Taking
BART as often as humanly possible, I had almost forgotten about the
white-sticker families that populate the back windows of so many SUV’s in the
East Bay. San Francisco is a bit different in its demographics, so sticker
families are rare in my neck of the woods. However, Sports Girl Liz did see a
Mini Cooper with a sticker of just a woman with a cat. Hey, in The City a
family like that qualifies as nuclear.

Anyway,
on my drive to Danville this morning for our weekly work meeting, 680 was
littered with cars rocking all sorts of flair. First there was a Yukon with a
standard stick-figure family: Dad, Mom, three kids and a dog. Then I saw an
oh-so-casual Flip-flop Family plastered on the corner of a Toyota Sienna’s back
window.

Then
the license plates started catching my attention. Some personalized plates are
sort of clever, some are obnoxious or boastful, some are just indecipherable.
And some are completely moronic, like the two I saw today.

Then
came the plate to beat all plates in terms of moronicism (not a word, I know).
At Mother’s Day brunch the sticker-family story came up, and my sister (Meg
Marlin) mentioned how she doesn’t understand the chrome license plate frames
people get that say the name of the car in cursive, like “Accord” or “Stratus.”
This morning I saw something that trumps that: A license plate that read:
“CAMRYLE.” And yes, this person was driving a Camry LE. Not only is this car
one of the most common and least exciting cars on the road, the information on
the plate is on the back of the car already. I wondered if this car was owned
by an English teacher, a person so anti-math that the idea of any numbers
desecrating his or her vehicle was too much to bear (or is it “bare?”). Or, maybe
the owner has a hard time finding the Camry in parking lots, so to combat that
issue made sure that this Camry LE was more “Camry LE” than any other.

I
don’t know why I’m focusing on 680 drivers and their desire to conform via
their own uniqueness, maybe it’s because the sports I watched last night on
television were so difficult to sit through or think about.

First,
the Celtics and Cavaliers proved that even in this spectacular season the NBA
can be boring, especially when two Eastern Conference teams have neither the
depth nor the offensive gameplans to surpass 90 points in a game. Is anybody
else waiting for LeBron James to get an effective scorer to play with? Larry
Hughes was supposed to be that guy, then Wally Szczerbiak. However, Hughes has never
been equipped to be a number two scorer, and Wally hasn’t been that guy for
over three seasons. Pretty worrisome for the Celtics that they can’t wipe the
floor with Cleveland, which has little else to offer besides LeBron and
Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Moving
on from the “Big Z” to the “Small Z,” watching the Giants kick the ball around
last night was no picnic either. Barry Zito pitched extremely well, hitting his
spots, snapping off curves…for three innings.

I’m
not so worried about the Giants’ defense, even though it seems like Eugenio
Velez needs a timeout like Champ Kind in “Anchorman” when he wanted to get that
apartment with Ron Burgundy. After another horrible throw in the ninth last
night, Bruce Bochy was heard telling Velez, “Just take it easy, Eugenio. Why
don’t you stop fielding for a while? Maybe sit the next couple of plays out.”

No,
even Keiichi Yabu’s errant pickoff throw to an open first base (with the bases
loaded) wasn’t as much of a bummer as this realization: the Giants have a $126
million long reliever. They should have just kept Zito in the bullpen all
along! With his weak arm and high pitch counts, he can never make it past the
sixth inning anyway, if he can even get that far.

Then
to add insult to the optical injury that watching a Zito start has become, the
midnight replay game on ESPN last night featured former Giant Livan Hernandez
slinging 58 mph breaking balls for the Twins. He beat the Red Sox to go to 6-1
on the season, on the same day Giants fans were trying to get excited about
Zito’s first no-decision.

I had
to go to bed when ESPN’s play-by-play guy (Dan Shulman?) noted that Livo leads
the majors in innings over the past eight years. The amount of money he’s
getting on his one-year deal from Minnesota: $5 million. No wonder Peter
Magowan’s in the process of getting his walking papers from the rest of the
Giants ownership group. Signing Zito (who seems like he’s more interested in
being like Jack Johnson than Jack Morris…I can see it now – Zito endorsing the
new “Z Casual” line of baseball shoes, the only flip-flops with metal spikes)
is quickly becoming the worst player acquisition in Giants history.