The back of the book

This is the back of the Dennis the Menace comic from the other day. Make money get prizes American seeds!

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #71 Willie McGee

I loved Willie McGee as a player. He was fast and could hit and field like an all-star. What I loved most about him though was that his facial expression always looked as if he smelled something really, really bad. Loved this guy.

How about old school Dennis the Menace?

I have no idea when this is from, it's just old. Mid 1970s probably, 76-77 is my guess.

Dave Matthews Band Crash

Here's the thank you and credits page and some art from the booklet that came with Dave Matthews Crash. Loved this album!! Carter Beauford is the best drummer on the planet, and as much as Dave's vibe has become a pop culture joke, he wrote (and still writes) amazing songs.

Yankees Lineup, September 30 1978

I think this was in the game day program you got at the park. My brother in law is a big deal and likes the Yankees a lot so maybe it's something he got for us, but anyway here's a real piece of ephemera- a typed sheet with the Yankees and Cleveland Indians line-ups. This was the epic stretch where the Red Sox choked and then battled back to force a one game playoff against the Yankees which was decided by a home run by Bucky F. Dent.

For the record, I stayed home from school to watch that playoff game. My older brother got home just as the game was getting to the later innings, right before Dent came up. He literally said "Bucky's gonna crank one." Not sure if I was more mad or amazed, and the rest is history.

The names on this are amazing- Mickey Rivers, Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson, Craig Nettles, Roy White, Chris Chambliss.

The Pleasure is Back. Barclay cigarettes

This is a full page ad from the 1981 Seattle Mariners home game program. Barclay! My step-father smoked these for a long time. The filter wasn't round but the paper around the filter was, so there were chutes of airspace that you dragged hot and unpleasant smoke from. I was not a fan, and neither was he, they were "low tar." A few years later he said screw it and went to Camel filtered.

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #72 Ozzie Smith

Ozzie Smith, The Wizard, really was an amazing baseball player to watch. You may not ever see a better shortstop than Ozzie Smith in his prime.

Let It Be...

Here is a scan of some of the album art work for the Beatles Let It Be...Naked album.

Let It Be... Naked is an alternative mix of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be, released in 2003. The project was initiated by Paul McCartney, who felt that the original album's producer, Phil Spector, did not capture the group's stripped-down, back-to-their-roots intentions for the album.

I prefer this version of the album to the original, actually.

Hofbrau House Coaster and some Digits

I have two coasters from the legendary Hofbräuhaus in Munich. Here is one in its entirety, and the other is just one side. They would be identical, except that a girl I met wrote her contact info on the coaster. (I've blurred it, hopefully well enough that you internet weirdos never find her). Of course, this was in 1988 or so, so I'm sure she's gone on to great things and no longer uses her parents house as her place of residence.

To be honest, when I found this coaster I had (and still have) no recollection of this girl. A few weeks after raging at the Hofbrau, however, I met the girl that is today my wife of 27 years, so maybe that's why I never followed up with the coaster girl. Either way, it's fun to haul this stuff out of mothballs and see it again for the first time in decades!

JJ Nissen Baseball Card- Don Mattingly

This is card #4 from the 1989 JJ Nissen Superstars collection.
Nissen is (was?) a New England bread company that each year (at least a few times) issued a series of "superstar" baseball cards. Get one in each loaf. (Not actually IN the bread, but that would have been fun).

My parents knew I liked baseball cards at this time actually saved the cards for me from their bread. I think the cards are super cool because my parents took the time to set them aside for me, but also because they are so super low-budget- they obviously bought the rights to the players from the player association, but not the full license from MLB, so the players don't have any team logos on them.

1975 Red Sox Yearbook Tony Conigliaro and Cecil Cooper

Here's a page from the 1975 Red Sox Yearbook. Compared to the yearbooks just a couple of years later it's a pretty drab affair- black and white pictures and stats. Some of the Red Sox players in 1975 were awesome- that was the year they made the World Series and lost to the Big Red Machine despite Carlton Fisk's famous home run.

Here are two such players- Tony Conigliaro was a Boston star until he was beaned in 1967. He was very young at the time. His career before the beaning was amazing- he was a surefire Hall of Famer if he could keep playing at the level he showed he could play at as a teenager in the major leagues! He was never the same after the beaning, and 1975 was his last year as a player.

Cecil Cooper was drafted by the Sox and played for them until right around this time. He was traded to the Brewers, changed his batting stance to one more like Rod Carew's and really started to hit. 

Spartan VHS Stickers

Here's some true ephemera- the stickers that used to come with VHS cassettes! These are for the Spartan T-120 VHS cassette, with care instructions on the reverse side!

A Bug's Life Video Game "The Story"

A Bug's Life is a video game based on the Disney/Pixar film of the same name. It was released for various systems in 1998 and in 1999. This is a page from the booklet that explains the story of the game! Flik, a klutzy but inventive worker, and the Queen Ant and Princess Atta and the coldhearted Hopper are all trying to figure their little insect world out. My kids loved this game!

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #53 Orel Hershiser

Orel Hershiser was a great pitcher and is a decent broadcaster and has one of the best baseball names in the last 50 years in my humble opinion.

Led Zeppelin In Through the Out Door

This is not my favorite Led Zeppelin album, but I always liked it. Fool in the Rain is a great great song. (And All of my Love was the ultimate middle school dance song). 

This is the inside of the tiny booklet that came with the CD. The art work was the art work on the original vinyl sleeve. I seem to remember having heard that if you moistened the inner sleeve, the art filled in with color. I seem to remember gently moistening the sleeve with a sponge and subtle watercolor type colors appeared. 

I wasn't sure if that was true or a fever dream, so I googled it and it's true! I haven't tried it with the CD sleeve.... yet!

U2 All That You Can't Leave Behind

Here's a couple of pages from the little booklet that accompanies the U2 All That You Can't Leave Behind CD. 

This was a sneaky great album- In a Little While, Elevation, Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, great great songs! The album was produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, two of my favorite music masterminds.

Book Crossing

This is a bookmark from Bookcrossing.com

Here's a blurb from the Bookcrossing Website:

BookCrossing is the act of releasing your books "into the wild" for a stranger to find, or via "controlled release" to another BookCrossing member, and tracking where they go via journal entries from around the world. Our community of passionate, generous book-lovers is changing the world and touching lives, one traveling book at a time. We hope you join us!

Back in the early 2000's I was an avid reader. I mean 100 paperbacks a year avid. I read all styles but especially detective stuff and scifi. There was a used paperback book place that I loved near where I lived, and I went there as much as I could. You could trade in your books back to them, but if they were titles that you actually had purchased from them in the first place, you received so little store credit it was hardly worth it. Paperbacks started to pile up around my house.

Then I discovered BookCrossing. I left literally hundreds of books wherever I was. All around my local area, and wherever we went on vacation. In the front of each book I'd put a little Bookcrossing label, hoping someone would find the book, read it, enjoy it, and maybe note on the bookcrossing website that they had found it.

Eventually, I almost entirely stopped reading fiction, and now read mostly non-fiction on my computer, so I don't BookCross anymore, but I found this old bookmark from those days and thought I would share.

Alvin Theatre Playbill, 1977, Annie

A few days ago I posted an autographed 1977 Playbill from the Alvin Theatre's production of Annie, autographed by the original Annie herself, Andrea McArdle. Go there to read the very long (and embarrassing) story of ten year old me's crush on the thirteen year old actress.

Here's the other Playbill I got autographed that night.

This one is signed by Andrea McArdle, Danielle Brisebois, and Diana Barrows. Diana Barrows' played an orphan who provided some comedic moments with the recurring line "Oh my goodness!" and Danielle Brisebois played an orphan as well. 

I was from a tiny town in Maine and thought I was pretty big deal for having met several Broadway stars, so the name Danielle Brisebois' name was committed to memory as I told and retold the tale of my brush with fame. (It was also probably terribly mispronounced, Mainers do terrible things inadvertently, with French names).

 Thus I was able to recognize it when she appeared a while later on the iconic (but late in its run) television show All in the Family and was a main character in the spin-off, Archie Bunker's Place.

And I did not know this until I just googled her, but she was also in the band New Radicals, who had a song I really like and is probably in a couple of playlists of mine- "You Get What You Give."

1979 Red Sox Coaching Staff

Some legends here from the 1979 Red Sox Yearbook. Don Zimmer, who was memorably thrown to the ground by Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez when coaching for the Stankees, here he is in his Red Sox managerial togs!

Also Johnny Pesky, who played and worked for the Red Sox for a million years. The Right Field Foul Pole (Fowl poll?) at Fenway is named after him. I met him at a baseball "camp" in Winslow or maybe Waterville, Maine way back then. He was with a young pitcher named Jim Wright and the two were doing clinics for Little League players.

Walt Hriniak I've actually mentioned on this blog before- he turned "Dewey" Dwight Evans into a hitter.

Al Jackson was a great pitcher for the Mets, and spent a lot of time as an instructor in their system. He'd been a teammate of Don Zimmer. Eddie Yost, the "Walking Man" was a long time coach with several teams.

Knockout Kings 2000 for Playstation Controls

Here's something that might interest gamers, it's the controls instructions for Playstation's EA SPORTS Knockout Kings 2000!

1988 Topps Mini Leaders #31 Mark McGwire

Here's a controversial one! Mark McGwire, the year before this card came out, set the American League rookie home run record. He and Jose Canseco were "The Bash Brothers." Then McGwire was hurt all the time, and then in late 1990s he became the most feared power hitter in the history of the game, until Barry Bonds became The Hulk and all the home run records fell.

McGwire and Sosa still piss me off. I remember waking up in the fall of 1998 with all kinds of things going on in my life, but wondering if McGwire and Sosa had homered the night before. I was excited for the home run duel going on. Baseball was awesome again. The Roger Maris single-season home run record fell that year to, what we later learned was these cheating, lying douchebags.

To be fair, when they started juicing, Major League Baseball wasn't doing anything about it. None of us knew what steroids could do for player performance. But they denied and denied and denied that they had taken anything to help them hit baseballs so far. I trusted them and they were lying to me.

"Lying, cheating, hurting, that's all you seem to do." -Led Zeppelin, Your Time is Gonna Come. 

TDK Audio Cassette "Library Card"

When you bought a blank audio cassette, it often had one of these little cards attached to the insert. Most people, like me, threw this out. Did anyone actually fill this stuff out?

"After completing the information on this card, tear it off and file it for an instant record of your cassette library's contents."

1979 Red Sox Yearbook Carl Yastrzemski

Growing up, without exception, this guy, also known as Yaz, was my favorite baseball player in the world. I emulated his batting stance, the way he twirled the bat while staring out at the pitcher, the guy was just super cool. I really would have loved to see him play when he was in his prime.

What's More American than Budweiser?

Well, since it's now owned by a European company and was originally brewed using a European name and beer style, I'd have to say the answer is "a lot of stuff is more American than Budweiser."

But....

They advertise the hell out of the stuff, so that's pretty American!

This is a full-page advertisement from the 1979 Red Sox yearbook.

Happy 4th of July!!

DMB Randall's Island Getaway Pass August 6, 2006

My wife and I have seen the Dave Matthews Band probably a hundred times by now. We thought he was great way back in the earliest days and just kind of fell into the habit of going to the shows whenever they came around. Living in southern Ohio, we could see them four or five times a year without having to travel very far, and see more shows if we were willing to travel a little.

When Dave did a two show mini-festival at Randall's Island near New York City, we bought VIP passes, here's one of them! These were great shows and featured lots of other guests like Bela Fleck and his band, David Gray, and Gov't Mule. We got to meet a bunch of the musicians, and I believe I probably drunkenly told Bela Fleck bassist Victor Wooten that I love him.

Annie Playbill Autographed by Andrea McArdle 1977 Alvin Theatre

In 1977, I was ten, and watching television in Maine. One of the morning television shows had the cast of some play on, and I half-watched and half-did whatever ten year old me was doing. The play was called Annie, and it has kids in it, and the Mike Douglas Show (or whoever it was I was watching) said it's great.

Fast forward to later that year and I'm in New York City with my mom and my older sister, who lived in the Big Apple. She wants to take us to a Broadway Show and is suggesting shows to my mother, and I chimed in with the one Broadway Show I'd ever heard of, Annie. We went.

I developed the absolute hugest crush on Annie, played by Andrea McArdle. The play was amazing, I bought ALL the souvenirs, I floated out of the Alvin Theatre on a cloud.

My sister was much older than I and already a savvy New Yorker and said that if we stand outside the stage door we might meet some of the cast. My mother had seen Lucille Ball years before coming out of a play, and I think that's why she was willing to put up with my idiocy, so we waited and sure enough, the cast came out and we commended Dorothy Loudon for her amazing job as Miss Hannigan, and then finally my lady love came out.

Googling her now, I see that she was just a couple of years older than I was but I was star-struck and speechless.  I had two copies of Playbill, and I somehow communicated enough to get her to sign this one, and also the other one along with a couple of her castmates (I'll scan that one and post it soon).

I should also mention that later that year I went to New York for Thanksgiving with my mother and my sister took us down to the street to watch the Macy Day Parade. I was stunned to find out that Andrea McArdle was featured on a float! I want to say that she was the Grand Marshal or something, but that could have just been ten year old me making up stuff. I do probably have a blurry picture or two of it I'll dig around for.

Fast forward a decade or so, and I have a friend who is a drama director at a high school and she is obsessed with the play Starlight Express. I didn't know anything about the play, but was extremely amused to learn that none other than Andrea McArdle had a big role in it!

Googling her just now to write this, she's still acting and singing and probably being amazing somewhere right this minute, and has played at the Ogunquit Playhouse which is not far from me. Maybe someday I'll see her on stage again and bring this whole thing full circle!

Carlton is Lowest

This is a cigarette ad from the back of the Playbill for the play Annie. (Playbill is the magazine you get when you go to a Broadway Play).

This must be from 1977 or so, which is interesting because this company was advertising that it had lower tar than the others on the market, obviously trying to make their product seem healthier than the industry in general.