Imogen and the Pigeons in Second Life

February 15, 2013 Haruko Haruhara 5 Comments

Imogen 1_001 — The beginning of Imogen and the Pigeons

I initially began in Second Life to see if I might want to start a music club. I found out that would cost upwards of $400 a month for the “land” (bandwidth), and that would mean raising money and then that would mean looking for advertisers and then … it would become a JOB!

So, other than playing in some dance clubs, I haven’t gotten too involved with Second Life, but one thing I’ve found which is pretty neat. Second Life is pretty good at advertising unusual “sims” (usually an island). I’ve checked out a couple of these sims and found them kind of interesting, but none really affected me until I came across “Imogen and the Pigeons.” The sim was created by Bryn Oh, and she is the author of the poems, as well.

Imogen and the Pigeons is an amazing multi-discipline art/poetry exhibit in Second Life. It’s also a fun little maze and game to find all the poems in the sim. The poems and images are both very powerful and sad. I came to realise of what kind of art could be possible in an interactive platform like Second Life.

When I first showed up at Imogen and the Pigeons, I wasn’t sure how it worked or was supposed to work. You arrive on a beach with a lot of old junk lying around — old mattresses, washing machines, etc. I wandered around and found a statue that played a sad little tune if you clicked on it. No clues about what Imogen and the Pigeons were about.

Me wandering through Imogen and the Pigeons

After a while, I found a flying chair. I kind of flew around in circles for a bit, but still didn’t come any closer to discovering the secret of Imogen and the Pigeons.

A very helpful person then told me to fly the chair up higher, as high as I could. So I took their advice and did it, and sure enough that’s when I saw, curling around a couple of cooling towers, some stairway up into the sky.

I thanked the person for their help, but I wanted to do the sim without cheating. So, I headed up the stairs. This was HARD. I must have fallen and gone “Splat!” a half dozen times. I felt like Lara Croft. (In Second Life, you can fall from a 1,000 feet and go “splat!” but then your avatar simply dusts herself off and is fine. Still, it sucked to keep falling. Also, in Second Life, you can usually “fly,” but in the Imogen and the Pigeons sim, flying had been disabled. No cheating allowed.)

Imogen 5_001 — Me climbing up the stairway to the sky

I finally figured out the way up the stairs is by using the arrow keys on your keyboard, rather than the movements arrows within the Second Life screen. By using my keyboard arrows, I was finally to get up the monstrous stairs without falling. You finally come to a bright red platform high above the beach … hundreds of feet up.

You go through a portal at the red platform and enter a receptionist’s office. Here is your first poem, posted on a wall of the office:

The receptionist looked up

her eyes rezzed so blue,

do you have an appointment?

to which you replied yes I do

Simple enough poem. But, the poems quickly become darker and more sad. Sad, oftentimes broken characters inhabit each room. Always alone, always seemingly isolated from the rest of the world in their dark rooms.

In the next room, you find a man pinning insects to a board. A lot of Oh’s poems are about insects. On the wall is this poem:

Inside the room

lay a mind’s haute couture

with a butterfly board

and pins to cure

He was the type of man

who felt he saw much clearer

from the darkened side

of a one-way mirror

His patients were pieces

within a game

which when molded correctly

would bring him acclaim.

After this first room, you enter a creepy hallway with a series of doors . The next room was my favourite. A young boy is drawing a chalk drawing on the floor. As you step nearer, the chalk drawing suddenly comes to life. This poem:

Chalk fingers sat

for hours engrossed

his fingertips tracing

things he longed for most

he would stay with each

but for a day

then at night

wash them away

Imogen 34_001 — The Little Boy and his chalk drawing come to life

so they’d not fasten

to his heart

because so many things

do depart

and all his lies

were really dreams

come apart

at the seams

In the next room, a figure is huddled under her blankets. You never get to see her. There is nothing else in the room but a television playing static:

Under a blanket

with holes throughout

nobody sees in

but Juniper looks out

Imogen 16_002 — The girl under the blanket

come under with me

and together we’ll hide

hold me in the darkness

there’ll be no outside

where people are cruel

and winters are cold

where I don’t fit in

and everything’s sold

climb inside

we’re two hands in a glove

fingers entwined

because you are my love

See? These are not happy poems. The next room is a sad little girl again lying on a bed (there are beds in all the rooms). In the middle of the room is a boat sailing on the floor:

a paper boat

far out to sea

I would float

To breathe the wind

and feel the spray

while my body

slowly decayed

absorbing the chaos

body asunder

closing my eyes

to descend down under

Into the dark

and swaying peace

my tears diffused

upon release

The next room has another poem about insects:

Elliot was shy

and very soft spoken

he loved moths

because they fly like they’re broken.

He dreamed of amber

housing ants suspended

in sienna coffins

tarsus extended.

He would sit on a step

in the middle of the stair

where none would stop

a place neither here nor there.

The next room is another person lying on a bed. This time it’s Imogen, and she is hooked up to IVs. She is ill. Is she dying, I wondered? You can hear pigeons cooing outside a window. This begins a series of poems about Imogen and the maze gets a little tougher.

Imogen sat

quiet on her bed

the books on her mattress

one hundred times read.

Eyes to her friends

huddled out on the wire

cooing softly

it was her one desire

This is sick Imogen, dreaming of being a pigeon — This is sick Imogen, dreaming of joining the pigeons

to join with them

out past her bars

where no one could test her

with Monarchs in jars.

She rose from her bed

tube fallen aside

and determined to join

her pigeons outside.

But will they fly

off to the skies

unless I wear

a clever disguise?

I must approach

like a whisper in moonlight

so they’ll not startle

so they’ll not fright.

And we’ll make a family

warm shoulder to wing

they’ll coo softly

and I’ll learn to sing.

Here, the sim gets tricky. There’s a couple of little clues about needing to pick up a pigeon’s feather to continue on. I picked one up and discovered that while holding a feather, you can walk up the walls. I walked up the wall to a window high above the floor, then I had to walk sideways along a curled path (sort of like a roller coaster). The first time I tried this, I dropped the feather and then I plunged 1,000 feet and went “Splat!” on the beach down below and was forced to start over from the beginning back up the stairs to the sky (Grrrr…!). I figured out not to drop the feather until I was sure I no longer needed it.

Eventually, you enter a room full of mannequins and Imogen sitting in a corner sewing.

Imogen arrived

upon a scene

of mannequins

and sewing machine

the lights revealed

fabric pigeon grey

dusty and torn

its edges frayed

and from there she sewed

her pigeon dress

that enveloped her body

in a gentle caress.

Here, you enter a tough part of the maze. You have to walk along a ledge and you find Imogen down at the end of the ledge.

She stepped through a window

and onto the ledge

the wind in her hair

and pigeons on edge.

She found on the stones

a loose feather

then gathered up more

and sewed them together

to fashion some wings

for her disguise

to join her flock

within the skies.

After you find Imogen, you can drop down to a lower ledge. There is a rope to another ledge on the other side of an alley. I tiptoed across the rope (it looked hard, but you actually have an inch or so of leeway on each side of the rope.). And if you are successful, you are rewarded with a little Bryn Oh doll. I carried the doll with me through the rest of the sim.

The next room is a creepy hair salon with a curved roof.

Imogen mused

that she was more pigeon than swan

as she climbed down the walls

to the Beauty Salon

She entered a room

surrounded by chairs

lowered the curlers

and singed feather to hair

Her disguise now complete

she walked to the ceiling

and saw a vision emerge

in her dream revealing

a future suppressed

like fading notes to a song

that we desperately grasp

yet can not prolong.

You have to pick up another feather and walk up the curved wall to the ceiling, through a hole in a ceiling and into another room.

She climbed up the pole

that rose like a spire

and attempted to join

her pigeons on wire

but startled they flew

so Imogen leapt

spreading her wings

and silently wept

missing her dreams

by seconds and feet

she soared for a moment

then fell to the street

Through a blindingly white room you find another poem.

Static emerged

like cracks in a road

and her minds construct collapsed

which housed her binary code

that was preserved for the day

when it could be rewired

into our human cells

once we were expired

but her memories were a virus

that corrupted the core

of her archived life

preserved at the Rebirth Store

Sure enough, here the maze gets bloody impossible. I think you are supposed to hop down a series of ledges, but I was never able to do it and plunged, “Splat!” 1,000 feet back down to the beach (I felt like Imogen failing to join the pigeons). Here, on the beach where you started your journey through Imogen’s world, there is one final poem:

Zeroes and ones

created a two

in the form of a child

from memories accrued

through her books and dreams

realities and fever

reborn for Imogen

never again to leave her

and the computer slowed

as the sand did rise

but eternity waited

within her child’s eyes.

Just past this poem is an image of Imogen reaching up to a giant blue whale hovering in midair. That is the end of Imogen and the Pigeons.

Uncategorized

Health Care Reform penalizes smokers

February 7, 2013 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

A little-known provision in the Health Care Reform law passed in 2010 is that it can penalize smokers — by a LOT.

Beginning in January 2014, for a 60-year-old smoker, the surcharge could be up to $6,000 a year. That surcharge gets bigger and bigger for older smokers. Ouch. Boy, that’s incentive to quit, especially tacking on the other $2,000 a one-pack-a-day smoker spends just on the cigarettes. Especially considering that the majority of smokers now are low-income.

Now the plan does allow smokers to avoid the surcharge if they agree to join a smoking cessation program; however, that option is not necessarily guaranteed to people attempting to buy individual insurance, according to this article quoted here.

Is this fair? $6,000 is a lot of money. I’m sure it drives the smokers nuts that the law specifically says surcharges for people being overweight are not allowed. I can tell you many insurance companies already charge higher premiums to smokers (ours does, in fact), for a very simple reason. Smokers cost them more money. They get more diseases at a younger age than nonsmokers and cost more to insure and end up raising everyone’s rates as a result.

Here’s a quote from this article about it:

Here’s how the math would work:

Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama’s law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.

But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can’t be used to offset the penalty, the smoker’s total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That’s considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.

Like I said, it seems as if a balance could be found. Put more emphasis on smoking cessation programs, make sure they are available to everyone.

Smoking bans, Uncategorized

Meet Bill Hannegan, a blast from the past

February 7, 2013 Pepe Lepew 2 Comments

Was kind of perusing Tobacco.org the other day and saw an interesting story that there is still a lot of bickering going on about smoking bans in St. Louis. Man, it’s been at least two or three years this has been going on.

I don’t get too worked up over smoking bans anymore because I tend to see it as a dead debate. There’s very few places left where you can smoke in bars or restaurants — mostly the Deep South, and mostly in smaller towns and cities in the South.

Anyway, in St. Louis, the big debate is over whether they should allow exemptions to an existing smoking ban. Missouri is one of the places in the country still fighting smoking bans. The only reason this story even caught my eye is I remember from the old toxic Topix days a Libertarian guy from St. Louis who was vehemently against smoking bans — Bill Hannegan, and I figured, “Oh, I bet ol’ Bill is in the middle of this spat.”

And sure enough, not only is he in the middle of the spat, this newspaper even did a sidebar about Bill. Hah, an article about this guy I remember from Topix five or six years ago, with his photo. So, this is ol’ Bill Hannegan from the Topix days. You still see Bill Hannegan’s name pop up all over the Internet, commenting on stories about smoking bans.

This article calls Bill “perhaps the staunchest defender of smoking rights in the region.” I read that and thought, “Christ, he might be one of the staunchest defender of smoking rights in the whole country, from how often I’ve seen him involved in stories about smoking bans.” It’s nice to see who the person is behind all those hundreds of comments I’ve seen over the years from him.

Bill, as much as I almost never agreed with him, and frankly got offended when he claimed there is no proof secondhand smoke is harmful and he kept comparing smoking bans to Nazism (Sorry, Bill, you cannot with a straight face compare having to go outside to smoke to the murder of 20 million people in the name of ethnic cleansing), usually managed to keep it pretty civil on those boards despite being the target of a lot of personal attacks, unlike this scary-ass Tea Party nut named Conferederate76 or HarleyRider76 (don’t care if I never see that guy again online). You could say Bill is obsessed with smoking bans, but it’s probably kinder to say he is very driven and passionate about it. Like I said, I will probably never agree with him.

(Speaking of Topix, I recommend staying off it. The links are full of malware and the threads downright nasty. There was this epic thread about the smoking ban in Ohio that began way back in November 2006. It got downright vicious, just nasty, threats, etc. It looks like that thread finally petered out in July 2012 after 75,000 comments — most of which came from probably fewer than a couple of dozen commenters.)

Uncategorized

Jack Klugman — 1922-2012 — “the only stupid thing I did in my life was to start smoking”

January 25, 2013 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

I remember watching the Odd Couple when I was a kid. It was one of my favourite shows.

Jack Klugman had a long life, but he had myriad health problems the last 30 years, mostly caused by his heavy cigar and cigarette smoking. In fact, in both the Odd Couple and a number of other characters he played, he was usually seen chomping on a cigar. Later, he spoke out strongly against smoking being depicted on TV and in movies.

In the 1980s, he was forced to retire from acting because he got throat cancer from his smoking. He was first diagnosed with cancer of the larynx way back in 1974, and ended up suffering multiple bouts of cancer over the next 20 years.

According to his obituary:

“In 1974, Klugman was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Like Oscar, his most notable character, he always had a cigarette in his mouth. “I saw John Garfield smoke. He was my idol, so I smoked. I even smoked like him,” Klugman explained. With surgery and some treatment, he was able to continue acting, though he refused to give up smoking. In 1989, he underwent surgery again to remove the cancer, but this time his right vocal cord had to be removed, which left him without the ability to speak. Eventually, he regained it, though in a small, raspy voice.”

He gave an interview in the 1990s about smoking, saying:

“The only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking,” he said in 1996. He said seeing people smoking on television and films “disgusts me, it makes me so angry – kids are watching.”

Jack would be glad to know smoking is gone from TV, and nearly gone from movies now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/dec/25/jack-klugman-obituary

Uncategorized

Longtime HuffPost poster Bill Loney, victim of emphysema

January 24, 2013 Pepe Lepew 15 Comments

I never interacted that much with Bill because I took a hiatus from HuffPost about the same time he showed up, but I know Haruko got to know him better than I did.

I think something should be said about Bill.

I seem to remember Bill had a different avatar when he showed up. Some generic cartoon of a man. But, a long time ago, he went to an old photo of a grumpy-looking John Cleese from his “Ministry of Silly Walks” days. And he stuck with that avatar. It fit him perfectly.

We heard through the grapevine that Bill Loney apparently died a few weeks ago, apparently after a long battle with emphysema. He last posted on Huffington Post in August. He was one of the HuffPost regulars, on the site almost every day, battling trolls and sometimes battling people that mostly agreed with him. Some people loved him, others just hated him. I think some of the people who disliked him simply didn’t understand him. Yeah, he could be a grouch, but he was a lovable grouch who cared and didn’t suffer fools lightly. I can tell you Haruko adored him and got along with him great. Bill was always kind and respectful to Haruko on HP.

Bill had hinted that he had health problems; he had made comments to the effect that he was on some kind of disability, which is why he was able to spend hours on HP every day. Finally, several months ago, he told Haruko directly he was gravely ill with emphysema. On some thread about marijuana laws. That’s how we knew what was wrong with him. Haruko certainly felt it was a profound moment they shared online.

Bill could be ornery and combative, like I said, he would fight with anyone he thought was wrong. He had a very dry and sometimes bust-up hilarious sense of humour. It didn’t always show through, but when it did, he was funny. Bill was also very bright and articulate and did a masterful job of breaking down inferior arguments, especially if it was an ignorant troll. Sometimes, he got too angry and caught up in feuds (even with fellow liberals, he had some epic battles with a couple of other regular posters); but I did too which is why I stopped posting on HP.

Perhaps Bill’s health problems made him that much grouchier. I don’t know. Like I said, I think he simply felt very strongly about progressive issues and got sincerely angry to see falsehoods and dishonesty about liberals being posted online.

Bill was on HP for about four years. He had become an institution at HP (Holy crap, he made 74,000 comments in four years), very much like Hume Skeptic and other longtime posters that have moved on, either because of life circumstances or because of changes at the site. I don’t think it’s widely known that he had died because HP has changed a lot in recent months and isn’t nearly as cozy as it used to be. HP will be lesser without him.

Emphysema is a bitch.

Uncategorized

My 35-year romance with the San Francisco 49ers

January 24, 2013 Pepe Lepew 10 Comments

What do the 49ers mean to me?

I totally understand not giving a damn about sports, and I totally understand a sports team being a big part of one’s life. I know a guy who just goes crazy if his team gets in the baseball postseason; you literally cannot even speak to him about his team. He throws chairs when his team loses, he refuses to watch them in a bar because there might be people cheering for the other team.

I find that a little nuts. But, one team that has always meant a lot to me through good times and bad are the San Francisco 49ers.

I grew up in Fresno, about three hours from San Francisco. We got all the Niners games on TV as a kid, most people in Fresno were either 49ers or Raiders fans when I grew up there.

Maybe because they won their first Super Bowl the year my dad died. It was a few months after he died that they won. See, dad actually hated the 49ers. He was a big Rams fan. I asked him one time why he hated them so much and he said it was because San Francisco was full of queers and liberals (seriously, this is how his mind worked). I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe you would hate a sports team over politics (or the sexual orientation of some of its residents … never mind the fact that L.A. has its own rather large gay community..?)

Yeah, Jim Plunkett actually played for the 49ers. Look at the crowd!

I think that was when I began cheering for the 49ers, to spite dad. I always cheered for the teams that he cheered for until then. The first year I remember getting excited about the 49ers was 1976. They got off to a hot start — 6-1 — and looked a sure playoff team after three straight losing seasons. Their quarterback was Jim Plunkett (that’s right, Plunkett played a year or two for the Niners), but then the team finished 2-5, ended up 8-6, still a winning record, but out of the playoffs.

What followed was an atrocious stretch of football. The 49ers became the worst team in the NFL, going 4-28 at one stretch. They became a joke, a laughingstock.

My dad died in July 1981. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it, Mom slipped off into a dark hole of depression that she didn’t pull out of for years. I didn’t talk to my friends at school about it. I just sort of internalized it all.

The 49ers didn’t start out anything special that season; they got off to a 1-2 start, then won a couple games in a row to go to 3-2. I didn’t start taking the 49ers seriously again until their next game when they destroyed the Dallas Cowboys 45-14. The Cowboys were the most cocky, obnoxious team in the NFL; they were the most dominant team in the NFC and had been for 10 years, winning two Super Bowls and going to three others since 1971, and the 49ers had just annihilated them. It was probably the team’s biggest win in a decade.

I started to believe in them again, and started looking forward to the next week’s 49ers game. They rattled off a bunch of mostly close, exciting wins over the rest of the season and went into the playoffs at 13-3. It had been their best season since 1972, and of course, their new star, Joe Montana, was the toast of the entire NFL. He was doing things no quarterback had ever done in the NFL. The entire offence centered around him. The 49ers had virtually no running game.

The 49ers easily won their first playoff game against the Giants and then faced the hated, cocky Cowboys again. I remember Butch Johnson boldly predicting a Cowboys win before the game. Wait a minute, the 49ers killed them last time, where did he get off? I remember thinking.

It was a very tense, back and forth game. Montana actually didn’t play well; I think he threw three interceptions, but it came down to the final drive and of course, everyone knows “The Catch.” I was watching it at my brothers’ house. I couldn’t believe it when the 49ers blew the kickoff and kicked it out of bounds and gave the Cowboys the ball at the 40, with almost a minute left. Oh, here we go. The 49ers never win, they’ve never won anything, here comes the choke. But, the defence held and the Niners were off to the Super Bowl. I couldn’t believe it. The 49ers NEVER won. They never won anything, they had never won a single championship, nor even played in championship game in their entire existence.

The next week was almost an anti-climax. The 49ers steamrolled the Bengals 20-0 in the first half, but then let them back in the game in the second half. The Niners held on a goal-line stand nursing a 26-14 lead and that was it. The 49ers were world champions.

And for a while, I forgot about my dad’s death. It didn’t sting so much, at least that year. The 49ers helped me get through that year.

I’ve witnessed almost all the highlights and lowlights of the 49ers over the past 30 years. They are all seared into my memory, even after all these years. Ronnie Lott severing a finger on a tackle — yeah, I actually saw that. Steve Young getting knocked completely out on a tackle. The wars with the Giants and Cowboys. Jim Everett curling up in a little ball because he was afraid of getting sacked … only no 49er was within 5 yards of him. I saw it all.

* The 1983 season. The 49ers made it back to the NFC championship after a down year, got steamrolled early by the Redskins, but Montana brought them back to make it close at the end. The 49ers got robbed by the refs, who made a terrible call late in the fourth quarter, calling Ronnie Lott for holding when a Washington receiver ran right into him. That call cost the 49ers a trip to the Super Bowl.

* The 1984 season, in which they went 15-1, but were actually underdogs going into the Super Bowl against an unstoppable phenom Dan Marino, who had thrown for 5,000 yards and 48 TDs. Well, the Dolphins had no defence, and the 49ers did and Marino was helpless as San Francisco won easily. What I remember about that game is Montana actually had 60 yards rushing.

* The 1989 Super Bowl against Cincinnati. I was living way out in the boonies of far Northern California and had no TV. There was no cable where I lived. So, on a bitterly cold and snowy day, I drove out to a nearby golf course, which thankfully had the game on in their bar. I spent the day at the golf course bar with about four or five other people eating free mini-tacos watching as Montana again brought the Niners back and won with a TD pass to John Taylor with 30 seconds left. It was the first Super Bowl decided by a touchdown in the final two minutes.

1988 was a really weird year for the Niners. They were actually up and down all year, looked awful at times, went back and forth between Montana and Steve Young. One game they only scored 3 points. They won one game on a 50-yard run by Young in the final seconds and won another game on an 80-yard pass by Montana against the Giants in the final seconds. Roger Craig had an incredible 50-yard run that same season that helped win a game. Finally, they rattled off five straight wins near the end of the year to barely make the playoffs, then they completely dominated a 14-2 team in Chicago in the NFC title game.

* The 1990 Super Bowl against Denver. Probably the most dominant team ever, at least the most dominant 49ers team. I’ll never forget the NFC championship game, watching it over at my boss’s house. The Niners had beaten the Rams, who were actually pretty good at the time, once that year with a pair of 90-yard touchdown catches by John Taylor.

My boss was a big Rams fan and gave me all kinds of shit all year long about the Niners. That was the infamous “phantom sack” game with Rams quarterback Jim Everett. His entire career is defined by that one play. Everett had been sacked by the Niners four or five times already and late in the game, he went back to pass and simply curled up in a fetal position with no 49ers within five yards of him. Everett never got over that and in fact punched out Jim Rome for calling him “Chrissie Everett” on TV a couple of years later. The Super Bowl was actually pretty boring as San Francisco won 55-10.

What followed were a couple of frustrating seasons. The 49ers were the most dominant team in 1990 and seemed sure to go to another Super Bowl, but they actually got beat by Jeff Hostetler (Jeff Hostetler! WTF?) and the Giants. The 49ers dominated most of the game, but couldn’t score and had a lead of only 13-6 in the fourth quarter. Finally, Montana took one of the most vicious hits I’ve ever seen, getting hit from behind by Leonard Marshall and fumbling the ball. It was the last time Joe played for the 49ers. He left the game with a concussion and the 49ers lost when Roger Craig fumbled late in the game and the Giants recovered, drove down the field and won with a field goal.

After that came the big controversy over Montana vs. Young. Montana, who had reconstructive surgery on his elbow (I actually saw the game in which he hurt his elbow, it was in 1989 or 1990, it swelled up to the size of a grapefruit), was traded to Kansas City and Steve Young became the quarterback.

* In 1993, it appeared the Niners were headed to another Super Bowl, they had the best record in football, but got upset at home by the Cowboys. They just couldn’t stop them from scoring. The Cowboys finally had their revenge for 1981.

* 1994. The 49ers got their revenge back with a pair of incredible wins against the Cowboys, who had become the dominant team in the NFC again and again were really obnoxious and cocky. They got behind the Cowboys early in the regular season game, but by running Steve Young, they turned the tide. I remember what really turned it was an unsportsmanlike late hit penalty against the Cowboy for drilling Young in the head after he was down. The 49ers came back later and beat the Cowboys in the NFC championship, getting up 21-0 on a bunch of turnovers, then 31-14 when Young hit Jerry Rice on a huge touchdown pass at the end of the half. They held on at Dallas tried to rally, winning 38-28, then again, another anti-climatic Super Bowl against San Diego, winning 49-26.

That began a long, gradual decline by the 49ers. Their owner Eddie DeBartolo, got in all kinds of legal trouble for trying to open up a casino in New Orleans and got busted trying to bribe the governor of Louisiana. The league took the team away from Eddie and handed it to his sister Denise York. Two years later, Denise and her husband John could have given the team back to DeBartolo, but chose to keep it. The Yorks promptly ran the team straight into the ground.

The 49ers were still good most years, but they weren’t consistently good year in and year out and they weren’t good enough to get to the Super Bowl. They won a playoff game against Green Bay one year on a 40 yard pass in the final seconds from Young to Terrell Owens (what I remember about that play is earlier on the drive, Jerry Rice had an obvious fumble, but that was one of the years they had gotten rid of replay because it didn’t work well when they first tried it. With replay, Green Bay wins the game.). But, then Owens turned into a jackass after that year. Biggest primadonna in the history of sport, I swear. The 49ers seemed to hit rock bottom when Steve Young got completely knocked out, a hit that ended his career.

Jeff Garcia had a couple of good years for the Niners. I always thought he was kind of underrated. One of his problems was he was tiny for a quarterback, only weighed about 180 pounds. He had one incredible game in the 2002 playoffs, bringing the team back from 38-14 to beat the Giants 39-38. The Giants had a chance for a game winning field goal, flubbed the snap, then actually got a pass off downfield to Jeremy Shockey. The 49ers, who didn’t know what to do, tackled Shockey while the ball was in the air, but the refs didn’t call pass interference (I think they literally didn’t know the rules on that bizarre play themselves). Giants fans are still pissed about that play.

Then came a long slowwww slide into irrelevance. The 49ers became just plain bad. The Yorks were inept owners, they were playing in a crummy stadium, and they kept hiring bad coaches and GMs. Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan, Mike Singletary, all bad, bad coaches. People were literally begging the Yorks to please sell the team. The head of Cisco offered $1 billion for the 49ers to try and save the team from the Yorks. The 49ers went 46-82 over eight BAD years. It was hard to watch. There didn’t seem to be any hope with the Yorks owning the team.

Singletary was the worst of the bad coaches, bad play-calling, bad clock management, switching quarterbacks all the time. The nadir came one season in which the 49ers could have won a game against the Cardinals. They had time for a couple of plays, down 24-29 and decide to run the ball up the middle from the 4-yard-line. They gain two yards, the clock runs out, they lose. What were they thinking? It turns out Singletary didn’t realise they were on the 4. He thought they were on the 1-yard-line. If San Francisco had won that game, they would have actually made the postseason. Instead, the Cardinals won the division and nearly won the Super Bowl.

The Yorks finally removed John York from decision-making duties and their son Jed was made president of the team. Oh, great, promoting their son, I thought. But, it turns out he is a really good executive, and the 49ers have been making all the right moves for three years — hiring Jim Harbaugh, getting a new stadium in Santa Clara, letting the football people actually run the football team.

I wasn’t sure if this latest incarnation of the 49ers was any good until their incredible playoff win over the Saints last year. The two teams combined for four touchdowns in the last five minutes of the game. I’ve never been a huge Alex Smith fan, but that was an outstanding game by him; by far the highlight of his 49ers career.

I also wasn’t sure what to think when Harbaugh switched from Smith to Colin Kaepernick in midseason. My brother was a big Kaepernick fan, but I thought Smith, who somehow survived Nolan and Singletary to stick with the team through some very bleak times, was getting screwed. It turns out Harbaugh knew what he was doing, obviously he had seen Kaepernick in practise, and knew his upside was too high to ignore. I wish Smith well, whereever he ends up next year, probably the Jets or the Chiefs. He deserves a starting job somewhere.

But, for now, the 49ers are back. Back in the Super Bowl after an 18-year hiatus through some pretty dark seasons.

My 35-year romance with the 49ers.

baseball, Haruko sportswriter

There will never be another 300-game winner? The math says “not so fast”

October 3, 2012 Haruko Haruhara 5 Comments

About a year ago, I was watching PTI and Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were talking about when the next 300-game winner in baseball would be… and the conclusion they reached is that there would be no more 300-game winners. There are no current pitchers anywhere near 300 wins and we had seen the last of the 300-game winners because teams use their bullpens more and pitchers don’t pitch as many games as they did in the old days, and thus don’t get as many decisions.

That talk always gets the gears in my brain cranking, so I looked into it, and discovered that they were right, there were no current pitchers (other than Jamie Moyer, who quickly retired this year) remotely near 300 wins.

But, there would NEVER be a 300-game winner again. NEVER? Because it’s impossible now, with pitchers starting fewer games, getting fewer decisions and bullpens being used more heavily.

Now, I look at some numbers, and I strongly disagree with the PTI guys. I simply don’t think you can say it will NEVER happen, in fact, there are three, maybe four active pitchers who have a shot at 300 wins … and in fact, one of them has a very, very solid shot at 300 wins. If anyone gets to 300 wins, it won’t happen for at least another 7 years.

Here are the four pitchers

. Age wins

CC Sabathia 31 191

Roy Halladay 35 199

Justin Verlander 29 124

Mark Buehrle 33 174

Now, compare that to these 300-game winners

. Age wins

Phil Niekro 29 31

(in fact, Niekro at age 34 still only had 110 wins)

Gaylord Perry 29 76

Early Wynn 29 83

Randy Johnson 32 104

Roger Clemens 33 192

Let’s look at each individual pitcher, first with the 300-game winners:

Phil Niekro

Niekro was a knuckleball pitcher who pitched into his late 40s, so this one is a bit of a cheat because knuckleballers don’t tend to decline in their 40s like regular pitchers. Still, he didn’t become a starter until the age of 25 and won over 200 games after the age of 35.

Gaylord Perry

Perry won 191 games over a 10-year stretch after the age of 30. He pitched in an era (the 1960s and early 70s) in which starters got 35 to 40 starts and 35 decisions or more every year.

Early Wynn

Like Perry, Wynn won a ton of games in his mid- to late-30s. He won 188 games over 10 years after the age of 30, and was making 35 to 40 starts a year (in the 1950s), with 30 or more decisions almost every season.

Roger Clemens

I included Clemens only because he pitched in an era in which pitchers started 30-35 games a year and almost always get fewer than 30 decisions a year, but still went well over 300 wins.

His career had begun to wind down at 33. Over the past four years, he had only won 40 games and had a middling 40-39 record. After the age of 34, he won 149 games over the next eight years. In not one of those 8 years, did he have more than 28 decisions. That’s important to remember.

Now, it’s fairly clear now Clemens had help from PED to regain his fastball late in his career and to stay healthy. I don’t care if he was acquitted of lying about it, the guy was a juicer, so he might not be the best example … a better example is …

Randy Johnson

Johnson’s career to me is the best barometer that you can NEVER say no one will EVER get to 300 wins again, PTI guys! Johnson only had 104 wins at the age of 32 and was coming off major, potentially career-ending back surgery. He went on to win 176 games over the next 10 years, in an era in which he was only starting 30-35 games a year. He never once had a year in which he had more than 30 decisions.

To be fair, Johnson, who was never implicated in juicing, did pitch in an ERA in which PED use was rampant, so you have to honest that PEDs may have played a role in his longevity. Today, players cannot get away with the same PED use due to testing.

Today’s candidates for 300 wins

CC Sabathia

Sabathia definitely has the best chance to get to 300 wins. In fact, PTI guys, I personally give him a 50-50 shot. He is only 31 and 109 wins short of 300. He plays for a big-money team (the Yankees) that scores a lot of runs, so he can tally double-digit win totals even when he has down years. This year, he won 15 games even though he spent some time on the DL.

If Sabathia stays healthy, and he does not have a history of injuries, all he has to do is average 13.6 wins a year for the next 8 years (pitching until he’s 39) to get to 300. That’s very, very doable. Sabathia has averaged nearly 16 wins a year over his 12-year career. Sabathia’s win pace is well ahead of Randy Johnson, Clemens, Wynn, Niekro and Perry. Seriously, I really think he has a very solid shot at 300 wins. You definitely cannot say he will NEVER get there.

Roy Halladay

Halladay’s chances took a hit this season because he was hurt and did not pitch particularly well. He only won 11 games and his ERA was around 4.50, but he still sits at 199 wins at the age of 35, which makes him a legitimate candidate for 300. He would have to win 101 games over the next 7 years (pitching until the age of 42), averaging 14.4 wins a year. Basically, he’d have to start 200 games over the next 7 years and win approximately 50 percent of his games. That’s doable; it’s certainly not impossible (look at Randy Johnson). But, I suspect it’s unlikely Halladay gets to 300. He has had a history of injuries and has lost two or three seasons as a result. He has to stay healthy to have a shot.

Justin Verlander

It’s still somewhat early in Verlander’s career, but at age 29, his win total (124) is well ahead of Wynn, Perry and Niekro and WAY ahead of Johnson. Verlander would have to stay healthy for a while. He would have to win 176 games over the next 12 years (pitching until age 41), for an average of 14.7 wins a year. Very doable considering he has averaged 15.5 wins a year in his career so far, but let’s check back in 5 years.

Mark Buehrle

I was actually surprised he has 174 wins. I’ve barely heard anything about this guy other than he has pitched a perfect game. But since he’s still just 33, I felt I needed to mention him. I think it’s very, very unlikely Buehrle gets to 300 unless he revitalises his career. Buehrle won a lot of games early in his career — he had 85 wins by the age of 26, but he has only won 89 games over the last 7 years (12.7 wins a year), and has won 13 games every year for the past four years and has won more than 16 games only once in his career. He would have to pick it up to get to 300. He needs to win 126 games over the next 8 years — 15.8 wins a year — to get to 300.

Red Sox

Biggest trade in history? Definitely a monstrous salary dump on the Dodgers

August 25, 2012 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

Actually, this really might be the biggest trade in history, at least looking at the dollar amounts involved.

I think the Red Sox fleeced the Dodgers into buying in to the biggest salary dump in sports history. Get this, the Red Sox just unloaded $260 million worth of contracts on the Dodgers, basically in exchange for two hot pitching prospects.

My take on it, the Dodgers got swindled here and will live to regret this trade. They are saddled with $31 million for the next two years to Josh Beckett, who has always been maddeningly inconsistent, never stays healthy and is 5-11 this year with an ERA of 5.23.

The Dodgers get Carl Crawford, who is owed $100 million over the next five years, never did anything in two years in Boston and just had elbow tendon replacement surgery and may not play next year until June or July.

They get Adrian Gonzalez, which was a bit of a bummer. But, truth be told, Gonzalez was a *bit* of a letdown in Boston … a bit. He was definitely not putting up big power numbers, at least not the numbers Boston expected. Gonzalez this year was on pace for only 20 or 21 home runs this year after only 27 last year. His OPS this year was only .812 and his slugging percentage was .469 — those are NOT $21 million a year numbers. He averaged 34 home runs a year for four years in San Diego, and that is a pitcher-friendly park. Truth be told, he had a big drop-off in power in Boston (his batting average was a solid .321, but BA is an overrated statistic.).

This year alone, the Dodgers just got saddled with $56 million in salary for these three guys. The Red Sox just dumped about 1/3 of their payroll. If they can find a way to get rid of the dead weight of John Lackey ($18 million a year, geesh!), that could open up all kinds of possibilities.

I think it became time for the Red Sox to retool. What they were doing wasn’t working. They had the third-highest payroll in baseball and had a losing record, after missing the postseason with the second-highest payroll the previous two years. They have offence, but their pitching is terrible, and they lose too many games 9-8 (in fact, the other night, they lost a game 13-12). Beckett was a big part of that problem (as is Lackey and Dice-K). Too much money for crappy, injured pitchers. Just proves to me that it’s a mistake to throw a ton of longterm money at free agent pitchers. Look at Philadelphia and Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay.

People rail about the Red Sox and their money, but truth be told, they have a long history of splurging a lot of money on bad free agents — other than Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez, can you name one Red Sox free agent who was really worth it? They have a long and sordid history of terrible signings — Dice-K, Matt Clements, Julio Lugo, J.D. Drew, John Lackey and many more.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers have new, aggressive ownership and are looking to make a big splash. Good luck to them. Gonzalez may work out great for them, but they are going to regret being saddled with Crawford and Beckett’s contracts, I guarantee it.

I think what the trade turned into was the Red Sox were in disbelief that the Dodgers were willing to take the terrible Beckett and Crawford contracts off their hands … and that all they had to give up was Gonzalez and his fat $21 million to get rid of that other $35 million of dead money.

The Red Sox get two solid (and cheap) pitching prospects — Rubby De La Rosa (who will pitch right away) and Allen Webster, who will probably stay in the minors this year. They also get a schmoe, James Loney, but that’s just to fill Gonzalez’s roster spot. The Red Sox desperately need to fix their pitching (23rd in ERA), did not do it in the off-season, and this is hopefully step one in getting a decent staff put back together again.

The Red Sox also free up a ton of money to re-sign free agents Jacoby Ellsbury and David Ortiz, or possibly go after Josh Hamilton. Hamilton would like command a deal similar to Pujols — something on the order of $250 million over eight years.

If the Red Sox get rid of Bobby Valentine, almost guaranteed, there might be hope yet for them to pull out of this tailspin next year.

Lance Armstrong

The case against Lance Armstrong

August 25, 2012 Pepe Lepew 3 Comments

Here’s my view on Lance being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. It was a witch hunt. Absolutely. There were people who have been determined to nail him for 12-13 years.

And … he was almost assuredly a doper.

What’s the most damning evidence against him? EVERYONE doped 10-12 years ago. EVERYONE. Almost every single elite rider from that decade has been busted.

I was one of Lance’s biggest supporters for years, but after a while, his defence of “I’ve never tested positive…” answers starting ringing hollow. I felt like he might as well have been saying, “I’ve never been caught…”

I believe Lance essentially pled “no contest” to the U.S. Anti-Doping Association because they had a whole bunch of his ex-teammates lined up to testify against him. They not only had Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis (a pair of dopers and chronic liars), but they also had George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer and six other former teammates. All these former teammates were going to testify at Lance’s arbitration hearing that they had seen him dope. I think Lance knew he was going to be smeared through the mud and simply didn’t want anything to do with the spectacle.

From a Washington Post article:

USADA, which announced its investigation in June, said its evidence came from more than a dozen witnesses “who agreed to testify and provide evidence about their first-hand experience and/or knowledge of the doping activity of those involved in the USPS conspiracy,” a reference to Armstrong’s former U.S. Postal Service cycling team.

The unidentified witnesses said they knew or had been told by Armstrong himself that he had “used EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone and cortisone” from before 1998 through 2005, and that he had previously used EPO, testosterone and Human Growth Hormone through 1996, USADA said. Armstrong also allegedly handed out doping products and encouraged banned methods — and even used “blood manipulation including EPO or blood transfusions” during his 2009 comeback race on the Tour.

It became harder for me to believe Lance had been clean when so many cyclists from his era were busted.

Damning was how many of his former teammates got busted for doping — Hamilton, Landis, Alberto Contador and Roberto Heras among them.

More damning evidence: Lance just didn’t win the Tour de France. He shredded it; he dominated it, for most of those seven tours. And look at his main rivals during that era — Marco Pantini, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Francisco Mancebo, Alexandre Vinokourov, Allesandro Valverde, Michael Rasmussen, Iban Mayo, and Heras and Hamilton. ALL OF THEM were busted for doping, either by testing positive or their names coming up in the Operacion Puerto case (or in the case of Rasmussen, vanishing for months so he couldn’t be tested). These were all the elite riders of the early 2000s, and all guys that Lance just didn’t beat, but destroy.

And after a while, I felt like, “you expect me to believe Lance beat all these dirty riders while clean himself?”

No, that’s stretching the suspension of disbelief too far for me. He could not have beat all these dirty riders clean. I don’t believe that’s possible.

To me a better question was did Lance have an unfair advantage over the other riders? No, I don’t think he did, because they were all dirty. They were all riding on a level playing field.

I don’t blame the USADA for wiping out his tour wins. In fact, the entire decade of 2000-2010 should probably be expunged from the cycling record books.

I think Lance took a calculated risk that his fans have “steroids fatigue” and don’t care anymore, which I think to a large degree is true. So many athletes have been busted for doping during the last 15 years that people can’t work up any outrage about it anymore.

I guess my attitude is everyone did it, in multiple sports and it doesn’t do a lot of good to dwell on who cheated 10 or 15 years ago, but that being said, records from that era shouldn’t count. So perhaps the Tour de France titles should simply be vacated from that decade, while Bonds and others don’t get to keep their records. Henry Aaron should be the home run champion — until Pujols breaks it (… and Pujols has never been 100 percent in the clear in my mind as far as doping, but I admit there is no proof), and Maris should be the single-season record holder.

Mountain climbing

Mount St. Piran

July 29, 2012 Pepe Lepew 1 Comment

Mount St. Piran

8,690 feet, Banff National Park

This is roughly a 3,000-foot climb (in less than 5 miles, so it is very steep) from the shore of Lake Louise to the top of Mount St. Piran, one of two relatively easy scrambles on either shore of Lake Louise. On the south shore is Fairview Mountain, which I climbed three years ago. On the north shore is Mount St. Piran, which I had twice tried to climb before but got pushed down by horrendous weather. Last year, I tried to climb it, winds at the top were at least 50 to 60 miles an hour and thunder and lightning were crashing through the whole Lake Louise basin. I figured if exposure didn’t get me, the lightning would and had to turn back.

This latest trip didn’t appear particularly promising, either. Upon arrival, it was cold, rainy and when the top of Mount St. Piran did appear every once in a great while through breaks in the dark clouds, you could see a dusting of snow on top. There wasn’t much to do at all that whole day because the weather was so crummy other than drive down to Banff and catch a matinee of the new Batman movie.

The weather tends to be crummy at Lake Louise quite a bit because of both its elevation — 5,700 feet — and a notch in the Continental Divide just west of the lake that tends to funnel a lot of weather systems right through that area. I’ve seen beautiful weather in Canmore and Radium Hot Springs, but then the weather all goes to hell as soon as you get to Lake Louise. You really have to pick your spots with the weather here and take advantage when you can.

The next day, dawn broke without a cloud in the sky and I realized this was my chance — FINALLY.

One good thing about an early start. This is a very busy area of Banff, with visitors from all around the world converging on Lake Louise. The trail gets very, very crowded by mid-morning, especially on the section between Lake Louise and the Lake Agnes teahouse. I found that if you start at 7:30 a.m., you will miss the crowds. Not a single other person was on the trail on the way up.

You take the trail to the famous Lake Agnes teahouse, which is where most hikers stop. Some go to the Little Beehive or even the Big Beehive, but only a handful make the little-known trek up to Mount St. Piran. All of the trail signs around the area do not show a trail to the top of this mountain; I only heard about it by reading some guide to scrambles in the Canadian Rockies.

To get to the St. Piran route, you take the trail from the Lake Agnes teahouse east to the Little Beehive (the more spectacular Big Beehive lies west). About two-thirds of the way to the Little Beehive, perhaps 500 meters from Lake Agnes, is a nondescript sign for the Mount St. Piran trail. Mount St. Piran has actually been scratched off the sign. I knew this had to be the trail, but it still gave me a bit of misgiving that the name was scratched off. Was that a message not to head up the trail? Maybe it had washed out.

The trail switchbacks several times up the steep slope of Mount St. Piran, and you get ever more spectacular views of Lake Louise, the Big Beehive, the Fairmont Chateau and Fairview Mountain to the south of the lake. At this point, clouds began rolling in, but I was still counting my lucky stars that any sort of actual weather was holding off.

Finally, you reach a saddle between two subpeaks. It’s a quick, easy walk to the lower subpeak, which gives you some fantastic views of the Bow Valley nearly 4,000 feet below.

I was slightly spooked by the route to the upper peak. As you hike up the switchbacks, the two peaks appear to be of a similar elevation, but as you get to the lower summit, you realize the upper summit is still another two hundred to three hundred feet higher. And the trail appears to peter out in the rocks and boulders pretty quickly.

I talked myself into trying it, not really feeling I was prepared for a scramble of 200 to 300 vertical feet over boulders with some fairly intimidating-looking exposure. But, it turns out there continues to be a very steep, primitive trail twisting back and forth through the rocks. It’s just plain invisible from below. There is one slightly spooky spot where you make a 90-degree turn on a pitch with extreme exposure 4,000 feet straight down to the north, but other than that, it wasn’t difficult at all.

Mount St. Piran in every book I’ve read about it is classified as a “scramble,” but frankly, I wouldn’t call it a scramble, with a primitive trail going most of the way to the top. The trail eventually does vanish, but at that point, you are probably less than 50 feet below the summit and it’s an easy horizontal walk through boulders on the wide and round summit.

Up at the top, you have to walk to the edge of the domed summit to get views of Lake Louise and the Fairmont Chateau. You do get some spectacular views from the top of 9,000- and 10,000-foot peaks — Fairview Mountain, Mount Victoria, Mount Lefroy, Mount Aberdeen, and The Mitre. There is also a pair of massive glaciers, Victoria and Lefroy, that you look down on. In an hour at the summit, the weather continued to hold (it did go all to pieces late in the afternoon), and the sun briefly made an appearance.

There is also wildlife up there. A pair squirrels scurried through the rocks, eating wildflowers and I saw two hoary marmots near the top.

The mountain gets a little busier in the afternoon — about a dozen people were slogging their way up the side of the mountain after noon . The Lake Agnes teahouse is a great place to stop for lunch after all your hard work. The bread is all homemade and they make a mean tuna salad sandwich.

On the way down from Lake Agnes, you realize how important it is to get an early start if you want to enjoy a “wilderness” experience. There were hundreds of hikers going both up and down the Lake Agnes trail, speaking languages from around the globe (It is funny to see European visitors hiking up to Lake Agnes, a not-to-be-taken-lightly 1,400-foot elevation gain, in dress flats and Italian loafers.).

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