got some hacky way of having the showcard show up on the page. TODO: figure out how to drop the application.html wrapper stuff and how to get this into Javascript

app/controllers/items_controller.rb

@@ -49,11 +49,11 @@ class ItemsController < ApplicationController
 
   # GET showcard/:id
   def showcard
-    @current = current_user
-    @item = Item.find(params[:id]).authorize_to_show(@current)
+    @user = current_user
+    @item = Item.find(params[:id]).authorize_to_show(@user)
 	
     respond_to do |format|
-      format.json { respond_with(@item) }
+      format.html { respond_with(@item, @user) }
     end
   end
   

app/views/items/showcard.html.erb

@@ -8,12 +8,12 @@
          class="icon" height="50" width="50" />
     <div class="scroll">
       <a href="/items/<%=@item.id%>" class="title">
-        <%= node.name %>
+        <%= @item.name %>
       </a>
       <div class="contributor">
         Added by: 
-        <a href="/users/<%= @item.user_id%>">
-          <%= User.all.find(@item.user_id).name %>
+        <a href="/users/<%= @user.id %>">
+          <%= @user.name %>
         </a>
       </div>
       <div class="desc">