All posts by Steve Stern

Watching the 49ers lose, thinking about crab for lunch

Family, Food and Drink

Cooked crab draining in colander -0755

 Fresh cooked crab (with a torn part of a paper bag in one of its claws, it had been trying to hold on when Michele put it in the boiling water).

As Michele and I were getting ready to watch the 49ers beat the Seahawks, Michele suggested she get some popcorn and hot dogs. She thought it would be a nice touch, typical football game food; I thought, What? Crab is much more typical playoff food after all it comes in season just in time for the playoffs, before I caught myself , realizing that hot dogs are – indeed – the quintessential game time food. At halftime, as we waited for the teams to come back so San Francisco could finish off Seattle, we ate our hot dogs. But, in the second half, as it became increasingly certain that Seattle would win, I started thinking about watching those Super Bowls with my mother and stepfather.

Growing up, college football was a much bigger deal than Professional Football, my stepfather – who my mother had married while I was stationed in Korea and did not feel like much of a father figure – however had season tickets to the 49ers at Kezar Stadium. Kezar was a much smaller stadium – only 18,000 people between the goal lines – than Cal’s Memorial Stadium or Stanford Stadium, and watching the 49ers play there, in the early 60’s, seemed more amateurish than watching the actual amateurs (and I think college players were amateurs in the 60s).

I was living in Oakland at the time and, a couple of years after the Raiders came to town, I got season tickets. Oakland was a great place to live that always seemed to be getting the wrong end of the stick compared to the much more glamorous San Francisco and that carried over into football. The 49ers were in the NFL and the Raiders were in the new AFL which was considered inferior. My stepfather, Sherry, was very gracious about the NFL’s superiority however, and several times we took each other to our team’s games.

After the first Super Bowl, Sherry and I talked after the game. We both agreed that Green Bay was almost unbeatable, after they beat Kansas City Chiefs 35 to 10 (most people considered the real Super Bowl to be the NFL Championship game in which Green Bay had beat the Cowboys). During the second Super Bowl, while Green bay was crushing Oakland, Sherry called me several times to talk during the game. We agreed to watch Super Bowl III together at his home.

My mother was not especially interested in football, college, professional, or otherwise. As an aside, I played football in highschool and it occurs to me that my mother never came to a game. End aside. As uninterested as she might have been in the game however, my mother was interested in having a nice lunch for the occasion. In those days, going to a professional game was more formal and the men would wear sports coats and ties – maybe this is where the term sports coat came from, something to wear to watch a game, that would be more casual than a suit – and I am sure that I showed up for Super bowl III wearing a coat and tie.

Going to my mother’s was usually a formal occasion and this luncheon was no different even though the occasion was a football game. The women were probably wearing dresses, the TV was probably black and white, and most people expected the NFL to – again – beat the AFL team. In this case, the NFL team was the Baltimore Colts that had gone 13-1 during the regular season and the AFL team was the New York Jets. The Colts had crushed the Cleveland Browns 34–0, in the NFL Championship Game, and the Jets had to come from  behind to beat the Raider’s in their Championship game (they had previously lost to the Raider’s in the infamous Heidi game, named that because NBC had cut away from the game, with the Jets leading, to broadcast the film Heidi). 

At halftime, we broke for lunch, in the diningroom, with the Jets leading 7-zip and we were served fresh crab with a salad. Today, it seems so incongruous, even slightly archaic, but it started a Parsons/Stern family tradition of getting together for the Super Bowl with fresh crab.

Unlike the 49ers, the New York Jets increased their lead in the second half and beat the 19-point-favorite Baltimore Coats 16-7.

Drought

Photography, Politics

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Cathedral in the Desert 2005, exposed by low water level in Lake Powell (really a reservoir). © srstern

On January 17th, Governor Jerry Brown finally declared a drought emergency in the state. He also asked all citizens to cut back at least 20% of their water use. In typical  Jerry Brown fashion, he had lots of charts and photographs showing us how bad it is and it is very serious. Last year was the driest year that California has had since we started keeping records in 1895. The Department of Water Resources said that Gasquet Ranger Station in Del Norte County has only 43% of normal and Sacramento is even worse with 5.74 inches of rain instead of the typical 18 inches.

This is probably not news to anybody who lives here and has gone outside this year. I have never seen it this dry and I have lived here since 1940 and paid attention since about 1956, when I started backpacking. The scary thing is that we don’t really have enough water for our lifestyle even if there were no drought. The good news is that the drought, which is aggravating the problem, may actually make us think about the underlying problem.

Felt Lake, irrigation water for the Stanford University Campus

 Felt Lake, irrigation water for the Stanford University Campus. © srstern 

That is not something we – we meaning, probably, all Homo sapiens, maybe all mammals – are good at doing; looking at subtle, underlying, problems and correcting them before they become big emergencies. Jerry Brown was the first politician that I remember who talked about national limits, saying The country is rich, but not so rich as we have been led to believe. The choice to do one thing may preclude another. In short, we are entering an era of limits. He got laughed off the stage as Governor Moonbeam. Jimmy Carter was the first president to really face an energy crisis, complete with gas lines. He asked everybody to turn their heat down to save energy, and he was belittled for it, losing to Reagan’s It’s morning again in America campaign.

As an aside, Carter had several firsts as a president; he was the first president born in a hospital, he was the first president to wear jeans in the White House, he was the only president – so far – to have lived in subsidized public housing, and he was the only President to have been interviewed by Playboy. End aside. My friend Ed Cooney is in love with Jimmy Carter, Ed is an amateur presidential historian and smart enough to know that, in many ways, Jimmy Carter was not an especially effective president but enough in love to want to overlook these Presidential flaws. However, I think that he is actually in love with Carter because of Carter’s political flaws.

What hurt Carter as a president, is partially what made him admirable. Carter graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Annapolis and later did graduate work in atomic reactor technology and nuclear physics; he was a rational man more than a political man. He knew we weren’t going to solve our energy and resource problems by ignoring them, and we haven’t.

I am not sure if I have become more or less cynical over the years. I used to think that we would know when we really have a water problem when they stop watering the golf courses, now I am not so sure. Now I think that water flows towards money more than downhill and we can be in a very serious drought with very green golf courses.

Silverado Golf Course, evening mist. © srsternSilverado Golf Course, evening mist. © srstern

Justified

Television

justified_rayboydWe watched the second episode of Season 5 of Justified last night. It is, by far, my favorite drama on TV. I’m not sure drama is the right word but comedy doesn’t fit either. The program is partially written by and based on a book – and, more importantly, characters – by Elmore Leonard who wrote movie sources like Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, and 3:10 to Yuma.

Leonard had a stroke in July of last year and died a month later so I am not sure how that will reflect on the coming season of Justified, hopefully everybody will energize their inner Elmore and it will continue to be good. Graham Yost – Speed with Sandra Bullock in her first major role, Broken Arrow, and Boontown, a short-lived L.A. cop program that Michele and I wished had lived longer – is now the writer and producer.

What I like about Justified are the great characters, the language, and the plot twists that we didn’t see coming but look obvious in retrospect. The hero is  Raylan Givens, a US Marshall that is not very good at relationships including that of his estranged wife who has left town with his daughter. The bad guy is Boyd Crowder who does have a good relationship with his wife and is easily the smartest, most morally ambiguous and, interestingly bad guy on TV. The third main character is Harlan County, Kentucky, a way-past-its-peak coal mining area that plays similar to Winter’s Bone with Jennifer Lawrence.

Check it out on FX.

Watching the Golden Globes, thinking about the ads

Film

Globes Winners 2014Watching the Golden Globes last night, with all the glittering stars, what I most remember is the Bing Ad. For some reason, I have decided that am a Google guy and Microsoft, in general, sort of bugs me. Maybe it is because, when they ruled the world, Microsoft quit innovating. Maybe it is because they were never an innovator to start with, just a company built around making money off of other people’s ideas.

There were so many good movies this year that I wasn’t particularly rooting for anybody. I had my favorites, but it is impossible to argue that the winner weren’t terrific. I haven’t seen The Wolf of Wall Street and have no idea if Leonardo DiCaprio should have won for best actor, but both 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle both winning for best picture, was great. Woody Allen got an award he deserved and didn’t ruin it by showing up, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were funny for the second year in a row. But all that is a blur the next morning and I still remember the Bing Ad and the Apple Ad. They are both well worth watching.

Team owners, bosses, setting the tone, and Chris Christie

Uncategorized

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During the last couple of days, I have found it hard not to keep bumping into Chris Christie. During that time, he has gone from ridiculing the very idea that shutting down the lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge was done on purpose, to admitting it – as the evidence grew – but denying he knew anything about the shutdown. It seems to me that the question of whether Christie knew or not isn’t relevant.

During the 1960’s and 70’s, I was a close-to-fanatic Oakland Raider fan. At the time, the Raider’s primary owner was Wayne Valley, the owner of the – then – very successful Besco home building company. Valley brought on Al Davis as Managing General Partner and Davis, as Managing Partner, turned the Raiders into one of the premier football teams of the era. At the same time, the 49ers were owned by the widows of the previous owners,  Josephine Morabito Fox and Jane Morabito. After a disastrous 2-14 season, the widows sold the team to  Edward DeBartolo Jr. who hired head coach Bill Walsh and the rest is history (at least in San Francisco).

When you read the history of the two teams during that era, the instrumental people most mentioned are Bill Walsh and Joe Montana, John Madden and Ken Stabler, along with various other players. Not much is said about the owners, but – I contend – the owners are the most important members of the team. The 49ers turned around because of Eddie DeBartolo. Under the Morabito widows, the 49ers had some great quarterbacks, like John Brodie and Y. A. Tittle, they had some great receivers and defensive backs, but they were never a great team.

When the Enron bubble burst, CEO Jeffrey Skilling and Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow got most of the credit but Ken Lay, the founder of Enron who claimed he knew nothing about the various frauds, was also charged and convicted as he should have been. As an aside, after he was convicted but before he was sentenced, Ken Lay died. He was vacationing in Snowmass, I guess when you steal as much as he did, you don’t go directly to jail. End aside. When Apple was run by John Sculley, it made some great computers but it didn’t become the Apple worth more than Microsoft, until Steve Jobs came back to turn the company around.

Steve Jobs didn’t do everything himself, but he set the tone. He created the culture, just like Ken Lay. Just like Al Davis and Eddie DeBartolo. And just like Chris Christie in New Jersey. Christie said that he fired his Deputy Chief of Staff, Bridget Kelly, because she lied to me. He didn’t fire her because of the traffic problems she caused or the because she acted in a petty and vindictive way; he fired her because she lied to him. Christie may be a governor that doesn’t like being lied to, but he has created a climate in which doing things that hurt the people of New Jersey is accepted, in which acting in a petty and vindictive way is accepted.