oh... shme!

I did not know that a friend I'd lost touch with had cancer until I read a post on the Cal footbal message board saying he passed away today. I hadn't seen Dave in several years, but he was utterly unforgettable. A nice guy, funny and zany, and about the biggest Cal sports fan you would ever want to meet (or maybe not want to meet).

Some quick memories of Dave:

He wore a black and white striped referee shirt and a whistle around his neck to Cal basketball games, sitting courtside and yelling at the referees from tip-off to the final whistle. Although I remember a newspaper photo with Dave prominently in the background, I can't find it via google. If you find it on line, send me a link!

Dave coined the term shme, which became part of The Jargon File. Although it was popularized mostly by Geoworks employees and spread from there, Dave was its originator.

Dave had an awesome room in his house in Berkeley for viewing football on TV. When he bought a big-screen TV, he wasn't satisfied with just picture-in-picture, so he put another smaller TV on top of the big screen so he could have picture-in-picture-AND-picture.

We roadtripped with Dave to the Cal v USC game at the LA Coliseum (I think it was 1992, when Cal led early and looked to be on the way to victory before a Bear lineman went down with a terrible neck injury and was driven off the field in an ambulance; after that, the fight went out of the Bears and USC came back to pull out a close, and undeserved, victory). The night before the game we stayed with Dave's mom. Many things about that trip I will always remember, including the mini pumpkin muffins, Dave yelling at the slow drivers in the left lane on I-5, and the bizarre, illustrated Swedish cookbook (in English): It looked like a kid's book, but all the illustrations were nudists, including a picnic with a kid in it. One of the recipes was Lutefisk. It went something like this: Go to the store and buy some Lutefisk. Soak it in water. Serve it.

One sentence: "Put the kitty in the Hobart!"

Another: "Where could he be?" (said with the whiny voice of Mark Hamill as Luke in the original Star Wars)

Another: "Third quarter gin and tonics!"

I will experience Cal football in a different way from now on knowing that Dave is no longer out there watching, too. (At least not in the same way I've always known him.)