Go Bears!

Cal banner courtesy of the Bleacher Report

Y'all know that I am totally non-sportzoid. If I am physically present at a game there is a good chance I will shout myself hoarse cheering on the team I favor. Absent that, I don't care about any of it - with two exceptions.

All that matters is whether UCLA beats USC and Cal beats Stanford.

None of the rest gets me going. Back in my late twenties I was quite a fan of the Lakers and UCLA basketball. I have a sense of nostalgic geographic loyalty to the Dodgers and the Oakland A's though I have only attended one professional baseball game in my life (and it was an exciting one).

Well, Cal beat Stanford.
The Axe goes back where it belongs: Berkeley! w00t and double w00t!

Click graphic to enlarge (for all you stats lovers). Graphic courtesy of Rob Calonge's Examiner article.

I share here a chunk of Jon Wilner's article in the San Jose Mercury News:

The game turned on two plays, and Jahvid Best wasn't involved in either. Nor was Shane Vereen or Kevin Riley or Syd'Quan Thompson or any of the usual suspects in Blue and Gold.

The Big Game has a way of placing lesser-known players on center stage, if only for one outcome-altering instant. In the 111th version of the Cal-Stanford rivalry, those players were Golden Bears linebackers Devin Bishop and Eddie Young.

Bishop's leading role in a goal-line stand late in the first half and Young's interception early in the second created an 11-point swing that broke open a close game and propelled the Bears to a 37-16 victory Saturday before 70,086 at Memorial Stadium.

OK, sports fans, time to settle back in the afterglow.

It's been a good day.
--the BB

Friday Prince Blogging

Thank you for your patience, prince fans. I have been saving this one for a while. First we need to announce that he is an alumnus of Cal (that's the University of California at Berkeley) and thus a Bear. Go, Bears!

Yes, we are talking a BA in political science from Cal in 1999. I remember commuting through the campus wondering if I would ever get a glimpse of him. (I didn't.) He was a dish back then. And he ain't getting ugly at time passes.
Yes, we are speaking of the Crown Prince of Norway, HRH Haakon Magnus.
He has an older sister but primogeniture was not sorted out in Norway until too late for her. It is not retroactive and so HRH Märtha Louise has to step aside and let her kid brother ascend the throne.
Here he is in younger days.

He was born on 20 July 1973 in Oslo. (Sigh, makes me feel old. I was out of seminary and in UCLA at that time. Go, Bruins!)
He married a single mother but the Norwegians have come to terms with it. Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit have two children: Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus in addition to her son and Haakon's stepson Marius Borg Hølby.
Now, here he is not dancing with his wife but with Princess Victoria of Sweden. We Scandinavians fight amongst ourselves but have to unite against the rest of the world.

[OK, you got me. For all the protests of a Latin soul, I will stand up for the North once in a while. Just wish I were standing next to HRH. Woof!]
25 August 2001 at Oslo Cathedral: the royal couple tie the knot. Isn't that a sweet picture?
A music fan, fond of windsurfing, a patron of several causes, a supporter of culture
Oops, he even hangs out with clergy (God save His Royal Highness!).

I lifted the info out of Wikipedia. The photos I've gathered over time.

Haakon is also a Knight of the Elephant in Denmark, a holder of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Chyrsanthemum in Japan, and in Sweden a Knight of the Order of the Seraphim. Sing, choirs of heaven!
--the BB