At the Gunn High of Palo Alto, Calif. Class of 1982 30th reunion, John Chovanec, the former all-league football and baseball star, gave me further comedic or psychic grist for the mill for the performance piece cum social sculpture I call the “Harbaugina Monologues”.
It seems that in summer of 1981 Chovanec and Jim Harbaugh were teammates on the local American Legion baseball team. John says that one day in the dugout there was some not atypical banter going on and it came out that although Harbaugh led his Vikings team to the CCS playoffs in months prior, and beat John’s team, his mine and our Titans, Chovanec picked off two Harbaugh passes, or so he said, or thought was true and therefore offered, somesuch verbalizing or utterance, natural, unrehearsed, slightly cheeky, like perhaps the chewing tobacco they might have also been mulling over and issuing, as man-boys, free and easy, in the summertime, wearing baggy flannel, back in the day.
Well in actuality, as he tells me some 31 years later, maybe one of those errant passes was thrown not by Harbaugh (who of course went on to be all Big Ten for Michigan, AFC Player of the Year for the Colts, NFC Coach of the Year 2011 for the Niners, et cetera, and or as I argue: ad nauseum: to become Harbarph) but by Paul Kraft.
So although it is now baseball season, back to his story, and they’re now temporarily teammates, the distinction between “picked off twice” or once was enough to get both players off their duffs and at each others’ throats, nose-to-nose, mega-rotay visor-to-visor such that, according to “Chevy”, the other Post 375s soon had to intervene. Chev may have been baiting Jim, of course, like Lester Hayes, but doesn’t say that.
Further, he says – and if I am giving him too much benefit of the doubt here let me admit that his nickname “Chevy” is also the same brand name of the famous manufacturer who employed both my pappy and my grand-pappy –from 1919 to 1988 the Weiss’s were professionally a Chevy clan, and I currently drive a Chevy Cruze, and I sold Chevy’s in the summer of 1984, to among others the great college football coach and player Bill Campbell, who had moved to town from Rochester to work for Apple; Campbell bought a maroon Celebrity — the rift continued all summer and into the next fall’s football season when, as Chovanec and Harbaugh and the other opposing Gunn-Paly co-captains met at midfield for the pre-game coin flip, Harbaugh greeted Chovanec with an icy stare and stony countenance. You see the famous dust-ups with Pete Carroll of USC (“what’s your deal?”) and Jim Schwartz of the Detroit Lions had precedents.
Chovanec knows considerably more football than I do – me, the second receiver for the league co-champion 1978 Terman Tigers flag footballers, although I did play basketball against Jim Harbaugh in fall winter of 1980-81 – and corrected me or at least begged to differ on part of my Harbaugina Monologue backstory and analysis; he says Harbaugh was perhaps “lucky” as a player but “damn good” as a coach whereas I say that he perhaps got to Stanford the year after the Cardinal laxed the admissions standards and or took over the Niners just in time for Singletary’s motivational tactics to kick in. And I will be proven correct on this one of these years.
As I augment and embellish the work-in-progress open mic performances of “The Harbaugina Monologues” with other people’s takes on the Harbaugh story and my little ditty, I am open to someday turning, to sing his praise. For instance, recent former Palo Alto Mayor Peter Drekmeier says, contradictory to the initial reports and genesis of my tale, that Harbaugh was inclusive of all his teammates and not exclusive nor alienating, by the end of his lackluster 6-6 second season. “Jim acknowledged everyone’s contribution; even that of kicker Drew Van Horne,” the former Mayor (and tight end, Paly class of 1983) said.
But the gist of the story is: Harbaugh came to Palo Alto in 1980, was a three-sport star for two seasons for Paly BUT, and it’s a crucial “but”, the biggest “but” this side of Montana, a Fat Albert “but”, a caveat the size of the Grand Canyon, Harbaugh played and won in such a way that he alienated his opposition certainly, and maybe his own guys. At least that’s the story coming out of South Palo Alto, since 1981, where we are not only sticking with but adding to it. He’s Harbarph, of “The Harbaugina Monologue” (except when there are minors present, who have never heard of Eve Ensler, when it is “The Harbaugh-Haters Monologue” or “The Harbaugh Monologue”).
Eric Cohen, another Gunn classmate at the reunion, suggested that I might read “Blind Side” by Michael Lewis. He said I might also study Spalding Gray, and or write out and rehearse these riffs. Eric, a SAG-AFTA actor, MFA with Paul McCarthy at UCLA and former Gunn hurdler, said he would consider reading “The Harbaugina Monologue” and portray me and my angst someday somewhere on stage, which would add a whole ‘nother side to the production and project. (And it’s not too far off-topic to mention that before “The Harbaugina Monologue” I had a project or a notion that Steve and Eric Cohen, “The Flying Cohen Brothers” comic strip heroes, should wrestle Eugene Robinson, of “Fight…”, like Andy Kaufman versus Antonio Inoki; not to digress but I also once tried to get Eugene Robinson to wrestle Keith Boykin, Eugene to play a black Pansy Jones — the Robert Ryan role — in “The Set Up” and, if this is not too plastic for “Plastic Alto” Austin Willacy to wrist-wrestle Gordy Quist from Band of Heathens; to come full circle, but not as far as Juan Marichal braining John Roseboro, I texted Eugene about could he train me to take a retaliatory punch some day from Jim Harbaugh?)
So far I’ve stood up four times at Philz open mic, and once at a karaoke truck at Eric Fanali’s Rockage event. I’ve described this project to potential confederates about 20 times and added their reactions to the mix. Actually point of fact, Quist, mentioned is a former Dartmouth starting linebacker turned songwriter and Texas rocker who, although probably never met Harbaugh but does certainly, as I try to do, bridge Monsters of Midway and Pirates of Penzance. And there’s of course the 1982 fake Campanile newspaper, the Palo Alto Crapanile which also explored the topic of Harbaugh.
For what it’s worth, if not too tangential, coaches I rank above “Our Boy Jim” include: Al Davis, Bill Walsh, Sam Wyche, George Seifert, John Ralston, John Madden, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, Buddy Teevens by a Granite State mile and former Titan all-league quarterback, my classmate Chris Strausser, the offensive line coach for Boise State, who is allegedly taking a close look at Bellarmine senior to be tailback Aaron Chapman (son of another of our classmates, Andre Chapman, who was at the reunion and looked like he could still run a 4.9 forty).
Chovanec is a director at Apple. And I wonder if he’s met Campbell.
If it’s not too extraneous here I am also now recalling that Jim Yardley, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter and one-time Titan footballer says that he sacked Harbaugh twice that game. I wonder if those too probably involved Kraft not Harbaugh, who some recall was yanked for changing the coaches’ play-call from “hand it to Ford” so that he could pass.
This entire process and script falls somewhere between John McPhee’s “A Sense of Where You Are” and scraping something suspect off the bottom of your Saucony.
HTFBH. Outro: Rancid “Keep ‘em Separated”
edit to add: Bill Campbell captained the last Columbia Lions championship team, the year before Jim, John or I were born, in 1961, and then coached there; I corresponded with him briefly when he was at Intuit and I was a pr guy in Silicon Valley, in the late 1980s; I approached him at the Old Pro about a year ago, about Ben Parks; Ben Parks who worked with Henry Ford, the NFL black pioneer; Henry Ford’s son Marc Ford is the guy Harbaugh was supposed to give the ball to, when he changed the plays; it all fits. All things are connected, as Jack Thompson, the Throwin’ Samoan would often say. Or was that John Zorn? (It was Chief Seattle).
edita 30 minutes later: Or as Greg Zlotnick said, in my 8th grade yearbook, about my penchant for reciting a certain comic’s routine in Drama Class: “George Carlin is funny; but you are not George Carlin”. And I truly regret that Ring Lardner is not here to do an Alibi Ike jobber on Our Boy Jim. “I had malaria that season so only hit .356”. I’m no Ring Lardner but at least can read him.
edita, three weeks after that: Drekmeier emailed me today with this link, to Harbaugh and his “tweets”. I wrote back to mention, sans link, about David Feldman and Harbaugh. Here is that link. I haven’t actually read the Chron piece, or calculated how it fits my project. An email conversation in today’s age is like dialogue from an Ionesco play: not sure which part of the conversation is actually being fully heard. I could easily add five minutes about Feldman to my 60 minute Harbaugh monologue but will save that for later. It occured to me that if someone like Feldman was slightly more neurotic, that his monologue about his ambivalence about his teammate would be much more compelling that mine, by a former rival. Splitting the difference, maybe someday Feldman would read The Harbaugina Monologue as a guest principal.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
Hey Mark – what the fuck is your problem? I see lots of shit-talking about Jim Harbaugh and Dave Feldman. And it looks like maybe you’ve got both too much time on your hands and too little audience on this website. No one gives one shit about your 30 year old whining.
Yeah? What the fuck is your problem, Zaharias?
A very atypical sports star in demeanor, Kent Lockhart befriended everyone from janitors to other playground legends… there was no Paye’s Place, but ask John Paye or Jim Harbaugh for that matter where Kent Lockhart would rank among competitors and sportsman they have encountered on any court or pitch.
I have a new initiative called working title “The Harbaugina Monologues” about Our Boy Jim. I wanted to call it “The Vagina Monologues” because Jim Harbaugh is such a pussy — a real squaw, which is like a square and a triangle at the same time, kind of like being in Hopi and Navajo territory simultaneously — but the name is taken. I want to tell my Harbaugh stories until the inevitable day – as Zizek says, quoting Stalin, “we just serve history” – that Harbarph, incised and sgraffitoed by these demeaning accounts, comes to the show and either a) punches this little Jew out – in which case I donate $10,000 to an anti-violence charity or something or b) kisses me on the lips in which case I donate $1 million to something PLUR (peace love understanding respect). I texted Eugene Robinson who is willing to train me to take that punch; I also had about 30 seconds on the cell with Joe Sib whose “California Calling” is an influence and has a riff about flag football. My parents were right, I know just enough about football to get my teeth knocked out. (NB: actually was 11 minutes with Joe Sib).
if Harbaugh punches me in the face I will shut up and donate $10,000 to charity, like a gym, for poor Utes or something, in Utah or Montana, for Cree sakes — or if he instead emulates his former mentor Rabbi Jesus Christ and turns my cheeks and plants one lip to lip, or like a quarterback with his hands on his center…but it’s only gay, as my trainer Eugene S. Robinson says, “it’s only gay if you make eye contact.” If Harbaugh, who I mock mercilessly, a real player-hater move, not at all “d and d” as they say on the waterfront, — Zizek says that to mock is one of the most aggressive things you can do — Schulberg on the other hand said, not to me personally in our too brief literally an elevator ride – that people who can write about injustice and music MUST speak out.
The second attempt at my Harbaugh Hater Monologue Friday at Philz Palo Alto open mic went well. I worked in new bits about Michael Akatiff, up next after me playing blues guitar and vocals, not remembering Jim – they were schoolmates in 1981. I also added details of Greg Zlotnick handing a fake Campanile to Jim on April 1, 1982 and then earlier Friday (May 12, 2012 – thirty years and five weeks later) telling me to “let it go…get over it…move on”.
this is a bit off topic, but as far as my Harbaugh monologue Peter Drekmeier yesterday, after his mouse-snake speech, told me that he was the year behind Jim at Paly, played football and actually thought Harbaugh was very inclusive of even the least-likely of his teammates, duly noted. (personal to NZ: you are right that DTST band rocks; that JH likes HATB may be a sign of CTE — someday there may be a riff about that in the Harbaugina Monologue per se!!)
I am going to do my 10 minute further installment of “Harbaugina Monologue” at Philz on Forest today, tea minus 3.5 hours and counting, and will do it as a laptop act in that I will read from my screen, or from Terry’s MacBook, my Bhi Bhiman riff which I call “Bho Bhoman a tribute to Bhi Bhiman meet the Harbaugina Monologue” the only footballish part is that Jim Yardly covers Sri Lanka and sacked Jim Harbaugh in 1980 AND Bhiman has a “hater” song about God, Satan and Kobie Bryant. As David Shields says, when I am writing about Phil Hellmuth or Lena Dunham — who I am resisting titling about under “Curb Your (Sounds Like a Mouthwash)” — that I am actually writing about myself. Or Yardley. Or Harbaugh. Or as Lennon said I am you and he are we and we are all in, as Phil Hellmuth might say, or I might say if I were him, eating oatmeal, in a cafe.
David Shields (“Reality Hunger”) says that even as we write about Bho Bhoman, Bhi Bhiman, Jim Harbaugh and Jim Yardley, we are really writing about ourselves.
edit to add, later that same library visit: I wanted to add the link to the actual Times story that re-routed my day — and I had 20 items on a to do list — before I re-routed again to discuss the V-word. But then I also clicked thru to youtube were 32,000 of us have heard the Tig Notaro actual riff on Taylor Dayne, which takes about 12 minutes in this format. Ok, I think this changes my life in general and in particular about my work in progress monologue on Jim Harbaugh, the football coach. Accepting the fact that is is real standup, joke, laughs, jokes, building, et cetera, and mine is a post-modern experimental piece where I perform it differently each time, improvising and ask the audience not to laugh for at least two hours after leaving. I will have to read a little deeper into the Times piece. Did I mention that the online version has a title referencing “repetition” whereas the print version I bought for two-and-a-half zuzim references duration over repetition? Or maybe I should re-mount the Harbaugh piece about how I keep bumping into him and offering the same mundane but sincere compliment? Like, “Excuse me, I just wanted to say I like your speaking voice — have you considered voiceover work? Aren’t you from Paly?”
In my to-do list I had promised myself that indeed, whether I stick with the improv thing or not, I will someday, maybe today or this week, write an actual 20,000 words or so on Harbaugh. Also, I envision the punch-line or the payoff as the audience all yelling out in unison – with a neon scoreboard cuing them — HIKE THE FUCKING BALL, HARBAUGH. That is, if I can say “gerund obscene” here, or at the Philz open mics.
It’s hard.
(if you type the word “harbaugh” into the “Plastic Alto” search function, you get about a dozen references to “The Harbaugina Monologue” project, including eight passages I’ve excerpted here, partially for the benefit of Nick Zaharias, a former teammate of Jim’s, at Paly, who I believe is actually pissed off at me and not merely imitating the famous Harbaugh-Schwartz exchange. If I ever do write out a full-on treatment of this, it would be interesting to see if Paly athletes of the early eighties totally love it or try to kick my ass. Actually I think that if NickZ34 came across this on an actual computer rather than his blackberry, he would have figured out it is a comedic monologue and not actually “whining”. Nick Z, who says I have too much time on my hands yet has tweeted 4,000 times….do the math)
When did your {“Plastic Alto” blog>Harbaugina Monologue} begin to express itself?
Thanks for your interest, Nick Zaharias, a former basketball teammate* of Jim Harbaugh, at Paly High, now living in Menlo Park, where he works in financial services, raises his family, and stays abreast of Paly High Sports:
The blog “Plastic Alto” started in fall, 2010, covers music, culture, some local politics and sports, and in terms of being a notebook for the offbeat Jim Harbaugh tribute, there are about 12 posts, mostly clustered between last winter and pre-season NFL 2012-13. The project was on a back-burner until you kicked the coals, so to speak.
I would say the project sort of started April Fools Day, 1982 when the staff of the Gunn High student newspaper, The Oracle, decided to put out a fake Paly paper, and ripping on Harbaugh (“Our Boy Jim”…”Jim Harbarph”) was a central feature.
The central point is that the speaker has a conflict between always disliking the former Paly 3-sport star and always loving the 49ers and to a secondary degree Stanford football. It’s a work in progress, but basically it is a meditation and exploration in the sociology of sports more than sports per se. It references — or at least tries to be aware of — everything from “Paper Lion” to “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. There are dozens of influences or titles that could be in a bibilography of the project, and sometimes they are directly quoted from or merely alluded to. The distinction between sociology and sports per se is like the difference between knowing Stan Musial’s best stats and knowing Curt Flood’s influence on the reserve clause, if you excuse the baseball digression. Or that is kinda weird that the Cardinals have too many statues in front of the new Busch Stadium.
There are a set of performances — all described as “works in progress” or “workshops” — that people have seen in venues — all improvised actually, and fairly diverse — and the chronicle of the project, mostly here in cyberspace, but it is actually, if you can follow this without resorting to ad hominem, a “social sculpture” which is a Josephy Beuys term. What I mean by that is that every conversation about it, by me, and even excluding me, to a lesser extent, is part of the project. As I describe the problem to people and they give me feedback or more material — insights, recollections, judgments, advice — that gets rolled up into and incorporated into the project.
I am a former Gunn basketball player, but also a former journalist and sports writer, ad agency and pr guy, and I produced a concert series, and have managed musical artists, and a visual artist, plus I am a activist some type of agent of change in local politics and culture: I ran for City Council here and got 4,000 votes in November, which is not a bad outcome.
There is a lot of Rupert Pupkin in the speaker in this piece; Pupkin is a character in a Scorcese movie, played by Dinero, who is delusional about his role in culture and media, at least at first.
It’s a hard line to walk, and may fall through (“fall off”?, the speaker may fall off the tight-trope, so to speak). But definitely I am aware that it doesn’t work — the live performance — if the audience perceives the story as chiefly “whining”. Harbaugh is or was an amazing athlete and coach, but has his foibles, which people are free to exploit. Likewise there is something admittedly odd about a 48 year-old man having such vivid impressions of 1982 and what-not. The joke is also on him — me.
I’ve described this and got feedback and material from at least three former JH football teammates, plus the Chovanec bit that came up at our reunion and is more backstory than part of the talk per se. You are the first basketball teammate to contact me via the blog or react to the blog. And you are by far the most hostile — if that is how you are trying to conduct yourself.
The piece ends with the speaker suggesting that if might be in Harbaugh’s best interest to quit football and maybe become a musician. Sometimes I say “reggae bass player” and other times “world music percussion guy”. But maybe just as well he could be a Ginger Baker type drummer or be in the Derek Trucks band — maybe a kit drummer, a more intense and athletic role in a music project — would be a better fit for him.
The project went on hiatus when Colin Kaepernick took a knee on the 2 rather than running up the score, versus the Jets – -I thought that signaled something about his coach mellowing out. Also, slowly, years and years later, and with them going to the Super Bowl, Harbaugh is growing on me. My hope is that he wins the game and, like John Madden in 1976, says “enough for me, I’m moving on” and it would be pretty funny, to me at least, if he pursued music.
God bless our boy Jim Harbarph of the “Harbaugina Monologue”.
Go, Niners!!
(Paly still totally sucks, however)
*Zaharias was an all-league and maybe all-CCS or all-Peninsula forward or center for the Paly Vikings hoopsters, and led them (with a little help from Harbaugh, and, if memory serves Dan Aspiras, Dickie Runkel, Mike Parr, David Feldman, Billy Pidto, Boston Heller, Bob Abbott) to a SCVAL League Championship and CCS semifinals, in 1982. He was a teammate of future-Paly coach Peter Diepenbrock at Menlo College, and played three seasons of D1 basketball at Gonzaga. Although only a reserve for Gunn, I must have at least shook hands with him post-game 8 or 9 times in 7th, 9th, 10th and 11th grades. A large group of Jordan-then-Paly guys would be at Dick DiBiaso’s Stanford Basketball camp each summer, and if Nick was part of that crew (as compared to going to a “Superstars Camp” in San Diego or elsewhere) maybe I knew him slightly there or was his teammate in that context. I don’t recall him being “aggro” or misanthropic so I am assuming the best and that either the medium itself — the internet — is obscuring his intent and making him sound hostile here, or that he doesn’t get that this is some sort of comedy or theatre or experiment and not an actual attack on his friend and teammate. Makes me want to swing by the Paly gym and see if they still have all those old photos of the various teams. I would guess the 1982 Vikes were arguably among the top 10 all time at that school.
Hey meathead, Mark has it right. Harbaugh is a useless ex Chicago Bear Useless Back who was a whiney, complaining little tampon wearing little bitch. Starting throwing a bit better once he left Chicago…but now thinks he’s a Head Coach.
Head “Jag Off” maybe
Most of my info comes from people who knew him from his prep days here in the 650, but thanks, Mike, for your Chicago style deep dish, if you excuse the pun.
“The Harbaugina Monologue” is on hiatus (but don’t hate us) for now, although I did get some spicy pepperoni second hand about a ping pong match that got out of hand, between Jim and a Gunn player.
I am meaning to catch up to Feldman to connect some of those dots. Feldman and I squared off in hoops and tennis; he was a very good athlete, and now a pretty fair journalist; a lot of this comes out of the pre-Harbaugh friendly rivalry between Gunn and Paly (or Terman and Jordan) players at Stanford baseketball camp…
based on your rantings about Harbaugh, Feldy will have nothing to say to you on the topic.
Harbaugh is far from useless. Objectively speaking, in a very short period of time, he has done an utterly tremendous job. And, as I might add, how he performed at University of San Diego and Stanford.
He and his brother John are both brilliant coaches. End of story.
As this post and topic have continued to breathe I did run into Todd Thiemann the former Paly football center who disavows the notion that there was a mutiny in fall, 1981 that presages the alleged mutiny of Jim Harbaugh by his charges in fall, 2014. Zaharias might have been Paly Athlete of the Year in 1982 if Our Boy Jim never materialized out of the woodpile for junior and senior years and teammate of Nick for probably six teams. It is hard to tell how much of his rhetoric is real or fronting — my first inclination, before he tried to slander me, would have been, had I recognized him, to buy him a beer. For the record, Kent Lockhart, Jerry Chang and I could whoop Zaharias, Harbaugh and Feldy any time, any place, bring it you little Brunhilde-wanna-be bitches. (Zaharias the philistine has to search-injun that classical reference…)
Mark – you are a dick.
may be true, and you are conceding the point that Lockhart, Chang and Hargadon could still beat you Jim and David?
(brunhilde is an opera singer and like the Paly Vikings, from oslo before SF)
Maybe Paly can find an even more inappropriate White Supremacist mascot…just to mess with the Tinsley and Ventura kids
Or why don’t you start your own blog and vent your own literary spleen, and or revise your own history? In Adventures of Zag-Man, you can bump me down from 6′ to 5′ 11″ 3/4 and or say that not only did I not score against Paly Frosh-Soph in 1979, but you swatted me 11 times down the court in a row…
@Mark Weiss –
I am writing this comment assuming that you commented today about the Gunn’s gratify (link – http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2014/05/30/teen-arrested-in-gunn-graffiti-case).
The thread was not active for few months, until today.
Please excuse me if it was not you.
if it were you- Thank you for following up!
i am assuming you noticed that the thread was locked completely after you posted.
Also- George Orwell’s comment from June 13th, responding to you (and complementing you) was remove today after you posted your comment.
I have posted Orwell’s removed comment on a page I dedicated to the ongoing censoring here –
http://villagefoolopenboard.wordpress.com/editing-before-and-after/
Thanks. Will look into it.
My complaint was three-fold, critical of:
1) The Press
2) the school
3) Police spokesman
But there is very little overlap between the PAPD case (which is actually from fall, 2013) and the Gunn Graffiti case (May, 2014). At this point, despite the tone of previous posts (to other media sites) I understand that the PAPd’s person’s actions were anomalous to his long service here and making the right choices, and further that despite the fact that these devices are in fact THE DEVIL, other public safety workers will refrain from such behavior, I have this on high authority.
And my assumption is that indeed the Gunn kid did not get railroaded up to County; maybe I was over-reacting, having heard some gruesome testimony about the fate of minors tried as adults in Alabama, via Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative; and on top of all that, I actually spoke for about 3 minutes in front of about 100 Stanford kids, mostly from the BSU, at King Plaza (250 Hamilton) saying that Chief Dennis Burns was already receptive to the concerns posed in Ferguson and echoed here by the Stanford students.
I posted the following on the thread dealing with Palo Alto forward
(http://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2014/12/12/changing-the-conversation-who-or-what-is-palo-alto-forward#comment_form)
.
My comment disappeared. It seems to me that we may be sharing the same views about the ongoing censoring and other practices.
My removed comment:
Posted by village fool
a resident of another community
0 minutes ago
village fool is a registered user.
@Mark Weiss–
Your removed comment along many other censored comments can be found on a page I dedicated in my blog to the ongoing censoring. I post comments Before & after being censored.
link – http://villagefoolopenboard.wordpress.com/editing-before-and-after/