Grateful Dead

Now let me preface this by saying that the last time I followed sports in any serious fashion, Sandy Koufax was pitching. However, many years ago when I was working for the computer magazine that was the spinoff of BAM, I was on AOL (then a fairly new service) one day in the pets forum when I came across a guy looking for a dogsitter in Oakland. Ideally a live-in dogsitter, as he had a big place and traveled a lot. So I sent him an email referring him to my dogsitter, who had distinguished herself by her conscientiousness during the Oakland firestorm and who I thought might know just the person. So we chatted back and forth in email a bit, and finally the guy says, hey, if you're a Warriors fan and want to see a game, lemme know and I'll comp you some tix. Whereupon the lightbulb went off and I put two and two together and realized I was talking to one of our great local sports poobahs, who had been a Warriors owner at one point and was still connected in some fashion. So I was tickled by this, but since my interest was as above (see Sandy Koufax), I thanked him politely and thought little more of it. Until some time later when I was walking down the hall and heard the boss bemoaning the fact that due to bad planning on his part his KIDS were using his season tickets for the upcoming game and he himself was shut out because the game was sold out. So, grinning to myself, I barged in and said, um, perhaps I can help, and explained the situation. As the boss is picking himself up from the floor (all else aside, I had never evinced the slightest interest in basketball), I explained that there was one catch, which was that I probably had to use one of the tickets just so if the guy came looking for me I'd actually be there. The boss decided he could live with this, so I made the phone call. No sooner was I back in the boss's office explaining that the deed was done than the phone rang and the receptionist came in giggling to announce that someone named Franklin the Dog Lover was on the phone demanding to talk to me. So I got on the phone and the sports guy says "My secretary says you asked for tickets for this game. But she had a feeling you were going to give them to somebody else and not use them yourself!" So, thanking my lucky stars that I had anticipated this situation, I said no no, I was coming, and I hoped we could meet. So the big day comes, and the boss and I get the tix and find ourselves in quite decent seats (in the risers at the Coliseum, if you'll remember from the shows). This was pretty swell. Then a woman in a Warriors business suit comes up and asks if I'm Mary Eisenhart. When I admit that I am and thank her for the seats, she says, come with me. So the boss and I follow along with her, and the next thing we know we are ensconced in the COURTSIDE SEATS next to Franklin Mieuli his badself, who proceeds to tell us the fine points of the game and the inside scoop on the large athletic young men who nearly crash into us several times in the course of the evening and generally be an awesome host. But that's not the best part. The best part is that unbeknownst to me, this was the night on which the Grateful Dead, or the Rex Foundation, I think, were presenting Sarunas Marciulonis with a big check for the Lithuanian basketball team (which, as we all knew, went on to win bronze in tie-dye uniforms funded by you-know-who). So it was flippin' old home week, and at halftime there we all were, McNally and various Dead dignitaries and many of my pals whooping it up with us in the VIP lounge. It was, shall we say, an unforgettable experience, my first basketball game, even if it did fail to turn me into a real sports fan.

You know, as the mists of time clear away, I realize that I neglected to mention that I'm pretty sure Bobby and Mickey presented the actual check, though no, I did not hang out with them. Warriors vs. Sacramento Kings. Only King I remember was the great Spud Webb, who was a real treat to watch. On the Warriors at the time, Chris Mullin, Chris Gatling (if I'm remembering right), Rooney as he was known, and various other cool folks. As I recall, Warriors won, barely and in OT, I think. It was pretty great. It was also a long time ago!

would be Harry Belafonte sometime in the '50s, but I'm guessing. He certainly did an early version. Tune's canonical name is "Man Smart, Woman Smarter."

CC has been Gone too long!

is that Nevilles are involved, the hit single in the early '60s was the Dixie Cups as I recall, and they were somehow connected to the Nevilles. There's a version on an album I've got by the Wild Tchoupitoulas, another Neville offshoot. But where it was before the Nevilles I do not know!

This is just how Google works. I've said it before and I'll say it again: anything you post on the forums is world readable. You do not have to log in to read this stuff, you just have to log in to post. I refer you to our original TOS, Very Few Rules, which concludes: 5. As the old adage says, never say anything online that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times. Rule #1 notwithstanding, as a practical matter there is no guarantee that anything you post here will not wind up on 600 blogs, Homeland Security's database, Digg, or your prospective employer's Google search. Post accordingly. This is still true and it's unlikely that there will ever be a time in the evolution of the Internet that it is not true. It is very difficult to balance the freedom and euphoria of talking to like-minded souls with the fact that you're doing so in an extremely insecure medium, and that your posts can be freely distributed God knows where, some out of approval and some out of malice. But that is the way it is. You cannot ever know who is reading what you post. Kinda like the parking lot. Something for everyone, but not smart to run around saying "Doses! Doses!" among strangers. Watch each card you play and play it slow. Thanks. And if someone's freaked out about a particular post of theirs, send me a PM and I'll see if I can remove it. If it involves decimating a discussion, probably won't happen, but if it's the isolated What Was I Thinking? or some such, we can probably arrange something.