Night Owl Cards

I do not drink as much beer as I once did. I would never call myself a beer connoisseur -- talk of making your own beer, the breweries you've discovered, or other esoteric ruminations about hops and barley bore me completely -- but I enjoy a good brew. Today, though, I can mostly confine beer-imbibing to one of two categories. 1) It's summertime and I'm off. 2) I'm exhausted and the world has decided "night owl is the enemy." Today it's in the high 70s, rather humid, and I've got a busy workload tonight. None of this really falls into category 1) or 2), but for some reason -- perhaps the nine zillion beer commercials that I've watched during all of my baseball viewing has finally gotten to me -- I can't stop thinking about a beverage. In short, I need a beer. Here's the problem. There's no beer in the house. And with the budget cutbacks continuing for another week, I can't be buying any without there being ... um ... r...

You may have noticed that not one of the card backs that I have featured in the countdown so far has displayed cartoons. That is only because those other card backs had something else seriously going for them. Ordinarily, the lack of a cartoon is a major problem on this countdown, while including a cartoon is almost a sure-fire way to get onto the list. I like tiny drawings of funny-looking men. Many of the card backs remaining in the countdown are rated highly because there are cartoons on the back. I admit I am biased. I prefer cartoons over photos, over fancy statistics, over slick-looking graphics. That's because one of my favorite parts of card backs as a kid was the cartoon. When I collected back then, it was a given that there would be a cartoon on the back every year. I actually learned more from card backs because I paid extra attention to facts that were accompanied by a cartoon. I also thought that anvils could drop out of the sky and hit you in the head. There ar...