Propaganda

RAY RATTO IN THE SF CHRONICLE, ON ST. MARY’S BASKETBALL….

THERE REALLY IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS…..

BUT THE SCENE IS WHAT UNIVERSITY SPORT IN THE U.S. HAS NOW BECOME.

Gaels stay up late to serve ESPN, and defeat Fresno State
Ray Ratto, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Three hours before Saint Mary’s College obeyed its alien overlords in Bristol and played an 11 p.m. basketball game, the only activity around McKeon Pavilion was around the TV trucks that obscured much of the building and gave it that Highway 5 rest stop feel.

There were no lines of students champing outside the ticket office so that they could spend the next six hours of their lives high on Red Bull and Patty Mills. There were surely no lines of adults - 11 p.m. is bad enough, but 8 p.m. for an 11 p.m. start is, well, just daft.

Not even Randy Bennett was in the building, and he’s the head coach of the Fighting Insomniacs … er, Galloping Gaels.

And let’s be honest here - Bennett wouldn’t have done this on his own, and he’s had opportunities.

“Some of our kids will come here and have 11 p.m. workouts because that’s when they can get the gym,” he said before Monday’s game against perfectly matched Fresno State. “Me? Oh, I never go to those. If they need me, they can call me at home.”

Yet Bennett said he was all for the mega-late start, agreeing to the proposal right after he got a phone call: “Hello Randy? This is ESPN in Bristol, and we were wondering if …”

“If” didn’t matter. When ESPN wants a mid-major, the mid-major says, “What color dresses would you like us to wear?”

St. Mary’s won with notable ease, 99-85, Mills (27 points, 5 assists) center Omar Samhan (18 points, 13 boards) leading the box score. It wasn’t a totally useful game given what they will face in the West Coast Conference, but if you have to be up all night, you may as well have some fun doing it - especially if you don’t have to take a Breathalyzer.

This was part of a 12-game eye-bleeding extravaganza that began with Memphis whipping Massachusetts, and went on from Moraga to Idaho State at Hawaii (another 11 p.m. local start), then Penn at Drexel at 7 a.m. PDT, followed by the Iowa women at Kansas, Liberty at North Carolina-Asheville, Richmond at Syracuse, Centenary at Baylor, Loyola at Purdue, St. John’s at Boston College, Kentucky at North Carolina, Florida Gulf Coast at Kansas, Davidson at Oklahoma and Alabama Birmingham at Arizona.

Not surprisingly, the St. Mary’s student section filled in quickly once the doors opened at 10, and they were loud and (at least we hope) at least slightly beered. Indeed, the first students to arrive were 10 gentlemen who spelled out “GO GAELS!!!” in chest, an indication that least some folks had been overserved on the mean streets of the Moraga Road Strip. Maybe by one of the 13 coffee joints within four miles of downtown.

The most boisterous adults? Two middle-aged gents who circled the court several times during the night, one carrying an Irish flag and the other a green flag featuring a large boxing kangaroo, a salute to SMC’s five Australians, Mills, Carlin Hughes, Clint Steindl, Lucas Walker and Ben Allen.

Mostly, though, this show was for the students, including the 38 cheerleaders and the school mascot, which is apparently the Geico Caveman in a cape and blue shorts.

And, it needn’t be added, it was for St. Mary’s athletic director, Mark Orr, who took the gig on the hope that he might get his calls returned if he ever needed a reciprocal solid from ESPN. Not that television people do much quid pro quo without making sure they get the fat end of the wedge, but like we said, mid-majors tend to be freer with their groveling, and more grandiose in their delusions.

Once the game started, though, the nap-challenged were rewarded with up-tempo, screw-the-longer-trey-we’re-jackin’-it-up basketball that plays well at any time of day - except, of course, in the NCAA Tournament. They induced Fresno to run with them (which wasn’t that hard a sell given Fresno’s history), and rolled up 55 by halftime, led by Mills’ 19. St. Mary’s may not have an intimidating front line or a clampdown defense, but what it has is the pace of a meth freak and the boldness of a gambler down to his last five bucks, traits which will win more games for them than anything else.

Well, okay, they have those character quirks and the Australians, who are greeted on every score with the old “Aussie! Oi!” World Series of Poker chant for 2005 champion Joseph Hachem of Sydney, and the occasional tiresome Dire Straits lift. The students understand which side their bread is Vegemited, and they run with it, which shows at least a modicum of cleverness at an age where clever is often defined as a YouTube clip of a baby dressed like Sarah Palin drinking out of a toilet.

Or maybe that’s just the fifth coffee talking.

Anyway, the night was worth it to St. Mary’s, which got to show off for a national audience … well, two clips on the morning SportsCenter, if that snakes your drain.

For Steve Cleveland and Fresno, the experience lost most of its luster long before the 182-mile postgame bus ride back to campus. They got their brains beat out, and figured to get home at 5. Not even state-funded Grand Slams at the Los Banos Denny’s could make up for that.

The adults started clearing out at 1:03, with St. Mary’s ahead, 97-79. The students, presumably with less reason to go anywhere, stayed until the end, satisfied except for the fact that the boys couldn’t hit the C-note even with three minutes and three points to get. They’ll get over it.

So the only question that remained as the people filed out at 1:12 a.m. was this: Would Bennett, having done the 11 p.m. thing, have cheerfully have changed game times with Hawaii and done the 1:30 a.m. game if asked.

“No, no,” he laughed. “One-thirty’s my limit.”

We suspect he may be lying. A lot.

E-mail Ray Ratto at rratto@sfchronicle.com.

A NOTE TO BRUCE JENKINS OF THE SF CHRONICLE

Geoff: “What is life, but a mastery of fundamental things?” That is
so beautifully said. Thanks for writing. And by the way, I tapped
into Pete’s oral history, at the library, in my book research. Best
– Bruce Jenkins

—–Original Message—–

From: geoff smith [mailto:smithgs@queensu.ca]
Sent: Mon 11/17/2008 6:25 PM
To: Jenkins, Bruce
Cc:
Subject: Pete Newell

Hi Bruce: Having read your book, I know you a little at least. I
went to Cal Berkeley in 1959 ostensibly to play basketball for Pete
Newell. Earlier that year the Bears had won the NCAA, 71-70, and as
a senior hoopster at San Mateo High School, I wished with all my
heart to get into Berkeley. I had the chance to go to Colorado on a
scholarship, but when somehow I got an ‘A-’ in my last Chemistry
class I got into Cal, later I learned, through something called the
two percent rule. I did not last as a player. I made the freshman
team, went through the first six weeks of practice, including the
dreaded run up Strawberry Canyon, and was one of three Smiths that
year (Dick and Jim the others). I was also in a frat at Cal, best
not mentioned by name, which did nothing for my academic
achievement. So by midterms, I realized that I was not getting
things done in class that I should be, and went to Pete’s home to
talk about it. He was not there, but his wife, Flo, sat me down and
listened for a good hour, ending with the conclusion that basketball
was great but doing well in school was far more important. That
message stuck, and I left Berkeley altogether in the winter term
1961, transferring to UCSB where I played for former Newell
assistant, Art Gallon. We played the same kind of ball, methodical,
defense-oriented, and guileful (guile was a quality that Pete had, in
abundance). I never forgot Pete and Rene Herrerias’s emphasis upon
fundamentals, especially footwork, which made average players better
than average, and patience, which made average players dangerous
players. Pete won many games that he should not have won because of
these two things, and the fundamentals of defense proved the one
thing I took away with me, as a player, and later a coach and
professor. For what is life, but a mastery of fundamental things?
For many years I told my students in history and sport sociology
about the dip step and how important is was in the scheme of the
cosmos. People thought I was crazy but soon learned that there was
method here. For it is the foundation that provides a crucial
ingredient of any and all success that we achieve, no matter the
field of endeavour. I knew Pete and Florence as campers at the Lair
of the Golden Bear as well, habituees of a group of campers that
denoted themselves as members of “Eddie’s Place”. My uncle, Bob
Tuck, was one of the ringleaders of the group, which played a lot of
cribbage and poker, and hacked a nine-hole golf course out of the
mountainside at Camp Blue in the mid-1950s. When I was a teen in
those years, and watched Cal basketball on snowy TV reception, with
Bud Foster (I think) doing the play by play, I could hardly believe
that the very handsome and yes — calm — man who coached the Bears
was the nice guy I met in Pinecrest. Yes, Pete Newell left a lot of
friends, many lessons, and a legacy that speaks for itself. Thanks
for reading this far, and I appreciate what you have done for Pete in
the years since he left coaching. I note also that my brother, Jon,
now of Novato, did the lion’s share of organizing and administering
the oral history project on Pete overseen by the Bancroft Library.
Your readers would be interested in revisiting that tome.

best wishes,

Geoff

ore than a coach - a teacher of basketball, life
Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Pete Newell’s death Monday at age 93 elicited sadness and praise from his former Cal players. Another common theme emerged in their reflections on the Hall of Fame basketball coach - Newell genuinely taught them the game.

“Someone once said there are a lot of coaches but not that many teachers,” said Darrall Imhoff, the center on Cal’s NCAA championship team in 1958-59. “Pete was one of the great teachers.”

Newell typically offered his instructions in a quiet, understated manner. That’s why Imhoff always found it curious that his former coach and Bobby Knight became such close friends, given Knight’s penchant for loud outbursts.

Cal players always knew Newell would meticulously prepare them for games, even without raising the volume. The Bears routinely conquered more talented teams, including Oscar Robertson and Cincinnati in the ‘59 national semifinals and Jerry West and West Virginia in the title game.

“We were in games where we knew the opposing team’s plays better than they did,” said Earl Shultz, who also played on the championship team. “We had counters to everything the other team was going to do. Pete always felt the game was like a chess match.”

Newell’s son, Roger, spoke Monday of the gracious way his father handled requests for his time in recent years. He gladly gave reporters he didn’t know as much time as Knight or any other high-profile coach.

This skill translated to Newell’s coaching and allowed him to connect with all his players, to hear Joe Kapp tell it. Kapp not only starred at quarterback for Cal, he also played for Newell on the basketball team in the late 1950s (though he missed the title season because the Bears reached the Rose Bowl).

Kapp and Newell had a friendly, running dialogue about the player’s role - to the point where Kapp wrote Newell a note earlier this month, wondering in retrospect how the coach made Kapp feel so important even though he occupied “the 12th seat” on the bench.

“That’s a great quality in a coach,” Kapp said Monday. “He knew he had my support, and I knew I had his support.”

Bob Wendell, who played on the 1959-60 team that reached the national title game before falling to Ohio State, told of a revealing comment once made by former 49ers coach Bill Walsh. Wendell and Walsh were longtime friends, and another friend once asked Walsh about the most influential coaches in his career.

Walsh mentioned Paul Brown, Don Coryell and Al Davis, all accomplished football men. Then Walsh said, “I always wanted to be a coach like Pete Newell.”

“I thought that was about as high a compliment as you could get,” Wendell said. “That’s when it sort of hit me how influential Pete really had been.”

Newell’s influence stretched into the academic realm for most of his Cal players. Imhoff said everyone who played for Newell with the Bears graduated - once Imhoff belatedly earned his degree in forestry in 1995, more than three decades after leaving Berkeley.

Imhoff attended a Cal basketball reunion later in ‘95 and told Newell he finally got it done. As Imhoff recalled, the old coach replied with a twinkle in his eye, “Thirty-five years? I thought it was going to take you 45!”

E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

AH, THE GLOOM AND DOOM OF IT ALL
WHOPEE!
THE LAST SENTENCE SAYS MOST OF IT……

PAUL B. FARRELL
30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011
New-New Deal, bailouts, trillions in debt, antitax mindset spell disaster

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Last update: 7:19 p.m. EST Nov. 17, 2008Comments: 990

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — By 2011? No recovery? No new bull? “Hey Paul, why do you keep talking about a bigger crash coming by 2011?” Readers ask that often. So here’s a sequel to my predictions of 2000 and 2004, with a look three years ahead:
First. Dot-com crash
We pinpointed the dot-com crash at its peak, in a March 20, 2000 column: “Next crash? Sorry, you won’t see it coming.” Bulls-eye: The dot-com bubble popped. The economy went into a 30-month recession. The stock market lost $8 trillion. And today, over eight years later, the market is still roughly 40% below its 2000 peak. See previous Paul B. Farrell.
Factor in inflation and the average stock has lost well over 50% of its value. Stocks have proven to be a very big loser, a bad investment for Americans, thanks to Wall Street’s selfish greed, plus the complicity and naiveté of politicians, press and public.
Second. Subprime meltdown
We reported on warnings of another crash coming as early as 2004, wrote a sequel, also titled “Next crash? Sorry, you won’t see it coming.” Yes, we were early, but in good company. We wrote many more warning columns. Few listened.
Subsequent events, notably former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s admission of his failures in congressional testimony, prove that if he and other Reaganomic ideologues weren’t so myopic and intransigent about proving their free-market deregulation theories, they could have acted earlier and prevented today’s colossal mess. Instead, their ideology kept the bubble blowing, delayed the pop, making matters worse.
So once again, as history proves over and over, ideology trumps common sense, reality and the facts. Greed drives ideologues to blow bubbles. They pop. Crashes happen. The public is collateral damage.
Third. Megabubble cycles
We also detailed the broader, accelerating macroeconomic sweep of cycles last summer in columns like “20 reasons new megabubble pops in 2011.” We summarized a long list of major warnings from financial periodicals — Forbes, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Economist — and from the voices of Warren Buffett, Bill Gross, a sitting Fed governor and a former Commerce secretary. Multiple warnings “hiding in plain sight,” beginning with a Fed governor warning Greenspan in 2000 about subprime risk.
But the big shocker came from the new Treasury secretary two years before the meltdown: Bloomberg News reports that shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs’ CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of “over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street’s face and affect the whole economy.”
Yes, they knew. And still both Paulson, a Wall Street insider, and Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, a Princeton scholar of the Great Depression, stayed trapped in denial and kept happy-talking the public for months after the meltdown began in mid-2007. Get it? While they could have put the brakes on this meltdown years ago, our leaders were prisoners of their distorted, inflexible views of conservative Reaganomics ideology.
As a result, once again the “best and the brightest” failed America and now they and their buddies in Washington and Corporate America are setting up the Crash of 2011.
Now it’s time for my 2008 update, a look into the future where things will get far worse during the next presidential term. And given human behavior, especially in the deep recesses of Wall Street’s “greed is good” DNA, it seems inevitable that no matter how well-intentioned the new president may be Wall Street and Washington’s 41,000 special-interest lobbyists will drive America into the Great Depression 2.
30 ‘leading edge’ indicators of the coming Great Depression 2
Every day there is more breaking news, proof Wall Street’s greed is already back to “business as usual” and in denial, grabbing more and more from the new “Bailouts-R-Us” bonanza of free taxpayer cash and credits, like two-year-olds in a toy store at Christmas — anything to boost earnings, profits and stock prices, and keep those bonuses and salaries flowing, anything to blow a new bubble.
Scan these 30 “leading indicators.” Each problem has one or more possible solutions, but lacks unified political support. Time’s running out. We’re already at the edge. Add up the trillions in debt: Any collective solution will only compound our problems, because the cumulative debt will overwhelm us, make matters worse:
America’s credit rating may soon be downgraded below AAA
Fed refusal to disclose $2 trillion loans, now the new “shadow banking system”
Congress has no oversight of $700 billion, and Paulson’s Wall Street Trojan Horse
King Henry Paulson flip-flops on plan to buy toxic bank assets, confusing markets
Goldman, Morgan lost tens of billions, but planning over $13 billion in bonuses this year
AIG bails big banks out of $150 billion in credit swaps, protects shareholders before taxpayers
American Express joins Goldman, Morgan as bank holding firms, looking for Fed money
Treasury sneaks corporate tax credits into bailout giveaway, shifts costs to states
State revenues down, taxes and debt up; hiring, spending, borrowing add even more debt
State, municipal, corporate pensions lost hundreds of billions on derivative swaps
Hedge funds: 610 in 1990, almost 10,000 now. Returns down 15%, liquidations up
Consumer debt way up, now at $2.5 trillion; next area for credit meltdowns
Fed also plans to provide billions to $3.6 trillion money-market fund industry
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are bleeding cash, want to tap taxpayer dollars
Washington manipulating data: War not $600 billion but estimates actually $3 trillion
Hidden costs of $700 billion bailout are likely $5 trillion; plus $1 trillion Street write-offs
Commodities down, resource exporters and currencies dropping, triggering a global meltdown
Big three automakers near bankruptcy; unions, workers, retirees will suffer
Corporate bond market, both junk and top-rated, slumps more than 25%
Retailers bankrupt: Circuit City, Sharper Image, Mervyns; mall sales in free fall
Unemployment heading toward 8% plus; more 1930’s photos of soup lines
Government policy is dictated by 42,000 myopic, highly paid, greedy lobbyists
China’s sees GDP growth drop, crates $586 billion stimulus; deflation is now global, hitting even Dubai
Despite global recession, U.S. trade deficit continues, now at $650 billion
The 800-pound gorillas: Social Security, Medicare with $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities
Now 46 million uninsured as medical, drug costs explode
New-New Deal: U.S. planning billions for infrastructure, adding to unsustainable debt
Outgoing leaders handicapping new administration with huge liabilities
The “antitaxes” message is a new bubble, a new version of the American
dream offering a free lunch, no sacrifices, exposing us to more false promises
Will the next meltdown, the third of the 21st Century, trigger a second Great Depression? Or will the 2007-08 crisis simply morph into a painful extension of today’s mess to 2011 and beyond, with no new bull market, no economic recovery as our new president hopes?
Perhaps some of the first 29 problems may be solved separately, but collectively, after building on a failed ideology, they spell disaster. So listen closely to “leading indicator” No. 30:
At a recent Reuters Global Finance Summit former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead was interviewed. He was also Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Secretary of State and a former chairman of the N.Y. Fed. He says America’s problems will take years and will burn trillions.
He sees “nothing but large increases in the deficit … I think it would be worse than the depression. … Before I go to sleep at night, I wonder if tomorrow is the day Moody’s and S&P will announce a downgrade of U.S. government bonds.” It’ll get worse because “the public is not prepared to increase taxes. Both parties were for reducing taxes, reducing income to government, and both parties favored a number of new programs, all very costly and all done by the government.”
Reuters concludes: “Whitehead said he is speaking out on this topic because he is concerned no lawmakers are against these new spending programs and none will stand up and call for higher taxes. ‘I just want to get people thinking about this, and to realize this is a road to disaster,’ said Whitehead. ‘I’ve always been a positive person and optimistic, but I don’t see a solution here.’”
We see the Great Depression 2. Why? Wall Street’s self-interested greed. They are their own worst enemy … and America’s too.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES….

November 18, 2008
Pete Newell, Basketball Coach and Innovator, Dies at 93

By BRUCE WEBER

Pete Newell, one of the most influential coaches in the history of basketball, who won a national championship at the University of California in 1959, an Olympic championship in 1960, and whose camp became a required seminar in low-post play for generations of professional stars, died Monday in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., near San Diego. He was 93.

Earl Schultz, a friend and caretaker who had been one of Newell’s former players at Cal, confirmed the death to The Associated Press, saying Newell had had smoking-related lung problems.

Like Hank Iba and Clair Bee, two other legends of college coaching at a time when the college game was far more popular than the professional game, Newell was a thoroughgoing master of basketball rudiments, a stickler if not a scientist regarding the fundamentals, a preacher of discipline on offense and tenacity on defense.

He was an innovator as well; according to Bill Fitch, a former coach of four N.B.A. teams, Newell was the first to use the “over-the-top” pass as an alternative to the bounce pass, and he found uses for the crosscourt pass, something conventional wisdom eschewed because of its risk of being intercepted. His stall strategy, called “three out, two in,” to protect a lead, predated the similar “four corners” technique popularized by Dean Smith at North Carolina.

Unlike Iba and Bee, however, Newell — who coached at Michigan State and the University of San Francisco as well as the University of California at Berkeley — wielded lasting influence with older players as well. His 1960 Olympic team was led by Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, who became two of the greatest guards in N.B.A. history.

Newell also held several executive positions in the N.B.A.; in 1975, as the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers, he brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the team in a trade with the Milwaukee Bucks.

“There is no way you can measure Pete’s impact on the game,” West, who starred for the Lakers, told The New York Times in the early 1990s.

Peter Francis Newell Jr. was born on Aug. 31, 1915, in Vancouver, British Columbia, the youngest of eight children, and he grew up in Los Angeles. His father was a quiet man, a carpenter and a devout Catholic, but his mother, Alice, led a lively social life and had dreams of her children becoming movie stars. Young Pete appeared in small roles in several movies — he claimed Eric von Stroheim once called him a dumkopf for ruining a scene — and said Jackie Coogan was chosen ahead of him for the title role in the Charlie Chaplin film “The Kid.” But he was happier on his own, off screen, fending for himself.

“By the time he was 10 years old, Pete Newell was a crack poker player, a dedicated coffee drinker and a retired Hollywood actor,” wrote Bruce Jenkins, the author of a 1999 biography of Newell, “A Good Man.”

Newell went to Loyola University in Los Angeles (now called Loyola Marymount), and after serving in the Navy during World War II, he became the head basketball coach at the University of San Francisco (where he also coached baseball, golf and tennis). In 1949, his team won the National Invitation Tournament, at a time when it was the premier college basketball event. He coached at Michigan State from 1950 to 1954 and at Cal from 1954 through 1960. After winning the N.C.A.A. national championship in 1959, Cal returned to the finals the next year, losing to an Ohio State team that featured John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas and Bob Knight. His overall record for 14 seasons was 234-123, a winning percentage of .655.

Newell’s wife, Florence, died in 1984. He is survived by four sons.

Always an intense man who relied on coffee and cigarettes, Newell retired from coaching after his Olympic victory in 1960, when doctors warned that further stress would kill him.

From 1960 to 1968, he was the athletic director at Cal. In 1976, he began his “big man” camp with a single player, Kermit Washington. Last August, the 32nd session was held in Los Angeles. Besides Jabbar, its alumni have included Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Walton, Hakeem Olajuwon, James Worthy, Bernard King and dozens of other pros.

One famous holdout was Patrick Ewing, and some think his absence helped explain his significant weakness on the court, his inability to get close to the basket. Newell specialized in footwork.

Sam Goldaper, who died in 2005, contributed reporting.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES…

I PREFERRED NOSFERATU, BELLA LUGOSI, VINCENT PRICE,

THIS?

November 17, 2008
The Vampire of the Mall

By DAVID CARR

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. — There are times when the limitations of the printed word come into focus, like when there is a need to convey how it sounded when Robert Pattinson, who stars as the vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the forthcoming movie “Twilight,” stepped onto a riser at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia on Thursday evening in front of more than 1,000 mostly teenage girls.

In collective pitch, frequency and volume the sound would make a shuttle launching seem demure, a Jack White guitar solo retiring, a jackhammer somehow soothing. To reach into history, it may have approached Beatles-at-Shea-Stadium loud, replete with the weeping, swooning and self-hugging, and only the ambient flutter of cellphone cameras and furious texting by way of modern update. All of it was arrayed over a mostly unknown British actor who plays a character in a movie that will not be released until Friday.

“What is with all the screaming?” Mr. Pattinson asked when he came out. He absently ran his hand through his hair. Pandemonium ensued. He tugged at his white T-shirt in response, ever so nervously. Oh, boy. Then he laughed good-naturedly at the absurdity of it all. The smile was just a bit too much. A girl in a “Team Edward” shirt fell into the arms of her friend. “I can’t stand it!” she said.

Along with other members of the “Twilight” cast, Mr. Pattinson is touring stores of Hot Topic, a retail chain that mines the sweet spot between teenagers and pop culture, in malls across the country this month. It’s not so much to gin up interest in the film but to feed the monster it has already become. For his Thursday appearance fans arrived outside the mall the night before to get a ticket. The first 500 would receive a quick autograph on a poster and the rest a chance to see Mr. Pattinson make a brief appearance.

And when he did, the crowd didn’t see an actor. They saw Edward Cullen, the perfect boyfriend who just happens to live on blood.

“Twilight” comes to movie theaters with a long and profitable back story in print: four novels and 17 million copies sold. Written by Stephenie Meyer, a first-time author who’s now 34, the series originated with a dream she had about a young woman and her love for a vampire, who returns her love while managing to avoid his urge to bite her.

The books that followed take place in cloudy Forks, Wash., where the Cullens, a group of sun-shirking vampires, live among humans but do not prey on them, drinking animal blood instead. Bella Swan, a shy, bookish young woman, is drawn to one of them, Edward, even after she comes to understand the danger. A proffered apple on hands of pale flesh, on the cover of the first book, suggests the chaste urgency of their love, and Edward becomes Bella’s protector after another, less well behaved vampire, James, takes aim at her tender neck.

So you have your against-the-odds teen love, your woman in peril, your vampires and your cult following, but “Twilight” frenzy still has the capacity to shock. Last Monday there was a huge crush outside a mall near San Francisco, and a girl ended up with a broken nose. When Mr. Pattinson appeared at the Apple store in SoHo the week before, one young fan asked him to bite her.

“The connection that I am an actor playing this character is sort of skipped,” he said, laughing during an interview before the throng was admitted to the Hot Topic store here. “They are in denial. They think I am Edward Cullen.” Mr. Pattinson, 22, said he had no idea what to make of his situation, about to meet thousands of teenage girls — and many of their mothers — who were flat-out in love with him.

“It is bizarre,” he said. “People come from three states away and walk up to you trembling. I feel that I am at a disadvantage here because I can’t provide this mystical thing that they came for in the two seconds we have.”

No one was complaining. Laci Turfitt, 14, had arrived the day before with her mother, Shirley Turfitt, 48, and sat outside all night, sustained in part by thoughts of meeting Mr. Pattinson, along with the pizza and hot chocolate provided by Hot Topic.

“It’s a love story with romance and mystery,” the elder Ms. Turfitt, of Telford, Pa., said. “The seduction of the series is hard to pass up.” Up and down the velvet-rope line were little girls, moms, goth teenagers, mall rats and even the occasional emo boy. Each had a brief moment with Mr. Pattinson, who sat at a table and quickly signed posters before they were trundled off. Ms. Turfitt at least had a bit of a moment when she finally made it to the front of the line: “You are adorable.” Her daughter, like many of the young women in line, could barely mumble hello she was so overwhelmed.

Alena Marsh, 19, from Lancaster, Pa., managed to show Mr. Pattinson a tattoo above her ear of a small apple and the word “lamb,” which is Edward’s nickname for Bella. Afterward she leaned on a kiosk outside the store, tears streaming down her face as other fans rushed to her. “He was this close,” she said as they squealed. “Close enough to bite my neck.” OMG.

“When he comes to our store and meets with these fans, he is becoming Edward,” said Betsy McLaughlin, chief executive of Hot Topic, adding that “a license like this comes along once every few decades,” mentioning Harry Potter, SpongeBob SquarePants and “South Park.”

That kind of blood lust means the movie could have a huge opening at the box office — the film’s soundtrack is already No. 1 on the Billboard album chart — and Summit Entertainment just signed a film deal for the rights to “New Moon” and “Eclipse,” the second and third books in Ms. Meyer’s series. If a young wizard starts to come to mind, a T-shirt worn by a fan at the mall winked at the prospect. “I never got my letter from Hogwarts,” the front said, and on the back it continued, “So I am moving to Forks to live with the Cullens.”

Nancy Kirkpatrick, president for worldwide marketing at Summit, said: “We think it can be huge, but there is no exact model for this kind of movie. We took superhero movies as our approach and anything that seems right for that. You want it to feel big, to feel like an event. You want your hero to be a hero, and you want to identify your villain. We took those tactics and used them for a female property.”

The last movie the “Twilight” director, Catherine Hardwicke, made, “The Nativity Story,” also depicted unconsummated love between a mortal and a nonmortal, but that’s where the similarity ends. Ms. Hardwicke also directed “Thirteen,” a very different take on teenage sexuality, and “The Lords of Dogtown.” She was at the Apple store for an appearance with Mr. Pattinson and was ready for a frantic response, partly because she had seen young fans showing up to observe the frigid “Twilight” shoots in the mountains of Oregon.

“You have the story of a young woman falling so deeply in love that she doesn’t care if she dies or becomes a vampire,” Ms. Hardwicke said. “There is something so dangerous and alluring about it, and it all goes off in this very lush mountain backdrop. It’s an obsessive love that’s not that far from ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ or ‘Titanic’ for that matter.”

Many showings for the first weekend are already sold out, according to Rick Butler, chief executive of Fandango, an advance movie-ticket sales company. “You have a very large fan base of very Web-savvy fans and all sorts of blogs for the film and in-store events,” he said. “Summit has done a great job of putting all that together.”

Back on the stage at the King of Prussia Mall, Mr. Pattinson continued to stand awkwardly but, somehow, fantastically beautifully at the same time. A local radio D.J. fed him written questions from the audience, but his answers were buried by screaming.

“Do you guys care about the questions, or do you just want to talk about nothing?” Mr. Pattinson asked.

A young woman in a shirt emblazoned with the Cullen family crest spoke for many: “We just want to look at you.”

FROM THE LA TIMES…..

OBITUARY

Pete Newell dies at 93; Hall of Fame basketball coach guided Cal to 1959 NCAA title
Newell, who retired from coaching at 44, brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers in 1975 as the team’s general manager.

By Robyn Norwood

3:26 PM PST, November 17, 2008

Pete Newell, who coached UC Berkeley to the 1959 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball title and was one of only three men to guide teams to National Invitation Tournament, NCAA and Olympic championships, has died. He was 93.

Newell died today, a Cal spokesman said. A cause of death was not specified, but Newell had been in poor health since lung surgery in 2005.

By winning the NIT with the University of San Francisco in 1949, guiding Cal to the NCAA title and winning the 1960 Olympic gold medal with a roster that included Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jerry West, Newell became the first coach to claim all three titles.

The only others are Dean Smith and Bob Knight.

“In his time, I think he was one of the better coaches the game has ever seen,” former UCLA coach John Wooden, a close rival of Newell early in his career, said in 2005.

“When I think of the outstanding teachers of the game, he ranked up there with the very best,” Wooden said.

Knight, a generation younger than Newell, considered him a mentor.

“From a personal standpoint, no one had a greater influence on what I do or try to teach than Pete Newell has had,” Knight said.

“The influence he had in basketball has been something that carried on for over 60 years, beginning when he was coaching at the University of San Francisco.”

Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979, Newell was elected not as a coach but as a “contributor,” because his brief but stellar career was a year short of the 15-year requirement for coaches.

He retired from coaching in 1960 at only 44 — in part because of the self-induced stress that contributed to his chain-smoking, chugging coffee and going without food before games, and in part, he later suggested, because of his discomfort with the adulation surrounding him.

Though he left the bench early, by the end of his life, Newell’s impact on the game had extended almost five decades after his retirement as a coach.

As general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers from 1972 to 1976, Newell made the trade that brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers in 1975 — a watershed in the history of L.A. sports — after Abdul-Jabbar let it be known he wanted to leave the smaller-market Milwaukee Bucks for either New York, where he grew up, or L.A., where he played college ball for UCLA.

Newell sent Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman to Milwaukee to acquire Abdul-Jabbar along with Walt Wesley.

In the late 1970s, Newell began an annual clinic that came to be known as the Pete Newell Big Man Camp, a summer training ground for more than 250 NBA players over the years — with a list of alumni that included Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, James Worthy, Scottie Pippen, Sam Perkins, Jermaine O’Neal and the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum, who was 17 when 89-year-old Newell first tutored him.

Though there was never an official height requirement for the camp, guards were not invited.

“I just don’t feel I could do what I want to do, which is keep the American center in business,” Newell said at the 2005 camp in Las Vegas, where he counseled players even though he was less than five months removed from lung cancer surgery.

Newell considered today’s players “over-coached but under-taught,” meaning coaches focus too much on strategy without teaching players fundamental skills. In his camp, Newell emphasized footwork, spacing and a versatile array of individual offensive moves for post players in his camp.

“To me, the center position is the most demanding and important in basketball,” he said. “I think Bill Russell proved that with the amount of championships he won in the NCAA and NBA. Today, Shaq [Phoenix Suns center Shaquille O’Neal] is an example of how important the center can be.”

Though his legacy in the NBA is tied to the big men whose skills he honed as a college coach, Newell made the most out of the undersized and the less-talented, and he did it with defense, discipline and conditioning.

At a 2005 reunion of players from his teams at Cal and Michigan State, where Newell coached from 1950 to 1954, men nearly 50 years removed from their college days let out a collective groan at the mention of the “Hands Up” drill — an exhausting knees-bent, hands-up defensive shuffle that Newell required his players keep up for as many as 20 minutes at a time.

“Apart from intelligence, he looked for toughness,” said Stan Morrison, a member of the 1959 Cal team who went on to coach at Pacific, USC and San Jose State and is now athletic director at UC Riverside.

One of the players most emblematic of the rugged work ethic Newell prized was the star of Cal’s championship team, Darrall Imhoff, a onetime walk-on who went on to become a 12-year NBA center despite a single-digit career scoring average.

Making it hard for the other team to score was the cornerstone of Newell’s coaching philosophy.

Cal won the 1959 NCAA title by defeating two of the great offensive stars in basketball history in consecutive games: future Hall of Fame players Robertson of Cincinnati and West of West Virginia.

“Defense was his game,” Morrison said. “Of all the innovations, the one that stands out was what was called ’sloughing defense.’ It was a helping defense, and back then everybody used to guard their man like they owed him money.”

Robertson led the nation in scoring in 1959, averaging almost 33 points, but against Cal in the NCAA semifinals, he made only five of 16 shots and was held to 19 points. The next year, the teams met in the semifinals again, and Robertson — a three-time college player of the year — made only four of 16 shots and finished with 18 points.

The Cal defense in ‘59 so impressed Fred Taylor, the Ohio State coach, that he sought out Newell at a coaching clinic and spent hours with him, learning the nuances of the system.

The next season, Cal met Ohio State in the tile game and lost by 20 points, though it might not have been only the defense: Ohio State had future Hall of Fame players Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek and a bench player named Bobby Knight, a future Hall of Fame coach.

Later, beginning when Knight was a young coach at Army, he and Newell became close friends — perhaps not kindred in personal style, but in their love of the intricacies of the game.

“I think Pete probably understands the game better than anybody, ever,” Knight told author Bruce Jenkins in the 1999 biography, “A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story.”

“In all of sport, I think Pete is the least-known outstanding figure there is,” Knight said. “He was at his best at a time when media coverage was nothing like it is now. Just imagine if he won the NCAA title today, went back to the title game the following year, then coached the Olympic team. He’d be at the forefront of everything. And he’s so unusual, he has no animosities, no regrets whatsoever about leaving coaching when he did. You never hear, ‘Boy, I wish I could have. . . . ‘ He is more at peace with himself and what he’s done than any person I’ve known in my life.”

Born Aug. 31, 1915, in Vancouver, Canada, Newell grew up in Los Angeles.

His mother, Alice, made her son into a reluctant child actor for a time, and he appeared in several “Our Gang” movies. But sports soon consumed Newell’s interests.

“He was my hero as an athlete at that time,” said Duke Llewellyn, a junior high classmate who went on to become chairman of the Los Angeles Athletic Club’s John R. Wooden Award. “He was a good-looking guy, tall, with black hair, a nice guy to be around. If he told me to go out to left field, I’d trip over third base getting out there.”

After graduating from St. Agnes High School at the corner of Adams and Vermont, Newell played basketball at Loyola University, now known as Loyola Marymount, and began moonlighting before he graduated, coaching football, basketball, track and softball at a local prep school.

It was a coaching career that began early, and in the eyes of some, ended far too soon.

Morrison, his former player, believes Newell was “embarrassed out of coaching” by the adulation that came with Cal’s success.

“People attribute it to coffee and cigarettes, but I attribute it to that,” Morrison said. “He was such a humble guy and it was just too much. Everyone would be on their feet when he came out, and we’d put the ball down and applaud. Even the visiting team would do it sometimes.”

Newell acknowledged his discomfort in Jenkins’ 1999 biography.

“It goes way back to my early days as a kid, when I hated everything that came with being an actor,” he said. “Obviously, my health was the major thing. But toward the end there, the whole experience was kind of chokin’ me.”

Some people find it hard to resist what Morrison called the “woulda-shoulda-couldas” about what Newell might have accomplished if he had coached more than 14 years. A few of Newell’s ex-players and colleagues still bristle over perceived slights in the rivalry with Wooden, who had not yet won an NCAA title when Newell won his first but finished with a record 10.

“Each of us had a pretty good streak against each other as far as victories,” said Wooden, who won the first seven games his teams played against Newell’s. Newell won the last eight.

“We were competitors, but we were always friends,” Wooden said, adding that he admired the discipline and fundamentals of Newell’s teams, particularly their defense.

“I learned from him,” Wooden said.

Newell, whose wife, Florence, died in 1984, is survived by their sons, Pete Jr., a former high school basketball coach who guided Santa Cruz to the 2005 California Division III state championship; Tom, a former assistant coach and scout in the NBA and WNBA; Roger and Greg, as well as grandchildren.

Norwood is a former Times staff writer.

Copyright 2008 Los Angeles TIMES