So, Do You Like ... Stuff?

Note: This column appears in the 3/1 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/2 issue of the Peoria Times. There are many hot-button local issues as we head into this election season, for example, the Coyotes, the proposed casino, and like, taxes and stuff. Many prospective candidates are like, “I promise this,” and “So and so, whatever” … I don’t know—I haven’t really been paying attention. But my ears will perk up when I finally hear someone address the real issue at hand, the elephant in this room we call Arizona: Who will promise to end this drought? I’m not sure if anyone has noticed this, but it has not rained in, I think, three years. In fact, the state of Arizona, U. S. of A., has been in a general state of droughtitude (new word) since 1999. Nineteen-ninety-nine ! It hasn’t been adequately hydrated here since Sugar Ray was acceptable. (Pop culture joke; Boom, roasted, Sugar Ray. Somebody had to do it) Not that it would have made a difference because my family loves it here, but t...

Andy Van Slyke, 1994 Upper Deck Here is a baseball card in which someone has taken a picture of Andy Van Slyke taking a picture of Andy Van Slyke while other people are taking different pictures of Andy Van Slyke taking pictures. If someone were to take a picture of me taking a picture of this Andy Van Slyke card in which he is taking pictures, the flash from the camera would open an alternate realty where every person is a camera with legs and social status is based solely on your camera’s quality, i.e. the rich and powerful are professional Canon XLG-3000s or whatever, and the disenfranchised are literally disposable. Anyway, baseball! Speaking of baseball, something tells me that baseball player Andy Van Slyke has interests other than playing baseball. Taking pictures, perhaps? It doesn’t say so anywhere on this card, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that, yes, one of Andy Van Slyke’s favorite hobbies is taking pictures. Here is another question though, having to do with ...

Note: This column appears in the 2/23 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/24 issue of the Peoria Times. There are certain items my wife will always purchase regardless of how many of that item we own and our lack of necessity for that item. For example, food storage containers. The technology of air-tightness gets more dramatic by the day, and if a new food storage container item is introduced that promises to retain even more freshness than its predecessor, my wife will purchase 20 of them, which is fine. The only problem is that she refuses to get rid of the outdated containers, arguing, “You never know when we’re going to need them,” like, as a feasible example, on the off chance we mistakenly cook for 85 people one night instead of three. But one item that I simply cannot fault her for consistently purchasing is bed sheets. Whenever (every weekend) I find myself in a department store, and have separated from my wife so that I can wander around aimlessly in search of clothes I wil...

Howard Johnson, 1989 Donruss Diamond Kings I’ve been on a Diamond Kings kick lately, and well, I will not apologize. I mean, LOOK AT THOSE SQUIGGLIES! That is art . There are so many dots and squigglies and stripes of contrasting colors it’s making me dizzy. Dizzy with AWESOMENESS. This card look like a boardwalk caricaturist collaborated with the 3rd place finisher of a firefighters-sponsored youth art contest. But in this homage to art, let us not forget about words. Had it not been for Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark, Howard Johnson would have had an easy path to the Most Valuable Player Award. That is great. Had it not been for other baseball players who were better at playing baseball than Howard Johnson, Howard Johnson would have totally been the best baseball player. Get out of the way, Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark—Howard Johnson is trying to win the MVP over here! Showoffs. Also, what the hell is this card talking about? In 1989, Johnson finished fifth in the NL MVP vote. A m...

Note: This column appears in the 2/16 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/17 issue of the Peoria Times. I have good news and bad news. First the bad news: crime continues to exist. Our office is here in downtown Glendale, which, contrary to the quaintness and public safety implied by its surplus of antique stores, boasts some sketchy areas and people. You may recall that not long ago , someone who was on the run from police came into our office to stash a crack pipe underneath a stack of newspapers and then asked to use the bathroom. (We did not allow her to use the bathroom.) I also frequently see various ragged-looking locals picking up used cigarette butts to smoke and also emerging from dumpsters, neither of which is a crime, but still. This sometimes provides an odd sense of perspective when I am having a bad day at work. Yeah, the copier isn't working, but at least I do not live in a dumpster. All of this could be viewed as rather quirky, I suppose, but things have recently ...

Artist : Kanye West Song : Everything I Am In this song, Mr. West attempts to define himself by establishing what he is not. Thesis: the things that he is not = everything he is. This seems rather all-encompassing, as listing the things you are as means of defining who you are would seem much simpler than acknowledging everything you are not (table, coconut, Asian person, wind, pencil, and so on and so forth) in order to reach that same conclusion. However, as in many rap songs, the “theme” is only approached intermittently, and the song quickly devolves into some faux self-deprecation and the declaration, “I got a lot of cheese.” But one line in this song has been stuck in my head since I heard it again the other day, and I would like to explore it here further: I never rock a mink coat in the winter time like Killa Cam Or rock some mink boots in the summertime like Will.i.am What is intriguing here is that Mr. West seems to be implying there are two established sides of the hip-hop...

Note: This column appears in the 2/9 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/10 issue of the Peoria Times. Already having mastered soccer by age 2—and by “mastered” I mean “proven her lack of interest in”—our daughter recently began dance class. I am, so far, the only dad who attends these weekly Saturday morning classes. (At her first class, while our family was still in town, we showed up with a party of six adults, and everyone was forced to leave the room after five minutes because our daughter, who has the attention the span of a spinning top, was too distracted.) I promised myself I was there only to observe, but last weekend I was pirouetting and bear crawling on the floor. The reason I was doing this was to coerce our daughter to actually participate in the class. One of the most confounding aspects of parenthood has been, for me, the transition from the unabashed joy of home life expression to the reluctance of organized participation in those very same endeavors. Our daughter l...

Dave Winfield, 1984 Topps Championship Baseball Hello! Is everybody here interested in playing some Championship Baseball by Milton Bradley—not the wacky modern baseball player named Milton Bradley, but the game company; I realize this is confusing—? Yeah? ALRIGHT! How about you, AL Super Star Dave Winfield? Ha, ha! Don’t be such a grouch, Dave! Look on the bright side—you have a shiny new ear flap-less protective helmet, and you play for … what team do you play for? … The Yankees! Cool. And hey, I’m sure more people will show up to your baseball game eventually. So, do you want to play or what? Fine, whatever. Everybody else, let’s play some Championship Baseball! Okay, it looks we’re going to need some dice. Or is it “die?" I forget which one is plural, but die is stupid, so let’s stick with dice. Who has dice? Anyone? Nobody? Okay, I will go to the store. ( Two hours later; most people have left party …) Sorry that took me so long! Shop Rite didn’t have dice, so I had to go t...

Note: This column appears online on The Glendale Star and Peoria Times websites. My wife introduced me to Words With Friends. At first I thought she was trying to tell me something. Shouldn’t we be playing Words With More Than Friends? But then I realized it’s just the name of the game. Everything is cool. Words With Friends is an app for the iPhone. People have said it’s like Scrabble, but the thing is, it is Scrabble. It’s just called something different, for some reason. The only difference is that it’s played on your phone at your respective leisure as opposed to the urgent confinement of a board game setting where several letters are missing and a dictionary must be referenced. (One day I will tell our daughter that, when I was young, we used to play a board game that required a dictionary, and I am going to sound like a Pilgrim.) Anyway, my wife won the first game. I discovered this when I logged into the app to see if it was my turn and was instead greeted with a party-type au...

Hey, so first of all, I eat Reese’s Puffs cereal for breakfast. I am a full-grown adult male. I prefer Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch, but sometimes that cereal is like $4.95, and I have principles. Both cereals, however, are part of a complete breakfast, in that you must eat a bowl of kale and three gallons of organic prune juice just to break even on the nutrient scale. The other morning I was standing by myself in the kitchen eating a delicious bowl of Reese’s Puffs when the back of the box caught my eye. MIXMASTER, huh? I own turntables AND I love Reese’s Puffs (although I admittedly do not own any Reese’s Puffs records like the one featured here, which makes me wonder why I even have turntables in the first place), so this seemed like something I should look further into. First, I need a name. DJ NAME MIXER TWO WAYS TO CREATE YOUR OWN DJ NAME Three ways if you include, “Use your imagination to think of a name on your own.” 1. Take the street you grew up on and the name o...

Note: This column appears in the 1/26 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/27 issue of the Peoria Times. My wife and I don’t often host parties. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s just … we’re not exactly the laid-back type of hosts who can graciously serve food and entertain while also fielding questions like, “Where is your plunger?” without freaking out. It’s not so much that we obsess over cleanliness, although that does play a small role in our anxiety, especially when kids are involved. Whenever kids who are not ours are in our house, my mouth says things like, “Hey, kids, let’s play, ha, ha, fun times!” but my brain is thinking, “Don’t touch that, put that down, get off of there, what time do you go to bed anyway, it’s almost six!” More so than that, however, is a fear that people will not have fun due to some flaw in our ability to host. I think it all stems from an instance back east when we had a bunch of people over to watch a playoff football game, and literally more than...

Patrick Ewing, 1998 NBA Hoops Today we continue our exploration of 1998 NBA Hoops basketball cards and the manner in which they personally address the player featured on the card with down-to-earth street talk. With this Patrick Ewing card, however, we are treated to a special literary device called, “wordplay.” Ew the man. A common phrase throughout the mid-to-late 90s was, “You the man!” This would be directed at a particular individual who was serving his community well. This was a shortened version of the more exhaustive acknowledgement, “Hey, male—you are the best of all the men in present company, myself included! We are embarrassments to our respective families in light of your performance! Keep up the good work!” Here, NBA Hoops treats the cardholder to a clever case of wordplay when they utilize the first syllable of Ewing’s last name to say, “Ew the man.” Of course, this only works in literary form, as to verbally express the phrase would illicit head turns from average men w...

Note: This column appears in the 1/19 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/20 issue of the Peoria Times. We had to hop over a 12-foot wall just to make it to the starting corral for the Tough Mudder event in Mesa last weekend. Once we landed safely, we were informed by the event’s emcee—after a rather inspirational speech—to be careful, as many of the runners who had already departed had suffered injuries like dislocated knees and broken collarbones. Oh, and also a heart attack. Someone had suffered a heart attack. And with that, we were off. The second obstacle was the Chernobyl Jacuzzi, which has, for your records, been renamed the “Arctic Enema,” which does not do the obstacle justice, as I would happily endure a dozen arctic enemas before doing this again once. It is a dumpster filled with ice water and separated by a board in the middle. You walk in, unspeakably freezing water up to your chest, and to make it to the other side, you must submerge yourself in the water and go under...

In the quest to discover new and exciting things to post to this blog in addition to the cards and weekly columns, esteemed reader and writer Don D. submitted his choice of “hip-hop-ifying classic rock songs.” Many times around these here parts we have interpreted hip-hop songs into the standard Caucasian vernacular, and that has been ... fun? Well, it has been for me. But Don’s idea got me intrigued as well. I have to admit I was skeptical at first, but I gave it a shot, and I remain skeptical. There’s been discussion of, if this concept is well received and thus moves proudly into the future, posting simply the hip-hop version and having you , the reader, determine its classic rock origins in the comments for a prize of: cyber congratulations. So, please provide your feedback on that, if you will. For this week, however, there will be no reveal. Also, a personal note: I truly dislike including curse words into this blog. Call me prudish, whatever, but like David Cross said on his...

Note: This column appears in the 1/12 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/13 issue of the Peoria Times. Many people who discover I am participating in a 10-12 mile mud run with obstacles—they discover this because I tell them instantly upon seeing them—ask me, “How do you train for such a thing?” That was a question I asked myself after signing up. Initially, I had considered setting up a few giant, flaming hoops throughout our development that I could jump through during my weekend training. But alas, it is “no burn” season in our part of the Valley (pfft), and besides, my earlier attempts to douse hula-hoops in gasoline and set them ablaze did not produce the desired result. My buddy and Tough Mudder teammate Pete sent me a few training videos a while back that I did not really watch because, well, I have a difficult time being led in a workout by an accompanying video. I mean, I’m trying to envision myself as Rocky here, downing raw eggs and running up an absurd amount of steps. In...

Danny Manning, 1993 Upper Deck "Collector's Choice" I’ve been a bit heavy of late with the artist renderings, I know. What can I say; I have a soft spot in my heart for the detail with which talented artists portray professional basketball players. It’s like flowers. Flowers are great and all in real life, with the way you can look at them and smell them and all that crap. But a painting of a flower is something you can look at and say, “Wow! That looks just like a flower!” Unless it’s one of those paintings that’s supposed to be a flower but looks like a mess, and you need someone who is good at interpreting art to explain it to you but you are not listening because you are bored. Man, art is the best. And this particular card is not abstract at all, no sireee. That’s Danny Manning right there—two of him, actually—drawn by Alan Studt . I have to admit, the details are pretty cool, most notably the sweat beads on Manning’s forehead and the ripples in his Clippers jersey....

Note: This column appears in the 1/5 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/6 issue of the Peoria Times As many of you have become aware throughout the years, I’m not much of a man. Many of the things that define manhood, like knowing how to use a circular saw, I am unable to do. There are two main things I do that attempt to offset this reality: 1) have facial hair, which is easy, and 2) run, which can be challenging. The latter is not totally manly and is often open to women as well, but it does take some stamina and mental fortitude, and so I will allow it, as should you. I should also mention that doing so once left me in an ambulance, and served as the least manly moment of my entire life. Still though. In fact, the past three years I have participated in the Phoenix Rock and Roll ½ Marathon. (They host a full marathon, too, but c’mon—that’s ridiculous.) But earlier this year I was thinking, “Is there anything manlier than running aimlessly on a flat, paved surface for a couple hour...

This week, we here at So, Do You Like … Stuff? are not posting any real content—assuming anything we ever post is real OR content—because we don’t feel like it. But, I’d like to take this opportunity, and thus the risk that it will go completely ignored, to solicit feedback. First though, a sincere and heartfelt "thank you" to every single person who visits this blog by intent or accident, or who has purchased the book by intent or accident, or who enjoys what is written here on any level. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now ... We—and by “we” I mean I—are wondering if the classic cards should proceed as usual throughout the immediate future. Since I’ve been writing for the fabulous ( as recognized by Google! ) The Baseball Card Blog , and doing card writeups for them, I’ve been wondering if the cards here have worn out their welcome or become stale. Some of the followers of this blog are obviously card enthusiasts, and I certainly don’t want to alienate them, but the issu...

Dominique Wilkens & Kevin Willis, 1991 Skybox "GQ" We have been fashion-heavy here of late , and that is okay by me. Here we have another installment of GQ’s “NBA All-Star Style Team,” because, sure, anyone can spin 360-degrees in the air and dunk a basketball, but not everyone can do that and also manage to dress well with all the money they make dunking basketballs. Today we present Dominique Wilkens and Kevin Willis. I’m not sure where exactly this shot was taken, but let’s assume they just de-boarded a very formal evening hayride. But what everyone really wants to know is, “Who are you wearing?” “Two guys who’ve got the jump on style. Hey, basketball players jump a lot, so this terminology works well! Wilkens sports Hey, basketball is a sport, so this terminology works well! his own suit, while Willis wears clothes from his own company.” Willis : Get a load of this guy. Where’d you get that suit, the Salvation Army? Wilkens : Pfft. Stop trippin’. This is MY suit. N...