Archive for February, 2023

Let’s begin by setting the expectation bar really low, and hope I can get under it.

1. I rub women the wrong way – I’m a Massagynist
2. Physicist Izzy Grissom insists his wrist is twisted, but it’s just a cyst that persists. That’s the gist.
3. My advice to the citizens of Moldova: Men, guard your catalytic convertors. Women and children, sell your platelets. And to all my mollusk friends: keep clam.
4. For obvious reasons, during performances at the High Wire Club, tipping is not allowed
5. It is said by people much smarter than me (and I’m sure there are some someplace) that curly fries are overblown.
6. The preeminent physicist Robert Oppenheimer was also a great chef, though in some of his dishes he did tend to over-plutonium a bit. I’m told he made the only Beef Wellington with a half-life and his fusion cooking was absolutely devastating.
7. I felt both full and empty after reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.
8. The syphilis way to get an STD is to have sex

 

First, a Few Words on Rabbit Holes, Then Our True Story

Rabbit holes have gotten a bad rap lately and sometimes with good reason. Unwary rabbit hole-goers often don’t discover they’re lost in one of these time-wasting tunnels till it’s far too late; and the hole-goer wishes they could have that wasted time added back to their life. Of course it’s not this way with all rabbit holes. There is that rare rabbit hole one tumbles down and comes out the other side much elevated by the experience. And this is my true story of just such a rabbit hole  – of my disappearance into and emergence out of, an unforgettable once-in-a-lifetime rabbit hole located right next to Disneyland.   

 

 

We Begin in My Dim, Misty Past

 

I’ve been a rabid Syracuse University football fan since 1973 when as a 12-year-old some switch was activated inside me and I became enamored of this team located right there in my hometown. Much like puberty, it was found gold. My rabid feelings for the team were the good or nerdy kind of rabid associated with Star Wars and not the bad or face paint kind of rabid associated with storming the Capitol. Unfortunately, when I began following the Orangemen, they were at their gridiron nadir, prompting Sports Illustrated (the preeminent sports publication I subscribed to in the infinitely smaller media world of the early 70s) to publish an article entitled: When You’re Standing on your Head, Syracuse is No. 1. That’s how low the fortunes of these once mighty Beasts of the East had sunk. Syracuse University, the collegiate incubators of Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis and future NFL Hall of Famers Jimmy Brown, Floyd Little and Larry Csonka, were ranked a morbid #101^st in the country, but they were #1 in my little boy heart – a heart that still resides in this big boy body today. Suffice to say I followed my team with prodigious avidity and even tribal intensity depending on how much Tang I’d drunk that day. 

 

Cut to 1989 when I’m living in Southern California and Syracuse’s football fortunes have experienced a notable uptick. Following an undefeated 1987 season and a stellar 10-2 mark in 1988, the 1989 Orangemen stood at 7-4 and teetering on a bowl bid. But where might that bowl game be? It set my fertile mind turning and potential rabbit holes multiplying.  Due to being marginally employed, I had time on my hands and began exploring bowl possibilities Syracuse might play in. One bowl venue candidate was right down the road from my San Fernando Valley apartment – the Freedom Bowl played at The Big A (Anaheim Stadium) not far from Disneyland.

 

As was my penchant for idle exploration, I ferreted out a phone number and called them on a landline and, in the days before phone trees, spoke directly with one of the Freedom Bowl principals. I queried a Mr. Rob Halvaks as to their interest in inviting the mighty Syracuse University football team to their bowl. He said Syracuse was in the mix, but that their East Coast origins, might not be the best fit for a West Coast bowl game. In other words they were a Plan C at best. It was a pleasant and extended conversation that touched on a variety of college football related topics in which we were both most conversant.

 

Again having more free time than is healthy for a 28-yr-old to have, about a week later I called Mr. Halvaks again to see if the bowl landscape had changed. It had changed and the ‘Cuse was on the outs. He commiserated with me and even gave me the pre-announcement scoop, the Freedom Bowl had enticed the PAC-12’s Washington Huskies and the SEC’s Florida Gators to faceoff in that year’s bowl. We continued talking animatedly and, sensing my keen interest and understanding of college bowl games, he suggested I come down to the stadium for a visit – that perhaps I might apply my acumen to this post-season collegiate endeavor.

 

What the Freedom was happening here? WTF indeed. I was on the cusp of something previously thought unimaginable – an intimate window on the inside world of a major college bowl game and Mr. Halvaks was perhaps interested in me helping them out in some capacity. The possibility of my full-fledged involvement in a college football bowl game from an insider’s administrative perspective was bewildering. This supreme opportunity was a bucket list item I didn’t even know I had. It had magically populated my bucket in the flash of one phone call. Read the rest of this entry »