Slimebags? Or Patriots?

Last week, a letter to the editor in the Berkeley Voice called the Occupy protesters "slimebags," adding, "Water canons, stun guns, clubbing and arrests must be used on these freedom violators, with full force and with no possible legal actions against our police officers."
I couldn't agree more. Who do these kids think they are?
I watched the police break up the Occupy Cal encampment on the UC campus, and I was shocked by the violence with which the protestors attacked the police truncheons with their stomachs.
The chancellor had it absolutely right when he said, "It is unfortunate that some protesters chose to obstruct the police by linking arms and forming a human chain to prevent the police from gaining access to the tents. This is not non-violent civil disobedience."
Right on! Violent arm-linking has been an intimidation tactic at least since the days of those infamous terrorists Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And, as Stephen Colbert pointed out, don't forget Occupy Oz, when Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion linked arms as they skipped down the Yellow Brick Road on their way to murder a witch.
Then, a week later, an overwhelming mob of 12 students at UC Davis protested the events at Cal by sitting down, linking arms (that violent tactic again) and attacking the police tear gas canisters with their faces.
There's been some criticism of the police actions in that incident, and a handful of people - only 80,000 - have signed a petition calling for the chancellor to resign. But as Fox News' Megyn Kelly pointed out, "Pepper spray is a food product, essentially," just like those other yummy snacks, mustard gas and Agent Orange.
In fact, the restraint shown by the authorities has been admirable. It reminds me of the so-called Civil Rights marches of the 1960s, when the Birmingham police magnanimously provided some cute little dogs for the demonstrators to play with.
And, because Birmingham tends to get hot in the summertime, the police, no doubt worried that some of the demonstrators might get heat stroke, cooled them off by spraying them with fire hoses.
The entire University of California system is beset by tight budgets, and you might be wondering, as I did, where the money came from to buy such expensive riot equipment and give the campus cops their riot control training.
It turns out that the funding was provided by the Department of Homeland Security, which is also good news.
I don't know about you, but I'm sure relieved that Homeland Security is focusing on student protestors - but not all student protestors; the ones who rioted at Penn State are OK - instead of wasting their time chasing Al Qaeda and Timothy McVeigh wannabes.
It might be a long struggle, folks, but don't despair. The day will come when people think twice before speaking their minds; and government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations shall not perish from the earth.
We shall overcome.

Toy Story

Memo to Santa: Interactive toys are in this Christmas, passive toys are out.
So says Devin McDonald, co-owner (with his life and business partner, Jenny Stevenson) of Mr. Mopps' in Berkeley, one of the last of the old-fashioned neighborhood toy stores.
"Kids love to fill in the gaps with their own imagination," he says. "Just give them an open-ended toy, and they'll take it from there."
Which means out with toys where you all you do is push a button and watch them do their thing. And in with toys that you can actually play with. For instance:
* Do-it-yourself kits such as Make Your Own Friendship Bracelet and Make Your Own Monster Doll (with extra eyeballs in case you want to give him four eyes, or even six).
* Spy kits, which include ink pad, dusting powder & brush (for detecting fingerprints), magnifying glass, mirror and fingerprint files.
* Educational jigsaw puzzles such as Great Inventors, which spotlights some inventors you know (Edison, Guttenberg, Wozniak and Jobs) and some you've probably never heard of (Ts'ai Lun, who invented paper, Bartolomeo Cristofori, who invented the piano, and Aryabhata, who invented the concept of zero).
A pretty good sign of an interactive toy is that it doesn't need a battery.
But there are exceptions. Moon In My Room is a 3-D lunar landscape that you hang on your bedroom wall, a remote control that lets you put the Moon through all 12 phases, and a CD audio tour of the Moon. Way cool.
Then there's the Anti-Monster Flashlight, "guaranteed to scare away any unwanted monsters that might be hiding in your room, under your bed or behind the curtains. Also effective against ghosts, witches, warlocks, werewolves, zombies and clowns."
Meanwhile, doll houses have been re-invented as wooden play sets, allowing kids to construct an arctic polar glacier (with Eskimos, seal pups, a whale, a walrus and a penguin), King Arthur's castle, or a pirate ship with pirates, cannons, cloth sales, a rum barrel and, of course, a plank!
But the best toys of all are the same ones you loved when you were a kid: finger puppets, building blocks, swings, trampolines, hula-hoops, magnetic dart boards, and board games, including Anti-Monopoly. (Remember, this is Berkeley.)
Mr. Mopps' has been a Mecca for Berkeley children for almost 50 years, most of that time under the ownership of Eugene Yamashita. Several generations of kids grew up and brought their own kids and grandkids to his store.
One of them was Devin, who has been a loyal customer since he was a toddler, when his grandmother took him there and bought him his favorite teddy bear, Mr. Choo-Choo (who, by the way, is still with us, residing on the mantle in Devin and Jenny's living room).
When Yamashita retired a couple of years ago, he turned down several higher offers and sold the place to Devin and Jenny because he felt they were the best ones to continue his tradition.
Old-fashioned toy stores like Mr. Mopps' are rapidly becoming an endangered species. But there are still a few left, including The Magic Leaf at Children's Fairyland, the ToyHouse in Montclair, Five Little Monkeys in Albany, Rockridge Kids in Rockridge, Sweet Dreams in the Elmwood, and Toy Safari in Alameda.
Check them out instead of the giant Internet and chain stores this holiday season.

Good Guy And Bad Guy

Congratulations to Tony La Russa, who has achieved that rarest of feats in sports: Like Jim Brown and Sandy Koufax, he went out on top.
He's one of only two managers - the other is Sparky Anderson - to win World Series with teams in both leagues. He won more games than anybody but John McGraw and Connie Mack. (And Mack owned his team, so he couldn't be fired.)
And in his final season he skippered the Cardinals to come-from-behind wins in both the regular season and the World Series.
But just as John Madden is already becoming more famous for his video games than for his Hall of Fame careers as both a coach and a TV analyst, I think Tony will be better known someday for his work to ease the suffering of animals.
Before he and his wife Elaine founded the Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF, for short), there was no adoption agency for homeless dogs and cats in Contra Costa County except the hopelessly overstretched resources of the county animal shelter. Thousands of cats and dogs who would have been euthanized because of overcrowding are alive today, thanks to them.
But equally important, by going public about his love for animals - something no one else in the sports world had dared to do - Tony made compassion cool. Nowadays it's common to see athletes like Ron Artest and Jason Taylor doing commercials for animal welfare groups. But Tony started it all a quarter-century ago..
I first met Tony 25 years ago, when he was managing the A's. He, Elaine and their daughters, Devon and Bianca, were quietly picketing a business in Walnut Creek because it was selling furs. (It was the girls' idea.)
Then a guy emerged from the store and unleashed a string of obscenities at them, even though Devon and Bianca were both under 10 at the time.
"You blankety-blanks! Take those blankety-blank signs and blankety-blank, blankety blank, blankety blank!"
Suddenly, he stopped. A look of recognition came over his face.
"Hey, you're Tony La Russa! Hey, sign this ball for me, willya?"
Nice guy that he is, Tony signed.
* * *
On the other end of the human spectrum, we have the late Robert Stroud, better known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.
If you've never been to Alcatraz, you really should go. It's absolutely fascinating.
When you arrive, the first people you'll meet will be former prisoners and former guards, all hawking copies of their memoirs.
And they all say the same thing: Contrary to the saintly old man portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the movie, Stroud was the most hated person on The Rock.
He was a brutal murderer and rapist and an avid collector of child pornography. New inmates, especially if they were young and good looking, were quickly pulled aside by an old-timer and warned to give Stroud a wide berth.
Everyone hated him, prisoners and guards alike. But Stroud didn't care. The movie made him famous, and he loved to boast, "When I die, it'll be the front page headline in every newspaper in the world!"
But God has a great sense of humor. Stroud died in his sleep late one night at age 85, and his body was discovered in bed the next day when the guards made their morning rounds.
The date: November 22, 1963.

Go For Broke

Shig Doi and Lawson Sakai are no heroes. Just ask them, and they'll insist, "I was only doing my job."
The U.S. Army, however, disagrees. It awarded Doi, who lives in Richmond, two Bronze Stars for "heroic and meritorious service" in World War II.
Sakai, who lives in Morgan Hill, was awarded one Bronze Star and four Purple Hearts. He was actually wounded a fifth time, but he refused to let his name put up for another medal because he didn't think his wound was serious enough.
Both men are veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese-American World War II unit whose members were awarded more medals, man for man, than any other unit in American history.
But the most impressive thing of all is that they did this while their own families were imprisoned behind barbed wire back at home in forlorn hellholes euphemistically named "relocation camps." Doi's family was sent to Camp Amache in Colorado; Sakai's sister was sent to Camp Poston in Arizona.
In addition to their individual decorations, the entire 442 was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal on Nov. 2. It's only the second time an entire military unit has been given this honor. (The first was the Tuskegee airmen.)
The Congressional Gold Medal is different from the Medal of Honor. Several 442 veterans have that one, too, including Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who lost his right arm while leading an assault on a heavily-defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany.
Doi and Sakai were among the hundreds of surviving veterans of the regiment who flew to Washington, DC, for the ceremony, which was held in the U.S. Capitol's Emancipation Hall.
President Obama wasn't invited because this was a congressional event, not a presidential one. But all the party leaders from both the House and Senate made speeches.
"I thought Nancy Pelosi gave a good speech, and so did Mitch McConnell," says Sakai. "But the amazing thing is that there were eight to 10 politicians, and they all stayed within their time limit!"
The climax of the ceremony was the awarding of the gold medal, which Sen. Inouye accepted on behalf of the regiment.
"Danny looked great," says Sakai, a good friend since they served together in the war. "He's dyed his hair, so he looks younger. The rest of us have white hair."
The next day, the veterans were wined and dined at a gala banquet in the main ballroom of the Washington Hilton, featuring speeches by Inouye, Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose), Veterans Affairs chief Gen. Eric Shinseki, and "Today" show anchor Ann Curry.
"After the banquet we had our own private celebration," says Sakai. "We drank a LOT of Scotch. I think we drained the hotel's supply."
There are two reasons why the 442 earned so many medals. One is that some - but not all - of their Caucasian officers were racists who considered them mere cannon fodder and had no hesitation about sacrificing their lives to get bigger headlines.
But the other reason is that they were simply better soldiers. They could do things that other units couldn't do, such as rescuing the Lost Battalion, a Texas National Guard unit that was trapped behind German lines; or breaking the Gothic Line in northern Italy, which had stymied the entire U.S. Army for six months. They broke through in less than 24 hours.
Both these deeds were accomplished with great loss of life, of course. Doi's company was the spearhead of the assault that rescued the Lost Battalion.
"There were 130 of us when we attacked," he says. "Only eight of us walked out."
The Congressional Gold Medal will go on permanent display at the Smithsonian, and all the veterans received duplicates made from a baser metal.
One of those duplicates will become part of the exhibit honoring the 442 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, the floating maritime museum docked at Alameda Point. It is the only display honoring an Army unit aboard a Navy ship. Sakai will formally present the medal to the Hornet at a ceremony on Friday at 11 a.m.
"My father always said that something good will come out of all this," says Doi. "After 67 years, it's too late for the guys who are no longer here. But they finally acknowledged us, and things are all changed for my children."

Pigskins and Pianos

(Above: Pappy Below: Audrey)

When Larry Blake's restaurant closed its doors last February, after 70 years as THE hangout for Cal students and alumni, many Old Blues wondered where they could go now.
Fear not: A new eatery is about to open on that site, and it's going to be called Pappy's Grill, which shows the new owners know a thing or two about tradition.
It's going to be blue and gold from top to bottom, from the oversized Cal banner flying in the courtyard to the framed football program covers from the Wonder Team and Thunder Team years on the walls.
The men's basketball team will broadcast its post-game radio show from the restaurant, and Pappy's Boys - the guys who played during the Pappy Waldorf era - are donating memorabilia.
But Pappy's is going to be about more than the Waldorf era, or even Cal football. The giant TV screen will feature videos of The Play that broke Stanford's heart in 1982 (but not, thankfully, Roy Riegels' wrong-way run that lost the Rose Bowl in 1929).
But it will also show the Cal Marching Band doing its signature spell-out at the Big Game, Cecilia Bartoli in a Cal Performances concert at Zellerbach Hall, some of Cal's 22 Nobel Prize winners giving lectures, even Mario Savio speaking on Sproul steps.
"We want to honor the whole spectrum of Cal/Berkeley/Telegraph Avenue history," says owner Alex Popov.
He hopes to have the place open by the end of the month; but you know how pokey the permitting process can be, so it might take another week or two.
* * *
Meanwhile, here's an update on 16-year-old piano sensation Audrey Vardanega, the Oakland girl who has been wowing critics, audiences and seasoned musical pros ever since she made her debut with the Midsummer Mozart Festival at age 13.
At the time, I asked Maestro George Cleve, the festival's artistic director, how good Audrey is for someone her age.
"Her age has nothing to do with it," he said. "You're lucky to find that kind of ability at any age. She has an endless capacity to move me musically. It's a privilege to work with her."
Then I heard her play, and I understood what he was talking about. Beyond her flawless technique and profound understanding of the music, she has the rare ability to bring the audience into the experience. When she plays Mozart, it's an intimate three-way conversation between her, Mozart and you.
And the best part is that none of this has gone to her head. She's still a normal teenager who is eagerly looking forward to attending a Katy Perry concert next month.
On Dec. 2 the Piedmont Piano Company's prestigious concert series will showcase her playing works by Chopin, Mozart, Liszt and Debussy.
And for the occasion, owner Jim Callahan - a big fan of Audrey's - is lending her one of his Fazioli pianos, the Rolls Royce of the piano world.
Faziolis are handmade from the finest materials on the planet. The wood for the soundboards comes from the same forest that Antonio Stradivari used to make his violins. Only 50 are made each year.
The Piedmont Piano Company is located at 18th and San Pablo in downtown Oakland. Suggested donation is $15. Visit www.piedmontpiano.com for more information.

Pigskin Pioneer

Congratulations to Andy Mousalimas of Oakland, who is back from Los Angeles after being inducted as one of the inaugural members of the Toyota Fantasy Football Hall of Fame, along with Scotty Stirling and the late Bill Winkenbach.
Toyota flew Andy and his daughter, Paula, to L.A. for the ceremony, put them up at a posh hotel, wined them and dined them, and gave them the VIP treatment. (You can watch the induction ceremony at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn8YbwpWB1c/)
It's no less than he deserves, because Andy, Scotty and Bill were the guys who invented fantasy football.
It all started in a New York City hotel room on a rainy October night in 1962, when the Raiders were on the tail end of a 16-day East Coast road trip. (In those days, they scheduled all their away games in one stretch because they couldn't afford to fly back and forth to the East Coast.)
Bill, a part owner of the Raiders, was joined by Bill Tunnell, the team's P.R. man, and Scotty, who was covering the team for the Oakland Tribune. As the night progressed and the cocktails flowed, the three men hammered out the basic rules.
When they got back to Oakland they let a few more guys in on the idea, including George Ross, sports editor of the Tribune, and Andy, who was managing the Raiders players' favorite watering hole, the Lamp Post.
Thus was born the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League - GOPPPL for short. Bill was named league commissioner.
"You have to understand what it was like back then," says Andy. "Pro football wasn't what it is now; baseball was the big thing. And the lowest of all were AFL fans like us. NFL fans - particularly 49er fans - looked down their noses at us."
The first draft was held on Aug. 22, 1963, in Bill's basement. The first player taken was George Blanda, who was drafted by two different teams: one as a quarterback and the other as a place-kicker.
As word got around, more people signed up the following year - so many, the draft was moved to a local restaurant.
"To give you an idea of how much times have changed," says Andy, "the menu for the 1966 draft dinner offered a choice of New York steak, prime rib or lobster for $6 per person. And that included tax and tip."
Information was harder to come by in those days. There was no ESPN, no sports bars, and the networks gave only the final scores, not who scored the points. "We kept begging them for more details, but they ignored us," Andy says.
The information gap reached its nadir in 1978, when one GOPPPL team drafted St. Louis tight end J.V. Cain - only to discover that Cain had died three weeks before.
In 1969 Andy bought the King's X Tavern at Piedmont & 51st and turned it into fantasy football central. By 1972 the Kings X had 200 participants playing in six different divisions: Kings, X, Taxi, Other (in honor of the old AFL, dubbed "the other league" by NFL snobs), Rookie, and an all-female division called Queens.
Today, fantasy football is a billion dollar industry with more than 30 million players worldwide.
Scotty went on to executive positions with the Raiders, Warriors and Sacramento Kings. Andy sold the King's X and retired in 1991.
Bill died in 1993. His last words to Scotty were "I told you we should have copyrighted the damn thing!

Rodney King Was Right

(Above: Rodney King at the press conference following the riots that broke out after the cops who beat him up were acquitted.)

Last week I was talking with a woman whose job is handling customer complaints for a local business. I asked if she's noticed any change lately in the tone of the phone calls.
"Absolutely!" she said. "People are angrier - a LOT angrier. Sometimes I go home after work shaking from the abuse."
I've been hearing the same thing from other people who deal with the public: sales clerks, bus drivers, telephone operators - you name it.
On the other hand, I hear from my friends that when they call a business, the people on the other end of the line are getting snippier, too.
I've also noticed this growing testiness in interpersonal relationships - stupid fights over stupid issues that at another time might have been chalked up to a simple misunderstanding and quickly forgotten.
And I see it on Facebook, listservs and other social media, where the rhetoric is getting meaner and more confrontational.
People are quicker to flip you off in traffic or to blast their horn if you're even a split-second late hitting the gas pedal after the light turns green.
In short, we're getting grumpier. A few weeks ago I wrote a column lamenting the rising anger in our political discourse; and, predictably, I got a lot of angry emails in reply.
But I think the problem goes way beyond the current political nastiness, although that isn't helping matters.
We have been suffering from this terrible recession for more than four years, with no end in sight.
Those who have lost their jobs, their homes or their retirement savings are clearly under a lot of pressure. But even those who have been able to hang on to their jobs are filled with anxiety, and with good reason: There's no telling where the next pink slip will land.
It's not hard to figure out. In high school biology class they taught us that if you put rats in a Skinner box under a lot of pressure, they'll start biting each other.
And when people are put under pressure, they react the same way: by turning on each other. Divorce and domestic abuse rates rise, and the scapegoating and finger pointing - usually at the most vulnerable among us - starts. The history books tell us that the national mood was pretty sour during the Great Depression, too.
I'm no exception. I'm becoming too quick to take offense and too slow to let it drop.
It's all very understandable, even excusable. But is it wise? Things are tough enough without us making it worse by being at each other's throats.
Yes, we feel powerless to change the world. But we can still change the tiny part of the world immediately around us.
We can start by realizing that every person we encounter is a human being, too. The next time someone is rude to you, be generous and don't respond in kind. You don't know what kind of awful day they might be having.
We all need to slow down, cut each other some slack and not sweat the small stuff. Otherwise, we end up becoming part of the problem.
I'm sorry this column isn't very profound. The best I can offer is the question posed by Rodney King: Can't we all just get along?