I'm not a master political jokester, nor was my attempt very effective).

I decided to give it one more try, this time broadening the scope of the joke, and going for something a little more lighthearted. I came to this joke while walking to the bathroom at work (number 1), which is where I often get my best ideas. I decided to end my April Fool's Day with this "gem":

Ugg, someone broke into my car and stole my CD case filled with my Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, GLEE, and Celine Dion CD's. Luckily my Miley Cyrus CD was in the CD player because only "Party in the U.S.A." can lift my spirits at a time like this.

This update was probably the most successful one I had today. I received kind words from my friends, including:

L.G. -- "my 10 year old has all of these if you want to copy them". (I would never copy someone elses cds, because everyone knows piracy hurts us all)
T.B. -- "I assume you had your mp3 player loaded with the Best of the Jonas Brothers and Hansen." (of course I did)
C.R. -- "This prank fails because everyone assumes you have copies and b-sides on your hard drive." (again, guilty as charged)
A.B. reminded me to just "nod your head like ya". (words to live by. also, a candidate for my next tattoo)
D.R. -- "that's a devastating loss. Tell the wife to hide the rope and shower rods." (great advice. consider it done)

It's good to know that I have great friends to help me though the tough times in my life.

Lesson number 3: Putting Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber's names in a blog post should help pick up the page hits from the 10-15 year-old demographic.
___________________________________________________________________

SONG: "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley

THINKING BACK ON: Seven years ago today was the first time I told my Wife that I loved her. We had been dating for about a month and a half and had been doing the "I really like you" tightrope walk up until that point. We were upstairs at my parent's house and were watching a movie. I finally psyched myself up enough to take the plunge. I turned to her and said, "Can I tell you something?" And, at that exact moment, I had this internal dialogue:

Oh, man, today is April Fool's Day. What if she thinks I'm pulling an April Fool's joke? What if she gets pissed off and storms out of here? What if she doesn't want to say it back? What if I'm moving too fast? Uh, oh, this is WAY too long of a pause. What if she thinks we're breaking up? Say something, stupid. SAY IT!!!

I finally broke out of my trance and told her "I love you" for the first time. It was terrifying and exhilarating. And, thankfully, she reciprocated with an "I love you, too." The rest is, as they say, history.

(Bonus) THINKING BACK ON: The best April Fool's Day pranks that I fell for during my youth. The ones that have always stuck with me were both carried out by my favorite radio station, 98.1 KKFM. I don't recall which came first, but I remember that one year they were playing classic country music rather than the usual morning show. They would occasionally announce that the station had been bought by a country music station and that they were so thankful for the support they'd received in the past when they were a classic rock station. They also took phone calls and people were not pleased with the move, to say the least. Very funny.

The second prank came when the station announced that the Broncos had traded John Elway to Pittsburgh for Kordell Stewart (who had played QB at CU, so he was basically a local boy). This was before the internet was a huge phenomenon, so people couldn't hop online to double check the story. Instead, they called in to voice their support with the move (Elway was at the end of his career and Kordell was a great athlete) or their opposition to the trade (Elway IS the Broncos. Kordell is not half the QB of Elway). Again, very funny.

LINK: The Definitive List of April Fool's Shenanigans for 2010

Jaime Escalante -- America's Master Math Teacher

2010-03-31T23:19:00.000-05:00

News came today that Jaime Escalante, the math teacher whose story was the basis for the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver, passed away at the age of 79.

In a July 2002 story for Reason Magazine, Jerry Jesness takes the reader through the "the famous rise -- and shameful fall -- of Jaime Escalante, America's master math teacher."

In the article, Mr. Jesness takes us through Mr. Escalante's background. We learn that unlike in the movie, Jaime's successes were slow coming. It was three years into the program before more than 10 students passed the A.P. calculus test, rather than the single year that the movie portrayed. And I have no problem with the Hollywood version of the story's time line being accelerated, as they only had an hour and a half to get the story told. But, as Mr. Jesness points out:

The Stand and Deliver message, that the touch of a master could bring unmotivated students from arithmetic to calculus in a single year, was preached in schools throughout the nation. While the film did a great service to education by showing what students from disadvantaged backgrounds can achieve in demanding classes, the Hollywood fiction had at least one negative side effect. By showing students moving from fractions to calculus in a single year, it gave the false impression that students can neglect their studies for several years and then be redeemed by a few months of hard work.

This Hollywood message had a pernicious effect on teacher training. The lessons of Escalante's patience and hard work in building his program, especially his attention to the classes that fed into calculus, were largely ignored in the faculty workshops and college education classes that routinely showed Stand and Deliver to their students. To the pedagogues, how Escalante succeeded mattered less than the mere fact that he succeeded. They were happy to cheer Escalante the icon; they were less interested in learning from Escalante the teacher. They were like physicians getting excited about a colleague who can cure cancer without wanting to know how to replicate the cure.

I can remember this movie being referenced a couple of times during my years in the teacher education program at my college. While we never viewed it in class, I do remember it being recommended to me by someone in the program. I remember being inspired by the movie. The movie fed into my desire to change lives. Yet, with all of the emotion and inspirational feelings this movie brought to me, it did nothing to inspire me to find out why and how Mr. Escalante was able to bring such success to students who society had basically written off as never being able to accomplish such a feat. A movie of this magnitude should have caused me to seek out Mr. Escalante's blueprint for success. But it didn't, and I didn't.

A movie as moving as Stand and Deliver did nothing to make me a better future teacher (which I'm sure was not the motivation of the filmmakers in making the movie). Yet, after watching The Legend of Bagger Vance I remember I was inspired to go out and pound golf balls on the driving range. After countless viewings of Friday Night Lights in high school, I was inspired to work harder in football practice so that I might be able to make the big catch in the big game. After Space Jam I was out on the basketball court working on my jump shot in the event that I was ever pulled into a cartoon universe to help Bugs and Daffy defeat some evil villains. And sure, I never did make the big catch in the big game nor did I ever join up with Bugs Bunny & Co. to shoot hoops. (I'm still holding out hope that Will Smith will help me fight off the demons that are keeping me from winning a match against Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen). But, at least these movies challenged me to improve myself. Unfortunately, Stand and Deliver did not have that effect on my life, which is a shame.

Another failure of the movie (again, not completely the filmmaker's fault) was that it left the viewer with the impression that everyone in the story lived happily ever after. Unfortunately for Mr. Escalante and the students he never got to help, his tenure as the maverick math teacher for that East L.A. school was cut short 10 years after the group of students featured in the movie passed their A.P. tests.

Escalante's open admission policy, a major reason for his success, also paved the way for his departure. Calculus grew so popular at Garfield that classes grew beyond the 35-student limit set by the union contract. Some had more than 50 students. Escalante would have preferred to keep the classes below the limit had he been able to do so without either denying calculus to willing students or using teachers who were not up to his high standards. Neither was possible, and the teachers union complained about Garfield's class sizes. Rather than compromise, Escalante moved on.

Other problems had been brewing as well. After Stand and Deliver was released, Escalante became an overnight celebrity. Teachers and other interested observers asked to sit in on his classes, and he received visits from political leaders and celebrities, including President George H.W. Bush and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This attention aroused feelings of jealousy. In his last few years at Garfield, Escalante even received threats and hate mail. In 1990 he lost the math department chairmanship, the position that had enabled him to direct the pipeline.

[Emphasis mine]

The culture that is the modern public education system is one that discourages innovation and extra effort. Rather than embrace Mr. Escalante's successes, his peers (and the union) grew jealous and saw his work as an assault against the status quo. There were no incentives in place for others to follow in his footsteps. And incentives matter.

One of the driving forces behind my decision to leave the teaching profession was the lack of incentives for me to try hard. While I never encountered explicit challenges to the way I ran my classroom, there were plenty of implicit demands that I maintain within the confines of the teaching bureaucracy bubble. Mr. Lesness touched on some of these forces in his closing paragraphs about Jaime Escalante's legacy.

Lyndon Johnson said it takes a master carpenter to build a barn, but any jackass can kick one down. In retrospect, it's fortunate that Escalante's program survived as long as it did. Had Garfield's counselors refused to let a handful of basic math students take algebra back in 1974, or had the janitor who objected to Escalante's early-bird ways been more influential, America's greatest math teacher might just now be retiring from Unisys.
Gradillas has an explanation for the decline of A.P. calculus at Garfield: Escalante and Villavicencio were not allowed to run the program they had created on their own terms. In his phrase, the teachers no longer "owned" their program. He's speaking metaphorically, but there's something to be said for taking him literally.

In the real world, those who provide a service can usually find a way to get it to those who want it, even if their current employer disapproves. If someone feels that he can build a better mousetrap than his employer wants to make, he can find a way to make it, market it, and perhaps put his former boss out of business. Public school teachers lack that option.

There are very few ways to compete for education dollars without being part of the government school system. If that system is inflexible, sooner or later even excellent programs will run into obstacles. (...)

One-size-fits-all standardized tests are driving curricula, and top-down reforms are mandating lockstep procedures for classroom instructors. These steps might help make dismal teachers into mediocre ones, but what will they do to brilliant mavericks like Escalante?

Now, I would never suggest that I was 1/10 of the innovator in the classroom that Jaime Escalante was, but because the current system lacks (lacked) the incentives for me to try, I will may never know what could have been.
______________________________________________

SONG: "Hands of God" by the Dave Matthews Band

LOOKING FORWARD TO: the eventful summer that is to come. I'll be playing volleyball on the "Chuck Bo-Buck and the Banana Fanna Five" team with my coworkers (and, yes, I suggested the name, and, yes, I am proud about that fact). I'll also be playing as much golf and will be attending as many Omaha and Kansas City Royals baseball games as my wife will allow.

AMERICAN IDOL 2010 BET: Since I don't know if my cousin JB dvr'd tonight's show, I cannot yet harass him on Facebook or by text message about the fact that his pick, Didi, was kicked off the show tonight. So, I shall gloat here. One down, four to go!!!

Oh Deer

2010-03-30T21:14:00.001-05:00

The Wife and I have been talking about getting Brodie a friend to play with, but concerns over our eventual move back to Colorado and our lack of space has led us to sidebar this plan for now. Little did we know we had multiple options in friends for our pooch.

(Also, I find this video much more enjoyable on mute.)

In related news, chalk a victory up for K-9s everywhere.

(h/t Sullivan)

American Idol -- Top Ten Performances

2010-03-30T21:09:00.002-05:00

Usher is the mentor. What, Justin Bieber was busy?

So they’re singing R&B/Soul songs tonight, which is one of the few genres of music with which I’m unfamiliar. Odds are, no one will impress me, just because I don’t particularly enjoy this type of music.

Siobhan is “wicked nervous” to sing in front of Usher. She’s singing “Through the Fire” by Chaka Khan. And she is SUPER PITCHY DAWG! She sounded off key the entire song. And, of course she does her patented “scream” to end the song. Yikes, she may have hurt her chances of winning the show after that performance. I think a lot of voters are going to lose faith in her singing ability.

(ASIDE: Crap, they are really stringing this episode out. We’re twenty minutes in and have only heard one person sing. They spent what seemed like 10 minutes talking to Siobhan.)

Casey is singing “Hold On, I’m Coming” and he’s playing an electric guitar without an amp during his one-on-one with Usher. He doesn’t even recognize how ridiculous he looks. And his performance on the Idol stage was odd. It was filled with his usual goat-vibrato and electric guitar. He continues to take no chances just to stay in the game.

Michael is singing “Ready for Love” and is using a guitar (which looks like a ukulele in his big ol’ mitts). It was slow, sensitive, and weird. But it is performances like that one that make me miss Paula the most, because she would have been going batshit crazy after that performance. His stock is rising.

Didi is singing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”, and is singing it exactly as I would imagine Michelle Branch or Colbie Caillat to sing it. She doesn’t have the pipes or the “soul” to pull of this kind of song. It was entirely forgetable.

“Teen Beat” Tim (which is a better nickname then “Teflon” Tim, if I do say so myself) is singing “Sweet Love” and Usher doesn’t “believe” Tim while he sings. So Usher asks Tim if he’s ever been in love. Tim shrugs and says yes. (I imagine Tim’s thought bubble in that moment would be, “I love my grandma, apple pie, and Jesus. Those count, right?”) The song is weird, the performance dull, the vocals adequate. I’m sure the Vote for the Worst crowd will continue to support him and will probably carry him into next week.

Andrew is singing “The Wrigley’s Double Mint Gum Jingle” by Chris Brown. He’s still trying to recapture the “magic” from Hollywood week, and this was as close as he’s gotten so far. I wonder if the judges can stop referring to his Hollywood performance now. Well, even if the judges can, Not-Brian-Dunkleman will continue to bring it up.

(ASIDE: It is official. I will not watch next year if Not-Brian-Dunkleman is the host. He thinks this show is about him. He is fixated with ensuring his dumb face is always on the camera. And I’m tired of it.)

Katie is singing an Aretha Franklin song which could be a death wish. If her vocals are not perfect, she’ll be trashed by the judges. She’s wearing some weird overall-shorts and leggings. Her vocals were fine/average because she took no chances with her vocals.

Lee is going to sing “Treat Her Like a Lady” because it has a lot of soul. This is a great song choice for him because it is easily converted into a rock song, which is his wheel house. He should be able to sneak his way out of the R&B week in better position than he entered it, which I might not have guessed going into his performance. His vocals were spot on.

(ASIDE: And now it feels like the judges are rushing though their critiques because they wasted so much time on the front end of the show. Pick a pace and stick with it people.)

Crystal is singing “Midnight Train to Georgia” and is turning in the guitar for a piano this week. She doesn’t seem as confident behind the keyboard. And for the first half of the song, the backup singers did as much singing as she did. And she’s even more awkward when she steps out from behind the piano. She doesn’t know if she should dance. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She’s smiling more than a song like this one would call for. The vocals seemed really weak to me because she picked the parts of the song that didn’t allow her to sing with full power or emotion. I was not a fan of her performance tonight.

Aaron is singing “Ain’t No Sunshine” which I believe is contractually mandated to be sung by at least one Idol contestant every year. It was adequate at best. This was a lame way to end the night. The dude has no soul (musically, not spiritually. Although his eyes are fairly vacant, so who knows.)

After tonight:

TRENDING UPWARD
Lee

Michael

Andrew (barely)

SLIPPED A FEW NOTCHES BACKWARD

Siobhan

Crystal

MADE NO FORWARD PROGRESS

Casey

Katie

Didi

FREE FALLING

Tim

Aaron

Bottom Three: Aaron, Tim, Didi

Going Home: I would support any of those three leaving this week, but I could see Didi leaving this week, which would be fairly surprising.

(UPDATE: And ALOTTFMA just reminded me that there is an Immunity Idol in the Judge's possession which may need to be used to save Siobhan this week after her off key performance. And I imagine she is the exact person they are saving it for.)

Bob & Tom Comedy Tour

2010-03-29T23:18:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday, the wife and I went to the Bob and Tom Comedy Tour stop in Sioux Falls. It was a bit of a drive, but was well worth it. It was a night of a bazillion laughs.

The show started with my favorite member of the Bob & Tom crew, Chick McGee, opening the show. He did a little comedy to whet our comedy appetites. I'm pretty sure the constraints that the FCC puts on him during the radio show is very frustrating for him, because he let loose with all the "blue" comedy that he's not allowed to use during his day job. Chick introduced all of the comedians for the night and did a few jokes in between acts. He was great.

Then Greg Warren did a half hour show and he was awesome. He did about a half hour of material from his latest comedy album, "One Star Wonder", which I had bought before the show, along with one of his "One Star" t-shirts. It was hilarious. Greg is of the Cosby/Foxworthy/Gaffigan school of comedy, in which he tells stories and is a fairly "clean" comedian (I'd say it's PG-13 at worst). Our favorite line of his (and probably of the night) was "Shut your whore mouth, Shannon."

After Greg Warren was Bob Zany. Bob is a veteran comedian, and when a drunk/retarded heckler started acting up, Bob put him in his place in the funniest way. Bob did more crowd work than Greg Warren, which was a nice change of pace. Bob does a weekly piece on the Bob & Tom show, called the "Zany Report" where he uses a news story as the setup and then gives a punchline about the story. His comedy routine is similarly structured: setup/punchline, setup/punchline, etc. He was very funny.

The low point of the night was the half hour of "Donnie Baker". Donnie is a character that calls into the B&T show a couple times a day. Donnie is big on innuendo, which once or twice a morning is fairly funny, but is pretty intense when you're bombarded by it for a half-hour. He had a few funny lines, but all-in-all it was a waste. I'd have rather had an extra ten minutes tacked onto the other comedian's time than to sit laughterless for that time.

The closer of the night was the absolutely crazy Greg Hahn. Words cannot explain Greg Hahn's act. Go here to see his promotional video. The guy slays me when he's on the B&T show, but to see him in person was an experience. His material is fairly constant every time he performs, but his rapid-fire delivery and high-energy physical comedy are top notch. There were moments during his act that I was not breathing because I was laughing so hard. There could not have been a better way to end the night than his act. OUTSTANDING!!!

While I wish we could have seen the show at a closer venue, we could not have asked for a better set of guys to spend the evening making us laugh (less Donnie Baker). If you see that they are in your area, I highly recommend you go see Greg Hahn, Bob Zany, and/or Greg Warren. You will not regret it.

One more point

2010-03-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

Since the House is going to have to re-vote on the Health Care Bill, I figure I can get in one more health care post before I lose my entire audience.

There are many people trying to predict America's future in the wake of health care reform. I am leary of these claims because they are so often wrong. With regard to health care, will this bill decrease medically-induced bankruptcies, mortality rates, and the deficit? Depends on who you ask. Will this plan stifle entrepreneurship, raise taxes, and crush any incentive for investments in medical technology? I hope not.

But, one prediction that I would put money on comes from Mark Steyn in Investor's Business Daily:

[...] the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.

In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect. (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative.”) The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.
Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic.

[Emphasis mine]

I'd disagree with Mark that "Republicans seem to have difffiiculty grasping this basic dynamic." I'm pretty sure that they do understand this fact, I just don't think many elected officials in the Republican party care if the political culture shifts to left-of-center. Because if they truly cared about conservative principles, then they would have attempted to take steps toward limited/small government during the four years that Republican's had control of the House, Senate, and Presidency under the Bush Administration (not to mention the extra two years that there was a Republican controlled House under Bush).

That is what disappoints me the most about Republicans. There was plenty of time to enact government limiting measures, but they couldn't control themselves. And now they want to play catch up? Now they decided to return to their foundational principals of smaller government, legal conservatism, individual freedom, free enterprise, and a pride in American exceptionalism? Too little, too late.

87 Murphy Squirrels

MOvember 2010 -- Final Update

MOvember 2010 -- Week 3 Update

Autograph Pickups

Joey Pos

MOvember Update: Mustaches That Inspire Me

Two videos and a card.

MOvember Monday Update: Week 1

Using words to prey on people's ignorance is fun.

Gonna try to win me some cards

1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner

MOvember 2010 Slogan Pitch

Honesty is the Best Policy

Treasures from my Grandma Eva

For My Sister

To be or not to be

Card Chase, the Dexter Fowler Edition

What I Like and Dislike

Gay Marriage and Me

Gibson.com's Top 50 Guitar Solos

Day in the Life

Favorite Nonfiction Books

Seasoning

2010 Topps T206 Stephen Strasburg Mini 1:1 Printing Plate

Trading Cards

Happy 29th Birthday

9/10

Marathoning

Kids

Mail Bag

"Stop criticizing President Obama for playing golf."

2008 UD Baseball Heroes rainbow

Ground Zero Mosque -- Part Deux

Ground Zero Mosque

Mail Bag

Happy Blog-aversary

Omaha Metro Golf Championship -- Day Two

1981 Topps Basketball Set

2010 Omaha Metro Golf Championship -- Day One

In the Mail

Memories of Grandma

Grandma Eva

New Additions

Cardboard Couture

New Arrivals

USA! USA! USA! USA!

The latest "amazing kid musician" video

Trading Cards

You know what's stupid?

Things that have made me happy today.

Things that have pissed me off today.

I'm waiting for Alan Jackson to come out and say what everyone is thinking about the flooding in Nashville: President Obama hates country music.

Draft Talk

The older I get...

"An island unto himself, surrounded by water but dying of thirst."

Baseball Card Bubble

The Taxman Cometh

Through a Dog's Eyes

I'm on a Highway to Lipitor*

Pulitzer Prizes

Inspiration

American Idol 2010 -- Top 9

Regulators (and a new Warning)

What I Learned Today -- 4/1

I can't believe that they aren't going to allow on the course spectators at the Masters this year because Tiger didn't want people watching him. The guy is a diva. And the people running the Masters tournament are a bunch of wimps for caving into his demands.

You know, the more I've read about it, the more ObamaCare sounds like a good idea.

Ugg, someone broke into my car and stole my CD case filled with my Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, GLEE, and Celine Dion CD's. Luckily my Miley Cyrus CD was in the CD player because only "Party in the U.S.A." can lift my spirits at a time like this.

Jaime Escalante -- America's Master Math Teacher

Oh Deer

American Idol -- Top Ten Performances

Bob & Tom Comedy Tour

One more point