Monday, July 30, 2012

No. 675 – Tahitian Moon

Performer: Porno for Pyros
Songwriters: Perry Farrell, Pete DiStefano, Martyn LeNoble, Stephen Perkins
Original Release: Good God’s Urge
Year: 1996
Definitive Version: None

I like to have new music to listen to whenever I travel anywhere. For my trip to L.A. in 1996, I bought two new albums: Dust by Screaming Trees and this album. I bought Porno for Pyros’ first album and liked it enough to give this one a try. I also had gotten into Ted, Just Admit It from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, so, as I said, I was ready to graduate to Jane’s Addiction when I arrived at LAX.

For the first half of my trip, I rented a car to drive to Anaheim for the National. I had never driven on the L.A. freeway before this trip, but because the National opened at 8 for press, the timing of my departure and perhaps the direction worked in my favor. I also left late, like at about 7, so I didn’t have any serious traffic issues going either direction that I recall.

The only thing I remember about my drive was that the Anaheim Convention Center was down the street from Disneyland, so I passed the entrance along the way, which was kind of cool. I only had ever seen Walt Disney World in Florida.

The Anaheim National was my third National, and it quickly became the National whereby all others would be judged. St. Louis was massive, but this was ridiculous. Between all the big sports and card companies that had exhibits, the National took over the entire convention-center floor to the point where the autograph-signers were cosigned to the basement.

I followed my usual buying strategy of first writing down table numbers, what cards they had and prices, and going back to the best ones later. But my strategy went by the wayside almost immediately. It might not have been the first table I encountered, but it was one of the first. The guy had a box of 1958 baseball singles, three for a buck.

No need to write that one down. I just pulled out my wantlist and started blowing through the box: You can’t pass up three for a buck on 1958s, which were in decent condition, on the possibility that someone else might have them for four for a buck (which no one, of course, did). By the time I was done, I had more than 100 cards—a serious dent in making that set attainable.

The rest of the show was like that. Although I didn’t have any huge finds like I had the year before regarding the Rose rookie, I had more overall success. I took $1,000 to spend on cards, same as in 1995, but I came back with more cards than I had from St. Louis—more than 1,000. Not counting purchases of multiple sets at once, this was the biggest haul I ever have had at a single card show.

But I had more than just cards. I bought a whole bunch of stuff for the growing Baseball Room—pennants, books, tchotchkes. I bought a foamy Hideo Nomo K at the Dodgers game, and a 1989 All-Star Game program from the Angels game, so my suitcase was a lot fuller on the flight home.

And the flight home was the best. When I fly, I prefer to sit in the back, because I’d read that in the few plane crashes where there were survivors, the survivors far more often than not were in the back of the plane. Anything that increased my infinitesimal odds in such a situation seemed worth it to me.

But again my strategy worked to my benefit on the long second leg from Phoenix to Columbus (good ol’ America West), because I had the entire last row of seats to myself. That meant I could spread out ALL of my card bounty on the trip and admire it. Now THAT’s a great way to wind up a card show.

No comments:

Post a Comment