Dumb And Dumber

I've been wanting to make a Dumb and Dumber card so I started thinking about the movie’s different scenes and I decided I needed to make a card with of Lloyd and Harry in their orange and baby blue charity ball tuxedos.  I found the image above and knew it’d do great in the 1988 Topps football league leaders design I made for Step Brothers.

Dumb and Dumber is one of those movies I’ve seen more times than I can count.  Dumber and Dumber came out when I was in eighth grade so of course I loved it with humor that is tailor made for a middle school kid.  A buddy of mine had the VHS tape and we damn near wore that thing out.  He also had the movie’s soundtrack which is chock full of 90’s goodies. 

Lloyd Christmas is probably neck-and-neck with The Grinch as my favorite Jim Carrey roles.  I also think Jeff Daniels is an altogether brilliant actor and I love the fact that he’s a Michigan guy that stayed home even after making it big. 

This is the second card I’ve made from Dumber and Dumber, here’s the first.

Stuck On You

Once again the Farrelly Brothers have given me great custom card material. I watched Stuck On You maybe six months ago. It's a goofy but heart warming movie about conjoined twins who have different aspirations which of course can lend to some funny situations. It's one I would call "an easy watch".

The other week it just dawned on me that there were some sports scenes in Stuck On You, sort of the way you're trying to remember something but can't and then it just pops in your head out of no where the next day. I literally got a smile on my face thinking about a single card for conjoined twins. It's a custom card two'fer!

Stuck On You was released in 2003. Hard to believe that was 15 years ago, but not quite old enough to match it to a card design of the same year. So, it was another case of designers choice.

First was the high school baseball card. I chose a 1984 Topps baseball inspired design. I thought it would be funny to widen the head shot box to be able to get both twins in there. Since Bob and Walt are from Martha's Vineyard I decided to use the Red Sox color scheme from the '84 Topps. (Martha's Vineyard is a island in Massachusetts for the geography fans).

For the hockey card I went with a design I've not yet use up to this point, the 1981 Topps hockey design. The main thing I was looking for was a card design that had a large enough area to fit "Quikee Burger", and although I had to stack it, the '81 design allowed for that. For the same reason as stated with the baseball card, I went with the Bruins color scheme for this card.

Kick His Ass, Sea Bass!

Here's another entry into category of athletes in movies that played characters that I did a four card post on last week. Again, the concept is mashing the movie character with one of the athlete's real trading cards.

I may not be the biggest hockey fan residing in "Hockey Town", but I do know who Can Neely is. Despite that I didn't know until recently that the 2005 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee was the guy who played "Sea Bass" in 1994's Farrelly Brother's classic Dumb and Dumber. I, like I'll assume everyone with a pulse, loves Dumb and Dumber. I guess I just never stopped to look at the credits to see who so brilliantly portrayed Mr. Bass. For the little time Neely was in the movie he has a couple of the most memorable scenes, in my opinion.

1990-91 ProSet

Growing up I didn't collect many hockey cards so most of the designs hold very little personal meaning to me like the other three major sports do. That's not to say I don't love using the designs for my cards, it's just not quite the same as remembering busting open packs of cards that look like the ones I recreate for my custom cards. The only two hockey sets I ever remember buying were both the 1990-91 Topps and ProSet. The reason being is that one of the party stores close to my house at the time had them and I collected any type of trading cards... any. I remember getting a lot more of the ProSet than the Topps. If I remember correctly they were on a slightly thinner, slightly glossier and more vibrant stock than Topps.

I've used the 1990 Topps inspired design a couple of times so I switched it up a bit and tried the ProSet on for size. I like the way this turned out a lot. It is unmistakably 1990 ProSet hockey. The one and only thing I would change if I could would to have a clearer shot of Sea Bass' "Wine 'em, Dine 'em, Sixty-nine 'em" trucker cap.

Phantom Cardboard Gets Munsoned

"Pressure?  Yeah there was some pressure, I mean I didn't wanna lose to a guy with a hook."

A couple of weeks ago I popped in my VHS copy of Kingpin with the sole purpose of entertainment.  Between laughs I got the bug to turn this movie into some custom cards.

Kingpin was made in 1996, the height of the Farrelly brothers putting out instant comedy classics, but also years past the period in time that saw me collecting every type of card I could get my hands on.  I think I was still collecting basketball cards around this time but then it was all about UV coating, foil stamping, and insert sets.  In other words, nothing like cards in the '80s.

So, I thought I'd use the 1987 Topps baseball cards design once again.  If you've read my previous posts on cards inspired by the '87 Topps you know they hold a special place with me being the first sports card wax packs I ever busted open.  I thought they would make sense with the wood grain seeing as there's wood grain on a bowling alley, right?  Then it dawned on me, why not replace the baseball bat grain with actual an bowling lane design?!  I think that was a strike (bad pun alert).  So, my customs became even more customized.

"Ten frames, that's for Quakers"

Outside of the of shying away from the wood grained design in the past there was also the issue of needing some sort of logo as a part of the template.  Like I did with in replacing the logo on my Sara Underwood card with baseball clip art, I added a bowling ball to fill the space.  I really like the way it looks.

I started making the cards that I guess you would consider "base cards". Then it occurred to me how well the movie could be lent to the different subsets that the '87 set featured, and I really started to fall in love with this Kingpin mini-set.

1987 Topps baseball

Ish is perfect as a "Future Star" being Roy recognizes him to be a young bowling savant that he could make into a champion, the champion he himself was pegged to be in a different lifetime.  Miss Claudia opportunistically joins on to help Roy co-manage Ishmael's career, and it's safe to say her business savvy is in a balance to Roy's vicarious hunger for money and glory and in helping Ish to not end up "Munsoned".  So it made perfect sense to slap the "Manager" tag on her card.

As a kid I loved the "Turn Back The Clock" subset. I would fantasize about how boss it would be to own not only the TBTC card, but the vintage card it featured.  I never did.  So, I wanted to "turn back the clock" to 1979 when Roy bested "Big Ern" in the 1979 Iowa Amateur Championship of bowling. Before he was "The Plastic Man", Roy was on his way to making "Munson" to bowling what DiMaggio is to baseball.   I've already used the 1979 Topps basbeall design for my Warriors cards, so paying homage to Ocelot Iowa's favorite son was already halfway in the bag.

Last up was the all-star subset.  I'm not sure if there's all-stars in bowling, but if there is Ernie McCracken would be one.  I mean, c'mon, he's "Big Ern"... he's the greatest!

To say I'm happy with how these cards came together would be a gross understatement