oops that is the old band, Souldiers. The new band or at least new name same personel is Cross Your Fingers, featuring my cousin Isaac Blumfield on guitar and vocals. This post, which is four months old, features one original and a cover by Sing It Loud, an Epitaph band from Minneapolis, “No One Can Touch Us.”
If it is not enough in one life for 32-year-old actor Daniel Breaker to shine on Broadway as both Youth in “Passing Strange” and Donkey in “Shrek” now he is starring in two commercials I saw back to back during “The Voice” (which, not to drift featured a dude Tony Vincent who was in a Queen vehicle in Vegas and “American Idiot” and I am pretty sure I met when he sang the national anthem at 49ers a few years ago). One Breaker commercial is for soup, the other for communications.
My captures:
Or am I bugging and thereby proving Stew’s lyric, from “Black Men Ski” that black men get mistaken for people they don’t resemble in the least?
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)
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.
| Jeremy Lin (unsigned) new! “Linsanity” 16×20, 11×14 & 8×10 (w/ Floating Plate) |
|
| If you haven’t heard of new NBA…really all of sports…sensation Jeremy Lin, you’ve been in an isolation booth. He is everywhere. Everyone knows the story by now. The Palo Alto High grad went undrafted out of Harvard. Was cut by the Warriors and Houston Rockets and sat on the end of the Knicks bench for most of 2012. Then the desparate Knicks gave him a shot and the rest is History. Amazing numbers, lots of wins, buzzer-beater winning shots, out-dueling Kobe. It is a real-life Cinderella (Linderella?) story that has captured the World’s attention. We offer this great unsigned action photo in three sizes. Quality Framed with SGA“LINSANITY” Floating Plate, this is a great piece of Sports Art from one of the greatest sports stories in a long, long time.
|
|
I was going to recommend “Jerry East” as a nickname for Jeremy Lin; it’s a play on “Jerry West” the Lakers star who is the model for the NBA logo. I found this song that makes the same association:
which reminds me that I texted Katie Ross who manages Bhi Bhiman and suggested that Bhi write a Jeremy Lin song or at least update this 2007 cult classic “God is a Warriors Fan, Satan Likes the Lakers”. Both Katie and Bhi I think went to Paly so quite holdin’ out on us, yo!
edit to add a minute later: un-bhi-knownst to me, Bhi’s new cd was revieved favorably in The New York Times Feb. 5 by Jon Caramanica and that fact was reported in Huffington Post.
(Written in 2012, updated January, 2014)
I caught a story about a Gunn wrestler tonight on a local highlight show then realized the student athlete is the daughter of my classmate Emmie Fa. The student is Cadence Lee who helped Gunn boys win their first league championship since 1976. She wrestles at 105 pounds. She has a winning record against boys of that size and won CCS two years running in the Girls competition. She also played JV soccer for Gunn this season, simultaneously, often competing back to back in the same day. And she is also a A-student, which doesn’t surprise me since her mother was an honor student at Gunn and did the 3-2 program pre-med at Brown University. I recall after meeting him at my high school reunion that Hon Lee, Emmie’s husband and Cadence’s dad, is also a physician.
I took the liberty of lifting this from the Gunn PTA online newsletter:
Cadence Lee has more decisions to make than most high school athletes, especially when it comes to practice. Does she wear the wrestling headgear today or is it time for the soccer cleats? Decisions. Decisions. That’s what happens when you play two sports in the same season. Lee, a sophomore at Gunn High, can be found in the wrestling room one day and the soccer field the next. She is an outstanding wrestler at 106 pounds (ranked 11 in CCS)and a solid soccer reserve for the Gunn girls’ team.
Being a two-sport athlete is one thing, but doing it in the same season is another. That makes Lee a rarity in the already busy life of a high school student.
Cory Hatton of Sacred Heart Prep is believed to be the last local high school athlete to play two sports in the same season. He was a placekicker on the Gators’ football team in 2005 in addition to playing soccer, which in those days was played in the fall before moving to the winter a few years later.
While soccer and football are similar, wrestling and soccer are not.
“It is rare, but Cadence is rare,” said Gunn wrestling coach Chris Horpel. “The only other time I heard of this (combination) was with Jason Welch, now wrestling for Northwestern. He was the goalkeeper on his championship soccer team (at Las Lomas High in Walnut Creek in 2008) and he also won three California state titles (in wrestling). He, too, was very impressive.”
Welch was the nation’s top high school wrestler in 2008. Lee, of course, is not in that category but she can hold her own on the wrestling mat.
At the Central Coast Section Girls’ Wrestling Championships last season, Lee won four matches by pin to win her 16-person division despite being unseeded. She advanced to the inaugural CIF State Championships for girls and finished seventh. During the regular season, she was 5-0 in dual matches (mostly against boys) while helping the Titans win the SCVAL El Camino
Division dual-meet title.
In a dual match against Palo Alto last week, Lee dominated her male opponent and won, 16-1. On Saturday, she finished second in the 106-pound division at the Bianchini Memorial Tournament in Cupertino. On Monday, she scored a goal in the Titans’ 3-1 nonleague soccer win over Menlo School.
“The girls’ soccer team needed a player and Cadence was game to try both,” Horpel said. “Wrestling remains her priority, but she is attempting to do both.”
Lee joined the Gunn soccer team shortly before winter break (in December).
“Coach Damian (Cohen) knew I played soccer since I tried out last year,” said Lee, a former competitive club soccer player. “And, since the team was lacking players, he offered me the opportunity to participate. I’m extremely glad to be playing both sports.”
Cadence sat down with her parents before finally deciding.
“My husband and I discussed the pros and cons with Cadence, but ultimately let her make the decision,” said her mother, Emmie. “I don’t think there was ever any doubt in her mind, but we wanted her to be aware that taking on two simultaneous varsity sports would not only be physically taxing, and carry with it an increased risk of injury, but would require her to be more
efficient with her time in terms of schoolwork and music — she plays the oboe in the Gunn wind ensemble.”
“The greatest challenge of participating in both wrestling and soccer is making sure I am able to prioritize and juggle all my other activities without becoming overloaded or stressed,” said Lee. “Both my coaches and I have agreed that whenever two event conflict, wrestling will always take the top priority.”
Cohen said he’s fine with that, especially in such an unusual situation.
“I don’t think there are that many highly skilled wrestlers that are also excellent soccer players,” Cohen said. “The trade-off is that she is first and foremost a wrestler. We are able to have her for a couple of practices and a handful of games, when such works with the wrestling schedule. In other words, she is a part-time soccer player and full-time wrestler.
“As a wrestler, she is scrappy. She hustles and will give everything she has. (In soccer) she has good vision, one-touch play, and isn’t afraid to hold the ball, either.”
When Lee is playing soccer, she fills in at either the midfield or forward spots. In wrestling, she’s the team’s No. 1 entrant at 106 pounds.
While wrestling takes place on Thursday (dual matches) and some Saturdays (tournaments) and soccer is Wednesday and Friday in most cases, the two sports do overlap.
“She cannot compete in all of our matches because she needs to meet weight heading into a wrestling meet,” Cohen said. “Thus, timing is a factor.”
Gunn hosted Palo Alto on Wednesday night in soccer, but Lee di not play because the Titans’ wrestling team hosted Cupertino on Thursday night. Friday is free for soccer (at Los Altos) because there is no wrestling tournament on Saturday.
“Yes, unfortunately I will have to miss all the soccer games that occur directly before a wrestling event,” Lee said. “The running and conditioning in a soccer game is good for keeping my weight down, but I believe that it definitely tires out my leg muscles more than is preferred.”
And, for anyone who has ever wrestled, leg strength is crucial.
Aside from one sport tiring for the other, Lee believes the two sports are very compatible for staying in shape.
“Soccer and wrestling are excellent cross-training for each other,” she said. “Soccer requires plenty of running and general fitness while wrestling requires adequate strength and coordination, and I think that each sport prepares me for the other.
“I think it would be wonderful if I could participate in both sports in my next couple of years, if things work out,” she said. “But, it all depends on if I am needed on the soccer team.”
The Gunn girls’ soccer team has 16 players listed on the current roster. Palo Alto and Menlo-Atherton, for example, each have 22. Even Castilleja, the smallest school in the area in terms of enrollment, has 18 players. Once the Titans have enough able bodies, Lee’s two-sport status could vanish.
Thus, Lee will continue to juggle her sports and schedules as long as possible — even though friends can’t believe what she’s doing.
Said Lee: “Lots of people are amazed and almost everyone asks ‘ How do you do it?’ But, I know that my family is proud of me for attempting to work things out and compete in both my favorite sports.”
Posted by Gunn Spotlight at 12:47 PM 0 comments
Congrats to Gunn Wrestling coach Chris Horpel and all the boys and girls on his squad.
I did find a 10-minute clip of Ms. Cadence grappling with a young lady from Texas but not sure how exactly to watch it. So as a visual I offer instead “When I Was A Boy” by Dar Williams (whose sister Julie lives here in town):
Maybe next time Dar Williams is playing in Palo Alto Cadence Lee can back her on oboe.
edit to add, Feb. 28, 2012: Cadence Lee placed 2nd at California Girls state meet, and her mom Emmie Fa commented below that she also played VARSITY girls soccer same season not jv as reported — duly noted and YEAY!!!
But I still want to interview someone from this crew or all of them to hear more about the other sister – -so Em or Hon if you read this give me a ring at 650.305.xxxx.
edit to add, two years later, January 2014, mainly because this keeps getting hits via the search engines, but with a tiny bit of additional reporting: here is a draft of a Mayoral Proclamation that then-Mayor Yiaway Yeh agreed to issue but somehow fell through the administrative and protocol cracks — I would say that I dropped the ball, not to mix metaphors, or let this slip out of my graps, or wriggle away, I lost focus and apologize: but best wishes and good luck to all the current and former Gunn grapplers, their parents’ and coaches; I got the idea from Keith Peters’ excellent coverage in the Weekly, and also interviewed Horpel in person to flesh this out a bit. Someone told me that Eugene Robinson, the writer and musician, has a child on the team now and wrestled for Horpel back at Stanford back in the day. I think Chris Horpel deserves accolades for about a decades’ work in building the program. Oh, yeah, one final note: I noticed in recent (2014) coverage that Matt Maltz’s son Andrew Maltz, a freshman, won a tourney title at 285 pounds. Mazel to all the Maltz’s as well. (I’ve known Matt since we were both under 150)
Bill Gould baseball nut, across from Nut House on Cali Ave today
I ran into William B. Gould IV, the famous labor law professor and baseball nut, at the dry cleaners today. I go to the Norge on California Avenue, in the building that used to hold the fabled Keystone Palo Alto and several other successively lesser nightclubs, and before that, some they say, it was a supermarket, before Mollie Stone moved in down at the end of the block.
I didn’t recognize Gould at first, although I went to his reading at Stanford Book Store a few months back. I bought and had him sign his recent book on the history of baseball as told in labor terms (Curt Flood and all that).
I noticed a set of credentials on his dashboard from civic events and baseball games gone by, then double-taked and back-tracked to greet him. His sons Bill the V and Tim were at Gunn when I was there, back in the early 1980s. I recall that his book, although mostly about Major Leagues had a photo of the professor’s grandson, William B. Gould VI or his brother or cousin, hitting a game-winning homer in a youth game in SoCal. (His Carlton Fisk moment, I guess, or the first such; I wish all the Gould’s Generation VI many happy returns and walk-off homers, but I digress).
Gould’s car is a red Chevy Camero Z-24 that has a personalized plate reading BOSOX98 which I will have to look into whether it references a year (1898? as in the first World Series or something, or 1998 as in I don’t recall, what, Wade Boggs top season? Or maybe it’s a jersey number? What did Yaz wear?).
Most people know him, if at all, as a Stanford professor who was on National Labor Relations Board and helped end a baseball labor dispute. I also recall running into him and mentioning Alan Davis and the No on D campaign and I think Gould did send a letter out expressing his concern over the measure (which won anyways, i.e. we of the working class lost, but I am here to talk baseball, not politics).
I recall that local writer Gennady Sheyner wrote a nice review of Dr. Gould’s book. It is called “Bargaining With Baseball”.
Gould said he is throwing out the first pitch tomorrow Friday, February 17, at Stanford Sunken Diamond, Cardinal versus Vanderbilt, at 5 o’clock. I bluffed my way through mentioning that I had noticed we have an impressive list of pre-season All America — I think Bill said that five of our nine starters rate that highly and that Stanford is #2 in the nation.
I have been watching a lot of basketball lately so missed the fact that spring is already here.
Shout out to my cousin Jenny Moats the former Vandy cheerleader recently married to Pat Falloon in St. Louis in a hotel decorated by Stan Musial, excuse the Cardinals not Cardinal nor BoSox backslide not headfirst like Rickey Henderson.
My tip to Gould was to err on the side of a wild pitch rather than a wicked curve in the dirt. He said that people are telling him to throw from the stretch rather than wind-up and get into a run down and cheat toward the plate and down from 60’6″.
Tip of the cap to the ol’ perfessor.
edit to add: let’s play three: Card-Vandy Friday, Sat and Sunday, check your local listings:
http://www.gostanford.com/sports/m-basebl/sched/stan-m-basebl-sched.html
more edit to add, two minutes: this is either a coinky or the salient point but extensive search-injuning (hello Jacoby Ellsbury!!) reveals that Bosox98 could mean that in the fabled 2004 Championship season the Red Sox won 98 regular season games and via the Wild Card advanced to the eventual victory. What year is the car?
and more: I had a photo in my phone recently but then deleted the license plate of not Bill but Dick Gould the Stanford tennis coach whose plates read:
1NCAA
Suzy Menkes, of IHT, on Charlie Rose, claims that young Asian women designers, from New York City and West Coast, are breaking out at Fashionweek this year.
Sounds good to me.
I have been wearing a lot of jeans and baseball caps, but I try to stay current.
http://www.houseoftoi.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=40
weird segue warning: curious about Asian Box coming to Town and Country by Frank Klein, who I knew slightly from Biscuits and Blues and Grace Nguyen of Slanted Door. Saw in PA Weekly but also met the architects Zack and DiVito of South Park
edit to add, two years later: I stumbled onto this as I was looking for more info about George Packer’s upcoming appearances in Bay Area, the teacher’s description of her unease with my presence in her class and the fact that I mention her six times in posts during that time plus this rant about the text itself; she may also be conflating some things I turned in in class with these posts. I also recall that one of the students I mention told me not to mention her again in my blog. This is pretty random, the way my ideas jump around, but I stand by it. Esteemed teacher:
My most pressing concern about blogs, however, has to do with the question of audience and voice. Benson and Reyman note that many students “reported that online writing is more like talking to a ‘best friend’ than talking to a public audience” (20). This point touches upon an experience I had a couple of years ago with a student who was an avid blogger. This startling experience effectually discouraged me from exploring blogs as a pedagogical tool until now. This student was a middle-aged man from Palo Alto, a political activist who maintained a blog to express his views of politics, literature, music, art, and other interests. He was taking my English 1B class because he was interested in the class theme of “Inequality and the American Dream,” but not because he needed credit for the class. As the class read Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle (http://www.amazon.com/The-Glass-Castle-A-Memoir/dp/074324754X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382390964&sr=8-1&keywords=the+glass+castle) –usually a popular book with students–, this student became enraged by what he saw as the immoral and fabricated story told by Walls, and he posted a rant on his blog about the memoir. The rant was not based on close textual analysis, but rather on the student’s speculations about Walls’ psychological condition, none of which could be corroborated by evidence in the text itself. Something about this text deeply irked the student, and he used his blog as a forum to air his many grievances.
While under other circumstances I would not be concerned with a students’ writing on his own blog, the fact that this post discussed me by name and revealed details of my course to the general public made me distinctly uncomfortable. I had a tense discussion with this student after reading the blog post (which he had voluntarily shared with me), and although he seemed to understand my concerns, he professed that he could write whatever he wanted on his own blog, and he would not delete this post. This experience exposed me to the murky and sometimes unclear boundaries between public and private writing, and between academic and personal viewpoints. It also showed me what might happen when a student discusses academic material in the informal space of the blogosphere, a space that this student used to express his views in an angry, unfiltered, and unrestrained way. So, as I keep this week’s readings about blogging in mind and prepare to assign a course blog in my own classes, I wonder how we as instructors should address those students who might use their writing on a class blog to create unruly, even angry posts based on speculation rather than textual analysis. How do we strike a balance between creativity and freedom on the one hand, and adherence to academic conventions and propriety on the other? How do we keep freedom of self-expression from devolving into uncritical ranting? I hope our discussion in class can shed light on these questions.
Former Paly stalwart Steven Brown, on February 12, 2012 in Palo Alto
I ran into Steven Brown who was Jeremy Lin’s teammate and main man at Paly. Steven said that they played on Mr. Jim Brown’s AAU team for years, then played separately at JLS vs. Jordan, then reunited at Paly.
My headline alludes to the idea that Jessica Yu, who made “Ping Pong Playa” and went to Gunn, could make a biopic about Jeremy Lin, maybe with Steve’s help. Maybe the biopic could be called “MSG Playa” which might look like a cooking show but is actually the answer to Spike Lee’s Jesus Shuttlesworth movie. MSG here being Madison Square Garden.
Again, if you light up Madison Square Garden for 38 points on a Friday night, on national tv, with or without Kobe, you have reached a pinnacle of sports and can live off that for a few decades if not forever.
He said “Superlintendo”.
I like “Linderella”.
I’m not sure I am feeling this “god’s fingerprints” rhetoric, however. I’d still like to see the document at 25 Churchill and how they got into Paly over Gunn.
Meanwhile I am off to Old Pro to join my old Gunn teammate Brian Evans and some others for more Lin.
edit to add, hours later: I checked out his 13 assist game at Old Pro, which was pretty packed. Matt Porteus and I disagreed on whether Jeremy elevated his game (my stance) or was overlooked by systematic group think (Dr. Porteus’ theory). When he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated on Feb. 20, maybe they will solve the mystery. For comparison, Kent Lockhart was pictured in a 1984 article in SI, regarding UTEP, but never on the cover.
Also, saw this link about Pinoy love Lin:
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/sports/02/15/12/pinoy-basketball-fans-fascinated-lins-story
| Douglas Tatelman on Zasu Pitts at the New Varsity,… | |
 | pbridge130 on Life as strange as fiction in… |
 | Rob Murphy on Anita Wheeler Raiderette Fan C… |
 | Timothy Girard on RedVette Band, 1981 |
 | petriverse on Don Cherry at Dartmouth |
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 