Britney Spears

Right before Super Bowl LIV I was listening to podcast and they made a reference to an article that ranked the best halftime performances of all-time for the big game.  Ranked pretty high on that list was the 2001 show with Aersomith, Britney Spears, N' Sync, et al.  I remember that well because of how smoking hot Britney was during that performance.  Never the biggest Britney guy, but I can't deny I took notice of her at least for that show.

This card is done in the style of the 1991 Upper Deck football set, which was UD's inaugural pigskin offering.

1991 Upper Deck football

B-Rabbit

With Eminem's meme-inspiring performance of his Academy Award winning "Lose Yourself" at this years Oscars just a mere 17 years after winning for Best Original Song in a film it got me to thinking that adding a Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith, Jr. card to my 1991 ProSet Yo! MTV Raps inspired cards would be pretty phat-with a "ph".

Little House On The Prairie

I'm not sure how it is these days because I don't watch any new television shows, but if you made a television series anytime in, let's say, the seventies up through the nineties and you didn't have a baseball episode ... was it even a t.v. show?

I've done a few cards from that familiar television trope.  Anything from The Incredible Hulk, The Greatest American Hero, Freaks and Geeks, Married... With Children, Seinfeld, and the list goes on.  Needless to say television baseball episodes have been great source material for my custom cards.

Well, not all that long ago I was alerted via Instagram DM by a helpful user about a baseball episode that had escaped my radar... Little House on the Prairie.  Who didn't enjoy an early afternoon with the Ingalls family?  Anytime I watched an episode of Little House as a kid I felt like I had just eaten a big warm bowl of oatmeal.  It was that wholesome.

1975 Topps

So, I found the episode in question on YouTube and gave it a watch.  That's my "method" if you will.  I like to have a fresh recollection of details of anything I make a card of just so I can give it the attention it deserves.  I knew right away that I'd be making a card from this particular episode.  If you're wanting to give it a watch yourself it's a Season 2 episode entitled "In the Big Inning" -- which is a clever as hell title.

Little House on the Prairie was set in the late 1800's, so I wasn't exactly going to be able to match the card design to that time frame.  Instead I went with a 1975 Topps baseball inspired design to coincide with the year the episode originally aired.

I switched it up on the card back a little bit.  Instead of going with a design that mirrored a base card backing I thought it would be cool to use the news headline style back of the Highlights subset which gave me a chance to give a synopsis of the episode. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers

I came across this pic of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and thought it would make a fun custom football card.  The photo itself (c. 2011) is the band playing tribute to The Who’s 1974 out-takes album “Odds And Sods” album cover.

I did this one in the style of a 1988 Topps football team card.  I just like the design for nostalgia reasons, 1988 was the year that I probably busted the most football packs.

1988 Topps football

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Even though the "Spaghetti Westerns" are before my time, it's a genre still really enjoy; especially the ones starring Clint Eastwood.  Clint is my guy.  He's truly a living legend and anyone who would say different is loco.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the greatest westerns ever made.  It's epic not only in its scope but its run time, clocking in at just under three hours.  The latter was something I discovered upon viewing it for the first time a few years back.  I remember thinking "damn, this movie has been on forever".  That doesn't mean I didn't really like it though.  I love all three of the "Man With No Name" movies.  Eastwood is such a bad-ass in that role, more so than even Dirty Harry.

This three card mini-set is done in the style of the 1966 Topps baseball set, matching the film's year of release.

Phoebe Cates

I've been wanting to add a Phoebe Cates card to the mix.  She is, of course, in the Fast Times at Ridgemont High set I did, but I this is Phoebe Cates we're talking about so more cards would never be a bad thing.

Phoebe is already in Topps' Gremlins set, so that wasn't on the table.  I decided Phoebe would be a great addition to the previous Dream Girl cards I had done in the style of the 1991 Score Dream Team subset.  For any 80's guy, Phoebe Cates was surely a "dream girl" at some point.