I am your Average Joe and this is my forum for everything that sparks my interest. Baseball cards to wrestling, UFC to horror movies, and everything in between.
This may upset some people but I have never been a big fan of upper deck. I grew up a Topps kid and grew into a Topps man. Last year however I did like the Masterpiece set. I did not collect it though because I was already working on too many sets. I'm noticing however that a lot of sites are selling boxes of them for relatively cheap so I decided to start a little late.
Then Steve at the Easy Life told me about the upcoming 2009 Upper Deck Goodwin set. These are some of the most beautiful cards I have seen in my life. And I think they blow the Masterpiece's out of the water. Here is an example:
Look at the difference a year makes. These are better than the Masterpiece, better than the Goudey's and better than just about everything I've seen this year. I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on this set. What do you all think? I plan on doing a lot more posts on this set that's for sure.
Added some more to both wants and doubles check 'em out. i need all the help i can get
This is another Fulci film I was able to get my hands on. I gotta thank my friend Justin for this. Just about daily he brings me a new movie or wrestling/MMA pay per view on dvd to watch. Today's movie however, after watching Cat in the Brain was quite a disappointment.
City of the Living Dead, first and foremost, has nothing to do with the very successful George A Romero dead series. Though I do wonder if this was Fulci trying to capitalize on their success. The movie itself falls flat. The whole movie feels like a big build up but in the end doesn't build up to anything special. Here's a brief plot of the movie.
In the small New England town of Dunwich, a priest commits suicide by hanging himself in the church cemetery which somehow opens the gates of hell allowing the dead to rise. Peter, a New York City reporter, teams up with a young psychic, named Mary, to travel to the town where they team up with another couple, psychiatrist Jerry and patient Sandra, to find a way to close the gates before All Saints Day or the dead all over the world will rise up and kill the living.
So pretty much All Saints Day shows up and it is a big let down. Nothing really special happens. On the horror scale I give this movie 1 Burning Skull. After Cat in the Brain this movie was just too slow and not nearly as much action packed. Don't get me wrong a horror movie to me doesn't necessarily need a lot of gore but if you're not gonna do that you gotta go the thriller route and this film didn't do that either. I wont give it a zero because I have seen some atrocious horror films in the past and it certainly wasn't the worst thing I'd ever seen. Check out the trailer below, and again pleasant dreams
I cant believe I'm saying this but I just cant watch the Mets right now. I've been a Mets fan since birth. There are pictures of me in Mets bibs for gods sake. I have been a Met fan for near 29 years now and I just cant believe i'm saying this. Don't get me wrong I realize we are fielding what is essentially a AAA ballclub (some even AA) but enough is enough I cant watch the carnage.
Don't get me wrong, I am not giving up on my team. I just cant watch them make total fools of themselves night in and night out. Error after error, stupid call by Manuel after stupid call. I'm taking a breather. I'm gonna sit the bench for a couple days and hopefully after a few days rest I can come back better than ever. Hopefully the Amazin's can too.
I have posted some more to both my doubles page and want list. Its gonna take me a lot longer than I thought to get all that info up.
As a horror fan I always had heard of the name Lucio Fulci. I never saw any of his movies but I certainly knew the name. Many horror buffs swear by him. Recently I took a look at my collection and I realized, I have a lot of slasher films, a lot of new stuff, some Japanese stuff, and a lot of black and white classic but the one thing that was missing from my collection were some good ol' Grindhouse films. The films from the 70's/early 80's that were rarely seen outside of drive ins and late night theatres.
In 2007, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez tried to bring Grindhouse films back with their double feature of Planet Terror and Death Proof, otherwise simply known as Grindhouse. Unfortunately only a select few went to see the movie. But I am sure those who did loved it just as much as I did.
Which brings me to today. I finally watched my first Fulci film, A Cat in the Brain, and all I can say is I am hooked on Fulci. The movie was great! I don't want to ruin anything for anyone interested but here's a quick breakdown of the movie.
Within the first 5 minutes of the film we have a woman having every single limb being severed from her body and her head decapitated. Her flesh is ground up into ground "beef" and her entrails are fed to pigs. (You still with me? I promise I'm not a psycho) Then suddenly we hear "CUT" Its a movie within a movie. Fulci plays himself. A horror director. However, in the movie he makes us ask the question, Can we actually see too much horror?
Fulci starts seeing scenes from his movies in everyday life. From food in a restaurant to a girl in a wheelchair to even just simply running water and just looking out the window. He decides to see a shrink to deal with his problems. Unfortunately for him the shrink is dealing with a wife who hates his guts and wants a divorce which drives the shrink to kill. He hypnotizes Fulci into believing he is killing people while it is really the doctor. This is not a spoiler, they tell you in the film. As Fulci slips deeper and deeper into madness the shrink has a field day killing one person after another. The whole time Fulci believing he is the real killer.
Its a great film for any horror fan. The effects are just what you'd expect from this type of movie, not the greatest but that's part of its charm. From a wheelchair crushing a persons larynx to a person face being melted clear away. It was great. I am going to steal a rating system here, any good horror fan knows exactly where this comes from.
5 Burning Skulls - Excellent 4 Burning Skulls - Great 3 Burning Skulls - Good 2 Burning Skulls - OK 1 Burning Skull - Poor 0 Burning Skulls - Horrible
I give this movie 4 Burning Skulls. I was definitely hooked and I loved it but I will save a 5 for the films that just absolutely blow me away. I highly recommend it to any horror fan.
Please enjoy the trailer below. And just a warning make sure there are no kiddies in the room, the trailer contains partial nudity and gore. Pleasant dreams!
Since I was not blogging on Opening Day this year I thought I would share a little story with everyone about it. For 3 years running Steve from The Easy Life, and I have watched the Mets game together. A tradition I do not see ending any time soon. Steve and I always pig out. His wife makes the most delicious chicken wing dip I've ever tasted and she also makes some great peanut butter cupcakes which is another tradition I hope does not end any time soon. This year I said I was going to make a cake of the NY Mets logo. I was only half serious. I wanted to do it but knowing me, last minute I wouldn't get it done. Well one day I mentioned to Steve's wife Sarah what I was going to do, and she says to me "You cant do it!" That was all I needed to hear. At this point I was determined that no matter what I would show up with the cake. So the day before Opening Day, Opening Day eve if you will (since its just as good as Christmas) I woke up and began the process. Almost 7 hours later, here was the finished product:
The picture quality is not the greatest because they were taken by a cell phone but you better believe I rubbed that right in Sarah's face. Ha! The cake is a red velvet sheet cake which I cut to shape the logo and for the rounded parts of the logo I made cupcakes and attached them to the sheet.
Since then I actually decided to take cake decorating classes and have made some other cakes. As time goes by I will post some other cakes that I have worked on and others I make in the future.
Today I started posting in my want list and doubles list. There is still a ways to go on both of them but we have the whole 80's want list up and the 70's and part of the 80's doubles up.
Whats up everyone? As the title says its good to be back. You may formally know me as StevesBuddyJoe. I took some time off from my old Baseball card blog to get my sets in order and boy have I done that. I have officially chronicled every card I own!!! I will shortly be posting sub-pages to the site with my want lists for every set I am working on from 1983 to today. I will also be posting every single double that I own for all of these sets as well. Thats 30,000 plus cards easy. And yes it took me quite some time to get them all in order and chronicled. Its going to take a while to post all of this but i will be working little by little daily until its all up.
This time around with the site I plan on doing a lot more than my cards. As you can see from the site I am also a big wrestling fan. Have been since I was 10 years old. Unfortunately the product isn't nearly as good as it used to be, but I can use this blog to vent my frustrations about that as well as when they actually do something right.
If you read my old blog, (and there weren't many of you, but if you did Thanks) you also know that I am a big horror movie buff also, so I will be talking about some of my favorites as well as some of my not so favorites.
UFC, music and much more. The blog will have a very different feel this time around but I cant wait to get started again. Stay tuned
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