Archive for the ‘UCLA’ Tag
Community.
At its best, a university becomes a community that supports its members. And that’s exactly what UCLA has done with an event put on by the Student Alumni Association called Dinner For 12 Strangers. UCLA alumni – worldwide – are asked to host dinners for fellow Bruins.
Dinners can be hosted for other alumni, or for students. Last year, UCLA alumni, including Velda, hosted nearly 400 dinners over 3 weekends.
This year, Velda partnered with Debi, her fellow UCLA alumna, good friend, co-worker, and former student (!) to co-host a Dinner. I knew we were in trouble when Debi and Martin, her husband, began unloading their car to deliver their culinary creations to our home, and they brought in serving dishes bigger than I’d ever seen.
WHAT? Bigger serving pieces than Velda uses. We were in trouble.
Velda never met a recipe she couldn’t make bigger and better. Debi and her sous chef Martin apparently subscribe to the same philosophy.
I try and keep Velda under control by helping her as little as possible. I mean, she’s only got 2 hands, right? As long as I’m not in the kitchen, she can’t reach things on the top shelves, and can’t open tightly sealed containers. If I was more available to her in the kitchen, heaven only knows how much more food she would be preparing for our clan.
Martin never got that memo, apparently. And doesn’t he know that using larger dishes only encourages Debi to fill them? Martin, I have so much to teach you.
But back to our wonderful Dinner.
8 students braved the LA freeways to find our home, and settled in to meet new friends and enjoy a casual dinner. They should have all brought a bunch of classmates … the buffet was overflowing the kitchen. Those big dishes were everywhere, it seems, and they were never empty. It was a great meal, obviously! The ladies even collaborated on a dessert that was an homage to a Westwood favorite, Diddy Riese. The meal was complete.
It was a largely medical crowd (something Velda requested), so there were post-dinner discussions of brain dissections, body fluids and what wild cats do in the dark. I just may have to publish my rules for family dinner conversation next time around….
Did we do the 8-clap? OF COURSE.
I can’t wait for 2014. Rumor has it the ladies will team up at Debi’s house next time. That’s great … unless Velda demands bigger serving dishes to keep up.
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One annoying thing about going to the Rose Bowl is they do not allow DSLRs into the public area. I guess they’re afraid that you might take some really good pictures?
In any event, I was limited to my old point and shoot, so I did my best.
The Bruins weren’t up to the task either, unfortunately, falling 35-17. This was just table setting for the finale, however. The Bruins have a chance for immediate revenge on Friday, when they will again play Stanford, but this time for the Pac-12 Championship. Friday’s game will be in Palo Alto.
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John Wooden created the UCLA basketball program. He inherited a program that was mediocre, at best, in the Pacific Coast Conference, going 12-13 the year before Wooden came in.
Under Wooden’s leadership, he began by winning 4 straight conference championships. From that ostentatious beginning, Wooden built the UCLA program to unprecedented levels.
- Four undefeated seasons. No other college basketball coach has more than one
- Ten national titles
- And his never-to-be-broken record: Seven straight national titles
Part of Wooden’s lore is that he recruited Lew Alcindor — one of, if not the greatest college player of all time — by saying that he was building a new basketball arena just for him. If he would only come to UCLA!
Of course, Lew Alcindor came to LA, was a part of 3 national championship teams, and was the MVP of the tournament each of those 3 years. Imagine that!
A careful watcher could have seen this coming, though. After the June 1965 completion of Pauley, it hosted its first basketball game that fall: an exhibition between the NCAA Champion varsity team, and the freshman team led by Lew Alcindor. The freshman team won!
And Pauley Pavilion became an icon of college basketball. That began with the building’s dedication in 1965. A renovation was announced in 2007, and completed this year. The first game is on Friday against Indiana State … ironically, the first college team coached by John Wooden.
Here’s a photo collection of the new Pauley Pavilion, taken today at the public open house. A new statue of John Wooden was unveiled a few days ago; it’s on the north side of the building, facing UCLA’s intramural fields.
John R. Wooden
UCLA Head Basketball Coach 1948 – 1975
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
The concourse is filled with testaments to John Wooden and his legacy at Pauley Pavilion.
The new expanded concourse surrounding the court features huge murals dedicated to the sports that play in Pauley, which will host the 2013 NCAA Men’s Volleyball championship. The John Wooden quote at the bottom: “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
Pauley will also host the 2013 NCAA women’s gymnastic championship. The Wooden text: Make each day your masterpiece.
The Wooden text under the basketball mural: “Be at your best when your best is needed.”
UCLA celebrates “Champions Made Here.” They have currently earned 108 NCAA championships, the most of any university. Each of the 108 championships are listed on the northern side of the concourse.
Pillars in the concourse have signs dedicated to noteworthy events in the illustrious history of Pauley, including Lew Alcindor’s 1967 record of 61 points in one game, which still stands today.
Pauley Pavilion is unique in college sports: only national championship banners hang from the rafters. Conference championships — of which there are many — are not showcased.
The home and visitor’s benches have been moved to the north side of the Nell and John Wooden Court. A video ribbon has been added around the arena.
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Tom Petty, Rock & Roll Star. Not a student role model.
“I’ve learned one thing, and that’s to quit worrying about stupid things. You have four years to be irresponsible here, relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. Drink ’til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does…” — an infamous quote about college education from Tom Petty
Tom Petty has made some great music, but he’s not someone to consult for educational advice. PoemHunter.com says that he’s a high school dropout. I don’t have a confirmation, but it is clear that he did not attend college. He was at the University of Florida — as a groundskeeper. Then he found his muse, moved to LA and got his first of many record deals.
Battleshots games are most commonly made with re-used pizza boxes. I do NOT recommend playing the game with the number of shots in play shown here!
Again, not someone to seek advice from about your education.
However, it’s a rare student that doesn’t find a time to walk on the wild side while in college.
Drinking games are a part of that, and BattleShots! has taken its place alongside Beer Pong as a go to solution for students seeking a release. BattleShots is played like Battleship, except when one of your boats is “hit,” you drain a cup from the board.
The problem, of course, is that there isn’t a great source for BattleShots! game boards. What’s the discriminating partier to do? There are online tips but those are hardly satisfactory. But when you want to do it right … and you’ve got skills and resources … you can get to a better place.
Designing a better BattleShots became a class project for a graduate level engineering course at the University of Southern California. The students put their design through usage analysis, figured out the ideal sight lines, etc. Michael and I then took the project from the theoretical to the practical and built it in the garage. Enjoy the pictures.
Want to see other woodworking projects I’ve done? Check out my other blog on LumberJocks.com.
The yellow baffles are removable; they just sit in slots routed into the edges of the playing surface frames. The design group decided there should be boats with 10x cup positions on a grid of 36x squares. The 4 boats are sized with 4, 3, 2 and 1 positions. This was hotly debated; the alternative of having 4, 3 and 3 or 3, 3, 2 and 2 were also considered.
The game’s made for tailgating, and in spite of Michael currently being in the final year of getting his Master’s from USC, the game HAD to be painted in UCLA colors. Both Velda (MSN, ’02) and Michael (BS Engineering, ’09) got degrees from UCLA — and once a Bruin, always a Bruin. If you know anything about this college rivalry in Southern California, you know this was a big deal!
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Best trivia question of the week: Name the last African American to lead UCLA in passing for a season.
If you’ve been reading MowryJournal, you probably know I’m a simple guy. I believe in the golden rule. I believe people are good. I believe people are smart.
With me so far? ’cause those are big ideas, and they inform how I believe life should be lived. That’s why I was so struck this week by two different examples of how people view the importance of race in America today.
Note: I won’t be making angry political comments. Please stick with me for a few ‘graphs and see if you can agree with my conclusion.
Alec Baldwin. Do you trust this man’s opinion about race relations?
Alec Baldwin tweeted this week that “If Obama was white, he’d be up by 17 points.” I was astonished by this unfounded, inflammatory statement. Mr. Baldwin had no research to support his tweet; it’s just another example of overblown partisan rhetoric.
Rush Limbaugh, “with talent on loan from God.”
And, of course, when a provocateur from one side of our political equation makes a bombastic statement, then we always hear from the other side. It was later that day that Rush Limbaugh proclaimed that if Obama was white, then he would be losing by 20 points! He also had no supporting data, of course … he also had no credibility. In my humble opinion.
A much different, a much more positive comment on the state of race in today’s America was in this week’s LA Times. Bill Plaschke wrote a wonderful article about UCLA’s new quarterback, Brett Hundley. He is African American, hence the trivia question.
Name the last African American to lead UCLA in passing for a season.
The answer is Jackie Robinson. Yes, THAT Jackie Robinson, who was a running back for UCLA in 1940. He led the team in passing with 444 yards.
Jackie Robinson was a multi-sport athlete at UCLA; its baseball stadium is named for him. He later broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and his # 42 is the only number retired by Major League Baseball. All baseball players wear his number on Jackie Robinson Day each year. No other person in professional sports is accorded such an honor as this.
Plaschke’s article is a wonderful portrait of a young man at the beginning of his college football career … his hopes intertwined with the hopes of the Bruins Nation.
UCLA is not only one of America’s top universities, it is also recognized as being one of the leaders in campus racial diversity by US News & World Report, which publishes some of the most watched ranking lists for universities today.
Here’s my bottom line:
I live in the America where race is important as an indicator of how far we’ve come. I have no interest in sniping about our President’s race and how that does or doesn’t affect his chances in the 2012 election.
I will root for Brett Hundley, and I root for UCLA. For Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Limbaugh? Not so much.
You still with me?
Brett Hundley is a redshirt freshman, and just might be the starting quarterback for UCLA for four years.
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Community.
