2021 Card-vent Calendar: December 14

December 14, 2021:

1991 Topps Desert Storm #76 Wearing the Gas Mask

You might find it hard to believe nowadays, but back in the 1990s, Americans pretty much uniformly got behind their blah blah blah wars with multilateral blah blah blah rainbow coalition blah blah blah divisiveness schmackety wackety.

Let's shove all that socio-political claptrap in front of a moving train and talk about what this card truly evokes: Hip-hop group 3rd Bass's 1989 hit, "The Gas Face."

 

If life gives you an opportunity to share "The Gas Face" and/or its music video with others, you take it.  I don't really have much I can say about this song that would do it justice, but I do have a few stray thoughts to share:

 

*At the height of the Gulf War, I actually got to try on a real live gas mask.  One of the college students from the Catholic mission trip my family went on in 1990 stopped by our house later that year.  He had recently enrolled in the National Guard and came by in full fatigues.  Being 12 years old, it was quite the experience, very disorienting to say the least.

 

*You probably know this already, but Pete Nice was a fellow sports collector who once owned a shop in Cooperstown and ran afoul of the law regarding some items of memorabilia of questionable legitimacy.

*In 2003, The Onion published a short article titled "MC Serch Updates List of Gas Face Recipients."

Just brilliant!