And they all lived happily ever after.

CAL DEFEATS STANFORD IN 111TH BIG GAME, 37-16.

This pleases me. Flagons of the heartiest ales and joints of the finest meats for all!

I've lost my voice, and my faith in humanity

Here is the rollercoaster of emotions I have just experienced over the last few minutes, as filtered through Twitter:

--Here is why you're glad you're not my neighbor: the PROFANITY-LADEN SCREAMS OF FURY I just emitted watching Cal lose to Oregon St.

--Cal is down by a TD, backed up to their own goal line, less than a minute left. Cal's QB throws a pick, returned for a touchdown by Ore. St.

--BUT WAIT! Cal was called for a false start before the play began! They get the ball back and a fresh start. And what do they do?

--THEY IMMEDIATELY THROW ANOTHER PICK FOR A TOUCHDOWN. Game over, man, game over.

--Fuck my alma mater. I'm a USC fan now.

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Yes, this was a sports post. Deal with it.

Warning: Sports Content

Only about two of you will get this, but it helps me vent my frustrations over an ex-Cal player. (Though not over Cal itself, and their boneheaded loss this weekend. Stupid, stupid Cal!)


From ESPN's Page 2.

Note for most of my readers: DeSean Jackson is a football player who did a very stupid thing.

Baghdad by the Bay

Jeff of Stuff Running 'Round My Head is currently posting a series of photos from his recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area.

As I have often mentioned and demonstrated on this blog, such as in this series of posts (the last three of which were written in the style of a Zagat's Guide review of my last visit there, for reasons that seem less hilarious to me in retrospect), San Francisco is my favorite city in the world. I wish on that last trip I had had an adequate camera to capture the beauty and oddness of The City and its surroundings, but since I didn't, you'll have to check out Jeff's photos instead. And maybe you'll get an inkling of what makes S.F. so wonderful.

For example, here's a shot of the outside of Vesuvio, a weird and cool little bar in North Beach (the exterior of which was also featured as the beatnik-poetry club in So I Married an Axe Murderer, though the interior was a set). Here are a couple of posts on Chinatown. (Forget it, Jake... oh, wrong Chinatown.) Here's the Stockton Tunnel, at the top of which is the Tunnel Top bar, which I "reviewed" in this post, and which was great. Here's Union Square, the setting of the crucial conversation in Coppola's The Conversation. This is a beautiful shot of the Transamerica Pyramid, and these are a couple of other very nice middle-of-the-street pictures. And this one includes a shot of Top Dog in Berkeley, at which I purchased countless bratwursts and Polishes and so forth late, late at night during my college days, since this was the only place to get food after the bars closed. Yum!

Man, I'm missing that city again. Nice photos, Jeff! Keep 'em coming!

MUSIC: Are you what you are or what?

From the "How Quickly They Forget" department:

On the radio this morning, I heard a DJ introduce the song "What I Am"... by Eddie Brickell.

Eddie. He said it twice. Eddie Brickell. And he wasn't joking. He really had no idea who this person he was introducing was, or how to pronounce her name.

I remember seeing Edie (say it with me: Eee Dee) Brickell & New Bohemians play Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus in my Sophomore year. Blue Rodeo opened for them. It was an incredible show. It was 1989. Fifteen goddam years ago.

So now, instead of getting irritated by this doofus on the radio, I just feel old. Damn. Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.

TV: More Olympics 2004

-- It's funny how games I wouldn't normally watch on a dare become fascinating in the Olympics. I couldn't get enough of badminton! Did you know that the shuttlecock reaches speeds of up to 200 MPH? (Heh, I said "shuttlecock.") And ping pong -- excuse me, table tennis -- is also weirdly compelling. But I keep wondering: where do they put their beers while they're playing? Shouldn't their red plastic keg cups be on the corner of the table? That's how I always played.

-- My favorite part of the women's gymnastics is the goofy little dance moves they're required to make in between doing the really cool stuff. And by favorite, I mean, "easiest to mock." Like, Carly Patterson does an amazing triple back flip on the balance beam -- and then she has to do a little hokey-pokey step while moving her arms like she's backing up Madonna in the "Vogue" video. I guess the men have to do some of that, too, but for some reason it's really blatant and distracting in the women's routines.

-- My favorite gymnast? Svetlana Khorkina. And no, not because of not-safe-for-work pictures like these (well, not entirely because of that). I just love how unapologetically arrogant she is. All the other gymnasts, before every routine, salute the crowd with two hands high in the air, arched back, posing with big, toothy, forced smile. In contrast, Svetlana merely raises one hand, brief, humorless, indifferent to the crowd, regally gracing them with the merest suggestion of acknowledgment of their presence. That rocks. She's such a delightfully cranky presence among all the other relentlessly cheerful Stepford gymnasts. Plus, she's 25, which qualifies you for an AARP card in the gymnastics world.

-- American swimmers Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin both have disturbingly, almost predatorially large, prominent, unnaturally white teeth. Check out Amanda's smile in this shot:



That's some set of choppers. And damn, she's got more gum than Bazooka Joe.

Just an observation. I still think they're both lovely as the day is long. Check out Natalie in my alma mater's gear:



Go Cal! And Amanda in a picture from Men's Fitness magazine:



I have no idea what that has to do with men's fitness. And it's entirely possible photos like that in men's magazines cheapen and diminish the great accomplishments of the female athletes in the Athens games. And, as it turns out, I'm all right with that. Grrrrrrowwwl.

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That's all for now. I'll try to get to soccer and basketball before the Olympics are actually over.

TV: CatchphraseCenter

I caught last night's SportsCenter -- the 90-minute special edition called SportsCenter Old School. These special editions, which will be running all week in celebration of ESPN's 25th anniversary, feature alumni of the show returning to once again take the anchor's chair and call the highlights. Last night, it was Craig Kilborn coming back to take a seat next to Dan Patrick. And as I watched, I realized: not only do I not miss the smug and smarmy Craig Kilborn, I don't even miss SportsCenter.

The last time I watched the show with any regularity was about four or five years ago, when I worked in an office with a big football pool, and felt like I had to do my homework. Nowadays, I'll watch football when it's on (NFL only, no college -- unless Cal is playing, and come on, how often does that get televised?), and I'll occasionally sit still for a Dodgers game called by Vin Scully, or the women's nine-ball tournaments, which for some reason I love, or the odd tennis match or three, or golf if it's Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. But I certainly don't care about what's happening in all those other sports events I'm not watching, which makes SportsCenter kind of useless for me.

Especially since it's so goddam annoying. (Back me up here, King Kaufman.) The point of SportsCenter long ago ceased to be delivering sports highlights; the point is for the anchor to insert himself into the highlights with his "wry" "hip" "humor" and "clever" catchphrases. Old School illustrated this fact by showing highlight reels of Kilborn's catchphrases, having Patrick quiz Kilborn on his catchphrases, having Kilborn first coyly refuse to revive the catchphrases as he read the baseball highlights, which became redundant and annoying enough to be a catchphrase unto itself ("No catchphrases, that's simply a home run"), and finally having Kilborn use every one of his not-so-fondly-remembered catchphrases after all ("Jumanji!" "Krakatoa!"), even adding a few new ones ("You stay classy, San Diego," straight out of Anchorman).

All the current SportsCenter anchors are guilty of this catchphrase style of announcing to some degree or another, but it's Stuart "Booyah!" Scott who is currently the most egregious offender. He so desperately wants to be stolen away from ESPN by a major network, or to host his own talk show, that it almost hurts to watch him. But Chris Berman's nickname-game isn't far behind in terms of obnoxiousness.

The only two SportsCenter catchphrases I've ever enjoyed aren't even SportsCenter catchphrases. The first is "Sweet sassy molassey!" from the classic Saturday Night Live send-up of SportsCenter, as spoken by Ray Romano (which, of course, the ESPN people immediately appropriated for themselves). The second is of nebulous origin: I seem to recall that it was from a Rich Eisen-hosted ESPN game show, a very short-lived one (not 2-Minute Drill), and I believe Peter Gammons was actually the contestant (maybe this was some 20th anniversary special show that I'm not recalling correctly). Anyway, the question was, "Which of the following is not a catchphrase used to describe a home run on SportsCenter?" I forget the other three choices, but the correct answer, the one not used, was "a four-base hit," which was by far my favorite. Wouldn't you like to hear the sentence, "And Barry Bonds gets a four-base hit!" "That is an upper deck four-base hit for Sosa!"

I was kind of looking forward to watching all of the Old School specials this week, catching everyone's return appearances (except for Keith Olbermann, who is still hated at ESPN, and wasn't invited back). Now, I'm thinking I'll just watch whatever the heck I want to watch on TV tonight, but describe whomever I'm watching as being "en fuego," or shout out some random word, Tourette's-like, every few seconds: "Yahtzee!" "Roanoke!" "San Buenaventura!" That should be about the same.