The Epic Collapse

The less said about this year's Big Game, the better. But a few random thoughts are in order:

- Every account of the game I've read lists the attendance as being "the announced attendance..." I couldn't watch the game (more on that below), and wonder if that means there were actually empty seats in the renovated, much smaller Stanford Stadium. If that was the case, that's truly astonishing.

- I don't know these guys so I can't really question their character, but based on what I saw against Washington last week and the accounts I've read and seen of this game, it sure looks like the Bears stopped playing with passion after the USC game. And based on the comments of the Cal players after the game, it appears that they were more concerned with going to a bowl game than they were with the shame of having lost to Stanford. If you can't get up for the Big Game, you shouldn't be playing at Cal.

- This is certainly the darkest moment of the Tedford era. For all his offensive brilliance, he was glaringly unable to come up with a successful, consistent offensive scheme after the Nate Longshore injury severely limited his effectiveness. And he was unable to motivate his players after it became clear that they were playing only for pride. So, great as he has been, Tedford deserves a healthy share of the blame for this disastrous season.

- Don't even talk to me about a bowl game. Bowl games are rewards for teams who had a good season; a winning season. The Bears had neither, and should they be offered a bowl bid, they should turn it down. (Yeah right, like that will ever happen).

- I can't put into words how much I hate the fact that the Big Game has been moved to the week after Thanksgiving instead of the traditional Saturday before Thanksgiving. Never mind that I may never be able to watch it again, because the new week corresponds with a work commitment that will keep me from being there in perpetuity. It just doesn't feel right; doesn't feel the same.

Overall it sounds harsh; six years ago, 6-6 would have been an excellent season. But with the talent, with the coaching, and with the fan support, there's no way to label this season other than to call it an absolute, total, stunning failure. Here's hoping that they come roaring out onto the field next September with fire coming from their eyes and smoke coming out of their ears.

Just A Couple Of Lonely Legends

Gosh, you'd think that Bing and Frank could find a more lively way to celebrate the holidays, but maybe legends are just more comfortable in the presence of their peers.

Blue Christmas

The musical advent calendar begins with the King himself, from the legendary "sit-down concert" that was part of the 1968 Comeback special. The song (which begins a little less than a minute into the video) is one of two absolute classics on "Elvis' Christmas Album," the other being "Santa Claus Is Back In Town." As David McGee once wrote, the King was spitting fire back in those days, and the album is worth it for just those two songs.

Coming Soon: A Musical Advent Calendar

I like Christmas music, to the degree where I’ll listen to Christmas music in genres that I would rarely listen to otherwise (New Age, for instance). There is also a lot of Christmas music that I can’t stand; music that literally makes me want to run from the room when it comes on. That’s one of the main reasons I never listen to radio stations that convert to an all-Christmas format (usually by mid-November) – you never know when something truly dreadful is going to compel you to drive into the nearest telephone pole.

For the month of December, I’ll be posting about Christmas music on a daily basis, either with a review of one of what I believe to be the greatest Christmas albums of all time, or with a notable video that features a Christmas song. And just remember, “notable” does not necessarily mean “good.”

Stay tuned...

The Longest Week Continues

Day two of annual conference week, and I'm either getting old or my stamina just isn't what it used to be, because I feel way too exhausted for there being four more days on the docket. Hopefully the second wind will kick in tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I need to quit getting up early for a run - but the route is so scenic, it's hard to pass up.

Tonight was our traditional (if you can call two years a tradition) departmental dinner, and the choice was a good one: Red Pearl Kitchen, in the Gaslamp District. We had the less expensive of two fixed-price options, and there was so much food that I can't imagine what the more expensive of the two options must be like. The Web site describes the cuisine as follows:

The extensive menu offers a new twist on traditional Pan-Asian Cuisine and is great for individual or family-style dining; guests can select from a wide array of Dim Sum, Salad, Hot Pot, Curry, Noodle, Wok-Fired, and Vegetable dishes.

I don't even remember everything we had, but from dim sum to dessert, it was all excellent. And it was definitely a wide array - in fact, I feel wider already.

Green Bay Packers Stat of the Day

Courtesy of Peter King:

Best Records, First 27 Games, Packers Coach:

1. Mike McCarthy 18-9
2. Vince Lombardi 17-10
3. Curly Lambeau 14-8-5

Obviously McCarthy has a long way to go before he can be spoken about in the same breath as Lombardi and Lambeau, but it's an interesting stat, nonetheless.

Random Notes From A Holiday Weekend

A lot going on the past few days, so the posting has been scarce.

• It was another hectic but fun Thanksgiving, featuring 25 guests and 39 pounds of turkey. My wife was a true superstar, doing the lion’s share of the hard work – getting the house ready, preparing the meal for cooking, getting the turkeys in the oven early Thursday morning, and then overseeing the entire production, from the arrival of the first guest until the last glass was washed on Friday morning. I wouldn’t say that I stood around doing nothing, but my contributions were minimal compared to hers.

• Not much of a restful weekend for son #1, with the high school band playing Friday night at a playoff football game, and then Saturday night during the annual Elk Grove Santa Parade.

• Plenty of football, of course. The first highlight was during the Green Bay-Detroit game, not so much for the game itself but for the halftime show, which was choreographed by my brother, who teaches dance at Cal State Long Beach. The second highlight, if you can call it that, was USC’s dominating performance against Arizona State. The Trojans are playing their best football of the season, and on a neutral field you’d be hard pressed to make them an underdog against any of the teams who are ranked above them in the BCS. This season is probably the best argument yet for a playoff, but I’m sure the nattering nabobs at the top of the NCAA will come up with some laughable excuses for not moving in that direction.

• And now my home for the next six nights is the Marriott Hotel & Marina in San Diego, where the Association I work for is holding its Annual Conference & Trade Show (I'm in the South Tower, building on the left, 20th floor, far end, with a nice view of the Marina). The preparations for this year’s event were even more harried than usual, making the time between Halloween and Thanksgiving pass like a blur. It will be a long week, but there should also be some fun to go along with the work. By the time it’s over, we’ll all be ready for a long winter’s nap.

Barney Lives - And Is A Kings Fan

I never realized until last night that Barney from The Simpsons is a real, live person.

In real life, his hair is a little darker, and he wears his shirts untucked so you can't see the rolls of fat cascading over his pants.

He owns two foam fingers, and can drink a beer - many beers, in fact - with them on.

He's very sneaky - manages to break all the rules just as the section usher is looking the other way or is otherwise occupied.

When the opposing team shoot free throws, it's not enough for him to block the view of the person sitting right in front of him. Rather, he moves into the aisle, where he can block the view of several people sitting behind him.

The voice? Exactly the same.

How do I know all of this? He was at the Sacramento Kings game last night, sitting two rows in front of me, across from the aisle.

Hope you enjoyed yourself, Barney. And I hope you have the world's worst hangover this morning.

25 Years Ago Today

"The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heartrending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football!"

- Joe Starkey, 11/20/82

"That One Moment of Time Keeps Me Going"

I had just returned Berkeley after spring break in late March of 1981, and of course we were using the occasion to party. It was a Sunday evening; classes didn’t start until Wednesday. As far as we were concerned, it was just another long weekend. Midway through the night, a girl who lived on another floor brought around one of her friends from high school, who was just coming into the dorm for the spring quarter. He had the unusual name of Mariet Ford, and we found out later that he was on the football team. That surprised us because he was small for a football player (not even close to threatening six feet), and because he didn’t have the arrogance and the “I’m doing you a favor by hanging around with you” attitude that you saw in a lot of the players who lived in the dorms. Basically a nice guy, and I remember that throughout that spring, even though he ended up hanging out with the other football players, he always greeted me by name, and gave me a “how’s everything going?” that made me believe that he meant it, as opposed to something that he said to people just so that he could be on his way.

Flash forward 18 months later. I’ve graduated from college, and Mariet Ford now starts for the Golden Bears, in their first season under Coach Joe Kapp. Because of his size he becomes known as a “scrappy” player, one that leaves his heart and soul on the field but never makes you think that he has a future in the pros. And then, out of nowhere, he plays a key role in The Play – to this day, the most famous play in the history of college football. If you’ve seen it, and you know you have, Ford is the guy who makes the last lateral, obviously having no idea whether there are any other Bears trailing the play. Through some combination of blind luck and divine intervention, Ford was able to hit Kevin Moen right in the hands, in stride, allowing him to run into history, plowing through an unfortunate Stanford trombone player in the process. I wasn’t at the game, but I was listening to the legendary call by Joe Starkey, and of course I went crazy. And when I found out that Ford was involved in the play, I thought to myself, “hey, that’s cool – I know that guy.”

More than ten years later, I’m living in Elk Grove, California, and somehow learn that Mariet Ford has also made Elk Grove his home. I can’t remember how I found out, but I remember thinking, again, “hey, that’s cool – one of the most famous players in Cal history lives right down the road from where I do.” I thought about trying to make some kind of contact, but ended up deciding that would be lame, and could only result in embarrassment for everyone involved – particularly myself.

A couple of years later, tragedy – Ford’s wife and young son perish in a fire at their home. He finds out when his wife fails to answer the phone; he calls his brother, who discovers the dead bodies in the smoldering home. And then a few months later, Ford is charged with the crime of killing his wife and young son, killing them in a rage and starting the fire to cover up the crime. According to the district attorney who prosecuted the case, “I just think he lost control in an angry, unpremeditated explosion of violence – and it was over within seconds. He did something rash and then he tried to weave his lies in to cover it up.”

Ford remains in prison today. Interviewed during the 20th anniversary celebration of The Play, he told a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, “When I get very depressed, I think back to that game. It brings me joy. I have a place I can always go. That one moment of time keeps me going.”

For Cal fans, it remains the terribly sad coda to the most joyous moment in the school’s football history.

With All The Trimmings

I never get tired of reading this essay by Garrison Keillor, which originally appeared in TIME Magazine back in 1995. It's a good way to start the Thanksgiving festivities, even if it is a bit early.

With All The Trimmings

It is a wicked world in which the power of any individual to cause suffering is so great and the power to do good is so slight; but here we are, the week of our beloved national feast, our annual homecoming, and signs of loving Providence are everywhere around us.

I am thankful to be alive. In Minnesota the lakes are freezing over in late November, and some men who envision a leadership role for themselves take their snowmobiles out onto the thin ice and fall through and drown in the cold water--their last thought in this life: "Boy, was this dumb or what?"--and so far I have not been one of them. Caution was bred into me: I never played with guns or made a hobby of pharmaceuticals or flung myself off a cliff while clinging to a kite. I read books instead. I read books in which men hearken to wild imperatives, and that is enough for me.

I am thankful for living in a place where winter gets good and cold and you need to build a fire in a stove and wrap a blanket around you. Cold draws people closer together. Crime drops. Acts of kindness proliferate between strangers. I have been in Los Angeles on a balmy day in January and seen the glum faces of people poking at their salads in outdoor restaurants, brooding over their unproduced screenplays. People in Minnesota are much cheerier, lurching across the ice, leaning into the wind as sheets of snow swirl up in their faces. Because they feel needed and because cold weather takes the place of personal guilt. Maybe you haven't been the shining star you should have been, but now is not the time to worry about it.

I am thankful for E-mail, which allows us to keep in touch with our children, and for the ubiquity of fresh coffee, the persistence of good newspapers, the bravery of artists, the small talk of sales clerks, the general competence and good humor I encounter every day. None of us is self-sufficient, despite what some politicians claim. Every good thing, every morsel of food comes directly from God, who expects us to pay attention and be joyful, a large task for people from the Midwest, where our idea of a compliment is, "It could have been worse."

I am thankful, of course, for Thanksgiving, a joyful and simple day that never suffered commercial exploitation and so is the same day as when I was a boy and we played touch football on the frozen turf and came to the table sweaty and in high spirits and kept our eyes open for flying food. My sister had good moves; you'd look away for an instant, and she'd flip her knife and park a pat of butter on your forehead. Nobody throws food at our table now, but in the giddiness of the festive moment, I have held a spoonful of cranberry for a moment and measured the distance to Uncle Earl, his gleaming head, like El Capitan, bent over the plate.As I grew up, Thanksgiving evolved perfectly.

It used to be that men had the hard work, which is to sit in the living room and make conversation about gas mileage and lower back pain, and women got the good job, which is cooking. Women owned the franchise, and men milled around the trough mooing, and if any man dared enter the kitchen, he was watched closely lest he touch something and damage it permanently. But I bided my time, and the aunts who ran the show grew old, and young, liberated lady relatives came along who were proud of their inability to cook, and one year I revolted and took over the kitchen--and now I am It. The Big Turkey. Mr. Masher. The Pie Man.

Except for gravy and pie crust, which take patience and practice, Thanksgiving dinner is as easy to make as it is to eat. You're a right-handed batter in a park that's 150 feet down the left-field line—it doesn't take a genius to poke it out.Years of selective breeding have produced turkeys that are nothing but cooking pouches with legs. You rub the bird's inside with lemon, stuff it with bread dressing seasoned with sage and tarragon and jazzed up with chunks of sausage and nuts and wild rice, shove it in a hot oven; meanwhile, you whomp up yams and spuds and bake your pies.

The dirty little secret of the dinner is melted animal fats: in all the recipes, somewhere it says, "Melt a quarter-pound of butter."Think of the fancy dishes you slaved over that became disasters, big dishes that were lost in the late innings. Here's roast turkey, which tastes great, and all you do is baste. You melt butter, you nip at the wine, and when the turkey is done, you seat everyone, carve the bird, sing the doxology and pass the food.

The candles are lit in the winter dusk, and we look at one another, the old faces and some new ones, and silently toast the Good Life, which is here before us. Enjoy the animal fats and to hell with apologies. No need to defend our opinions or pretend to be young and brilliant. We still have our faculties, and the food still tastes good to us.

Walt Whitman said, "I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name." Thanksgiving is one of those signed letters. Anyone can open it and see what it says.

The Bear Will Not Quit, The Bear Will Not Die

Cal Bear legend Joe Kapp was brought in to coach the Bears in 1982 after a couple of really disappointing seasons (which, naturally, coincided with my two years in Berkeley) under Roger Theder. Theder's reign as coach had begun with promise; the Bears reached a Bowl game (the Garden City Bowl, of which there were few) in his first year, but in 1980 and 1981 underachieved to a remarkable degree - posting 3-8 and 2-9 seasons when the talent was there for 7-4 or 8-3. I remember how excited folks were when Kapp was announced as the new coach - his enthusiasm was infectious, and it was easy (if foolish) to overlook the fact that he'd never coached a game in his life.

By far, 1982 was his best season. The Bears finished 7-4, not good enough for a bowl game, but more than enough to keep the Old Blues happy. On the bright side, Kapp brought the dark blue uniforms back to Cal, but on the flip side, was also responsible for the questionable bear paw helmet insignia. And of course, he will be forever remembered as being Coach when The Play happened. From there it was all downhill, but he closed out his coaching career with another stunning upset of Stanford in 1986 - a fine way for any Cal coach to wrap it up.

To this day, he remains one of the Bears' most enthusiastic backers. No doubt he yearns for the day when Cal returns to the Rose Bowl, where it hasn't played since he was quarterback.

The Lost Season

It's still hard to believe how far and fast Cal has fallen this season. One play from being ranked the #1 team in the nation, to one loss away from turning the season into a complete failure - all in the span of six short weeks. I was about to say that things can't get any worse after today's shellacking at the hands of Washington, but unfortunately it isn't true - a loss to Stanford would be worse. And the way Cal is playing right now that looks like a distinct possibility, and if it happens it would leave the Bears bowl-eligible but without even the ability to point to a winning season.

Today, it looked as if they had nothing left after having left it out on the field against USC. The defense was a sieve, and the receivers looked like they'd prepared for the game with vaseline. Over the long run, the injury to Nate Longshore against Oregon was obviously the turning point.

A sixth straight win against the Cardinal would certainly help salve their wounds. If they can't get up for that game, they can't get up for anything - and fired up, I like them by 31-14.

Good and Evil

The story that has stormed the Internet this week about the woman who created a false MySpace account which she ultimately used to drive a neighbor’s teenage daughter to suicide demonstrates with alarming clarity that there is evil out there, and that it is probably closer than you think. No doubt, some would argue that the description I just used is far too black-and-white to discuss this particular case. I don’t think so. Had the woman in question shown any sign of remorse for what she did, I might have felt differently. But no, instead she became very friendly and “supportive” to the grieving family, doing her best to “help” them in their time of need. And with that, she forfeited any right she had to forgiveness. Her life deserves to be ruined for what she did.

You can read the story here. Michele speaks forcefully and eloquently about the case here and here. Beware – this is a story that stays with you, the kind that digs through your psyche and makes you wonder whether the world is even worth saving, climate crisis or no.

So it was good that after enduring that story, I came across this one, Sheila O’Malley’s account of a random encounter with a beret-wearing Dickens fan while waiting in line to see No Country For Old Men. It’s a simple story, but also one that sticks with you - in this case, a life-affirming one; something to cleanse your soul after the dark depths of the previous story.

And life goes on.

Bumper Sticker of the Day

"What Would Scooby Do?"

Another View of "Magic"

Quiet Bubble offers some well-written, insightful thoughts on Magic. I don't agree with all of it, especially the comments about the second half of the album, but these observations on "Radio Nowhere" are a keeper:

The song—well, almost all the songs here—are about trying to find connections with other people, about the desire and need for human touch, for the sound of another person’s voice. Mostly, the search ends in failure; occasionally, Springsteen gives us equivocal success. Here, and throughout the rest of Magic, Springsteen’s voice is fighting to be heard over the music, over the production that sounds murkier and more frayed than he’s ever let the E Street Band sound before. The guitars slur and muddy the water; even Clarence Clemons’s normally clear-ringing saxophone is brash, roughly recorded, as though its sound is unable to match the clarity of its message.

In his 1970s and 1980s concerts, Springsteen’s battle cry to the crowd between songs was “Is there anybody really alive out there?!” Two decades ago, it was a yell of solidarity; the audience responded with a roar. In “Radio Nowhere,” however, Springsteen’s voice is weary, trying hard not to be desolate as he decries that he’s “spinning around a dead dial/ Just another lost number in a file.” As his narrator succinctly describes his isolation and desperate search for anything approaching communion, Springsteen’s voice is buried by sound. “I just want to hear some rhythm,” chanted over and over again, becomes increasingly ferocious, but also pathetic. He knows he’s being drowned out.

Good stuff.