The Hunt For October: Post Season AL Matchups

As the end of the regular season draws near, and the pennant race begins, the four teams to represent the American League in the post season are all but decided. This will hopefully be a good October for baseball fans and memorabilia collectors alike.

The Red Sox and Yankees have always been historic rivals, and this year is no exception in their heated fight to the finish. Although the Red Sox were dominating the AL East through the summer, the Yankee bats have been a blaze, as they've whittled away a Sox 14½ game lead in late May down to the 1½ game lead it is now. Red Sox fans have reasons to be tense. They've had a few injuries including Ortiz's right knee acting up, which has effected his batting. They also lost two of the last three to the yanks this past weekend and then continued on their spiral down, dropping three straight to the Blue Jays, who are 12½ games back in the AL East. The Yanks are leading quite an opposite life. They have won 12 of their past 14 games, racking up a whopping 103 runs in the 17 September games they've played, and show no sign of slowing down.

Cleveland has been this year's surprise success. They squeezed through the last three games against the Detroit Tigers, the second place team in the AL Central, winning by three runs or less each game, and will be well rested for next week.

The Angels have finished with the league's best record which bodes well for them in the post season, and their tendency to dominate their opposition at their home field will help them succeed in passing through the first round.

Enjoy the post season and don't forget to show off your sports memorabilia!

Refinished Antiques Make Great Conversation Pieces

I have recently noticed how popular antiques are becoming, even among the various generations. It is not uncommon for a college student to pick up some old furniture at a garage sale, but all sorts of retailers are throwing back their designs to older styles. Reupholstering older furniture can add value to the piece as well as character to the room. Every collector knows they have at least one major conversation piece in their collection, and the same should be applied to a room of furniture. Estate sales often have great focal point pieces that are reasonably priced, and they may even come with a good story behind them. The more you can find out about a piece from an antique appraisal or antique price guide the better. If the piece is a family heirloom, it would be beneficial to keep and digitally store the records that might have come with the piece. For instance, my family has a chest my grandfather brought over from Sweden when he was small, but there are very little markings on it and it did not come with papers, so it will be difficult to determine all of its history. Moral of the story? The next time a parent or grandparent starts getting rid of their old antiques that have been collecting dust for years, brush them off and give them a second look. They'll be of no value to you once they're gone.

Mystery Behind Holocaust Painter's Album Partially Solved

It has been 60 years since the end of World War II, and as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, the mysteries of that horrific era become more difficult to solve. Recently, the story behind an album of historically unique value has been partially solved.

Shari Klages' recalls wandering into her parents bedroom as a small child and thumbing through a leather-bound album that held around 30 pages of ink-and-watercolor images, depicting the horrors of Dachau. She knew her father had spent the last few weeks of World War II in Dachau, but did not know how he came to possess this album. He had immigrated to the states on a ship with more than 60 Holocaust orphans and had taken his life in 1972. The signature “Porulski”, found on the bottom of a few of the pages, was her sole clue as to who the artist was.

The album begins with an image of four prisoners in winter coats. They are carrying their suitcases and marching toward Dachau's watchtower, which was armed with SS guards. The next depicts two inmates being stripped for an exam by a kapo, a prisoner who worked for the Nazis. As the drawings continue, they become more debasing and humiliating from the inmate's perspective. In the final image, a man is lying on the ground next to the barbed wire fence that separated him from freedom, but he has been killed under the looming watchtower. The album also contained 258 photographs, including copies of well-known images of the dead, but also those that portrayed Dachau an an idyllic summer camp, which the Nazis used for propaganda.

Thanks to modern technology archiving and a little help from the Associated Press, Klages located records that documented Porulski's journey. He had enrolled in the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1934, after completing two years in the Polish army service. After Germany invaded in 1939, he worked on painting postcards of Nazi-occupied Poland. Two of his postcards have survived and are currently located in the Warsaw Museum of Caricature. He was rounded up in 1940, arrested “without any reason,” and was moved from camp to camp before being recorded at Dachau as Michal Porulski, Profession: Artist in 1941. It has been assumed that Porulski created his works after his release, due to the fact that they are all done on the same paper and that no prisoner would have dared to draw such horrors under the Nazis' watchful eyes. Porulski was tragically unable to resume a normal life after the years he had spent in concentration camps, and he wandered from country to country before finally becoming homeless and painting in England, where he passed away at the age of 74.

Though Klages is unsure of where her father and Porulski crossed paths outside of Dachau, it is certain that he treasured Porulski's work as a documentation of what the two men had been through. If you have any treasures of historical value, document and catalog them for the generations to come.

Show Your Stuff And WIN!

Show Your Stuff and Win!!!

Win an iTaggit t-shirt by uploading 10 or more of your favorite things into a new public collection for iTaggit to admire! For every collection of 10 or more items you are also in the running to win a $250 Amazon Gift Card!! Just be the owner of the collection that receives the most views by October 15th to win the grand prize. Good Luck!

To Win a iTaggit t-shirt

1. Create a new iTaggit public collection between September 15th and October 15th.
2. Upload 10 or more items in the collection and we’ll send you an iTaggit t-shirt of your choice. Choose one of these shirts.
3. SarahB will contact you once you have successfully uploaded your 10 items to receive your prize. Contact SarahB for any questions or concerns.
   *Limit (1) t-shirt per registered user.

Win a $250 Amazon Gift Card

Between September 15th and October 15th, the owner of the public collection that receives the most number of views will receive a $250 Amazon Gift Card. Collections must have at least 10 items to qualify. The leaders will be announced daily on iTaggit’s homepage. The collection that has received the most number of views will be announced on October 15th.

Use iTaggit’s “Send This Collection To a Friend” tool to e-mail your collection to your friends and increase your collection views. To do this:

1. View your collection;
2. Click on the item actions menu AND choose “Send This Collection to a Friend”;
3. Enter as many email addresses as you would like and include a personal message to promote your collection!

Click here for more contest rules and regulations.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The 2007 MTV Video Music Awards left a whirlwind of publicity in its wake including the botched Britney act and the clash between rock stars Tommy Lee and Kid Rock, but one clean highlight on the reel was Shia LaBeouf announcing the title to the latest Indiana Jones flick. Hype had increased in the past month when it was discovered that Lucasfilm had registered six names with the Motion Picture Association of America, and now we know Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has surpassed the others and become the official title.

The last Indiana Jones adventure, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was released in 1989. Several veteran writers, including M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), had stepped forward since Last Crusade's release to write the sequel, but it wasn't until David Koepp (War of the Worlds) presented his polished script that Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford decided to pull the Indy hat out of the closet one more time.

The crew has been filming since June in several locations ranging from Connecticut to Hawaii, and several additions to the original cast have been sighted on set including LaBeouf, who has been rumored to be playing Jones' lost son, and who's mother would then be Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielburg announced that Karen Allen would be reprising her role as Ravenwood during this year's Comic-Con in San Diego. Sadly, Sean Connery will not be making a cameo in the film as Indiana's father. "I thought long and hard about it, and if anything could have pulled me out of retirement it would have been an Indiana Jones film. I love working with Steven and George, and it goes without saying that it is an honor to have Harrison as my son," the 76-year-old Scottish actor declared. "But in the end, retirement is just too damned much fun."

So far, the storyline is being kept tightly under wraps but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is set for release on May 22, 2008.

I Am Iron Man!

the new trailer for the Iron Man movie is up at apple trailers. and it's awesome! I hope the end product lives up to this.

What Happened To Michigan.... Again?

Well the Big Blue held on to high hopes that perhaps their second game of the season would be the redemption they needed to resurrect their National Championship contention dreams. Needless to say, their hopes were squashed by Oregon, who handed them their second of two straight home losses to begin the season; the last time this happened was in 1959. In a 39-7 defeat, this past weekend's game was historical for two reasons:

1) The Wolverines suffered their most lopsided loss in 39 years; which was the season before their famed former coach, Bo Schembechler, debuted in Ann Arbor. And,

2) The Wolverines have not won a game since Coach Schembechler passed away on the day before the Ohio State game last year.

Hopefully Michigan hasn't incurred a “curse” like their sports counterparts the Boston Red Sox (the curse of the Babe) or the Chicago Cubs (the curse of the goat) that will keep them out of the National Championship for years to come, but all the fans who are superstitious might want to double check their rituals before this weekend's game against Notre Dame. Chad Henne, senior quarterback for Michigan, will not be available for the Notre Dame game due to a lower leg injury that kept him out the second half of the Oregon game. Notre Dame is also 0-2 for the season, but they have not scored an offensive touchdown in eight quarters, and have been outscored by 51 points in their first two losses. If Head Coach Lloyd Carr doesn't pull out a W for his Wolverines this weekend, his job security is little at best.

Be sure to keep track of your sports memorabilia through iTaggit.com!