Can I bother you for a few minutes to hear me kvetch about Jim Harbaugh, who I call either Jim Harbarph or Jim From The Harbaugina Monologues?

Abstract:

Doctor Popular

Rockage

Jim Harbaugh

Jim Blake

Tom Blake

Rockage

Eric Fanali

The Harbaugina Monologue

Norman Mailer (cameo)

Herbie Herbert (cameo)

Sy Klopps

Dan Olmstead (cameo)

Stew (cameo)

Cake

This is like four or five posts, but work with me.

I did a few minutes of my “The Harbaugina Monologue” at Rockage in San Jose last week and fooled the photographer into thinking I was somebody.

The photographer was actually Doctor Popular. Not sure who he is but I quick peek at his site indicates he is friends with MC Lars. I think he shot this with something called ADOX. !

He makes something new to me called chiptune music.

The mike is part of a karaoke that is part of a dessert truck.

The monologue is me working out my reservations about the success of Jim Harbaugh the former three-sport star at Paly that we lampooned on April Fools Day, 1982 in something called The Crapanile. We called him Harbarph, with a headline “Our Boy Jim Does It Again…” We noticed that the student newspaper used Harbaugh’s picture with the Winter Sports wrap-up playing hoops AND the Spring Sports preview, playing baseball.

The rumor was that by the end of his senior football season his own guys were sick of him and would let the opposition sack him just for spite.

Meanwhile, one of the dad’s of a Paly 1981 teammate recalls that coach Jack Harbaugh would admonish Jim from the stands for his preening and cockiness, over center. “Snap the fucking ball, Harbaugh” his own dad said.

It’s sort of funny that I would go on stage and blab about all this, thirty years later. Although I am in direct violation of the Herbie Herbert Rule which states that powerful artist managers lose bargaining power once their adversaries see them squeezed into too-tight pants on the stage of the Fillmore.

I am meaning to bring this act to open mics and stand-up events. Someday it could be up there with Joe Sib “California Calling” which itself has some football.

BTW, the Rockage event was great and deserves its own more proper post. I took three rolls of film as well. Kudos to Eric Fanali, Rockage founder.

This is well off topic but: I found this bio of Herbie Herbert who was Journey’s manager during their heyday and sings under the name Sy Klopps, who I caught in a band with some Grateful Dead members and entourage performing under the name Trichromes at the Fillmore. This link has a long explanation which I have not yet digested accept to say they are rocking all the way to the band, speaking of Rockage. But it also says that he retired from Journey in 1993 which may or may not explain why I was rebuffed when I called management office in 1995 or so to try to get Gregg Rolie to introduce the bands at the Cubberley Sessions. We had a press conference — that nobody showed up to — in front of Gregg Rolie’s old house where musician Dan Olmstead recalls mowing lawns back in the day. Dan showed, good sport that he is. His band The New EZ Devils were on an upcoming bill that also included The Negro Problem (Stew later of “Passing Strange” fame) and Cake. The flyer was designed by Mac MacCaughan and Lane Wurster and was mistaken for white supremacist propaganda by more than one offended party. I am way off topic.

I did a bit of The Harbaugina Monologue today for Jim Blake, whose son Tom Blake is a former Gunn High and UCLA football player. He son that when Harbaugh was coach of USD he was scouting the Paly quarterback and ended up with film of Blake chasing all over the field like a cross between Charles Haley and Brian Bosworth and ended up trying to land Blake. Kind of a fitting digression.

Jim Blake also once contributed a paining (of me) to my one-day art show when I ran for City Council, at least read if not wrote a response to a Stegner story for my tribute project. Not yet at least. He was once a pen pal of Norman Mailer knowledge of which I am working into my Harbaugh project in that a possible outcome of my work here is me learning to duck or roll a bunch, which Blake tried to demonstrate — I am probably learning just enough self defense to both lose my teeth and break my neck. (In which case I guess I will have to start a Christopher Reeves tribute).

edit to add: I am thinking of doing this, “The Harbaugina Monologue” at an open mic fundraiser for Menlo Park Project Read on Saturday, March 1 1 to 4 p.m. I think they gave us each about two minutes. I might not do the bit per se just talk about why or why not the bit is appropriate or not. I might not use the suffix “-gina” in this all ages context. Reminds me of the time Janet Duca Norton or whoever she is in the Merc and Daily wrote about Eve Ensler visiting Castilleja but couldn’t bring herself to mention “The Vagina Monologues”. Which I wrote about above in my post that became about Jen Dziura, “V. Monocles: Or how do our Burgers rank?”

I am also fit to be tied about the fact that Sports Gallery in Palo Alto is selling Jeremy Lin photos for $100 each. Good god, maybe I can frame up some of the photos I’ve clipped from the newspapers and sell them for $40 each on sidewalk and give proceeds to Rec Foundation.