Book Club - Under The Dome by Stephen King

At 1074 pages, Under the Dome is not for the fainthearted. The premise is right on the cover. The small Maine town of Chester's Mill becomes suddenly surrounded by some sort of force field that will allow nothing in or out. And when I say suddenly, I mean suddenly. A small aircraft flying over town crashes into it, a beaver gets chopped in half as it walks along, a woman loses her hand as she reaches to the edge of her garden, which lays just over the town line.The reasons for the dome, it's mechanics and the ultimate removal of the dome don't really much matter, although King goes to a lot of effort to make it as realistic as possible. For example, the air starts to go bad within a few days and the dome, although completely invisible at the start, gets covered in the inside with soot and gunk. King uses it to set up an experimental laboratory to see how people will react to being cut off and completely on their own. It's basically the same plot as the TV show, Lost without the exotic location. Although to someone living in Southwest Texas, Maine is pretty exotic.

The story is about how people behave. As you might expect, some behave badly, some behave very badly. Some are heroes, some do what they have to do to survive. Horrible things happen, some good things happen. It is an engrossing story and kept me interested all the time. It's probably a bit longer than it needs to be (does any book really need to be 1,074 pages long?) but it never drags.

2010 Topps Turkey Red Mystery

I've only bought two blaster and two cereal boxes of Topps Series 1. Eventually I'll get around to making a post about them. But first I have a mystery (at least to me).I managed to pull 11 Turkey Red cards. 3 of them are Albert Pujols. When I started to catalogue these I started with the Pujols cards. The first thing I noticed was that unlike every other issue of Topps Turkey Red, the card had no texture. It's as smooth as a baby's bum. What gives here? When I reached for the second card, it did had the familiar Turkey Red texture, as do all of the others I have. I searched Beckett.com, Topps.com and on eBay and can find no mention of smooth Turkey Red cards. Does anybody have any thoughts about this? I suspect that I have a card that somehow missed the texturizing process but I'd like to think I have a one-of-a-kind short print.

Quest for 1998 - Part 7 Donruss Collections

In 1998, Donruss had four primary sets: Donruss, Leaf, Donruss Elite, and Donruss Preferred. They also produced a set called Donruss Collections which featured cards which were parallels of these four sets. The cards featured the same design and photography as the regular sets but were either printed on thin plastic or are plastic coated. It's hard to tell. The background of each card had a sunburst kind of effect which was raised from the surface of the card and the word Collections was embossed in the background as well. Each 5-card pack featured 2 Donruss Collections Donruss, 2 Donruss Collections Leaf, 1 Donruss Collections Elite. A Donruss Collections Preferred was inserted 1 in 2 packs.

There were 750 cards in the set, 200 each of the Donruss, Leaf and Preferred and 150 of the Elite. Also, the Preferred were limited to 1400 sets.

As if this wasn't confusing enough, there were also parallels of the parallels called Prized. The Prized parallels, in addition to all of the above, had a refractive rainbow finish. They were also limited in production although they were not serial numbered. I just picked up 3 of the 4 parallels.

Donruss Prized Collections Donruss #26 Jeff BagwellThe Donruss Prized versions were limited to 560 sets. Unfortunately the rainbow colors didn't show up in the scans very well, but this is a pretty attractive card.

Donruss Prized Collection Leaf #295 Craig Biggio
The Leaf version was limited to 400 sets.

Donruss Prized Collections Elite #511 Derrek Lee
The Prized Elite cards were limited to 220 sets.

Although I have one Donruss Collections Preferred card, the Prized versions are limited to 56 sets. The Jim Thome card is currently being offered on eBay for the Buy It Now price of $22.50. That's a bit more than I'm willing to spend.

Song of the Week - Distant Shores by Chad & Jeremy

I have 9,396 songs on iTunes. This is one of them.

I was listening to the CD The Very Best of Chad & Jeremy and though, something from here would make a goof Song of the Week. This due was active in the mid-1960s and were bart of the original British Invasion. I was going to go on about their sweet harmonies and sad love songs. But while looking for a video on YouTube I found this and any ideas I had went right out of my head.

Quest for 1998 - Part 8 Donruss Signature

In 1996, Donruss introduced Leaf Signature. It was the first set to feature a large number of autographed card. Each pack had at least one autographed card. There were over 1,000 different autographed cards available in several parallel sets. In 1997, Donruss renamed the set Donruss Signature, and continued the set into 1998. Donruss went bankrupt after 1998 and disappeared for a few years. Just like with the Leaf Signature, there was at least one autographed card per pack.

1998 Donruss Signature #83, Roberto AlomarThere was nothing particularly exciting about the design of the base cards, in fact they looked pretty much like the 1997 versions. A moderately glossy card with silver foil.
The back featured a player photo and personal and game stats.

1998 Donruss Signature Autographs Millennium Gabe Alvarez
There were 3 125-card parallel sets of on-card autographs. This set featured 1,000, serially numbered cards of each player. The 'base' autographed card was also serial numbered to various amounts between 400 and at least 3,900. There was also a Centennial version, serial numbered to 100. Gabe Alvarez only played about 90 games but I only paid $4.00 for this on-card auto.
The backs featured another photo and some biographical information about the player.

Thursday Night at the Movies - Green Zone

This movie is being billed as an action-adventure film. In the ads for the movie much is made of Damon and the director Paul Greengrass' connection to the Bourn movies. In the trailers for the film, it's not too clear what Damon is doing. He appears to be on a quest of some kind.Damon plays chief warrant officer Roy Miller. It's just after the fall of Baghdad and Miller and his team are looking for WMD in and around the city. The opening scene has them arriving at a site where intelligence has reported a stockpile of biological weapons. Here's where the action-adventure part comes in. Although an Army unit has attempted to secure the site prior to Miller's unit's arrival, all is chaos. There is a sniper keeping them pinned down. Panicked Iraqi citizens are running all around. Purposeful Iraqi citizens are looting the place. Bullets are flying everywhere. When Miller and company finally get inside, the find an abandoned toilet factory. No WMD. It's the third dry hole in a row.

Miller's quest is to find out what is going on. Just where are those danged weapons of mass destruction. For his trouble he finds himself in the middle of a CIA operation and a Pentagon operation. Although both these agencies work for the same government, they seem to be working at cross-purposes. To reveal those purposes would be too big of a spoiler so I won't. Suffice it to say that you may have heard that WMD were never found in Iraqi. There have been many theories put forward as to why this is so. This movie offers a theory I never heard before but doesn't sound any crazier than those I have heard.

We thought that Matt Damon was great in this. As I said, when his unit arrives at the chaotic scene in the opening of the movie, Damon just takes charge. His men have complete confidence in him and you believe it that they do. The action scenes are very good. The director goes for a total immersion sort of feel with jerky camera movements, a point of view from right inside the action. You can almost feel the bullets whizzing past your ear. Very effective and very tense.

A word of warning. If you think that the Iraqi war was fully justified and that we did the right thing there, you will probably not like this movie no matter how close the bullets come.

Book Club - The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050

The Next Hundred Million: American in 2050 by Joel Kotkin is, perhaps, the most optimistic book on America's future that I ever read. He extrapolates a lot of positive trends in the US and negative trends in other countries and predicts an America in 2050, pretty much on top of the world.But it's not just about trends. He spends a lot of time reminding us what's good about the US compared to other countries and how these good things will get us through. A lot of his optimism seems based on the fact that people have been predicting the fall of America for the past 60 years and it hasn't happened yet. I'm afraid that isn't a very persuasive argument by itself but combined with the trends makes a good case.

He thinks that the high amount of immigration over the past years will blossom into a renewed American vigor because of the influx of youth. While other countries either segregate their immigrants or deny immigration all together, the American blending pot will continue to operate. Lots of new businesses will mean lots of opportunities and jobs. The Heartland is starting to show signs of recovery with high tech businesses relocating there. The suburbs will become more diversified, with mixed housing and businesses and an influx of immigrants.

He predicts an America of more diversity than ever as immigrant groups intermarry with other groups and the people already here. We will be come a land of minorities, but all Americans.

I will be 98 years old in 2050 (I hope). If I'm still writing this blog then, I'll revisit this book and see how well he did on his predictions.