This nifty article at California Magazine introduced me to the original Oski. Apparently, according to its creator, Robert Colescott, he was lovingly cynically created to be a "funny loser." Oski was originally meant to help soothe the pain of a loss in football with his graphical antics in the Daily Cal. It got me thinking that we probably could have used some of that light-heartedness last season, and probably will again this coming season.
In a lecture called "A Few Thoughts about My Life in Art," Colescott described the Oski from his cartoons as a cynical creation meant to be a funny loser. This was a fairly accurate portrayal of the football team at the time, which was coming off a 4–6 season in 1940. In a recent interview, Colescott elaborated, explaining that the cartoon Oski would appear in the sports pages of The Daily Cal on Fridays and Mondays. "He had the hots for this young lady named Rosy Bowl. He was after Rosy Bowl, and each week he had to face off against someone else. There was an Indian (Stanford) and a husky and so forth. The simple story was that Oski didn’t do very well that year, and every Monday he would be beat up, destroyed one way or another, but still in pursuit." The costumed Oski creation was supposed to cheer up fans after each loss.
So in the original spirit of Oski's role, I thought "....hmmm, methinks we need a caption contest."
After the jump the contenders and a call for personal Oski photos
via beartracks.net
obligatory:
via www.berkeleydailyplanet.com
via berkeley.edu
via www.berkeley.edu
via imgs.sfgate.com
via imgs.sfgate.com
Because if anyone deserves to be made fun of, it's the baby bruin:
After doing a Google images search for Oski, I came to realize that unfortunately there aren't a ton of great Oski "funny" shots. I am hoping that this post can change that up a little bit. So here is what I propose:
1) Upload your old Oski photos, especially ones that are sub-compromising, but still ironic/funny/relevant to a particular Pac-12 team.
2) Go forth and capture new images to be used in future caption contests (especially after losses).
My hope is that we can come up with some hilarious images that will take away the pain of losing just a little bit. After all, what kind of Cal fans are we if we can't laugh at ourselves.
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