Left Coast Cowboys

Jeez, the Mainstream Media. No wonder they’re in trouble. Between all the blather about Michael Vick, steroid usage and Michael Phelps’ bong hits, the Boston Herald only managed to miss the Sports Story of the Year, maybe even the Feel Good Sports Story of the Last Half Decade. Yes, I’m talking about the Goody Glovers rocketing to first place in the division after three years of never winning a game, then losing in a heartbreaker sweep in the playoffs.

You say you’ve never heard of the Goody Glovers? Where have you been? These gals are the Bad News Bear-ettes of Boston. A lovable band of party-hearty rogues who turned the league on its head over in Beantown. Yes, I know Boston is a bit out of the usual sports coverage range of Left Coast Cowboys. But if I could post my take on the Olympics in Beijing, Boston is comparatively right next door.

Besides, the story heavily features my old pal MoMo who has appeared periodically in this blog, most notably in the story where she put the capper on my dying Dad’s pact with God over the Red Sox. (Read it here and weep. I mean you’ll really weep, but you’ll end up loving MoMo.)

This isn't just a sports story. It's another MoMo story. She's seen here with one of the team coaches.

MoMo is also the kind of gal who doesn’t waste time wondering “wouldn’t it be interesting if…” She just does it. So the day she woke up and decided playing on a softball team was on her Bucket List, that’s the day she went down and signed up.

It wasn’t an auspicious beginning. The team she chose to join? One sponsored by the only Irish Pub in the heavily Italian North End. Already we’re talking underdogs. Add to that the fact that the Pub and the team were named after the last person hanged as a witch in Boston.

Here are our gals looking nicey-nice. Their opponents found out they aren't!

There were other moments of doubt. The Goody Glovers had, in past years, been what Bostonians call certified “loosahs”. Three years in the league. Not a single game won. I don’t think they even came close. MoMo thought it would be an easy, low pressure way to cross that softball entry off the List.

Then she shows up to the orientation meeting and finds out it’s a whole new cast of characters going out for the team. They are all, well, let’s say “more than a decade” younger than she is. And they are ready to party as hard as Mo did, but back in her Boston College days…er…several years ago. Yeah, they’re young, they’re rowdy, they’re in it to win it. Mo thought for one dreadful moment that she was in over her head.

The Gals of Team 'Tude. Note Dr. Hot Pants at right.

Next uncomfortable moment. They repair to Goody Glovers and their sponsor’s staff has never heard of them. Undeterred, they ordered their drinks. The waitress comes out loaded down with steins of beers, then says, “And who ordered this [sneer] Chardonnay?” That would be MoMo.

None the less, she sticks it out and becomes not even the most colorful character of the bunch. A team, I might add, that in true Bad News Bears tradition, even includes an English girl who hasn’t a clue about baseball. While she plays some form of cricket or rounders, the rest coach her in the finer points of the game. The gals give it their all, helped out by liberal references to their role models, the women in the movie A League of Their Own. It seems to work. They win. And win. And win some more. Next thing you know, they’re first place in the division.

Ya wanna piece a them?

Then it all crumbles. Helen, the English girl, misses enough games that, by the rules, she has to sit out the playoffs. She cheers from the bench with a six pack of beers. It’s not enough. Our crew of plucky heroines gets swept in the playoffs. (Hey, any coincidence that Brit off the team equals defeat? I’m just saying.) It’s a heartbreaker. And as their erstwhile coach (who is NOT Walter Matthau) says: they’re a better team than that.

But, hey they’re all from Boston now, a town that’s had more than 80 years to experience late season heartbreak and practice “wait until next year” faith in the face of defeat. I hope Mo joins up again, even though she can cross this off her Bucket List. But maybe such magic never happens twice.

In any case, join me in a big Bah-stahn style cheer for the Goody Glovers. They are:

Lenore: The singing catcher who turned the big Three-O during the season.

Haley: Also a catcher. The most improved player of the season. And she was good to start with.

Brook: AKA Brooklyn. Played second base with real Bah-ston cred as a kid from Southie.

Ann: The pitcher. AKA Annie-Bin-Annie or “All the Way May”. Very lady-like until she slammed you with one of her low and lighting-fast pitches.

Lorelle: Outfielder par excellence.

Stephanie: Called the plays and never got it wrong.

Karyn: Right outfield, pitcher and home run queen.

Katie: In Mo’s words, “a fricken riot” and the most vocal booster of team spirit.

Hang: Left outfield. A tiny little thing who could whack the ball a mile. Her speed around the bases got her the nickname Lightning.

Lindsey: AKA Dr. Hotpants. Played first base and relied on her secret weapons: three sports bras.

Helen: Catcher. Brit. Need I say more.

Leah: A great player never without her baseball cap or the boyfriend who studied for the bar as he did double duty as cheering section.

Rhi: Nicknamed Captain Chardonnay after Mo convinced her to put down the beers and head to the vineyard.

Allison: Rightfield. Dedicated. Never missed a game. The Cal Ripkin of the Glovers.

And, of course, MoMo who says she’s just happy to have survived the season still standing.

Well done Gals! You are our new sports heroines.

NOTE: Let’s not forget the coaches and main boosters! Bryan and Jeff, big time former college sports stars, who brought the Goody Glovers to the Finals. And Mo’s husband, Billy, who sat in the bleachers with his laptop telling the girls he was emailing ESPN and WEEI Sports every time they made a good play.

NOTE: For those who are wondering, that is indeed The World’s Most Beautiful Baby wearing a Boston Red Sox cap that MoMo bought for her. Amelia May wants to be a Goody Glover when she’s 21. But only if MoMo’s playing.

I am NOT a sit com person. I have managed to get through my adult life so far without ever having watched even one episode of Seinfeld, Friends or Cheers. Not in first run, not in rerun, not even with the sound off on the treadmill at the gym. My life has still been rich and rewarding.

But NBC is offering up a sit com for Thursday nights called Community that I’m not going to be able to resist. The main reasons: some genius at the network figured out that a) it’s long past time to get Chevy Chase back onto weekly television and b) community college equals Comedy Gold.

As a veteran of half a dozen courses at Community College of San Francisco — and a former English Literature major — I speak with some authority on these matters. Since the Greeks, it’s been a time-tested technique for comedy and drama to introduce some device that gathers together a wildly divergent cast of characters. Then as the network suits love to say: “it practically writes itself”. John Ford did it with a stagecoach. Shakespeare did it several times with shipwrecks. Network TV tends to favor bars, apartment buildings and hospitals.

The guy on the left was apparently a big hit in some shows called Will & Grace and Pushing Daisies. The guy on the right plays the wacky TV quoting son of a Pakistani convenience store owner. How's that for a community college character spread?

While schools — especially high schools — have long been a classic TV device, until now, no one has cottoned on to the fact that community college is Degrassi High, West Beverly High and any other TV school to the tenth power. Can you imagine how it ups the comedy or drama ante to have students, not only of many ethnic, economic and temperamental shades, but also wildly divergent ages and backgrounds? Take my classes this Fall, for instance. My Spanish professor is just moonlighting. By day, he’s a family dentist, albeit one with a Spanish mother and a degree in Spanish literature from a University in Madrid. From the first class when he came bouncing in shouting “Que Tal! Hola!“, it was clear he had enough energy for several more careers. My HTML professor? Not that long off the boat from South America, or at least she sounds like it. Two classes in and it’s a bit like learning programming from Charo. Except that she is fiercely intelligent. (The professor, I mean, although I have heard through the years that Charo, despite her cuchi-cuchi schtick, was actually immensely talented and an accomplished flamenco guitarist.) Now that’s just the teachers. In one semester. The students? The full microcosm which you’ll hear hilariously and stereotypically outlined in the clip below. And this being San Francisco, we’re one up on fictional Greendale Community College in that, in my classes, I’ve had the full Rainbow Coalition and even a few transexuals as fellow students. I tell ya: Comedy Gold.

Listen, TV Squad is already predicting Community will be the breakout, must-see hit of the Fall. And NBC seems to be putting all of its marketing muscle behind the show. They’ve even got a fake Greendale Community College website up where you can find out that you’ve already been accepted to this institute of higher learning.

Hooray! Chevy Chase is back on weekly TV. He is NOT playing a character based on me.

Here’s the premise: a flashy, fast-talking lawyer is found out to have less than legitimate credentials and must go back to school to get a real degree. Once there, he tries to hit on the hot girl who is resuming her education after a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer. His ploy is to say he’s a “board-certified Spanish tutor” when he finds out she’s worried about her upcoming Spanish test. He makes the “study appointment” only to find the full spectrum of Community College types showing up in the library for “study group”. Those types, as stereotypically outlined by that aforementioned bumbling provost, are: “remedial teens, 20-something dropouts, middle aged divorcees and old people keeping their minds active as they circle the drain to eternity.” Yes, that last “type” is the Chevy Chase character. (Before you think that’s the role I’m playing in my own community college comedy, let me remind you: I have a long standing order in to Hollywood that Drew Barrymore is to play me in all TV and film adaptations of my life.) Of course, on my first day at CCSF, I realized these stereotypes are hardly accurate. I’m sure, as the season goes on, we’ll learn the same thing at Greendale, as they say in TV Land, “through our laughter and our tears.”

In any case, if Greendale Community College is even one third as interesting as Community College of San Francisco, I’m telling ya again: Comedy Gold. So NBC, if you need a story consultant, call me. You know where I am on the Internets — except on Monday and Tuesday nights when I’ll be doing research for you. And can you see if Drew Barrymore is available in case we want to introduce a wacky advertising executive turned winemaker and part time student into our cast?

Two years ago, I took my niece on a cross-country roadtrip to celebrate her graduation from college. She was content to let me plan the whole trip, but there was one place she was insistent that we visit: Graceland. I wasn’t enthusiastic.

You see, I’m too young to remember the vibrant, rock ‘n’ roll Elvis. By the time I was listening to popular music, he was a fat, washed up, druggy joke. I did have one brief glimpse at his impact on the day of his death (see this earlier post.) But all in all, he’s not a star I would go out of my way to learn about.

Boy, did Graceland change my mind! Well, in the beginning, it was all that my snarky self expected — weird, tacky and filled with people who were taking it all waaaaay too seriously.

A surprisingly small Graceland. It would be the smallest home in your average gated community.

The first odd thing you notice about Graceland, is that everyone who works there is Black. I mean EVERYONE from the ticket taker to the tour guide to the concession stand and gift shop operators to the maintenance people. With the psuedo-Tara facade of the place, it gives it the feeling of a strange plantation.

The next thing you notice is how small and relatively modest everything is. The house is less impressive in size than anything you’d see in a mid-range gated community. And the outbuildings, such as Vern Presley’s office and the guest quarters, are pretty much the architectural equivalent of double-wides.

The Pool Room: just one example of Evis's terrible White Trash taste.

Then you get inside. Holy gold lame with a cape! This has got to be the apotheosis of White Trash Taste. We’re talking purple shag carpeting ON THE CEILING, ceramic monkeys, gold flecked mirrors on the walls, fake wood paneling. (Our pictures on Flickr can’t even do it justice, but view ‘em anyway here.)

Something happened during the tour — and I think it was due to the excellent self-guided audio tour that features Elvis, Priscilla, Lisa Marie and various famous people talking about Elvis. But it was most certainly the video monitors set up at nearly every point in the tour showing him in performance. In fact, after awhile, I had a hard time concentrating on the tour as I was riveted by his performances. (Luckily you can stop, start and replay any section — and you can take as long as you want on the tour.) I’ll tell you what we learned: Elvis was an amazing performer!

At Graceland, Elvis is still in the building. Note the TCB (Takin' Care of Business) logo. It's everywhere.

But he was also an incredibly sad individual with a tragic stunted life. Listening to Lisa Marie describe him playing around in go-carts and shooting off fireworks with his friends, you realize, he never really grew up. And Lisa Marie seemed not to have a connection with him as a father, but only as a “presence” who changed the energy in a room when he entered and electrified audiences on stage.

There were points in the tour where Aleana and I were practically in tears.

But the videos pulled us out of it. Now I’m a huge Elvis fan and my next Amazon purchase will be the deluxe special editions of his “68 Comeback Special” and “Aloha From Hawaii”.

Our post-Graceland blue mood was lifted on Beale Street by these friendly Shriners.

It was tough to shake the mood after that, so we headed down Beale Street — and straight into a club featuring the worst Elvis impersonator in the world. I think he was trying to be “The Native American Elvis” as his blue jumpsuit featured turquoise beads and he said he was Chocktaw. He also said he knew Elvis personally, but then everyone in Memphis of a certain age tells you they knew Elvis personally. However, after Graceland, we felt we, too, knew the King.

To quote Paul Simon:

“And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there’s no obligations now
Maybe I’ve a reason to believe
We all will be received in Graceland”

My faithful readers will remember when I first mentioned Donny Osmond on this blog. It was a throw-away line in a post I wrote about Michael Jackson’s death. In response to my musing that I thought Donny was an underappreciated talent, I got flooded with emails, Twitters and Facebook messages (People, talk to the blog!) In fact, I got more feedback on Donny than I did on Michael Jackson. So I had to come out as a secret Donny Osmond fan in a follow-up post. Next thing I know, it’s picked up in the forums at Donny’s official fan site and even reprinted on the front page. And again, the Twitters, Facebook messages and emails confirm that there are a lot of Donny fans out there. Even ones who aren’t embarrassed to admit it.

So I thought I’d better examine this Donny phenomenon in a little more depth. Not being a scholar of music or even particularly knowledgable about modern music, I contacted my go-to guy on all music theory, history and trivia from the Blues of the 20s to Rock of the New Millenium. That would be my brother, Steven, who has been a professional guitarist and student of American music since high school. Knowing how Steven used to meet mention of bubblegum singers like Bobby Sherman with a sneer and an Eric Clapton guitar lick, I was a little nervous about asking for his musical assessment of Donny. I was completely surprised. Steve has a great appreciation of Donny, who he says is an artist with a lot of cred among serious rock musicians:

We rockers always appreciate a good vocalist as they

are always so hard to find. It really doesn’t matter what style you do

as it is very easy to spot the pretenders.  Donny is no pretender. He’s

a pro with serious vocal ability.

No less an authority than Jeff Beck thinks Donny rocks. He does. Just ask him. (photo: Mandy Hall)

Then he went on to point me toward a YouTube clip that he thinks illustrates his point. In Rock guitar legend Jeff Beck’s Ambitious video, the scenerio is a tongue-in-cheek “audition” where various singers and wannabes are lining up to try out as lead singer. Among them is Donny Osmond taking a cheerful poke at his own career. But as they say, the laughing stops when Donny starts to sing. Steven points out, “Donny’s vocals can definitely stand up to and even complement Beck’s guitar playing.” (In fact, Steve wondered why Beck didn’t go ahead and cut a collaborative album with Donny. He’d buy it.) But of course, as I said last time and Steve confirms, Donny can do most everything.

Here's the Donny I'm listening to now. And this just in: Donny will also be on the next season of Dancing With the Stars.

Judging from the Donny Osmond CDs I’ve downloaded recently, what Donny prefers to do is what used to be termed “Blue Eyed Soul”. You can hear how he’s mastered that genre on his cover of the old Spinners hit Could It Be I’m Falling in Love and he puts a nice twist on Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together. Plus, he shows the BeeGees how it should have been done with a surprising take on How Deep is Your Love, a song I spent the Seventies trying to avoid. When Donny sings it, I’ve been known to hit repeat on my iPod one, or maybe even two, times. Then, on the same CD, Donny tackles Broadway with Seasons of Love (Rent) and This is the Moment (Jekyll and Hyde), Reggae with I Can See Clearly Now, and even performs an interesting do-over on his own old hit Puppy Love. As Steven says, when you have real talent and a true understanding and feeling for the music, you can cross into most any genre. The only thing I haven’t seen Donny tackle is the standards, which sorely need him. At a time when we’ve got Rod Stewart mangling Porter and Michael Buble injecting too much sugar into Berlin, the American Songbooks need Donny Osmond.

So c’mon, folks. I know there are a lot of you out there who agree with me. Git yer Donny on and let’s start a movement. Download your favorite Donny Osmond songs and hold that iPod up high, no matter where you are. Tell the world, WE ARE DONNY NATION. Say it loud, Donny Fan and Proud!

NOTE: Here’s that Jeff Beck Ambitious video I told you about. Watch it and tell me if you don’t think Donny should be a rocker front man.

I’ve just discovered two great old broads. They aren’t my grandmothers, but I’m appointing them that title in the Blogosphere. It’s Margaret and Helen. They were born in 1925. They’re 82 years old. They’ve been fast friends for more than 60 years. Then Helen’s grandson set her up with a blog. The rest is fast becoming raucous InterWebs history. Helen, who lives in Texas, is really the blogger. But Margaret is on the phone from Maine nearly every day and her comments get incorporated. Their husbands Harold and Howard get mentioned from time to time, especially Helen’s because he’s a Republican. Margaret and Helen are decidedly NOT.

In common sense and often salty language, Margaret and Helen give their spin on today’s top news stories. Worried that Obama’s health care plan will bring about the “death squads” Sarah Palin warned about? Helen will set you straight. You’re an idiot. Furthermore, Helen reassures you that your final wishes are all in your own hands. Just write a living will. She and her husband have one with an interesting twist:

“Mine states that unless the feeding tube is large enough for a piece of pie, I don’t want to be hooked up to it. Harold, of course, says his can only be connected to him if the other end is connected to a bottle of single malt scotch.”

Margaret and Helen have been friends since college in the Forties. I imagine them in their campus days somewhat like this

Helen also tackles Rush Limbaugh. At least as hard as she could if she weren’t confined to that scooter. But after Helen finishes chastising him for disparaging Walter Cronkite, Margaret weighs in and reveals her own crush on the famous newscaster:

“Helen, dear, we can certainly agree on one thing for sure. Walter Cronkite was a very sexy man. I tell you, he was the Anderson Cooper of his day. He could melt my butter each and every evening. He could toast my bread on both sides. He could float my boat, row it out to sea, and wait for it to return with the tide any day of the week.”

Don’t even get these gals started on Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney or Governor Sanford and Republican hypocricy.

Oh, and by the way, Margaret and Helen are not rated PG. More like R. Helen admits she loves to use words like shit, dumbass and bitch. She says they make her giggle.

Here’s one of her many takes on Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney:

“No wonder these guys look bloated and constipated. They’re full of shit, and lots of it.”

Okay, that made me giggle. So new Internet Rule: when you are this funny and you’ve lived this long and still kept your edge, you get to use whatever language you want.

Viva Margaret and Helen!

Note: all of these images were found at random on Google Images. Neither is of Margaret and Helen. Just the Margaret and Helen of my imagination.