Safeway International Thursday: Stanford's 62 Sets Course Record

And I got to see it all on Golf Channel! Yup, drove onechan and imoto yesterday to my hometown to hang out with my folks for a couple of days toward the end of my spring break. What, delay the girls' bed-time to watch women's golf after dinner? How could I? Well, my parents have a picture of my little bro and me at ages 4 and 6 or something with Sally Little and Nancy Lopez at some LPGA event somewhere. Where do you think I get my sports fanaticism from, anyway?

So between the batting around plastic golf balls inside and out before dinner and getting to see the people whose maru and shikaku (circles and squares--that is, birdies and bogeys) we usually only track onine, onechan and imoto are huge LPGA fans now, too. Onechan's new favorite is Natalie Gulbis, thanks to the pink ribbon in her hair and the pink accents in her top, but she also stuck up in favor of Momoko Ueda's top--also pink, but ruffly--against the consensus in the room that it was responsible for her bad round. For whatever reason, she wasn't as impressed with Ai Miyazato's pink top--it was Gulbis who leaped to the top of her list of favorite players, passing Paula Creamer and Karrie Webb, while Ai-chan and Momo-chan lag behind. In fact, she had imoto playing Momo-chan, me playing Ai-chan, and my dad playing Moira Dunn while she played Natalie during the telecast. Two years ago I would have been hating that, but my opinion of Gulbis has gone way up since I realized what a fighter she is.

OK, getting back to the golf, what an amazing round by Angela Stanford yesterday, eh? Her interview on-line wasn't nearly as great as her post-round one on the Golf Channel, but it was clear from everything she said in both that this was a once-in-a-lifetime round for her. Not to say that she can't continue to go low and extend her lead on the field--the way things went today, she exemplified what Tiger was saying about how hard it is to win on tour: everyone's so good that you need some things to go your way that normally don't in order to come out on top. Well, when you look at her last two birdies, on 17 and 18--the first a long bomb she was shocked dropped and the second a result of some great bounces and rolls on a practically-skull-hooked 3-wood that got her on the par 5 in two--you start thinking that this just might be her week.

But, the Safeway International kicks off a run of 72-hole events, in which a first-round lead matters much less. But, her closest pursuer, only 3 shots back, is Lorena Ochoa, and she also was rolling in a bomb or two and making some breaks happen. (Her sand save for par on 17 was key and her fairway-wood approach on 18 also got a good bounce, so her final two holes were crucial vis a vis momentum, too.) But, Sherri Steinhauer made 8 birdies on her way to a 66, and once she's figured out a course, she doesn't usually back off. But, it looks like some Young Guns, led by Ya Ni Tseng and Jee Young Lee at 67, may be tuning in early into the Prospector course, which typically takes many repetitions to hone in on. But, 19 players broke 70 and 53 went under par, including many capable of going super-low themselves.

On the other hand, a lot of players never got anything going on a day ripe for scoring, some even had horrific rounds (a 75 for Momo-chan? a 78 for In-Kyung Kim??), and many who had some good things going on had disappointing finishes. Take Birdie Kim. Or wait, forget that one: thanks to a Golf Channel scoring error, I thought she had gotten to -6, but it turns out she only got to -4 before her final-hole bogey on the 9th dropped her to T11. (Paula Creamer and Jeong Jang had about the same story, just with birdie-only rounds broken up by late bogeys on the 7th and 4th, respectively.) Let's try again. How about Stacy Prammanasudh? She went out bogey-free on the back and carded a 32, but proceeded to have a birdie-free 38 on the front. (Hee-Won Han repeated the feat, going 33-37 to be stuck with Stacy at T20.) Or try Mi Hyun Kim: consecutive closing bogeys on the 8th and 9th turned what could have been a mid-60s round into a 71 (T33). And Laura Diaz had recovered from a double bogey on the 2nd to get to -2 with two holes to play, but promptly bogeyed the 17th and 18th to fall back to T54.

Although a lot of hot players left a lot of strokes out on the course, others started to get something going toward the ends of their rounds. Christina Kim went on a birdie barrage, making 5 birdies in her last 12 holes, to come back from an opening stretch in which she followed up an early birdie with bogeys on 3 of her next 4 holes. Annika Sorenstam was stuck in neutral for most of her round, but consecutive closing birdies on the 17th and 18th bode well for the living legend. Even Ai-chan, who had her putting problems on the front, closed with a gritty sand save for par on 17 and birdied 18 to fight back to E on a course that's given her fits in the past. When she gets her putter going, she's capable of going quite low, so watch out for her tomorrow.

Speaking of Ai-chan, it's annoying that the Golf Channel announcers have her pegged as a short hitter. Nothing about her averaging a respectable 253 yards off the tee in her rookie season. Nothing about her post-HSBC leg injury that led to swing glitches and confidence problems. Nothing about her switching to a 3-wood off the tee for a good part of the second half of last season as a result. Nothing about what she was using off the tee yesterday. Just the steady drumbeat of, "Oh, she's 30 yards behind Ochoa on this hole" and "It must feel terrible to be 55 yards behind Ochoa on that hole." All I'm saying is, you'd think people paid to talk in particular about the players in the prime-time pairings would, you know, do some actual research on those people. To be fair, Dottie Pepper mentioned that Ai-chan's dad is travelling with her for a time to help her keep working on her swing and ease the pressure of the Japanese media's high expectations. But even that factoid could have been much better contextualized.

Looking ahead to Friday's round, it's far too soon to call this tournament for Stanford, or even portray it as a three-player race. With Golf Channel coverage starting at 1 pm our time tomorrow, we should get to see quite a bit of the prime-time pairings on the front:

Start Time: 8:07 AM
Angela Stanford
Natalie Gulbis
Meena Lee

Start Time: 8:18 AM
Jimin Kang
Laura Diaz
Marcy Hart

Start Time: 8:29 AM
Nicole Castrale
Maria Hjorth
Se Ri Pak

Start Time: 8:40 AM
Momoko Ueda
Annika Sorenstam
Laura Davies

Start Time: 8:51 AM
Lorena Ochoa
Juli Inkster
Ai Miyazato

and the back:

Start Time: 8:07 AM
Christina Kim
Lorie Kane
Mi Hyun Kim

Start Time: 8:18 AM
Birdie Kim
Shi Hyun Ahn
Jeong Jang

Start Time: 8:51 AM
Stacy Prammanasudh
Jee Young Lee
Wendy Ward

.

And maybe even a little bit of some fascinating pairings in the afternoon, off #1

Start Time: 12:07 PM
Grace Park
Morgan Pressel
Paula Creamer

Start Time: 12:18 PM
Hee-Won Han
Cristie Kerr
Suzann Pettersen

and #10

Start Time: 11:56 AM
Young Kim
Seon Hwa Lee
Pat Hurst

.

In other words, I'm not complaining that tomorrow's weather forecast is bad at grandma and grandpa's place!

[Update: Hound Dog has the first-round overview, highlights, and Grace Park Watch.]

We Have a Site! And a Line-Up? And Sponsors...?

As in a real, live, location. A building, if you will.

What is this about? Click here and ask yourself which god(s) of stupidity made me forget to cross-post that CitizenSE post here. But hey, everything happens for a reason, etc. etc. Instead of a cross-post, I have something much, much better.

Video from the Virtual Goods Summit 2007 at Stanford University. Watch it all. I haven't--yet--but Sloucho has.

Sloucho, you'll recall, is the guy too busy to blog here about some of the material we never quite got around to doing together as a ground-breaking video games studies book back in the early aughts--mostly due to mutual slackerdom. Well, since then he's straightened up and appears to be flying right. His Fantasy Football writing gig has been supplemented by a third job toiling away in Everquest 2's platinum mines. His first job? Oh, he was just named Professor of the Year there. I'm totally serious. Things are going his way. And coming. Watch the video and try to figure out how he's making more per month on his third job than I am on my first.

So my point in mentioning all this is that we don't just have a site but also potential sponsors and a stellar line-up for the video game studies summer camp idea you all were too lazy to click and read about up there in my first link. Go do it now, so you'll appreciate what I'm about to do next.

Site: Cameron University's Center for Emerging Technology and Entrepreneurial Studies.

Sponsors: Click on the link, for starters. Feel free to suggest more (or self-nominate) in comments.

Line-Up (other professor-coach types than Sloucho and me): Dave Lester. Rob MacDougall. Timothy Burke. Kathleen Fitzpatrick.

OK, so they haven't officially confirmed. Heck, some of them don't even know yet that they're being recruited, or are doing a damn good impression of it. Only others we let in are close personal friends or those whose friend(s) already in can wangle a majority vote among those already in for them.

Seriously, this is going to be big. I can't believe no one has done this already. How do you patent this? Or is that trademark? Yeesh, maybe we can bring somebody in who knows something about intellectual property. Between the 2 of us, we ought to know someone.

Yeah, I said Lawton, OK, in summer 2009. You got a problem with that? Sloucho has to take advantage of his summers to do most of the heavy lifting directing an Honors Program there, so no travelling road show until we finish beta testing it on his home turf.

OK, anyone else who wants in can leave a comment or drop me a line at my super-secret bloggy email address (or any of my others--impress me with your fab research skills)....

Please excuse my tone. When I was talking about all this with the Full Metal Archivist yesterday evening, onechan came over, listened in for awhile, and interjected, "why are you laughing like a monster from Pretty Cure, daddy?" No, my laugh had nothing to do with the Powerpuff Girls CD playing rather loudly in the background. It's the possibility of never having to teach a summer course again and still being able to send both my girls to any college they want.

Curious?

[Update 3/26/08: Bill Benzon shares an article on the social networking pros of video game play. Thanks, Bill!]

The Collected Adventures of Sparkychan & Gojochan (Thus Far)

Well, here it is, the first book of The Collected Adventures of Sparkychan and Gojochan (Thus Far), by Uncle Bill Benzon.

July 9: For onechan [in response to this and that]
July 10: The discussion continues
July 11: Onechan's Adventure [in response to this]
July 12: Where's Onechan? and Calling Onechan! Calling Onechan!
July 14: Help is on the way and There They Are! Yippieeee! [in response to this]
July 17: Onechan's Choice
July 19: Calling all kidz! Calling all kidz! [in response to this]
July 23: Sigh
July 28: Catch you later alligator
August 1: Where's the bunny rabbit?
August 3: Onechan Tells a Story
August 11: The Little Worm from Kansas
August 14: Twas brillig
August 16: Sparkychan & Gojochan Adventure Time Mystery Theatre
November 20: i had a dream

Without giving away too much, our intrepid pair end up in Dunkirk! Literally. The girls are still celebrating. Sparkychan is getting rides on the girls' toy baby stroller while onechan cradles Gojochan in one arm until imoto says "itai" enough to prompt me to intervene and force onechan to give Gojochan back to imoto. For more updates, see the comments on the last post in Book I. A big "arigato gozaimasu" to Uncle Bill from onechan and imoto!

Summer in Chiba City

In only a week here in Chiba with the tsuma's sister and her three boys (5, 3, and 1 and a half) before they return to Okinawa, we're trying to pack a full summer's worth of fun. This includes:

1. Suika every afternoon. Japanese watermelon is the best!

2. Fireworks every night we can. Last night was just sparklers in the driveway but tomorrow night we're shooting for the real thing, if we can get the middle cousin over last year's trauma. Hey, don't tease him--ever since onechan was caught outside in that mini-typhoon with her mom and little sister, she's been afraid of strong winds! I had to talk her down during the Matsuri festival one of our last evenings in Fukuoka when it got windy enough for her to exclaim "sugoi kaze!" and suggest that everyone get inside immediately. (In her defense, she did hear that a typhoon was near Japan that week.) Which reminds me that she was also afraid of the sparklers because of the fire safety lesson she got at her yochien.

3. Speaking of typhoons and Fukuoka, we managed to get out of town before Typhoon Usagi went almost straight northward up the eastern side of Kyushu. It's hugging the northwestern coast of Honshu--good thing Chiba is on the southeastern one! Dodging typhoons is good summer fun. Being in them, not so much.

4. More summer festivals. Today we enjoyed the ancient and revered Pokemon Festival right by the Chiba Marines baseball dome/stadium. Well, I guess less than ten years isn't quite ancient, but when upwards of 25,000 people were there in the first three hours of a three-day event, that's some serious reverence. We're talking elementary school kids, their younger siblings, and their moms (and even some dads) hiking in a kilometer or more from the parking lot in high 20s C (at 9 am) and sunny post-rainy season heat wave to go through at least that much in lines just to enter the main arena, which is filled with 8 or so stations, each of which involved waits of 10 minutes (for the free Nintendo DS new Pokemon adventure game) to 4 hours (for who knows what). We waited about 45 minutes to get a Pokeball and go in with a group of kids and moms trying to "catch" some new Pocket Monsters. Only problem was, neither the tsuam and I paid any attention to the directions the attendant was giving the kids, so when onechan got scared (of course), we had little idea what to do and only caught 2. Whatever. Then we avoided the 4-hour line and onechan and I tried the Nintendo DS game, which basically involved hitting the A button whenever hiragana appeared on the screen (which was often). I did accidentally discover you could move the character by touching the screen, which was cool. (You could say I've been out of the gaming world for a while, I guess.) Then the family waited a half hour for photos with and postcards featuring Pokemon characters, while imoto and I checked out the crowd outside that station, while some kind of concert went on about 200 yards away. This was the best part of the event, for me, at least. I jokingly referred to the whole thing as "three hours of crowd watching and kid herding" in a cell phone email to a friend, but I can't say I didn't have a good time doing that. I've been to Tool at the Buffalo Civic Center, but this crowd dwarfed that one. More litle girls in this one, too. As much as I hate Pokemon, I have to admit it provides a unifying generational experience for the boys and girls between 3 and 12, who were the majority of the crowd. Sorry, no outre otaku sightings to report, but as Kung Fu Monkey pointed out, the .1% of the crowd that fits the bill gets 99% of the media attention, so why feed into that even if I did see some?

5. Lots and lots of free play for the cousins. Imoto and her male counterpart are beginning to get old enough to almost interact--they had an impromptu tea sucking contest (her cousin learned to use a straw for the first time at lunch today) outside a Costco food area, fight over/share prized toys and whatever else they find on the floor, climb stairs together, and get jealous when any of the adults pick up any of the other kids. Onechan continues to tag along after her gosai otokonoko cousin and gang up with him on his three-year-old younger brother, but the difference is now they all can have real conversations, as her Japanese has improved light years since the beginning of the year when they were last hanging together.

6. Watching Japanese kids' tv together--including late evening stuff like Kurayon Shin-chan, which featured tonight a great parody of the Sunday morning live-action Kamen Rider (Masked Rider) show, using the voice talents of the actual actors from the show. This deserves a post of its own.

7. Oh yeah, and I am definitely staying up to watch the second round of the Women's British Open on Japanese tv tonight. Definitely.

Looking Ahead: The Next 25 Years

OK, over at Citizen of Somewhere Else I summed up the history of U.S. representations of Japan that I actually was able to deliver yesterday at the JASF (thanks, Gojira!). So here's how the talk ended (in plenty of time for Q&A, I might add--I'll blog the questions tomorrow at CitizenSE).

What does it mean for the future that Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Naruto represent Japan for American kids today? Or that slightly older kids first encountered Japanese culture through Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, Final Fantasy, or The Legend of Zelda? One thing it means is that even greater proportions of Americans in the next 25 years are likely to have positive associations with Japan, due in part to their immersive, interactive, multi-vector leisure experiences made possible by Japanese technology. I’m not denying that the youngest of these younger generations have probably been almost as oblivious, selective, and subjective in their engagements with Japanese culture as I was in the 1980s, or that their understanding of the actual Japan has probably been as limited as mine was before I started visiting and researching it around 2003. And they certainly will be influenced by future political and economic shifts and shocks. But I want to suggest that these generations will be a lot less easy for anyone to manipulate than American publics were in the 1940s and 1980s. The odds of military or economic conflict between the U.S. and Japan seem increasingly long over the next 25 years as a result.

It’s not just that “American otaku,” as some in these subcultures identify themselves with pride, are likely to become an even more influential part of the cultural mainstream in the U.S. in coming years. It’s also that problems the younger generations of the U.S. will have to face up to--stemming from the globalization of capitalism and climate change, and including peak oil and alternate energy sources, food production and distribution, demographic shifts, and a host of social issues associated with access, equity, and risk management--are associated in many Americans’ minds with Japanese efforts to solve them. The image of a green Japan may prove to be the most potent representation of Japan in the U.S. in the coming decades.

That is, I think we can expect to see a shift from largely cultural appreciations--of “beautiful Japan” (kawaii culture, Miss Universe, youth fashion, animation culture), of “cutting-edge Japan” (information and entertainment technology, robotics, social dynamics), of “weird Japan” (just do a google search on this phrase to see what I mean!)--to political reappraisals of Japan in the U.S. Part of this will be fueled by regional realignments as crises like North Korean nuclear ambitions force East Asian powers to renegotiate their security policies (not to mention their understandings of each other’s histories) and as the growing importance of intraregional trade forces Asian tigers to learn to grow together (rather than primarily relying on exports to the U.S. and Europe). And part of this will be fueled by a shift in American political culture from Republican-led efforts to orient a new Cold War against radical Islam or China to Democrat-led efforts to head off, mitigate, or recover from global crises and their repercussions for the U.S.

It’s possible, of course, that the U.S. will turn out to have learned the wrong lessons from the twentieth century. It’s possible that Iraq will become Imperial America’s Korea, Iran its Manchukuo, and Saudi Arabia its China--and that Japan will someday face the choice of when and how to break off an alliance with such a dangerous and destabilizing partner. By the same token, it’s possible that Japanese political culture will accelerate its rightward shift and intensify Asian rivalries so much that the U.S. would be forced to distance itself from an embarrassing and erratic ally. But it’s much more likely, I believe, that even U.S. political and military leaders will find much to learn from the post-W.W. II transformations of Japan in the near future. And that liberals in both countries can encourage their fellow citizens to reexamine their own countries’ colonialist and militarist pasts and shift their nations’ priorities to focusing on solving problems of the near- and mid-future.

So my projections for the next 25 years of U.S.-Japanese representations and interactions are surprisingly, if guardedly, optimistic. I’m curious to hear what yours are. Thank you for your time and attention. I’d be glad to respond to any questions or comments you wish to share with me.

[Update 7/25/07: The Onion does a hilarious riff on the Japan=future theme!

OMG!! 4WAAGNFNP

Rob MacDougall has written a second post on the history of role playing games. This one looks at the links between R&D and D&D. It's a must-read! And totally fitting that this is Mostly Harmless's 200th post!

[Update 6/23/07: But even more fitting that I posted this out of my intended order so that the LPGA post up next turned out to be the actual 200th!]