Looking for the Light
And today, we sink into the true dead zone. The bottom of the bottom. The Super Bowl is over and all there is between today and opening day is hockey and the NBA. If you told me hockey was still on strike, I would believe you. I’m mildly following the NBA but honestly, without a fanduel.com team or two going it’s hard for me to give much of a crap about basketball and the way it’s played today at that level.
Yesterday we had our first day of rain in 2 months and I already miss the sun. Rain is lame. While I recognize the necessity of it, I still find it quite lame. I want to smell Spring and see the sun shine at a different angle. I truly loath the day after the Super Bowl.
A buddy of mine who I’ve been friends with for close to 20 years is a die hard Seahawk fan. He grew up there but lives down in the Bay Area. His allegiance to all Pacific Northwest teams is unquestioned as he routinely makes the trip up to Seattle for games. Yesterday, he finally got to the top of the mountain. In football, I got there when I was 10. It took him much longer. Congrats, Jeff.
The Broncos, and especially Peyton Manning, can kiss my ass. The ONE THING they did right yesterday was convert a two point conversion easily. I had them at 100-1 scoring 6 points total in yesterday’s game. One more reason for Manning to suck it.
February. Ugh. There’s nothing good about this month. Thank God it’s only 28 days long…….
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Great pic of your buddy Jeff. He’ll cherish that one for the rest of his life.
John, aren’t you from the Seattle region?
“Sources confirm S.Korean RHP Suk-Min Yoon did workout yesterday in Irvine for #Orioles and reportedly #SFGiants. He’s IFA, no posting fee”
Not exacty Tanaka. Here’s his profile from MLBTR:
http://tinyurl.com/moe9oc3
And a video:
Sure the Bum’s scouts are there to make a pitch,since the Kid has a blue glove on.
Ah, Feb ain’t so bad man. P and Cs report in a couple weeks and games will begin in Cactus league last week of the month. Meanwhile, lot of FAs still out there, including some SPs that could certainly help SF, imo.
B-ball is in last month of season before playoffs for HS and college. Lot of good college teams on left coast from Gonzaga to SD state, including Cal and Stanford–bracketology guy on cbs has both in NCAA. as of now (which would pain Dawkins haters I’m sure). Stanford women (after a no doubt W at Cal yesterday) on a long winning streak with POY candidate.
Sun is back out, kids get a Holiday for GW b-day plus *ski week* off, and hopefully we get the live reports from Chi in not too distant future–surprised to see how many teams (15 I think) now in AZ. Baseball is right around the corner.
Just booked my airfare and hotel today. On 3/9, my daughter and I see our Giants against the Los Bumbinos of Smell-A (in their yard – new facility that they share with the White Sux). 3/10 we see Da Cubs in Scottsdale. 3/11 we wrap it up against the Reds in Goodyear (a park the Reds share with the Injuns).
So looking forward to baseball. Broncos were pathetic…and while I severly detest (won’t use the H word) the SeaChicks, I will admit that Seattle has a damned good football team. They are young, and unless they run into cap issues, etc., they are probably going to be good for a while. (Cannot wait to see the Niners kick the living dog shit out of them next year!)
I am down with the rain…let it rain, let it rain…let your love rain down on me…
February, a month where some of us think of King cakes, go cups, cleavage and lugging around 50 pounds of fucking beads, doubloons and other useless throws.
But today is Super Bowel hangover day, so gather around children, your Uncle Bozo is going to waste your time with a story, probably one I’ve already told here before but fuck it. You see my fellow Flappers, your humble narrator worked a few years in retail on Fisherman’s Wharf back around the year nineteen hundred and seventy nine. During my short time in this business endeavor I had brief encounters with Carlos Santana, Angela Lansbury, Lou Ferrigno among others (I pissed off the Hulk and lived). But today’s story is about a man best known for a 56 game hitting streak and getting between the legs of Marilyn Monroe, yup Mr. Coffee, the great Joe DiMaggio.
The store where I worked had a retired gent do the cleaning six days a week but on Sunday this duty feel on my shoulders. I was into many things back in those days which led to only a few hours sleep before going to work on Sundays. Back then there wasn’t any meters or timed parking on the weekends at the end of Van Ness so at that hour I could find parking, and then meander through Aquatic Park on my way over to the Cannery. One of those mornings (and only once), I’m walking by the bocce ball court, head down, hands shoved in my pockets and I catch a side glimpse of Joe D. sitting on a bench there. This takes a moment to register in my brain and when it does I do the classic double take, I think I came close to pulling a muscle. I start to point at him while stammering “uhh, uhh, uhh”, I couldn’t get anything out, so I put my hands back in my pocket, put my head back down and walked off while DiMaggio starts cracking up. Seriously, the dude is just laughing at me.
I get to work, do the cleaning and after we open up, a lady I’m working with asked my how I was doing? I just shook my head and said well, I made Joe DiMaggio laugh today.
Cool anecdote, Bozo. Closest i came to fame like that was shaking hands with Brando at an AIM powwow.
Gotta hand it to the coasts, particularly certain locales on the left one, they are good places to encounter the rich and the famous. Not so up here in flyover country in my one stoplight county.
But stix, Minneapolis has Mayslack’s lounge with their insane original roast beef sandwich. If I lived around Minneapolis, the minute the snow melted I’d be in that bar chowing down on that bad boy.
Football pools really got fucked up for 2 people on the last play of the 3rd quarter when Denver finally put some points on the board .
1st who had 36-0
2nd who hoped for 36-7
3rd the ultimate winner when they got the 2 pt conversion for 36-8
Buddy of mine had the 6-0 for 4 bills and got fucked over, needless to say his Pissed off this morning!!
You forgot Golf at Pebble Beach. I agree I don’t follow golf either. Scenery is nice.
This one’s for Blade: http://tinyurl.com/chaq34l
Along with SanDawg and Twin, I was rooting for Seattle to win. I met 2 friends for coffee yesterday before the game and then we did a walk around an open space park before the game (the weather was gorgeous, albeit cold yesterday, i.e., one of those beautiful sun shine days that Colorado gets after a snow storm).
Anywho, we all were going to a Super Bowl party afterwards; and I knew it would be interesting, if only because I dislike all Denver teams, especially the Broncos, and my friend, Jerry, a Green Bay Packers fan, almost abhors them as much as I do. Jeremy is a Broncos fan, but not psychotic like many here (stats for domestic violence after a Broncos loss is unbelievably high in this State . . . More on that in a second).
So fast forward to the party and the food was excellent, commercials great, but OH OH . . . No one was too happy about the Broncos play in the 1st quarter. I think it was half time when I sent a text to Flavor, saying, “I am at this party and it is like a morgue. I can’t even cheer, as it would be bad form. LOL.” He replied, “Ha, love it!” So, that’s how the party went – 99% of the attendees “shocked and awed” by what the Seahawks were doing to Manning & incorporated . . . With Jerry and I doing “knowing head” nods, coupled with shit eating grins. Umm . . . No cheering though.
I mentioned violence earlier and unfortunately, someone was critically wounded in a shooting outside a Super Bowl party. The paper said, “The victim, who has not been identified, was at the party with his family. Police said he walked outside and soon after was shot several times. Two gunshots were in his upper body.” Sad that this type of shit has to happen over a frickin’ football game.
I thought that was another photo of the Panda…
This is a hilarious video.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1945604-frank-caliendo-mocks-nfl-players-and-analysts-in-richard-sherman-30-for-30?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=san-francisco-49ers
February: fifty shades of ice-cold noir.
That photo posted by Mac-D shows the winning team gets their team’s colors of confetti falling. That means there were tons of orange confetti that didn’t fall. Poignantly unused confetti is a sad thing.
🙂
Cool story, Bozo. You got caught kind of in-between of whether to go for meeting the celebrity or not. It can be a tough call. I was in Seattle at a music festival when I saw Peter Buck of REM walking with a musician friend to the food court. There just was no way I was going to pass up a chance to meet him. I walked up to him and said hi and asked if I could shake his hand and told him how much I admired his work. He shook my hand and we chatted for a bit, and he was very friendly, and overall I left the encounter feeling good about it. I would have been devastated if it had not gone well.
But I could see hesitating with DiMaggio though, or athletes in general. The musicians seem to be more friendly in those types of encounters, IMO. But I’ve rarely met any famous celebrities anyway, so my sample size is pretty small.
I agree zumiee. Playing in bands has always made it easy for me to chat up musicians, I wouldn’t bug someone if they were about to go on, but otherwise I’ve never really had a problem. I had heard that DiMaggio could be a difficult person to approach, I know at Liverpool Lil’s and La Barcas, two places that he hung out, it was damn near impossible. But he wasn’t doing anything when I walked by, oh well, bad brain day. Also, I’m not an autograph collector, I’ve gotten a few but I really don’t go out of my way. I probably would have just asked him something lame like what he did to break in a new mitt.
Well said Zumie. I’ve told the story on here before of my friends and I approaching Bobby Bonds in the parking lot of the Big A before the ’89 All Star game. (That was the game where Bo Jackson led off the game taking Big Daddy Reuschel deep). Bobby was MY GUY as a kid and is still my fav Giant of all-time (Zum–I think he is also your fav). Anyhoo—when we called out his name while walking through the parking lot (he was by himself) he whirled around and looked at us like we were gonna hassle him about something or cause him some kind of problem. Luckily, my friend disarmed him by saying we were fans of his and just wanted to meet him. We ended up having a fairly nice chat with him, but it did get off to a rough start. Others have said Bobby was a pretty complicated guy and I could see that after that exchange.
Johnny Thunders, one time guitarist for the New York Dolls and spiritual co-traveler with Philip S. Hoffman, many years ago spent the night with his entourage at my apartment in Berkeley after a gig at the Keystone. I never exchanged a word with him — he arrived after I went to bed, and was still crashing in the living room when I had to go to work the next day. When I got home I found my copy of The Heartbreakers Live at Max’s out. He’d signed it.
I smoked a ginourmous blunt with Les Claypool once. Dude talks weird.
We were coming home from a camping trip once and stopped at a little store near Valley Ford (near Bodega Bay). I’m in walking around the store and look up to see Joe Montana (this back when he still owned his ranch near Calistoga). Dude was with his kids…no way in hell I was going to bug him. But pretty damned cool just to be near the guy in that location.
If I ever see Kruk, I’m going to go up and say, “Hey Kuip, how’s it goin”? Or, vice versa…
Well, when I met both of them in the air-conditioned hallway of the press level at cauldronesque PNC Park in Pittsburgh just before the all-Star Game in 2012, I was so rattled that I’d get their names wrong I avoided names altogether.
Bozo, great Joe D. story.
do you guys remember where you were when you, as a fan, won your first world championship? I’ve checked in on the blog at least 7 or 8 times today and I keep getting drawn back to the pic of Jeff. And not just because of his strangely large head that he does have in real life but not the way the picture presents. He’s rollin’ with like 2 heads smushed into one in the pic. But also, he just looks like….it finally happened. Mountain climbed. It’s the best feeling we ever get to have as a fan. And I don’t think we ever actually stop to notice what’s happening RIGHT THEN. Too many endorphins racing through us. Too many memories flying by the endorphins. Too many high fives. Too many beers. The amount of time you spend as a fan of a shitty losing team is overwhelming. And then when you finally get there?
That pic of Jeff all the way across the country, alone, all geared up at the top of a foreign stadium as the clock wound down says it all. Jeff is a lawyer for Microsoft. He never fucking smiles. lol.
I’m pretty sure I watched the Warriors in their championship series, although I don’t remember if I saw the Game 4 win to clinch it. Some of the games were on late-night tape delay, I think, as such was the practice in those pre-Magic/Bird years. The status of the NBA was just so different in those days.
But definitely there was much much much joy when the Niners won it all in the ’81 season. I was in our living room, watching it with my dad, and it was AWESOME. I remember being enthralled by the game, but not so nervous for some reason. I was REALLY nervous watching the ’84 season Super Bowl, for some reason, even though the game wasn’t as close. I couldn’t sit down. I watched just about the entire game standing up. I wanted it so bad because the team was so great that season, 15-1, and had ended their ’83 season with such heartbreak against Washington, and the chance for a Niner dynasty was so real.
My first champeeeenship of any kind as a fan was the ’71 Giants winning the West. They won it in Diego, with Marichal up. Juan was on his last legs pretty much as a starter, with Speier as the new guy catalyst coming in, and Willie about a year from being traded to the Mets. That was great, I heard it on radio, with Lon announcing the action. That’s the first I remember. The first real championship was the Dubs in ’75 with Barry and Co. What a magical year and then uber-magical playoffs that was. Bill King describing the action was just fun, fun fun. Then the next was the Raiders pounding out their first Lombardi trophy in ’77 against the Vikings in the Rose Bowl. That was nice, I was a Raiders and Niner fan then. Bill King yet again making great calls. The Niners decade and a half of greatness was a few years off, then, and so too Darth Al’s traitorous move to LA…