California Uber Alles

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The Red Eye from Frisco International

Right now I am reading the San Francisco Chronicle - The Chron. This is the first leg of a triple stop flight from Frisco to Siem Reap, Cambodia, via Manila and Singapore. I try to fly first class or business class whenever possible or affordable on a flight that is more than four hours long. This is because I’ve had my share of agony in coach or economy class in overseas flights. The seats are wide, there’s plenty of leg room, there’s complementary champagne, the food is better, and the service is terrific. I’m not really sure what to expect once I arrive in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I’m heading there to see the Temples of Angkor Wat and the other ruins of the ancient Khmer kingdom. I don’t even know what Wat means. Wat, not What. Like the band Was Not Was. Maybe it’s not a name of a band but the name of the person who is the leader of the band. His first name might be Was and his last name Notwas, a common Native American surname. Probably not.

On the other hand, Matt Bianco is not really a person but is the name of the band whose lead singer was a woman from Poland named Basia. She later went on to have a successful solo career and Matt Bianco went nowhere without her in half a minute.

The Peoples Republic of Palo Alto, Center of the Universe

The Chron is a left leaning regional newspaper covering the greater Bay Area. Its focus is mainly on events taking place in San Francisco proper and parts of the Peninsula, ending in Palo Alto, although I don’t know why they stop there. Perhaps because the great minds in the The Chron’s editorial board think nothing interesting ever happens south of Palo Alto. Granted, the greater Silicon Valley starts and ends in Palo Alto, the rest is just real estate, manufacturing, middle managers, and consumers. Venture capital in the universe is highly concentrated within the boundaries of Page Mill Road and Sand Hill Road, the borders of Stanford University. Like other centers of the universe, good ideas originate there and are funded within its borders. Once funding is secured, properties, products and employees are outsourced nroth, east, south, and west of Palo Alto and beyond, even as far away as India. Thus, with its privileged and high brow standing in this great wide world of ours, there’s a tendency for the citizens of the Peoples Republic of Palo Alto to thumb their noses at the rest of the universe. In their arrogant minds Palo Alto is the center of the universe. The Chron’s editorial board knows and understands this, not even disputing this, and in a sense is awed by this, so they cover events, politics, culture and sports that take place in Palo Alto. It is not a coincidence that many members of The Chron’s editorial board are also graduates of Stanford. This partly explains its liberal persuasion, in addition to the Bay Area having a high concentration of socio-liberal-communist residents, and the fact that the mainstream media is usually left leaning.

Although Stanford is home to the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, the undergraduate programs and its deans have cultivated an atmosphere and a student body that is conducive to an education that is politically correct, culturally diverse, globally aware, and environmentally sensitive. The students are taught to hate Bush! Maybe not, but during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend when many students return home from school for a brief break many parents wonder who the kid sitting in the table next to them is. "Honey, did you do something to your hair, you look different?" one of them might ask, unable to put a finger on the changes precisely because it’s not physical but rather a mental and intellectual transformation, the kind that usually happens in the process of indoctrination. Because many of the kids who attend Stanford are bright and earnest go-getters, they eventually end up in positions of influence, like the editorial board of The Chron. This is the main reason why I skip the front pages of this paper and head straight to The Sporting Green, its sports section, the toy department.

Foghorn Leghorn

I’ve been on board the plane for a few hours now and can’t get any sleep. I’ve always had this problem when flying. Insomnia. I look at my watch and it tells me that it’s 10:30 PM Pacific Daylight Savings Time. That would be the time in the Bay Area, in Frisco, the place where I departed. People always look at me funny when I say Frisco, especially in the Bay Area. It’s one of those weird look that’s half a grin and half disgust, as if they smelled something funny, the funny smell that fouls the air when a guy or someone exercises unabashed flatulence. Yet the early settlers of Frisco called it Frisco. Before that it was called Yerba Buena by the Conquistadors and Missionaries. Conquistadors and Missionaries are basically the same people, just a different side of the same coin. One uses the sword to conquer native peoples while the other uses the name of God. To this day most people I know who were born and raised in Frisco have no problem calling this wonderful city by the bay Frisco. The fact that they were born and raised in Frisco automatically gives them the prerogative to call this place whatever the hell they want to call it, be it Frisco, San Francisco, Fag City, Home of the Homos, Bareback Mountain Country, or simply just The City, with all the pretensions that go with it.

Bruce Bochy is the current manager of the San Francisco Giants. The Gigantes. Pronounced Hee-Gan-Teys. He’s been the manager for a year and a half now. Before that he was with the Padres organization down in San Diego. Down yonder to you old folksy people out in the boondocks. He likes to be called “Boch”, pronounced Boech, with an emphasis on the oe’ part which gives it a full Southern twang, by his acquaintances and the other people around him whom he generally likes. Boch was with the Padres organization for over twenty years both as a player (catcher) and as a manager. He managed the Padres for over ten years and took them to the World Series once, in 1998, but lost to the mighty Yankees in four games, swept, ran into a buzz saw as they say in the vernacular.

Boch is a good old Southern gentleman from Mississippi, so naturally he speaks with a lazy and deep Southern drawl like Foghorn Leghorn. And so quite naturally, he says Frisco. I don’t know if he still says Frisco today now that he is the manager of the San Francisco Giants, but I do remember quite fondly when he was with the Padres that Frisco was a word he quite often said when talking about the city by the bay. I’m sure people in the front office have talked to Boch about not saying Frisco, but why mess with something that’s part of this charm. After all, you wouldn’t want Foghorn Leghorn to suddenly learn calculus or listen to Mozart, would you? The minute that Foghorn Leghorn begins to listen to classical music is the day that I’ll lose faith in our society in general and in The United States of America in particular.

Foghorn is the epitome of the American male; loud, brash, confident, sometimes ignorant. Well, maybe more than sometimes, but let’s just forget about that for now. That’s not what’s important. The important thing about Foghorn is that he walks tall and proud and he talks like he knows what he’s talking about, like the time he tried to show the little chicken how to play baseball.

“Aahh Say Boy! This here is a bat, and this here is a ball. Now all you gotta do is swing the bat at the ball! Come on now son, Aahh Say SWING Boy, SWING!!!”

Foghorn’s voice is always 100 dB too loud and an octave too low. It’s deep, loud, and full of swagger, like a real good old corn fed Americano. On the other hand the little chicken looks demure and introspective, especially with those huge coke bottle glasses that he wears which is about the size of his face. He doesn’t say anything at all, he just looks at Foghorn somewhat quizzically and pulls out a little piece of paper and a pencil, writes some long ass equation on the paper, then as Foghorn delivers a fastball right down the middle he quickly grabs a bat and with one wheelhouse swing knocks the cover off the ball and sends the rest of it to the moon. Foghorn is dumbfounded, can’t understand how a little unit like that with no athletic ability and only using a little mathematics could possibly hit the ball so hard.

Foghorn would never say San Francisco. You could not point a gun to his head and force him to say San Francisco.

“Aahh Say Boy! Now wait just a dadgum second here, Aahh Say! Now what did you want me to say?”

“Mr. Leghorn, I want you to stop saying Frisco or I’ll blow your brains out. Sir, it’s not Frisco, it’s SAN FRANCISCO!”

“Aahh Say Boy! Now wait just a doggone minute here, Aahh Say!! Now you don’t want me to say Frisco? You want me to say Aahh Say!! You want me to say Now wait just a doggone itty bitty second here, Aahh Say Boy!!! Aahh Say you want me to say Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh………….”

Foghorn can’t say it so out of frustration he yells to the top of his lungs

“FRISCOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

BOOM!!!!!!

Feathers fly up in the air. Foghorn Leghorn’s brains gets blown out and splattered on the pavement. Foghorn runs around with his head cutoff and yelling

“Aahh cayn’t say it, Aahh cayn’t say it, Aah cayn’t say it…FRISCO!!!... FRISCO!!!... FRISCO!!!...”

Hate Mail

I’ve received quite a few unpleasant emails and comments, most of them not fit for publication, about some of my observations while on travel and which were published on my critically acclaimed and award winning travelogue blog. A few pf them have suggested that I perform an act of sodomy onto myself. Quite offensive, really. Many have complained that I generalize too much, specifically about Caucasian males traveling to Asia for only one thing.

Love you long time.

I admit, that is a gross generalization. Not all Caucasian males travel to Asia for the Honey. They travel to Asia for many reasons; the culture, the food, the history, the arts, the sights, the wonderful beaches of the Philippines, the religion, the diving, the mountain climbing, to surf the wonderful waves of Indonesia, and last but not least, love you long time. Now there I go again, making gross generalizations.

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Photos

Let's Roll
Eager and excited about my upcoming trip

The Peninsula
From somewhere in Skyline Blvd near Pacifica

Woodside
View of Palo Alto from above

More Skyline View
SLAC is down below

Stanford Stadium
The new stadium is intimate and compact. Unlike the old wooden creaky termite infested old stadium

Cardinal Sin
Stanford sucks in football. They're going to suck even more every year until they start recruiting real athletes.