Night Owl Cards

   It's January, so it's time for a football-centric post.   Football these days is full of fret and consternation. There's a big Bills game today that will have me all uptight (I'm writing this beforehand so either "Go Bills" or "the Jaguars have ugly uniforms"). And that's the way it's been for decades, lots of good vs. evil and plenty of disappointment.   But it wasn't always that way. For example, I picked up this 1976 Topps football card of Patriots quarterback Jim Plunkett recently while ordering a Dodger card and looking for something else to help out with shipping. This jumped right out at me, I love that set and Plunkett brings up good vibes despite my view of the Patriots these days. In fact, I don't remember him with the Patriots at all, nor with the 49ers --just with the Raiders when he led them to a Super Bowl title and all the talk was about this "old guy" that Oakland picked up off the scrap heap (Plunkett was...

It's pretty much a fact that kids grow up much faster today than they did in the '70s. And even in the '70s, I grew up slower than most. I didn't have older siblings. I was the oldest. We didn't have cable. In fact, I don't know if my folks ever have had cable. And, most of all, I loved cartoons far too much to be interested in what was on "grown-up TV." Other friends, even my own brother, were in a hurry to grow up and they gravitated toward early '70s sitcoms or movies. Me? I liked my PBS kids shows and I loved my cartoons. Saturday morning was the highlight of the week and like any kid from the '70s, I can recite the cartoons that aired at that time: The Bugs Bunny Show, The Jetsons, Fat Albert, The Pink Panther, Scooby Doo Where Are You, Josie and the Pussy Cats, Josie and the Pussy Cats in Outer Space, Speed Buggy, The Harlem Globetrotters, The Underdog Show, Super Friends, you get the gist. The only shows that I saw that involv...