Solano urban legends about Kardashian, presidents

Did you know that Kim Kardashian attended Vanden High School briefly during her freshman year?

Did you know that Jimmy Carter owns some land near Birds Landing?

Did you know that Richard Nixon hid in a bomb shelter at Travis Air Force Base during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962?

Neither did I, and there's no evidence they happened, but they all could have happened. And they’re all part of this year’s edition of Solano Urban Legends, my attempt to create stories to give our county more cachet – with stories that could possibly be true. All that's missing are facts.

However . . .

It was a persistent local urban legend that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song “Green River” was actually about Putah Creek. The band was from the East Bay Area, so the possibility existed, since any creek could be called a "green river." This urban legend was told to me 30 years ago by former Daily Republic City Editor Rick Jensen, who grew up in Vacaville, and I assumed it was ridiculous. But a recent trip to Wikipedia (which may have been updated by Rick, for all I know) confirmed the legend!

Wikipedia says it's true: "Green River" is about Putah Creek!

So the following urban legends could be true. Maybe they'll be confirmed 30 years from now.

Let's start with Kardashian. Well, I once overheard a customer at the checkout stand at the Suisun City Raley’s say something that sounded like she could have been a freshman classmate of Kardashian at Vanden. (Alternately, she could have been said "car crashing in Vanden." It was noisy.)

That would have been 1994 or 1995, when Vanden’s athletic program was at its peak – and isn’t it possible that Kim’s parents sent her to Solano County to stay with relatives and attend a good academic and athletic school? Go ahead and tell people that – Kim Kardashian  probably attended part of her freshman year at Vanden. We think.

Similarly, have you ever seen that house out by Birds Landing? The old one with the big field around it? Yeah, that one.

Well, one story that I may have heard was that when Jimmy Carter was simply a peanut farmer – before he became governor of Georgia or even president – his family considered moving their farming operations to California. Property near Birds Landing was inexpensive and there was talk of building a port in nearby Collinsville, which was enough to persuade the Carters to purchase a farm in California. As I heard it, Carter kept his property secret as governor and then couldn't sell it when he was president due to some regulation. Decades later, the rumor indicates that its still in his family and the county gets a check every year from Plains, Georgia, to pay the property tax.

To be clear, it's just a rumor.

Nixon, on the other hand, certainly could have taken shelter near Travis AFB during his campaign for governor in 1962, when the Cuban Missile Crisis hit. Nixon, a former vice president, would have been considered a significant target and could have taken shelter there. Let's say he did, because can you prove he didn't? I can't.

There are plenty more urban legends, including the one about Howard Hughes and the Rio Vista airport, Bob Hope appearing at the Nut Tree and rapper E-40 giving out full-sized candy bars on Halloween at his home in Rancho Solano.

Some of them might even be true. Don't believe me? Well, I didn't believe Rick Jensen about "Green River" and now Wikipedia confirms it.

If Wikipedia can be said to "confirm" anything.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Sports rules: Why you can't have a 'second team'

In sports, there is no such thing as a "second team."

The need for this clarification became obvious when I saw my niece post on Facebook last week that the Dallas Cowboys were her "second team," behind the Oakland Raiders.

It's disturbing enough that a family member is a Raiders fan. The "second team" concept? It's heresy.

Allow me to explain.

There are certain rules that come with being a serious sports fan. For instance (and I previously covered this topic), there are three acceptable reasons to cheer for a team: You live (or have lived) in their geographic region; a parent or important adult in your childhood was a fan of said team; or there is an unusual connection between you and the team (you're a Dodgers fan because of Jackie Robinson, someone from your hometown played for the Milwaukee Bucks, a member of the Cleveland Indians once saved your life).

That's it. Otherwise, you're wrong. (Yes, I'm saying you are wrong to be a Lakers fan or Cowboys fan if you were raised in Solano County and have no other connection. You're a front-runner, not a real fan.)

The "second-team" rule is equally obvious: If you are a fan of a professional sports team, they're your only team. There is no second team. There is one.

There are acceptable pseudo second-team instances. For instance, that the San Francisco Giants are your favorite team and "whoever is playing the Dodgers" is your second team, is fine.

Also acceptable is to have a team that you adopt for a specific season after your team is eliminated – as long as you only jump on the bandwagon for one postseason, then return to your beloved team the next year.

My niece's admission – that she somehow had a "second team" behind the Raiders – was shattering. It was like hearing your spouse had a long-term affair, but still considered you their first choice.

A second team?

Are you kidding me?

Perhaps this is a natural outcome of society's softness. In an era when we want to give everyone a participation trophy, maybe people pick a second team so they won't feel so bad when their team is eliminated. Maybe we should extend that and have a third, fourth and fifth team. Maybe we should say we don't care who wins in sports, because we like all teams.

Maybe we should just shut down competition, because we've gotten so soft that it doesn't make any difference!

Yes, I used an exclamation mark and italics to emphasize my outrage at that last sentence.

It matters. Having favorite sports teams means that you celebrate when they win, suffer when they lose. Having a "second team" is a betrayal of your favorite team and anathema to everything sacred in being a sports fan.

Rule 1 in sports: There are three acceptable reasons for picking your favorite team.

Rule 2 in sports: There is no "second team."

Rule 3 in sports: Don't argue with the first two rules and call yourself a real fan.

Rule 4 in sports: I reserve the right to change my opinion for people I like, including my misguided niece.

But as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sang in their classic song, "Teach Your Children": You, living on the road, must have a code that you can live by.

Part of the code is no second teams.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Our attention span is shorter than a ... hey! What's that?

Mobile phone technology, the internet and TV have made their mark. On our brains.

According to a study by the Microsoft Corp., human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2002 to eight seconds in 2013.

Even more significant: The attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds. Longer than ours.

Which reminds me of my friend Brianne, who bought her daughter some items for her goldfish this Christmas – and then accidentally poured the fish into the sink and killed it. Fortunately, goldfish are cheap, even if Brianne's daughter's memories aren't. According to Google, you can buy a goldfish for about $1, which is pretty good for something with an attention span longer than ours.

But getting back to the attention-span study: Researchers found a decrease in attention span across all age groups of their subjects, who were Canadian.

The idea that they used Canadians begs the question of whether researchers used the metric system or our imperial system to measure things. Of course they measured time and the clock is not metric – if it were, I presume there would be 100 minutes in an hour, 10 hours in a day, 10 days in a week and 100 weeks in a year. If that were the case, the Canadian year would be just over 694 days!

But to get back to the attention-span study: Researchers said a major factor in the decrease is the use of smartphones, which they said reduced humans' ability to focus on one task.

Did you know that the first smartphone was created in 1993 and 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator? I didn't. Personal digital assistants – popularly called PDAs – were the forerunners of smartphones. They included such brands as BlackBerry and Palm Pilot. Which reminds me, when I was the Daily Republic sports editor, we used Palm Pilots to transmit articles from remote sites. They worked roughly half the time. The other 50 percent of the time, the articles left the phone – there was no folder for sent emails – and went somewhere in the ether. The sports writer was left to dictate their article over a pay phone from somewhere in Lodi or Auburn.

But back to the attention-span study: Researchers found good news out of our smartphone-controlled lives. We can multitask better, probably due to the fact that smartphones require that skill.

I'm not sure whether that means I'll be able to pat my stomach and rub my head now – or is it the other way around? Are you supposed to pat your head? Speaking of that, did you know that legendary University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt's maiden name was Pat Head? Seriously. I wonder if she could multitask.

But back to the attention-span study: The takeaway, despite the sexy goldfish angle (idea for a band name: Sexy Goldfish), is that our brains adapt. Since we're now in the information age, we've sacrificed some attention for the ability to multitask, which I'll discuss as soon as I finish posting a clever update on Facebook.

The human brain is amazingly adaptable. And goldfish are terrible at texting, so we win.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

My eyebrow-raising adventure with tweezers

Sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone – especially when it concerns your eyebrows and results in your spouse laughing so hard that her legs buckle.

Yes, Mrs. Brad laughed at me. Again.

It started a few weeks ago when I spotted a few renegade gray eyebrows growing straight out, like a unicorn's horn. If you don't have gray hair, you may not realize this, but gray hair is courser and straighter than your natural color.

At least mine is. And it's especially obvious in my eyebrows. (An aside: The outside one-third of my eyebrows are wispy and nearly blonde, giving me a Muppet appearance. So I'm already eyebrow-challenged.)

On the day in question, I did what I've taken to doing in recent years when I see the random albino unicorn eyebrow hair: I get Mrs. Brad's tweezers and pull out the offending strand. I should note that I don't pull out all the gray hair – I don't want to look like Martin Scorsese, who has black eyebrows and gray hair. I just want the protruding locks removed.

So I plucked. But eyebrow hairs are thin, so I missed and pulled out an adjacent hair. (Note: It hurts. Not like plucking nose hairs would feel, but it hurts. I understand why women might choose to stop plucking their eyebrows and instead do whatever it is that they do – despite having three sisters and being married for 30-plus years, makeup is still a mystery to me.)

Anyway, the albino unicorn eyebrow hair remained, so I plucked again. And again. The gray hair spot looked bigger! So plucked again. And again.

I stood back.

Better.

Until I looked closer.

It was worse. I had a large white spot on my eyebrow.

It wasn't from gray hairs. It was pale, sun-protected skin showing through. I had plucked a bald spot in my left eyebrow!

It wasn't noticeable, I told myself. I wear glasses, so the spot was hidden behind my frames. At least that's my story.

I was guilty of the mature version of what nearly every kid does, when they cut their own hair and keep making adjustments until they look like Mo Howard from the Three Stooges. I tried to remove a renegade eyebrow hair and wound up with a white skin patch.

When I told Mrs. Brad the story, she listened intently. She didn't know where it was going. Perhaps she thought it was a confession of how I broke her tweezers.

When I got to the end and showed her the bald spot, she laughed so hard that she had to sit down. And wheeze. As always, she told me that these things only happen to me.

I disagree. I'm sure this has happened to someone else.

It's like actor Jack Black once said: "You must never underestimate the power of the eyebrow."

If only I'd thought of that before plucking.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Seventeen sure-fire predictions for '17

Anyone can write about the past year: The biggest news, the celebrity deaths, the natural disasters, the political stunners.

I  predict the future. That's right, on the first day of 2017, I will issue 17 predictions for 2017 that will – or should – come true.

Ready to hear what happens in the next 12 months?

Here we go:

• A famous celebrity who you haven't thought about for years will die and you will be slightly sad. Social media posts will make it seem like the worst death since the JFK assassination.

• In mid-September, a company will announce a new product with "pumpkin spice" flavor and people will erupt in joy. Others will realize that we lived most of our lives without "pumpkin spice" and won't be excited. The company will make a lot of money.

• The Golden State Warriors will win the NBA title. Please.

• You will wait in the parking lot at the grocery store while some guy backs into a parking spot, not only irritating you, but ignoring the fact that it's much easier to back out of a spot than to back into one.

• In May, it will be cool and rainy and someone will tell you they're tired of winter and ready for summer.

• In October, it will be hot and the same person will tell you they're tired of summer and ready for winter.

• Fake news will continue to prosper because while we oppose it, we love when it reinforces what we already believe.

• Movie fans will get excited about a film version of a 1980's or 1990's TV series that you don't really remember ("Northern Exposure?" "Nash Bridges?"). The movie will flop.

• If you go to the Solano County Fair, you'll think this is the year that the turkey leg or the deep-fried Twinkies will taste good. They'll just give you a stomachache. Again.

• In my annual December column about Solano County, I will remember that Harry Price was elected to the Fairfield City Council in 1997, but didn't become mayor until 2005. (This counts as a correction of last week's column).

• Someone will say, "Boy, things have really changed in Fairfield," and everyone will agree with them – although the biggest change may be that the speaker is just older.

• Friends will talk about a new series on Netflix or Amazon and you'll watch it. It will be pretty good, but you won't understand why people acted like it was life-changing.

• The price of gas will be lamented because it's so low that it's hurting our economy, or it's so high it's hurting our economy.

• The day before you have an important meeting or date, you'll awake to find a pimple on your nose, and say, "I thought this would end when I turned 20!"

• "Star Wars Episode VIII" will be released in December as "one of the best 'Star Wars' ever." I won't see it.

• A new smartphone-based game or app will take over the world for about a month. And then we'll forget about it. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Pokemon Go.)

• In the final week of 2017, people will lament what a terrible year it was and eagerly welcome 2018, with hopes that it will be better.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.