Stanford Jonah on the Ukelele

The most unusual rendition I've seen...








Go Bears!

When worlds converge...

There's another part of my life, besides rooting for Cal - and that is my faith. I'm a "cradle Catholic", having strengthened my belief during my school days at Newman Hall on College Ave.

Over the last few years, my belief has further deepened and I always look forward to the opportunity to enhance my faith journey, especially during the everyday events. One way to maintain my awareness is the reading of some bloggers.

Perhaps it was providential that this excerpt appeared from one of my favorite faith-sharing bloggers, describing her adventures with her mother-in-law:

She was telling someone on the phone that her son (my husband) has degrees from Yale, Columbia, and this other school that she's not so sure is a reputable institution because she'd never heard of it, Stanbrook or Stancliff or something like that [referring to Stanford].

This reminds me of the following page from an issue in the California Monthly in 1982. My belief just got stronger. Thanks for the laugh, Jennifer.

Wow! I'm Honored!

After the stinging defeat, I went into hibernation mode. The truth is, my job made my life anything not remotely linked to hibernation.

Nevertheless, I just logged into my visitor tracking, checking in on my lowly statistics. The Daily Kos, I am not.

Lo & behold, I get not one, but two visits with an IP that references a very famous stanford band alum, known for playing a trombone. Welcome!!!

For that honor, I will mention a blog where he submits haikus.

http://stanfordfootballhaiku.blogspot.com/

Farm fans in another language still equals "nerds"

So this blog post referenced below proves what I always knew...below is the original in Dutch, then the next paragraph is a rough translation using Google's translating service (the Rosetta Stone it's not, but it's better than nothing).

http://rubzzzz.blogspot.com/2007/12/halloween-aquarium-stanford-alcatraz.html

Die zaterdag was het de dag van 'the Big Game', oftewel the California Golden Bears van UC Berkeley speelden American Football tegen Stanford in Palo Alto. Daar heen gereden met Gabe en zijn ouders waren er ook met hun hond die natuurlijk ook een Golden Bears shirt aanhad! Voor het stadion met Bart-Jan (red: van de zeilschool) afgesproken en de wedstrijd gekeken. Helaas gingen de Golden Bears keihard onderuit met 13-20 :(, dus het was na afloop alleen feest voor de Stanford-nerds, die dan ook in grote getalen het veld bestormden...
(emphasis added)

That Saturday was the day of the Big Game, or the California Golden Bears of UC Berkeley played American Football against Stanford in Palo Alto. That drove around with Gabe and his parents were also there with their dog, which of course, a Golden Bears shirt aanhad! For the stadium with Bart-Jan (red: from the sailing school) agreed and the match looked. Unfortunately, the Golden Bears hard bottom with 13-20: (, so it was only after feast for the Stanford-nerds, who is also large numbers in the field bestormden

"Be At Cal" photo contest by the Axe Committee

The Farm's Axe Committee currently has a contest for the best picture that proudly screams for people to "Be At Cal". For more information, check out the "unofficial" farm blog.

Fake News Department: Stanfurd Stadium - "new design"

I have to rate this on par with all the other "fake news" organizations - The Onion, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Fox News. This one from HULIQ.com

The 115-year old Cal-Stanford Football game has been apart [sic] of sports for at least the last 100 years. Now that is all going to change. Due to a radical new stadium design for the Stanford Stadium fans will no longer be able to go and watch the game.

Architect Hewey Johnson from Hewey Architects & More has come up with a jaw dropping design for the new Standford [sic] Stadium. The renovation will not only cost $90 million to do, but will cut out the audience seating completely.

“My idea was to cut out all the noise and the crowds and make the field more handicap accessible.” Hewey said. “What happens at football games where you have thousands of people? They drink and and eat and leave garbage all over the place. Well people have to pick all the garbage up. I’m simply helping the littering problem. “

Assistant athletic director Marty Tinker had this to say. “I’m not sure why we picked this design. I think the committee was clearly drunk or asleep when this brain fart came up for discussion.”
...snip...
Cal fans are equally angry at this change. As many as 30,000 fans a year would go to this “Big Game” and now they will be shut out as well. Monday as many as 300 people took to the streets to march in protest of this stadium alteration but in the middle of the march it turned into a “I HATE BUSH” march.

Drawing above from huliq.com

Cal, the Farm, unite against the NFL

Yes, the 110th Big Game is still about 8 months away. But this article in the SF Chron today gives me more reason to dislike the NFL.

Each year it sends out cease-and-desist letters to businesses and
advertising firms demanding that such terms not be used for commercial purposes.

But now the NFL is pushing into Cal and Stanford territory.

The NFL wants to trademark the phrase "The Big Game."

...

But the Big Game also has a very specific application for Stanford University and UC Berkeley, whose annual football game dates back to 1892. It has been known as the Big Game since 1902, according to San Francisco author Ron Fimrite, who is writing a history of Cal football.

As Bob Murphy, a former Stanford baseball player who has been an analyst on Stanford radio broadcasts for many years, said, "This game started way before there was anything called the National Football League. Besides, it's such a common expression, I don't know how you would trademark it. It's like copyrighting 'hello' and 'goodbye.' It's kind of silly.''

Former Cal football coach Joe Kapp fumed when he heard about the NFL plan. "Traditions and the names of traditions are meaningful in college football,'' he said. "What's next? The game between the two greatest universities in the world that play big-time football is the Big Game. It's a tradition. It's history. That's the true meaning of sport.''

...

Michael Drucker, vice president and associated general counsel for Collegiate Licensing, said Cal and Stanford "have developed a lot of equity in the game and ancillary products like apparel. In my opinion, the NFL could never assert against the universities that they can no longer use this phrase because of more than 100 years of use.''

He said the NFL's action might prompt Cal and Stanford to seek their own collective trademark of the Big Game, just as Alabama and Auburn collectively registered the name "Iron Bowl'' several years ago and as Texas and Oklahoma are in the process of doing with the "Red River Rivalry.''

I can't wait to see the words "Big Game" with a small "TM" next to the phrase.

UPDATE: this from King Kaufman at Salon:

Stanford and California, the two Bay Area universities whose annual rivalry football game has been known as "the Big Game" for more than 100 years, are among those who are considering a formal objection, though the NFL has said it has no interest in messing with college traditions, only in keeping advertisers from associating themselves with the Super Bowl without paying rights fees.

Full disclosure: This column graduated from Cal, twice. It has no particular interest in the university's trademark battles but just wants to mention at this point that Stanford is a nasty little place. [emphasis added]

UPDATE 2: The NFL punted. No trademark is being pursued.

Football Statue all Dressed Up

From the UC Berkeley News Center - the Football Statue was all dressed up today.


Photos at right by Steve McConnell



Douglas Tilden's Football Statue (officially called "Football Players") was the precursor to the Axe. San Francisco Mayor James Phelan promised to award the statue to the winner of two of the three Big Games of 1898, 1899 and 1900. Cal won the first two, thereby winning the statue.

Go Bears!

Annoying axe committee

The stanfoo axe committee is doing their part to annoy stanfurd students by blowing their train whistle every hour for 109 hours (for the 109th Big Game). One student blogger penned a haiku about it:

Big Game horn each hour
Mocks me through the silent night
I am still working

Tuesday Big Game Quotes

The San Jose Merc:

Monday, at the Big Game media luncheon in San Francisco, there was the same brave chatter about what a close rivalry this is.

``It's always been a hard-fought, close game,'' Jeff Tedford said, with a straight face.

Not exactly, Coach.

While it's true that only 23 points separate the schools after 108 meetings, Tedford is doing his best to change that. The margin was much closer a year ago -- only one point separated them after 107 games.

``If you look at the series the last four years, it's always very, very close,'' Tedford said.

Absolutely. That is if you're talking about at kickoff.

The Bootleg (via the Bear Insider)

This, fellow Cardinalmaniacs™, is exactly why I believe that we not only have a chance this Big Game Week to reverse the tide and shock the world, but that the chance is much greater than any of us might have even realized. Really. I'm serious.

C'mon, the numbers are on our side. It's too weird the way we've been sucker-punched, pimp-slapped, cheap-tricked and banana-peel skidded at the hands of these guys. Like they have the original deed to The Farm. The one with Leland's and Jane's fountain-pen signatures. Cal's been working us like rubes at the State Fair in Sacramento, skinning us at three-card Monty. Walking around with a “I'm-a-Dork” sign they taped on our backs and a “kick-me” yellow sticky on our rear-end. And don't even talk to me about the toilet paper dragging from our shoe. Yeah, they put THAT there, too.

[snip]

I remember last Big Game Weekend, only too well. And now, it's payback time! Call me nuts, call me deluded, call me anything. But you may be calling me “Nostradamus” because I will not budge from my prediction this week: We smoke the Aggies tomorrow night.

note: the farm plays UC Davis in basketball tonight.

SJ Merc Sightings

Geracie - in today's San Jose Merc

• There is talk this could be the worst Big Game ever, but that 1901 game couldn't have been much to watch: Cal 2, Stanford 0.


• Stanford football could take a lesson from Stanford rugby, which canceled its game against Cal in 2001.


• St. James is hoping the Stanford doctors will have a better winning percentage in their new hospital than the football team has had in its new place.


• When Cal (8-3) and Stanford (1-10) get together this time you can't throw out the records.

Denver sightings

I was in Denver last week for business meetings. Staying in Cherry Creek, my good buddy, Ken '82, informed me that I was across the street from Elway's, a John Elway restaurant.

Never having set foot in an establishment operated by a famous stanfurd / Bronco quarterback, I walked by the restaurant one morning. Besides the number "7" jerseys hanging near the bar, this is nothing like Kapp's Pizza Bar & Grill, a place I would definitely rather be.

The saving grace? There was a Peet's nearby, which gave me my daily Berkeley coffee fix.

Proofing Error

You can see a glaring error in this simple one-sentence opinion in today's furd Daily. The correction is "Be at Cal!"

Blondes in the Bleachers

Two Cal students write a weekly article in the Daily Cal titled Blondes in the Bleachers. As the title suggests, the two are blondes and describe themselves "with at the very least a minimal interest in sports". In their latest installment:

Our favorite holiday is fast-approaching, people. No, not Thanksgiving-Big Game Day.

So for this column, we decided to go out into the Berkeley community to see what some notable Berkeley denizens thought about the upcoming contest.

[snip]

Who's more of a Berkeley character than the Hat Lady? You know the one-she hawks her wares on Telegraph and Durant in front of Smart Alec's. She also claims to know 465 languages, many of which she invented herself.

BB: Hi, how's it going?

Hat Lady: I hate white people. I was working and pregnant when I went to Cal. I was on roller skates and my daughter was coming out of me right there in the back of my Portuguese class in Dwinelle. And then I nursed her all through my Italian class and my Russian class and my Chinese class.

BB: Tell us what you think about Stanford.

HL: Oh, Stanford. When I was applying to school, obviously I wanted to go to Oxford and Princeton and Yale, but after that my number one was UCLA and my number two was Stanford. I was going to say USC, but they're snobs. And Stanford, they're snobs too, but they have class. Tiger Woods went to Stanford.

BB: So you're rooting for Stanford in this week's Big Game?

HL: Is it here? (We shake our heads "no") Damn! Suicide would be better.

I'm glad things never change in Berkeley.

B*g G*me B*nf*re Fu*l

A true blue Cal grad, Peter Roizen, will be bringing some alternative bonfire fuel to the Axe Rally on the eve of the Big Game...the Official Scrabble Dictionary!?!

Roizen is the inventor of the WildWords Crossword Game. Unlike Scrabble(r), WildWords permits any word in English, no matter how long, to be played. The game relies on wild asterisk tiles and wild squares that can represent any series of one or more letters. Thus the play of "INF*TORY" could be the word "INFLAMMATORY" with the asterisk representing "LAMMA." Roizen claims the game promotes functional English and creative skills.

"I personally took Bonehead English twice as a freshman," says Roizen. "I can't say for sure that playing Scrabble(R) and relying on the Official Scrabble Dictionary in high school was the root cause, but it didn't help any. It's not easy writing a thoughtful essay relying on short, odd, foreign words like 'SOUK' and 'AALII'."

"WildWords must be played with a bona fide reference dictionary," states Roizen. "You will play and learn useful words." Roizen says he will be bringing his copy of the Official Scrabble Dictionary to the Cal Big Game rally. He invites other Golden Bears, and college students and alumni across the country to do the same at their rallies.

"Everyone from every school is invited to participate and join the cause," he says, "except Stanford."

Um...yeah. I can hear the chanting now..."Freshmen more dictionaries!" Does Rally Committee know about this? Hopefully the dictionary is red. Check out the full press release.