Brad Balukjian is a lifelong baseball fan who spent his childhood in the 1980s collecting baseball cards. Upon reaching his 30s, Balukjian realized he was at the age that most baseball players are retired, with a lot of life left. What happened to all those sports heroes on the cards he collected in his youth? To find out, he devised a plan that eventually became the basis for his new book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife.

Pondering what happened to his heroes after they retired, Balukjian came up with a plan: In fall 2014, he went on eBay and ordered about a dozen sealed packs of Topps baseball cards from 1986, and opened them, searching for a pack with a set of 14 players who would make for a good cross-country road trip.

While digging into all those old baseball-card packs, Balukjian even gave into the temptation to try the nearly 30-year-old gum. “I remove the calcified stick of gum with the caution of a bomb expert, place it in my mouth, and clench down on its powdered surface, splintering it into a thousand crumbs, which instantly dissolve on my tongue,” he writes in The Wax Pack. “It’s delightfully gross.”

Once he settled on a pack, Balukjian then planned to spend the summer of 2015 driving across the United States in his 2002 Honda Accord trying to meet each of the former players in his baseball-card pack, the “Wax Packers” as he calls them, to find out what fate befell each one. He would blog about his adventures each day of the trip and hoped the blog could turn into a book.

Balukjian settled on a pack of 14 players and managed to meet and get to know most of them. He found them to be much more interesting and complex than their baseball cards, or their sports careers, would lead one to believe. They came from varied backgrounds, often from small towns, broken homes, and even abusive childhoods. They dealt with career problems such as adultery, racism, and substance abuse. The Wax Packers opened up to him for the most part and became friends. Read about that road trip, and oh yeah baseball cards, too, in an article that will appeal to both fans and people who don't know a thing about baseball at Collectors Weekly.

In October of 1998, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch in which guest host Lucy Lawless played Stevie Nicks as the proprietor of a casual Tex-Mex restaurant in Arizona. It was a weird random setup, a one-time bit that was never reprised. For many it was forgotten, but in the hyper-communicative era of the internet, we learn that it resonated with a lot of people, even decades later.

“I tell you what: I didn’t really realize it had a life of its own,” Lawless tells me.

Honestly? It’s pretty wild that it does. “Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup” wasn’t prescient. It didn’t put its finger on the pulse of 1998, or anticipate the ways in which pop culture would shift in the years to come. It didn’t point toward some broader universal truth, or teach us something about ourselves.

It just … started, and was weird for two and a half minutes. But it was really weird for those two and a half minutes, blithely absurd and blissfully silly in a way that cuts through the clutter and nestles itself into your gray matter. We can’t always explain why something sticks in our brains; sometimes, it just works. And for a lot of people, “Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup”—something that probably shouldn’t have worked for anybody—just worked.

Fans of the sketch are delighted to find that they are not alone, and Lucy Lawless herself is tickled that people remember a thing she herself had forgotten. Read how “Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup” came about and found an afterlife of its own at the Ringer.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dan Evans)

He must be a farmer, because he's certainly not a forklift driver. I'm no forklift driver, either, but it appears he lifted the load too far from the cab. The real payoff of this chain-reaction snafu is his reaction -that poor hat! The security video has no sound, but you can imagine what he's yelling. -via Digg

Star City is a gated community in Russia that was built in the 1960s specifically for the Soviet space program. The only residents are those who work in the industry and their families, which today is about 6,000 people. Despite its government mission and dependence, Star City survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, and is still centered around space exploration. And it's not always been completely off-limits to everyone. The facilities were super-secret during the space race, but after the Apollo moon landing, there was a seismic shift.

Then, the unthinkable happened in 1973 when Uncle Sam arrived. “The Soviet and American spacemen will go up into outer space for the first major joint scientific experiment in the history of mankind,” announced Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, “They know that from outer space our planet looks even more beautiful [and] it is big enough for us to live peacefully on it, but it is too small to be threatened by nuclear war.”

Dubbed the “Apollo-Soyuz Mission,” the joint venture was an extremely sensitive, highly calculated effort to end the Space Race – or at least ease tensions between Soviets and Americans.

While politicians played, well, politics, the scientists, astronauts, and cosmonauts got along well in Star City. And the American presence remained after Soyuz. Read about NASA in Star City at Messy Messy Chic.

(Image credit Flickr user Samantha Cristoforetti)

Artist Chet Phillips (previously at Neatorama) has created a series of illustrations that portray fictional creatures from pop culture as vintage scientific field studies. Click to the right on the picture above to see more of the collection he calls Unnatural History. It's as if a science artist wanted to show us accurate flying monkeys, xenomorphs, or gremlins in the days before photography (or CGI, for that matter)! Prints of these are available at Etsy, in case you see your favorite fictional character. -via Laughing Squid

It seems pretty natural now, to ease the symptoms of a cold or flu with hot lemonade, spiked with some honey and/or whiskey. It hydrates the body, provides vitamin C, and soothes a sore throat, but it doesn't cure anything. However, the reason we enjoy hot lemonade when we feel sick goes back to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic and the power of advertising.  

The telegram first arrived at Sunkist’s sales office in Los Angeles: The East Coast needed lemons. The arrival of cheaper, Sicilian imports had been slowed by the war, and America’s new go-to citrus, the orange, had suffered a poor growing season. Demand for the little-used lemon was high and supplies were low. In Boston, wholesale prices had more than doubled in a month. Meanwhile in California, leafy lemon trees, finally recovered from the sweltering 1917 season, were heavy with fruit.

Countless home remedies emerged as Americans grappled with the disease, some placebo, some actual poison. From the pantry came the promise of health in the guise of red onions or black coffee or watered-down molasses or brandy with asafetida, a pungent spice common in Indian cooking. But only the lemon had the advertising know-how of Don Francisco and Lord & Thomas behind it.

The campaign advertising lemons never claimed it cured the flu, but they knew what to say to lead people to think so, even to the point of sucking lemons directly. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.  

(Image credit: André Karwath)

Will Disney ever run out of ways to monetize the Star Wars universe? No. Next up, a competition series centered around everything Star Wars. That's cause for celebration among Disney and Lucasfilm executives, and fans too young to recall the original trilogy in theaters. Or on videotape.

That’s because on June 3, Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge will finally be released to the world. Hosted by Ahmed Best (aka Jar Jar Binks himself), the show is very much like the kids’ game shows many of us grew up with: Double Dare, Endurance, Guts, etc. Except this time, it’s all Star Wars.

Strangely, this game show will not air exclusively on Disney+, but will be available online to all. And it's good to see Best given a chance to play a different Star Wars character. Read more at io9.

During the spiritualist movement of the 19th century, Russian aristocrat Helena Blavatsky drew a following with her philosophy and apparent supernatural abilities, and in 1875 set up an organization called the Theosophical Society in New York.

Theosophy had tens of thousands of adherents, ranging from serious devotees to celebrity dabblers like Thomas Edison. Blavatsky argued that every major religion contained some element of truth, and she made that argument in books that were based on her invented travels to Tibet and that liberally stole from earlier occult works. For today, all you need to know about is her idea of a World Teacher, a supposed being from a higher plane of existence that routinely takes human form to guide the development of our species. Blavatsky speculated that our Teacher previously popped down in guises that included Confucius, Plato, Seneca, and Jesus, and in 1909 the Theosophical Society claimed to have found Jesus 2.0.

A Theosophist in India spotted a 14-year-old boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti and declared him to be the prophesized Teacher. Krishnamurti was taken in by the Society and educated, but things didn't turn out the way Madam Blavatsky had predicted. Read that story in all the colorful prose you'd expect from Cracked.

(Image credit: The Library of Congress)

Baseball is a game that lends itself to statistics nerdery. Some fans know all the players and their stats, others know the long history of games in great detail. Tom Shieber at Baseball Researcher knows how to find the answers to the most obscure questions by detailed investigation. There is a scene in the 1940 movie The Great McGinty in which mayor Dan McGinty pulls out a photograph of a baseball game.   

McGinty: Now look at that crowd. How many people do you think there were at the game?
Maxwell: I’m sure I don’t have the faintest idea.
McGinty: Look again. How many people do you think there are in that photograph?
Maxwell: 10,000.
McGinty: Guess again.
Maxwell: 20,000. Mr. Mayor ...
McGinty: You’re not even warm, Mr. Maxwell.
Maxwell: Well ... [Suddenly realizing what’s really going on.] Oh. You mean it’s more like 40,000?
McGinty: It’s more like it. But that ain’t it.
Maxwell: Mr. Mayor, about that flaw you mentioned ...
McGinty: There’s no flaw in that photograph, Mr. Maxwell. It’s perfect. What was your last guess?
Maxwell: 50,000?
McGinty: [Laughs]. There were 75,000 people in that stadium. Ain’t that wonderful? 75,000 filling their lungs with nature’s own sunshine. I’ll send the guy up to see you. Goodbye.

Were there really 75,000 people in that photograph? Or, more to the point, at the game represented by the picture, which does not show the entire crowd? To find the answer, Shieber determined the exact game depicted in the movie prop through painstakingly studying the clues in the image, then linked his findings with the architectural history of the ballpark. Read what he found and how he found it at Baseball Researcher. -via Metafilter

During the War of 1812, actually in the autumn of 1814, the Baltimore Patriot and Evening Advertiser took ten days off from publication. When it returned on September 20th, it contained the lyrics to a new song written by Francis Scott Key, with the suggestion that it be sing to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” While clippings of that newspaper still exist, a full issue is an extreme rarity, and one is now up for auction.  

Printed under their original title, “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” the four verses allowed the newspaper to report on the events of the titular battle with some literary flourish. “In our first renewal of publication,” the editors wrote, “we rejoice in an opportunity to enliven the sketch of an exploit so illustrious, with strains … which so fully celebrate it.” The paper also predicted that the words were “destined long to outlast the occasion,” but it’s doubtful the editors understood just how long. In June 2020, more than 200 years later, this first newspaper printing of what became “The Star-Spangled Banner” will be auctioned by Christie’s, for an expected minimum of $300,000.

Accompanying the lyrics is a reported account of the song’s conception.

Read about that newspaper edition in context at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Christie's)

Indy is a curious cat. When a new contraption appears in his home, he has to investigate every inch of it. When it's turned on, he puts his best efforts into figuring it out. YouTuber Walter Santi (previously at Neatorama) documented Indy's lessons for our vicarious pleasure.  -via Digg

Imagine digging in your garden and finding this lovely floor, just covered up with soil! Archaeologists knew there was an ancient villa under a vineyard in Northern Italy, but discovering this intricately-tiled floor was a surprise, just a week after the excavation resumed after a pause during the coronavirus outbreak.

The team discovered the tiles, as well as portions of the villa’s foundation, “a few meters” below the vineyard’s surface, according to the statement. To make the “archaeological treasure … hidden under our feet available and accessible,” the researchers will collaborate with authorities and the vineyard’s owners. The process will likely require both significant time and resources.

You have to wonder why and when someone decided to just have a bunch of topsoil hauled in to cover the floor. Read more about this find at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Comune di Negrar di Valpolicella)

Move trailers in the 21st century tend to follow a pattern, a formula if you will, and over time began to all look alike. AD_edits did a nice job on The Empire Strikes Back, with a trailer that will make you want to see the movie again. But what if you'd never seen it before? What makes the "modern trailer" above so noteworthy is the contrast between it and the real 1979 trailer.



The production values and the use of a narrator make it seem hopelessly dated, but this one honestly gives fewer plot points away then the newer style trailer. It worked 40 years ago. -via Geekologie

Chris Kyle tried a new restaurant and wrote a review that has gone quite viral for reasons you will be pleased to learn.

So I tried to support another Black Owned Business for lunch today. It’s called Ava’s Kitchen, just opened end of April. It’s a very clean establishment, but whewww let me tell you about this owner.

To read the rest of the review, you can continue reading or go to Facebook.

Even movie stars are looking for something to do during quarantine. Sam Neill and Helena Bonham Carter made a short film on two different continents. Bonham Carter plays Sam's phone, and she is not happy. -via Laughing Squid