BRIAN LIBBY

We Are Literally #1 (For Now)

On those rare but special, sublime occasions when a sports team I love has something extraordinary happen, one of my favorite moments comes awhile later. It's after I've forgotten about the good fortune for awhile and then experience feelings of surprise and happiness all over again - the euphoric next day leftovers, you might say.

For example, I was standing in my kitchen this morning, making my first cup of coffee, when it suddenly hit me: "Oh yeah, we've got the #1 pick in the draft!" We, of course, meaning the Portland Trail Blazers.

It's been several days now since the Blazers won the NBA draft lottery, and I still find it something to savor. We haven't had a chance to potentially blow it yet, like we supposedly did in 1984 by not drafting Michael Jordan, so one is free to feel nothing but optimism. Besides, there are extra reasons to feel good. In some down years, having the #1 pick means getting the rights to pick Michael Olowakandi or Andrew Bogut - mediocre players who never have come remotely close to greatness. However, there have also been a lot of great players drafted first, like Tim Duncan, Shaq, and Lebron James. Portland has the good fortune of there being two players viewed as can't-miss prospects in Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. Whomever of the two isn't picked first in this year's draft probably would have been the #1 pick in numerous drafts past.

Blazer fans (myself included) are also very high on new general manager Kevin Pritchard. A combination of relentless research-oriented study and unteachable chutzpah, Pritchard got his start in the San Antonio front office and engineered the six-trade draft day in 2006 that brought Brandon Roy and LeMarcus Aldridge to Portland. Even before we got the #1 pick, one felt like he had the team headed for future prosperity, more so than at any time since the team got Scottie Pippen a decade ago - ironically, Jordan's sidekick, courtesy of a trade with Houston. (Someday people will more fully recognize the Scottie Pippen-led Blazers as the franchise's third-best era after the ones Walton and Drexler led in the late 70s and early 90s.)

With Oden and Durant in a two-man race to become the pick (no one else is close), dissected continuously in sports media, I find it ironic that conventional wisdom seems built on the same logic that saw the Blazers take Sam Bowie 23 years ago.

Back in 1984 when Portland picked second in the draft, the team already had a future Hall-of-Fame guard in Clyde Drexler, and the consensus among fans and media was that the Blazers needed a center. Bowie was All-American at that position for Kansas. (Remember him on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline "Sam Bam!"?) So we ignored the flashy scorer in Jordan and took Bowie. Who fucking knew? As I've said so many times before, the real tragedy came when Portland lost the coin flip for the #1 pick with Houston, who promptly took the Blazers first choice: Hakeem Olajuwan (then "Akeem"). If only the Rockets, who already had center Ralph Sampson, the #1 pick from the year before, would have taken Jordan. Then the Blazers could have taken Olajuwan and, chances are, the Portland version of Phi Slamma Jamma would have had some of MJ's rings.

And yet, even with Durant averaging 25 points per game as a freshman at Texas and Oden averaging 16, and the hindsight of history indicating a truly great scorer is invaluable, my gut still says to go with Oden. He was shooting mostly with his left hand all season following surgery (he's right-handed), and he still led his team as a freshman to the NCAA title game. Walton, by the way, thinks we should take Oden. Plus, this is one bad-ass 19 year old. Look at him - he looks like's 40!

After watching both players, reading about them and hearing comparisons to past/present players, I like to think of this as a choice between Patrick Ewing and Kevin Garnett. I might take Ewing by just a nose, but if they both reach that kind of potential, aren't we looking good either way?

I wish it were that easy.

The Bowie albatross notwithstanding, the Blazers have had the #1 pick three times before, with a spectrum of bad, great and middling results. LaRue Martin in 1972: bad pick. Bill Walton in 1974: great pick, even if the glory and the feet were fleeting. Mychal Thompson in 1979: middling pick. Although he was a solid pro and team leader for the Blazers for several years, he played in maybe one or two all-star games. Magic Johnson, by comparison, was the next year's top pick. Thompson would later wind down his career as part of Magic's supporting cast on one of the team's (yawn) last of their five championship runs in the 80s.

For now at least, though, I'd like to imagine that Walton is more the connecting thread to Oden. And besides, why spoil the fun of imagining a limitless future? I'm no expert on these things, but I think "Oden and Roy" has a nice sound to it, not unlike "Magic and Kareem" or "Shaq and Kobe". Only without the foul stench of Lakerdom. They've had a succession of great teams and enough rings to open a jewelry store. Could it maybe, possibly, eventually, mercifully, rapturously, sorta kinda, pretty please, just one teensy weensy time day be our turn to be champions again?

The Ugliest Car In the World

Ever since childhood I've been passionate about cars and their design. I think it was a small-town precursor of my interest in architecture and visual arts, a bit of engineering and sculpture rolled into a practical everyday package.

My tastes usually tend to be a bit vintage, as seen in the 1984 BMW I own know as well as my first car, a '65 Ford Mustang. But I'm also a perfect target for the newer generation of retro-styled cars, such as the VW Beetle and Mini Cooper.

However, perhaps the most consistently popular retro-looking car is the one that I find unabashedly hideous: the Chrysler PT Cruiser. Or, as I call it, the "P-U Loser".

Inspired by the modified surfing vans made in the 1960s as that sport hit its apex of popularity, the PT Cruiser is kind of like a mini-van disguised as something more bold. Unlike other popular retro cars, it has plenty of room for the whole family. As a result, its sales are still going strong seven years after it was introduced, while Beetles and Mini Coopers sell only a fraction of what their well-hyped introductions brought in.

Taste is a subjective thing, of course. Obviously there are millions of people who find the PT Cruiser delightfully styled. It's unique looking yet harkens back to a time of Baby-Boomer youth. That's their right.

But I've got to say that I find this the absolutely most wretched-looking excuse for an automobile ever thrust upon us by Detroit. It's got these riduculous wheel wells that flare out from the car's body, and the combination of grill and headlights is downright goulish to me. It looks like someone with thin, beady little eyes but a huge jaw and nose. This car could scare young children!

Worse yet, there's a PT cruiser in my neighborhood (the one pictured) that has fake wood panelling. This is another allusion to the old '60s jalopies, but the faux aspect of it makes my skin crawl. Wood panelling? What's the matter with people?

I've tried to figure out why the Beetle and Mini appeal to me so much while the PT Cruiser makes my skin crawl. I think it's partially related to the fact that the original Beetle and the Mini aspired to be aerodynamic, forward-thinking cars. But the old vans that surfers converted for holding their boards were pieces of shit. The surfers just had fun with them. But how do you recall the beauty of something whose beauty wasn't really visual? The surfer rigs were cool because they belonged to surfers. And as a result, the retro design that comes up later is a tribute to something that was never good in the first place.

Then again, maybe that's just a convenient intellectual justification for my highly subjective tastes. Either way, I'd rather look at Dom Deloise applying oinment to his delicate areas than stare at one of these atrocities. (Well, maybe I'm exaggerating just slightly.) Thank God Mercedes finally cut Chrysler loose from their tainted portfolio of otherwise gorgeous sedans.

It's All Behind Me Now

Oregon Public Broadcasting has a new marketing campaign with a redone logo, slogan and commercials. The commercials were done by a local ad agency, but they were filmed by my friend Rob Tyler, a superb local filmmaker.

A couple months ago, I got an impromptu call from Rob asking if he could film me right away at a pedestrian bridge overlooking Interstate 5. (The light was good so he was in a hurry.) So I quickly drove over there and stared down at traffic for several minutes while he filmed.

And recently the result began playing on OPB. My head is the second in a montage you see of the backs of people's heads, each looking at some different urban or rural scene. The idea is that OPB is TV for people who think. The commercial is playing regularly during primetime at the beginning and end of shows, and it's also available for viewing online here.

And yes, I know I've lost some hair.

It's funny: I have no real desire to be famous, but somehow getting on television regularly but only with the back of my head seems fitting. Once several years ago I remember having a dream in which I could fly, but could only ever get a few feet off the ground.

From Double Karl's to Serinita to Betty Crocker (or, "I Have To Say It Was A Good Day")

Yesterday was my birthday, and in the spirit of Ice Cube’s song (quoted from above), I’d like to record for posterity an enjoyable time.

I awoke around 8:30am to the sound of our cat, Ruthie, meowing outside the door. After I let her in and got back in bed, she jumped up onto my chest for her usual session of purring and kneading with her claws.

Over a series of espressos (half decaf), I spent much of the morning playing around on Shutterfly.com with different configurations for a photo-book of assorted travel pictures I’m making. I’ve already had the little books made for my Japan and Britain trips. It’s really fun how you can collect snapshots into a bound book that seems more or less professional. I often daydream of coming out with photography books, so this is an enjoyable way to play around with the concept.

Around 12:30, with weather sunny and, somewhat ominously for me, already in the 70s, I rode my bike downtown to meet my friend Ned. We lunched at The Red Coach, a longtime favorite of mine. It’s been around since 1954 and has red vinyl booths as well as some of my favorite burgers in Portland. I went with the ‘Double Karl’s Special’, a wondrously decadent double-patty concoction. At the Red Coach the waitresses also walk around with pitchers of Coke for free refills.

There’s nothing like a birthday to prompt impromptu spending. For a couple years I’ve had this pair of brown slip-on boots in a kind of Swinging London style from Banana Republic that I love. But brown doesn’t go with everything, so I gave myself a birthday gift of a matching black pair.

As if the burgers and fries weren’t enough, Ned had a hankering for a cookie afterward, so when he stopped in a cookie shop on the way back to his office, I couldn’t resist. But instead of my usual chocolate chip, I decided to live dangerously and go with white chocolate chip.

In the afternoon there was actual work to be done on various writing assignments in different stages of completion, and I also began the final proofread on my Oregon Ducks book, which comes out in July. Last week I received the bound proofs in the mail, with the photos and graphics all laid out. I’d been very worried about how it would look, because I wasn’t a big fan of the publisher’s graphic design on previous titles. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how Tales From the Oregon Ducks Sideline will look.

Because my birthday was on a Monday, we decided to delay my birthday dinner until Saturday, when we’ve got reservations at Fenouil, this yummy-sounding Pearl District restaurant. So for my literal birthday dinner last night, we got take-out from La Serinita, this terrific hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Sellwood. I was more than satiated by a burrito, a taco, half of Valarie’s enchilada and lots of chips with guacamole. But then there was birthday cake to be had, a delicious chocolate-on-chocolate number courtesy of Valarie with an assist from Betty Crocker.

To wind down the evening, we watched about a half-hour sequence of The Empire Strikes Back from Luke and Han’s rescue through the Empire’s invasion of Hoth and our heroes’ escape by Millennium Falcon and X-Wing, respectively. Those AT-AT walkers are so cool after all these viewings and years, although it’s equally satisfying when Luke, his snow speeder crashed, hoists himself with a grappling hook (which I ordered away for as a kid to go with my Star Wars Luke action figure) to the walker’s underbelly, throws a grenade, falls down into the snow, and watches the massive thing tip over in explosion. The original Star Wars trilogy in particular is so brilliant at portraying those kinds of David-and-Goliath situations with those most armed and powerful tripped up by small but ingenius and motivated adversaries. The only weird thing about it now, though, is that the exact same thing is being done to the United States. Are we the Empire?

Luckily such dour existential/political questions didn’t dog me as the birthday wound to a close. Aside from being uncomfortably full, emboldened by the birthday I was for once able to slip away from the pressures of everyday reality like a Calgon bubble bath and allow for a moment of contentment.

Vacation Writer’s Block and Photo Flood

Last month we returned from a 12-day vacation to London and Copenhagen, and I’ve been meaning to write about it ever since. But where do you begin? A general recounting of the narrative feels dull, and yet it’s impossible to recount all the details.

If I’ve been tongue-tied about how to talk about the trip, at least I have photos. A lot of photos. Over the course of the trip, I took about 1,3000 pictures. Each day I’d come back to the hotel and upload a couple hundred more onto my laptop. Since arriving back home, I’ve spent much of the last 40 days going through them all.

So instead of trying to recount highlights from my memory banks, maybe I’ll just talk about some of my favorite pictures.

This one was taken in London at the top of The Monument, a skinny cylindrical tower not unlike the Washington Monument, only round. The Monument in London was built to commemorate the lives lost in the Great Fire of 1666. I took a lot of pictures of the skyline, capturing nearby buildings of note like Richard Rogers’ legendary Lloyd’s of London building, Norman Foster’s new office tower unofficially dubbed ‘The Gherkin’, the Tower of London, or Foster’s City Hall. But my favorite shot, seen here, was looking through the bars of The Monument with a blurry St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background. St. Paul’s is such an icon that it’s easily identifiable even just in silhouette, and the bars have a great texture in addition to how they bisect the frame in a cool symmetrical way.

As it happens, out of those 1,300 photos another favorite shot was taken just a few seconds later – on my way down the very claustrophobic winding staircase. Anytime somebody else would pass by, one would have to practically do a spread-eagle against the wall to let them pass by. But I managed to steal a view looking straight down, which has a surreal visual effect but also, as with the bars, has a cool old material texture.

One of my other favorite shots was taken in Copenhagen. The area you see in this photo, Nyhavn, is one of the more popular and probably tourist-oriented areas in the city. But it’s such a striking scene, set upon one of Copenhagen’s Amsterdam-like canals with a host of multi-colored buildings. I also like the street lamp that shows up in the foreground. If I end up framing any of these vacation photos, so far this would be the leading candidate.

Another favorite Copenhagen picture was taken the day we flew home. It was that in-between time where we had to check out of our hotel, but had a couple hours to kill before it was time to go to the airport. So we went for a walk in a residential area nearby, and along the way came across a store that was selling all kinds of used knickknacks, including lots of silverware. I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures of storefront windows that incorporate both aspects of what you see through the glass and what’s reflected onto it.

While in London, we made a day trip to the nearby town of Richmond along the Thames and the adjacent Kew Gardens, also known as the royal botanical gardens. I’d wanted to see Kew Gardens for a few years, although ironically it was not to see the plant life so much as the massive old greenhouses there, at least one of which is an architectural world heritage site. The biggest structure, called Palm House, was my favorite, but I couldn’t get any pictures inside because the simulated tropical environment fogged up my camera lens within just a couple of seconds. And outside, somehow none of my photos did enough justice to how impressive Palm House and some of the other buildings at Kew really were.

As it happens, though, by the time we returned to Richmond to take the train back into London, the light was spectacular, and I got a couple shots of the buildings along the Thames bathed in that golden illumination.

Ironically, one of the photos from the trip that I still enjoy seeing is a totally unsuccessful one. While staying with our friends Neil and Bridget in south London’s Wandsworth Common area, one night I was lying awake in bed and noticed their motion-sensor porch light coming on constantly. I got out of bed to look, and saw it was a fox. It seemed like a major fluke at the time, but he was back the next night and the night after that. Turns out urban foxes in London are very common. Some neighbors of Neil and Bridget even had a family of them living in their garage. But to us, it was an extraordinary episode.

Mud, Broken Microphones and the Missing Red Head: A Dampened But Joyous Blazer 30th

A couple weeks ago the Portland Trail Blazers held a celebration downtown at Shrunk Plaza across from City Hall to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the team's 1977 NBA championship. The actual 30th anniversary is June 5, 1977, but the ceremony was held on the occasion of the jersey-retiring ceremony for the point guard on that team, Lionel Hollins, and held at halftime of the of current Blazers' last game.

Pioneer Courthouse Square would have been a much more visible and practical choice for the event, but Shrunk Plaza was where the original championship parade concluded. For history's sake, it was the right call. But Shrunk Plaza has only a small brick-paved area and the rest is mostly a grassy gently-sloping hillside occupying one city block. This was an early spring day, and not only was it showering, but the ground was very soft and muddy from lots of rain that already had fallen. The ceremony was held at noon, and there were hundreds of us - including lots of business people on their lunch hours - getting our feet and pant legs submerged in mud. One poor guy fell down on his butt and slid about 15 feet down the wet slope. He got totally covered in mud. But you know what? He still stayed until the end of the ceremony. There was also a woman who seemed to be in her early 40s who was trying to control her toddler, who also managed to get covered in mud. "I know this doesn't mean much to you at your age," the woman said to obvlivious little girl, "but it does to Mommy."

The team members from '77 who attended the event came by bus with a police escort down Broadway to the plaza, in a recreation of that day, in which hundreds of thousands of people mobbed the victorious team as it made its way down Broadway. They were a little late in arriving, however, so keeping the crowd warmed up fell on two disparate parties: emcee Bill Schonely, the much beloved longtime Blazers radio announcer (his call of the winning championship moment is a Pavlovian tear-inducer for Blazer fans like myself) and the Blazer dance team. It was pretty embarrassing to behold, seeing these cheerleaders rocking out to Motley Crue's "Girls Girls Girls" while the septuagenarian Schonely encourages them (I hope I detected a tongue-in-cheeck look in his eye) by saying, "Do it, girls!" I laughed to myself thinking how hard the Blazers' PR department is trying to generate a family-friendly image after the "Jail Blazers" era, and yet the cheerleaders are dancing to a song that had its music video set in a strip club.

It was really endearing, though, when the team arrived and got introduced by Schonely one by one. I remember noticing this sort of blue-collar guy in front of me video taping the whole thing with his friend. He recognized all the players (all 30 years older now) at once. "Oh my god," he said, "they even got Corky Calhoun!"

This was a case of two polar-opposite emotions coming through simultaneously, though. Seeing all these now pretty every day looking guys in their fifties and sixties hailed as conquering heroes was a sincerely beautiful scene. In one particularly heart-tugging case, current Blazer players Joel Pryzbilla and Ime Udoka helped carry Robin Jones in his wheelchair down the terraced steps onto the stage.

All the while, though, Schonely's microphone kept going in and out. Even thinking about it now, my eyes squeeze shut and my nose shrivels in full-on cringe. He carried on, either not realizing the mic was failing (my bet) or choosing to ignore it. Thankfully, his microphone seemed to kick in for good just as the championship trophy was brought to the stage by two season-ticket holders whose subscription dates back to before the championship some 35 years.

There was a problem bigger than the mud or the faulty public address system, though: the missing presence of Bill Walton. "The big redhead's not here," Shonely announced. Apparently Walton couldn't get out of an existing assignment doing commentary for an NBA telecast on ESPN. I felt pretty angry Walton wasn't there. Although this was a real team in the most basic sense, with a disciplined offense that shared the ball and a very strong defense, Walton was clearly its superstar. He's a powerful enough figure now (a kind of star broadcaster, love or hate his boisterous style) that I believe he could have gotten permission from his teacher to skip class for a day. But the Blazers also seemed not to have planned things very well - it was all a bit hasty - so I wonder if the real fault lies in asking Walton too late. Schonely did say that Walton asked him to remind the crowd that he poured a can of beer over the mayor's head during the championship celebration. What if someone did that to Tom Potter now? They'd probably be looking at hard time.

At the same time, though, I was shocked by how little Walton was mentioned in the ceremony other than Schonely's announcement. I mean, you don't have to be a Blazer fan to acknowledge that however short his career may have been, Bill Walton was one of the handful of greatest centers to ever play the game, along with Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar, Olajuwan, Robinson and O'Neal.

With Walton gone, though, the crowd could have more fun with the role players from the championship team, so many of whom seemed to rise above their individual potential. Larry Steele led the NBA in (appropriately) steals that year, for example. Steele, by the way, was the best dressed at the ceremony, wearing a nicely cut suit. Bobby Gross, as Schonely noted, "had Dr. J running all over the place" in the championship series. And then of course there's Maurice Lucas, the power forward who not only was the team's high scorer, but also was a hugely intimidating presence - an ideal combination with the ultra talented but highly injury-susceptible Walton. In one famous moment during the '77 playoffs, he actually grabbed a referee's whistle while still around the guy's neck and said, "I wouldn't blow that again if I were you." Of course today "The Enforcer", now an assistant coach with the current team, is quite the teddy bear.

Luckily given Walton's presence, coach Jack Ramsay (also an ESPN commentator) was at the ceremony. When he was introduced, the burly video-camera-toting guy in front of me said to his friend, "I love this dude!" And Ramsay was all about simple sincerity in his brief comments.

A continuing theme of the ceremony was the connection between the '77 team and the current one, which certainly seems to be headed in the right direction with Brandon Roy and company. But you just never know. The Blazers have been tantalizingly close to winning the championships on at least four other occasions, 1990-92 and 2000, but always wound up without the ring. I don't want to let myself get heartbroken again.

One bit of bitter personal irony is that, as much as I cherish the 1977 championship, I really was too young to appreciate or remember when it happened. I was five years old. I remember a blur of Blazer mania, but I can't visualize where I was or what it felt like when the moment was won. That has always eaten away at me, of course. But as we filtered out of Shrunk plaza, to the predictable canned blare of Queen's "We Are the Champions", I felt emboldened as part of a family of people who deeply cherish that day in June thirty years ago.

As I see what I've written, it feels embarassingly earnest, but that's precisely why the couple of sports teams I follow mean so much to me. They're an escape from all the complexities and ambiguities of life. There's nothing left to wonder about the 1977 Trail Blazers championship. They won it. They were absolutely positively the validated best basketball team in the world as of June 5, 1977. Nobody can take that away.

It's enough to make me get choked up standing the rain and mud through a bush-league ceremony broadcast with faulty speakers.