When I was young, I was hopeful I’d have been able to say this before my 40th birthday, but all the same: I officially finished paying off my student loans today. I got lucky. I went to an in-state school at a time when tuitions were certainly rising, but nowhere near how much they’ve risen… Read More 41 in America and done with student loans
Right Name/Wrong Name is an ADHD-fueled exercise I started a while back when I was thinking about how little sense the name Utah Jazz makes to me and how sports-angry it makes me that it’s still the name of the basketball team in Salt Lake City. I started writing way-too-long blog entries about the good… Read More Right Name/Wrong Name: Fixing the names of NFL teams
Sometimes it’s little things that make you feel good. For instance, have you ever hit the “perfect pump” at the gas station, releasing the pump handle just as the dollar amount clicks to a perfect, round number? It doesn’t really matter in this age of pay-at-the-pump, but it feels good, right? Like tossing a wad… Read More 61 from ’64: Finishing the 1964 Topps Giants set
2023 NBA Draft prospect Victor Wembanyama lost a game last night, but he is winning the buzz wars. The spindly 7-foot-2 (or 3?) … center? point-pivot? wing-warrior? … led all scorers in a nationally televised exhibition between Wemby’s French squad and the G-League Ignite stars (led by another top draft prospect) and set Twitter aflame… Read More The All-Lank All-Stars: The NBA’s spindliest supermen
I really, really liked last year’s Topps baseball set. Not everybody did, but that slick, sharp, clean, modern look really did it for me. It was a bordered card that didn’t feel closed-in, it was a visually interesting card that didn’t feel cluttered. As far as base sets go, it was hard for me to… Read More More like Midds: Topps 2022 Series 1 Baseball
Olivia Rodrigo is selling a lot of records without the co-sign of a near-40-year-old dude in flyover country, so it’s not like this is the most essential, ground-breaking post I’ll ever write, but I kept hearing her singles in public and thinking “damn, that’s a good song, I need to listen to her album!” I… Read More Pop Perfection: Olivia Rodrigo “Sour”
When I restarted my sports card collecting habit two autumns ago, global demand for cards was sky-high and global supply was super low. A would-be collector walking into a big box retailer anywhere in the country with a wallet full of cash in those days (at least a year starting in summer 2020) would almost… Read More Wow, there’s cards on shelves: Finding and breaking a booster of 2020-21 NBA Chronicles
Late last summer, when sports apparel and memorabilia giant Fanatics came out of nowhere and swooped trading card licensing deals with NBA, NFL, and MLB, one of the biggest side stories was the fate of venerable card maker Topps. The company has produced an MLB card set (or many sets) each year uninterrupted since the… Read More The Other Shoe: Fanatics buys Topps
I’m not a Beatles guy. It’s not that I don’t like the Beatles; I just never really got into them. The last time I really listened to any of their music was when Cirque du Soleil released the soundtrack for their Beatles-based show “Love,” and it was like an hour-long DJ set of classic Beatles… Read More ‘Get Back’ from a non-Beatles guy perspective
In recent weeks, a few things I’ve tried for the first time didn’t seem super great at first … but after a couple more tries, it’s like I can barely live without them. That doesn’t happen very often, so for it to happen three times in close succession is pretty noteworthy. Here are the sneaky… Read More They grew on me: Sneaky good candy and booze recommendations
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