Let the Celebrations Begin, Trivia Fun is Back!!!

Claude Monet, noted for his impressions

I'm deeply honored to introduce another edition of Trivia Fun. I know exactly what you're thinking: it's about damn time! Yes, it's been nearly two years (October '23) since this beloved feature last appeared. As you may recall all trivia fun "facts" have been verified by the International Bureau of Trivia headquartered in Digby, Nova Scotia. Enjoy!

In Europe instead of going the extra mile, workers go the extra kilometer.

Reportedly Eva Braun was upset about having to commit suicide because, she claimed, her and Adolph were finally making real progress in couples therapy.

Famed French impressionist Claude Monet reportedly did a spot on Johny Wayne.

After the dissolution of the Ask Jeeves search engine, a despondent Jeeves committed suicide.

Not many people know that AA Milne had a smaller brother called AAA Milne

The Dewey Decimal System was named for William F. Decimal of Hershey, Pennsylvania. 

Sacagawea was chosen to help Lewis and Clark explore the Louisiana Territory because she was the only one in her tribe who’d downloaded google maps.

According to military historians, dozens of U.S. soldiers missed the D-Day invasion because they had forgotten their passports.

Most theologians say that in college Jesus was a religious studies major.

In five states it is illegal to talk to a pelican.

There is credible evidence that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini survived World War II and opened a small pizzeria in Yonkers.

In a potential cost-saving measure the Federal Bureau of Mathematics is thinking of eliminating the number 27.

Julius Caesar’s brother Rolf is believed to be the first person to say: “heads I win, tails you lose.”

Actors Jon Hamm and Kevin Bacon are believed to be kosher.

Oddly, famed physicist Albert Einstein found sudokus too difficult but loved to do the daily jumble.

Recently many giraffes have taken to wearing scarves.

Among cannibals expensive purchases can literally cost an arm and a leg.

Under federal law it is a felony to steal someone’s thunder unless you immediately return it.

Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was originally set in London, Paris and Schenectady and called A Tale of Three Cities.

While there has been a recent decline in psychic advisors there has been a concurrent rise in the number of psychotic advisors.  

Golden Bear Football and I, It's Just Not the Same, a Lament

Cal's 1920 team that bestrode college football like a Colossus

Every year on the first weekend of June I start the countdown to Cal’s first home game. For the next ninety or so days I’m aware of exactly how many days it is until my beloved Golden Bears take the field. I’ve been doing this for decades. But this year as we near the end of July not only have I not been counting down, I’ve no idea how many days till kick off. Instead of tingling with excitement for the forthcoming season I'm numb. Some things in your life transition from being hobbies, interests or passions into part of your identity. Golden Bear football has long been part of who I am, how I define myself and how I see the world. Yet as what has always been a magical time of the year approaches I'm indifferent. Clearly this calls for introspection: what’s going on with me and my love of Cal football?

I’ve been a fan of the University of California Golden Bears football team since I was eight-years-old. I fell madly and deeply in love with a team that was — to put it charitably — subpar. Mediocrity would have been an improvement. Clearly I was no glory hunter, no band wagons for me. I was thrilled by the mere sight of the blue and gold uniforms. The gorgeous setting of classic Memorial Stadium nestled in Strawberry Canyon with views of the Golden Gate were awesome to my young eyes. I delighted to the jaunty sounds of the marching band and their pep songs. The mascot Oski became my spirit guide. An afternoon at a Bear game, whether warm and sunny, or shrouded in fog, seemed the best possible way to spend a Saturday. And if the Bears won there was nothing better. On those rare occasions when they actually beat a superior opponent I was in heaven.

My love of Cal football did not diminish one iota in my teen years, if anything it intensified in my twenties and continued apace as I entered middle age and parenthood. Through thin and thinner I’ve stuck with my team. It’s part of my DNA.

I yearn for them to have a great season. I accept it when they don’t. There’s always next year and I’m always optimistic as the new season rolls around. Until now.

This season promises to bring more heartache. The Bears enter the 2025 campaign with a head coach who is in his ninth year at the helm. His overall record is a losing one, he’s never had a winning year in conference play and his last winning season was in 2019. Only at Cal would a coach with such an abysmal record be given the reigns for a ninth time. It’s not that just that there’s little promise for the year ahead its the accumulation of all the misery. It’s been sixteen seasons since the team won more than seven regular season games (there have been but four wining teams in that span, all going an uninspiring 7-5.) More than that it’s the many decades of poor or mediocre play. It’s our brand.

I love the Bears like a child. Unconditionally. But it gets taxing when all they consistently fail at the last hurdle, or more likely, one of the earlier hurdles.

In my lifetime there have even been a few brief periods when the Bears fielded good teams. The seventies saw some success including a co-conference champion, there were three very good teams in the early nineties and there was an eight year run of winning seasons at the beginning of this century (2002-2009). 

Yes, California has fielded some good teams, had some remarkable players who have gone on to storied professional careers and there have been memorable victories. Chief among those the incredible finish to the 1982 Big Game versus arch rival, Stanfurd which, of course, I witnessed and is a seminal moment in my life. 

Over the years I’ve become steeped in Cal football history reading and studying everything about it. For every season from the permanent switch to football in 1915 onwards I can tell you off the top of my head whether the Bears had a winning season, if they won the Big Game and who the head coach was. From 1960 on I can tell you who the starting quarterback was. 

 

California was a football powerhouse in the early 1920s. Those Wonder Teams had five consecutive unbeaten season. There was more glory to come highlighted by the Thunder Teams of the late 1930s which included a 1937 squad that went undefeated and earned a number two ranking (though they deserved to be national champs). From 1947 through 1952 the Golden Bears had another great run which featured three teams that went undefeated in the regular season before losing in the Rose Bowl (1948-1950). 

Since then it’s been bleak.

The Bears' last Rose Bowl victory in 1938

I can sum it up thusly: from 1915-1952 California had 26 winning seasons, eight losing seasons and three seasons in which they finished at .500. In the subsequent 72 years the Bears have had 24 winning seasons, 39 losing seasons and nine in which they were .500. You may have noticed that Cal had two more winning seasons in their first 38 years than they did in the following 72. That’s Cal football.

Still I show up. I cheer. I believe. This season will be different. Everything will come together. That 3-0 start against weaker opponents was not illusory, we’re on our way…..Then reality hits. A heartbreaking loss, an injury to a key player, victims of a stunning upset, another injury to a key player, a game effort in a tough loss to a good team, another couple of injuries to key players. The team is 3-3 and you hope the slide doesn’t continue. 

As a fan I am undaunted, resilient after decades of suffering. Nothing has deterred me from renewing my season tickets and showing up for every home game. (I’ve only missed one since 1989 and two since 1982). I’m not only always there I’m always enthusiastic. But that enthusiasm is waning. And while it may have a little to do with the Bears’ history of desultory performances one must also factor in the fact that college football is badly broken and may have to implode before things get better.

The game day experience has been ruined by endless and exhaustingly long commercial breaks. In my youth games weren’t televised and moved right along ending in under two and half hours. Later most games were on TV but games were not stopped for commercials every time someone stubbed a toe. Today games can near the four-hour mark. Adding to this many games are at night, stretching past 11:00. (Money, money, money, the true kings of college football.) Ads and promotions are prominent on the scoreboard and the announcements during breaks in the action. Our senses are bombarded by loud music irrelevant to the traditional game day experience. The band plays less. A hype man is hired (for college football? Are they nuts?). The band, the rally committee and even Oski are alienated. Oh yes, and the fans too.

Many of college football’s traditional rivalries are gone, vanished. Geographically sane conferences are no more. The Bears spent years in the Pacific 8 conference with eight teams located in states on the Pacific Coast. Later the conference expanded to ten teams as two schools from Arizona were added. Then twenty years later two more teams joined (Utah and Colorado) and a conference title game was added. The two expansions were not ideal but tolerable but now the conference has been torn asunder and last year Cal and Stanfurd were forced to join the Atlantic Coast Conference. That’s right, Memorial Stadium which literally boasts a view of the Pacific Ocean is in conference with teams from up and down the eastern seaboard (and one from Texas). Instead of a tidy eight, ten or twelve team conference the ACC, like the other major conferences, fields 17 teams for football. Insanity.

While the Bears still play Stanfurd, their other rivals USC and UCLA are off the schedule. 

As a consequence of all this madness this season the Bears’ six-team home schedule features zero teams that have been to Berkeley more than twice. It’s an abomination.

And who are these Bears that will be taking the field? It’s a given that at the end of every season you bid farewell to the team’s seniors, roughly a quarter of the squad. A few other players leave too for various reasons but many of the names you’ve become familiar with are back. You get to “know” players over the course of three or four years on the team. No more.

With the transfer portal players come and go at an astonishing rate. The hero of last year’s Big Game, quarterback Fernando Mendoza who famously said, “Go Bears forever!” transferred. Wide receiver Jonathan Brady who caught the winning touchdown pass in that contest is also gone. Cal’s one-two punch at running back, Jaydn Ott and Javian Thomas have departed. The other stellar offensive star, tight end Jack Endries, gone.

They’ve all been replaced but whether the new Bears are equal to the task or not is unknown. 

College football has further eviscerated its traditions by implementing a post-season season playoff to determine the national championship. Up until the late 1990s college football’s season-ending number one ranking was determined by two sets of voters: sportswriters and coaches. The problem was that with two polls you often had two champions. Sometimes there was a third team that many people thought deserved the mythical crown. A lot of fans demanded the champ be determined on the field. For others of us it was fun to enter the off season with the ongoing debate of who the best team had been. Arguments, discussions and speculation would often dominate the coming months. It was fun.

But enough was enough, it was finally determined that the top two teams should meet on the gridiron to determine a true champion. (Of course this extra contest would make a lot of money.) Fair enough, I thought, it was inevitable. So for about fifteen years years the two top ranked team would meet in a championship after all the other bowl games were played. Neat and tidy.

The culmination of Cals' greatest football moment

But a new clamor was soon heard. What about that number three team and for that matter number four? There’s often a strong argument to be made for one if not both of them to be included in the mix. (Plus think of the additional money to be made by TWO extra games, the national semi-finals.) So in 2015 the college football season culminated with two semi-finals along with the title tilt. It seemed excessive to me but in sports we’d seen sillier things. The flaw in the system was evidenced a few years ago when the season ended with two powerhouse unbeaten teams (Georgia and Michigan). One lost its semi-final and the other came within a missed field goal of losing. We very nearly had two teams that hadn’t even won their conference playing for the championship.

But last year college football added the number five team to the post season mix. And the number six. And seven. And eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve. The curious thing is that I have no recollection of anyone claiming that number seven ranked team deserved a title shot let alone the numbers eight, nine, ten, eleven or twelve. It is inevitable that the playoff will be expanded to sixteen teams because of course why exclude the thirteenth best team in the country from a shot at glory? Or the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth. The idea of finding out who is truly number one in college football is gone.  No, all those extra games, area all about that extra money.

College football = big bucks.

One of the consequences of the playoff system — and this started when there was just two teams involved — is the destruction of college football bowl games. More tradition by the wayside. The excitement of those New Year’s Day bowl games is gone with the wind — I mean, money.

It can be argued that bowl games had started becoming meaningless when teams that finished with as many losses as wins were deemed eligible to play. The last two years California has finished at 6-6 and still gone bowling (in both cases adding a seventh loss to the ledger). Today there are more bowls than ever and they have less meaning and less tradition. More and more players opt out of the bowl games and a lot have already left their teams to enter the transfer portal. Ho hum. But the games make money, so there’s that.

College football used to be my favorite sport. I loved the pomp and pageantry and the sense of connection one got to the past. Being in an old stadium, watching two teams meet on the field as they had been doing since the late 1800s, hearing the band play the same songs they had for decades, there was a warm, happy nostalgia to it all. A feeling that while the world was dangerous and unknowable some things stayed the same and could be experienced in new forms again and again. Because within all the tradition there was also the unpredictable. Maybe a100 yard interception return, or a goal line stand, perhaps an unlikely hero, a miracle comeback, a crushing tackle, or even a five lateral kick off return. While those elements remain on the field so much surrounding it has been sullied. Greed has won the day. 

I’m glad that players are being remunerated for their efforts. I’m happy that they have the freedom to move. I suppose it’s crazy of me to expect that college football could ever go back to the way it was. In a capitalist society the lure of still more money will continue to be the tail that wags the dog. TV is king and the rest of us are pawns.

On September 6 California opens its home slate by hosting Texas Southern. I’ll be there. I’ll be excited to see the Bears in action. I’ll be making noise. I’ll be cheering and cursing and joining in yells. I know this. What I don’t know is why — I just looked it up — 42 days out, I’m not excited about it.

Perhaps there’s a clue in what I just wrote.

This Might Be an "Interesting" Post and Might Reflect that the Author is "Smart"

I finished reading an article in the New York Times this morning  and found myself declaring it “interesting.”

What the hell does that mean? What is interesting? What exactly do we mean when we say that a fact or a person or a movie or book is interesting? If someone tells me that they saw a motion picture and found it interesting I’m going to assume they thought it was merely okay. Please also keep all interesting books the hell away from me. 

 

One thing we don’t mean is that this thing we’re describing was compelling then again we certainly don’t mean that was boring. Sometimes to say something was“interesting” is to be dismissive. But I suppose sometimes it is literally something that captured our interest if not our imagination. It can be damning with faint praise or noting that we were not put to sleep. 

 

Ya know what’s interesting? That Saturn has 274 moons. I find that interesting. I also don’t believe I’ll be going around telling colleagues, friends, relatives or acquaintances about the number of moons Saturn has. I think it far more than interesting that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day and that that day was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (I’ll do the math for you, July 4, 1826). 

Is is interesting or fascinating that Adolph Hitler liked Mickey Mouse cartoons? Depends, I guess on your…uh, interests?

 

Another word that doesn’t mean much is smart. He’s a smart guy. Big deal, so am I. Tell me something more…interesting, about him.

What do you mean if you say someone is smart? Smart how? Good at math? Knows current events? Has an advanced degree? Is good at their job? Most everyone save MAGA people are smart in one way or another. You meet a cardiologists you’re meeting a smart person. Right? Well, yeah, they can figure out what’s wrong with someone’s ticker and in most cases fix it. Gotta be smart to do that. But the last cardiologist I spoke to thought that as an ESL teacher I needed to be fluent in all the languages of the students I teach. Folks, that’s dumb. I knew a school administrator who when it came to understanding issues around education was  -- as they say – smart as a whip. But that same person had no clue what was going on in national politics. This was not someone who you felt comfortable having the vote. 

 

There are different kinds of intelligence – or ways to be smart. There are the general categories of book smart and street smart for example. There’s also emotional intelligence. Some people who are considered brilliant have no clue how to interact with their fellow human beings.

 

If you tell me that you’re child is smart I’m going to assume the kid gets good grades in school. Bravo. That’ll get the child to the next level of school and if they keep it up eventually on to college and maybe many degrees of various kinds. Way to go. But maybe they’ll be a drug addict, or sexual deviant, or sociopath. A lot of good smart does you if you’re in jail, or dead of an overdose or are divorced with no friends. 

 

It's great to be smart at something, but it’s better not to be really dumb at important things. I’ve gotten away with being dumb at mechanical things all my life. I can screw in a little bulb but that’s the extent of my abilities with tools and the like. However if I were dumb about crossing streets I’d not be here today. (Can you be a smart or dumb street crosser? Spose so.) I’m not smart at math but I can slap sentences together. I know my U.S. History but can’t tell you much about Romania. We’re all like that. 

I’ve made a lot of dumb mistakes in my life that would seem to reflect a stupid person. Then again things have turned out all right for me, ya know, as if I were smart.

 

When it comes down to it most people are smart and for that matter most people are interesting. So fucking what?

You'll Sort of Know What I Mean as I Discuss Excess Verbiage at This Point in Time

Twenty one times. That’s 21. One score and one. Ten twice and then one. Four fives plus one. Five fours and a singleton. More than double ten.

Yesterday I was at a 12 step meeting where a gentlemen shared, as one does in a meeting and he uttered the words, “ya know what I mean,” twenty-one times. This was not during the course of a one hour oration, he squeezed that dreaded phrase into what was less than five minutes.

Amazing.

There was a chap at a meeting I used to attend who once let forth with 32 “ya know”s but “you know what I mean” is twice as long as — more than twice as long as — a simple “ya know.”

The worst part was that he didn’t once stop to wait for someone to say, “yeah, I know exactly what you mean” or “no, we have no fucking clue what you’re talking about!” The nerve.

(You're probably wondering: what kind of idiot counts "ya knows" and "ya know what I means?" Fair point.)

I wouldn’t have minded so much but earlier in the minute someone babbled on for well over five minutes (I didn’t think to time him) in a veritable stream of consciousness covering all aspects of his life and sobriety. The real culprit in this situation was the secretary of the meeting who should have cut him short. Several people didn’t get to share because of Mr. Diarrhea of the Mouth.

It behooves me to hear add that the above events are unusual at meetings I attend. For the most part people are respectful and don’t babble on and on and on when sharing and while verbal tics such as sprinkling “ya know” or “sort of” are common enough, a full-fledged battery of “ya know what I mean” is an extreme rarity. 

I suppose complaining or making sport of people who are merely trying to maintain sobriety is gauche but at the same time we can keep off the sauce and maintain decorum at the same time

Here’s something else: I was changing (clothes) in the gym the other day when a behemoth strode between me and the lockers on his way to his locker. He prefaced this invasion of my personal space with the this: “I’m gonna sneak past you.”

Suffice it to say that his attempt at “sneaking” was an utter failure on several counts. First of all there was  his was odd decision to announce the “sneaking.” If you want to sneak anywhere successfully you should by all means keep your intentions to yourself. Secondly, as a man of well over six feet in height and probably nearing 240 pounds in weight, he had zero point zero chance of “sneaking past” anyone who was conscious. 

In other words, he failed to “sneak” past me. But to me the greater sin is the use of the “sneak past” you line. Why not instead employ proper manners and say: excuse me? I would have much preferred those two simple words to his attempt at being cute. It is akin to when someone announces that they’re going to “steal your salt” as opposed to asking if they can borrow it.

But I suppose even that is preferable to the silent ones who require you to stand up at a theater or sports venue as they shuffle by. There are an increasing number of people who fail to offer an “excuse me” “pardon me” or an “I’m sorry” and virtually no one can manage a “thanks” for your consideration. Here I am exception offering both an “excuse me” and a “thanks.”

Earlier I made brief reference to the overused “sort of.” Some people litter their talks with it. “We sort of met to talk about the issue and sort of decided that we’d sort of form a committee to sort of finalize some sort of proposals.” Enough to sort of drive one sort of crazy.

Lastly my favorite podcasters have taken to using “at this point in time.” I often respond to this by saying aloud: “you mean, ‘now’”? 

“At this point in time” has a cousin I very much hate: “at this moment in time.” It can also be translated to: now. 

I guess that at this point or moment in time sounds more erudite to some people. To other people such as me it sounds like excess verbiage. Which is what it is.