The L.A. Dime

Dear readers, there will be a brief pause in posting as my real-job workload has increased and my lovely mother will be visiting for a short while starting tomorrow. We have another baby-Dr. visit coming soon, and I might be able to sneak in a few little things here or there, but I’ll definately send those who have posted comments on the site an email when there’s some new content.

The Dime thanks you for your patience and your continued support.

This is my final post on the 2006 Tour de France, and it will be a short one. Think about this: Greg Lemond won two tours in a row, then got shot during a hunting accident and nearly died before coming back to win his third and final yellow jersey. Armstrong, never a tour contender before, recovered from testicular cancer that spread through his lungs and brain to win seven in a row. And while Landis’ pending hip replacement cannot be considered life-threatening in any way, still, he is suffering from avascular necrosis, leaving a dead and rotting knob of bone grinding in his hip with every step he takes, and every pedal stroke he makes. Can you imagine the pain? And yet, he overcame this agony to win the hardest sporting event in the world with panache that the cynical and jealous French can no longer deny. Clearly, there is much more to these men than big lungs and stronger-than-average hearts. They have super-human willpower. An asset far greater than biology could ever deliver.

It was a good weekend in the Valley, despite the brutal, record-setting heat wave that has engulfed SoCal. Saturday, we spent the afternoon with friends JT and Phoebe, celebrating the one-month birthday of their son, Jacob (Cub to his friends) with lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. We returned home to discover that Van Nuys had been hit with a rolling blackout, and our power was cut off for three hours during the hottest part of the day.

That night, we went to see the Dodgers play the Cardinals. It was 90 degrees at game time (7:10 PM), and it had reached a high of 110 degrees during the day in Chavez Ravine. We sat right behind home plate with Jake, Aiyana, Mark and Faleena, sweating profusely as the Cardinals (much to my Reds-loving chagrin) built a 6-1 lead on Albert Pujol’s 32nd homerun of the season. Over Dodger Dogs, garlic fries and, fittingly, Perrier, we celebrated 8 consecutive years of American dominance in Le Tour De France as Floyd Landis brought home the maillot jaune earlier that day in Paris. That’s eight in a row, and 11 of the last 21. Lemond – 3, Armstrong – 7, and Landis -1. While Floyd’s story will never equal the comeback from cancer that was Armstrong’s miraculous saga, consider that Landis was riding on a hip that is so injured it must be completely replaced in the off-season. Also consider that his turnaround from losing eight minutes to gaining back all but thirty seconds of that deficit in 24 hours may be the single greatest performance in the history of the Tour. So, we toasted Floyd, I jeered Jeff Weaver (he still won), then we bolted for some AC after the 7th inning stretch.

Sunday was Tina’s birthday, and she wanted to get soaked at a water park, so the same crew that sweated together through the Dodger loss rolled up to San Dimas early in the morning to spend the day at Raging Waters. It had been 112 degrees there the day before, but we got lucky as it was cloudy most of the morning — there were even two pauses in park activity due to lightning and rain showers (unheard of in July here) — making the experience quite comfortable. We rented a cabana, rode slides (Tina and the Kid were limited to category 1 & 2 attractions), played in the wave pool, chilled in the lazy river, and paid way too much for food and water. It was a fun day, though, a happy birthday for my bride, and a busy, busy weekend despite the heat, which, according to Climatologist Bill Patzert of the Jet Propulsion Lab, is here to stay for a long while.

…is back in the race. I wrote Floyd Landis off yesterday as finished in this year’s tour. Nearly every commentator and writer did as well. But today, in one of, if not the bravest efforts I have ever seen in sport, Floyd attacked the peloton 50 KM into a race with four brutal mountain passes, held them off the entire way, climbed from 11th place into 3rd, and erased most of an eight minute deficit to keep his dreams of yellow in Paris alive for the Saturday time trial. He may have won this race’s first time trial if not for a mechanical problem, so the thirty seconds he needs to make up on his rivals is more than doable. That said, the yellow jersey has been known to sprout wings for its wearer (see Marco Pantani), so don’t count out Oscar Pereiro, yet, and Carlos Sastre is no slouch either.

Sadly, the only way pro cycling will continue to grow in this country is if Americans keep winning Le Tour. It’s the only pro event that gets TV time on Sports Center, or has its results updated on sports talk radio. I feared a decline of growing popularity in the post-Lance era, but hopefully this man raised in Pennsylvania as a Mennonite, whose parents watch the race at a neighbor’s house because they don’t have a TV, will find it within himself to win the final time trial and give the French one more thing to cry about this month (see Zidane).

You can watch the time trial live on OLN (Outdoor Life Newtwork) beginning at 8:30 AM, EST — though the start is in reverse order and the leaders go last, so by 10:00 it should be getting interesting. They also replay the stage several times over the course of the day. Vive La Floyd!

Hitting an orange-sized, rock-hard ball traveling at 100 MPH with a thin wooden club is really tough. So is reading a zone blitz and making the right throw to the open receiver in less than three seconds with a 250 pound linebacker in your face. Bending a free kick around a wall of jumping men and sneaking it into the upper left-hand corner – that’s hard, too. But none of them are the hardest thing in sports.

You have to give strong consideration to Iron Man: a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run, all to be completed in 17 hours or less. Our friend Laura Edwards is competing in the Lake Placid Iron Man this Sunday, and all our thoughts and best wishes are with her in what is absolutely one of the most grueling athletic tests ever devised by mentally ill human beings. Go Mo-Mo!

And then there is Le Tour de France: three straight weeks of racing an average of 120 miles a day over the Pyrenees, the Alps, and across the baking 95-degree plains of central France to cover 2211 miles in total. That’s 32 miles more than the distance from Los Angeles to Cincinnati. There are two murderous time trials and countless hazards to avoid, including collar bone-snapping, 50 MPH crashes, and idiot fans rushing in front of racers to take pictures. Beyond saddle sores and road rash, and somehow consuming 7,000 calories a day, there is also the loss of bone density. Yes, these guys spend so much time on their bikes in July of every year, that like astronauts, they loose bone density because they aren’t supporting themselves by standing or walking. It’s one thing to finish this race, but to wear the yellow jersey as you cross under the Champs Elysées in Paris is an infinitely more ridiculous dream than winning a Super Bowl or World Series. Fewer than 200 men compete in the tour each year. Of them, a little more than half will finish, and of them, only one will be crowned champion. By comparison, the NBA has roughly 480 players, sixteen of whom will win a ring no matter if they play a single minute or not.

This year’s tour, despite having its favorites lost to doping scandals, is a true testament to the inhuman feat it was for Lance Armstrong to win seven in a row. Today, Floyd Landis, the top American contender, cracked under heavy pressure on a tough mountain stage while wearing the yellow jersey because his team disintegrated and left him isolated. Lance was a freakish athlete, but without his soldiers controlling the battlefield, setting a grueling pace to discourage would-be breakaways, and then chasing down those who did manage to escape, he may not have won any of those races. It’s due to Greg LeMond and Lance that we can even utter the phrase “top American contender” in a sport dominated by Europe since its inception. But today, as I watched poor Floyd crumble, his legs unable to spin the cranks at even half the speed needed to stay in contact with his rivals, I was again made aware of how good Lance was, how easy he made it seem, and how winning this grand tour is absolutely the hardest thing in sports.

A recent AP story states: “The federal government reported last week that the first half of 2006 was the warmest in the United States since record keeping began in 1895. The average temperature for the 48 contiguous United States from January through June was 51.8 degrees, or 3.4 degrees above average for the 20th century.”

It’s easy to be lazy and say, “this is just a weather cycle.” I’m sitting in a place where the temperature has been over 100 for a week, and I believe otherwise. Warmer air means warmer water, which means stronger hurricanes, more tornados, and melting ice caps. If we each make the effort to do some simple things in our lives, if we take the time to let our representatives know they need to take action, we can all make an impact. Aside from buying a hyrbrid vehicle, riding a bike, or walking to nearby destinations, I’ll drop the dime on ten things you can do at home to reduce your impact on the planet. Click here for more details.

1. Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl). CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
2. Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer. You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.
3. Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner. Cleaning a dirty air filter can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
4. Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchases. If each household in the U.S. replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, we’d eliminate 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year!
5. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket. You’ll save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple action.
6. Use less hot water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year) instead of hot.
7. Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible. You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year.
8. Turn off electronic devices you’re not using. Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
9. Unplug electronics from the wall when you’re not using them. the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption and spews 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year!
10. Be sure you’re recycling at home. You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide a year by recycling half of the waste your household generates.

Help us decide our baby names! We’re not making any promises that we’ll go with the majority — if the Supreme Court doesn’t have to, why should we — but we’d love to hear what you think. Click here to vote.

It’s hard to believe that our little one’s been in the oven for four months, now. We went to see our fabulous OB, Dr. Morse, for a check up today (see the video below!). Tina’s doing a fantastic job as a mommy, and all signs point to perfect health for she and the bump. It has been decided (by Mommy) that the sex of our child will not be revealed to us until the moment of his/her birth. Let me go on record as saying that I want to know now. If we knew, we could start calling the bump by his/her name, I would no longer have to type or say “his/her” all the time, we could get adjusted to the idea of raising a boy/girl, and in general, the nameless little bump would feel more like part of the family. Tina feels that discovering the sex of a child is one of life’s greatest surprises, and she feels it gives her something to look forward to as she fights through labor. As I will not be the one doing the pushing, hers is obviously a decision I must abide by. Looks like lots of green and yellow baby clothes, huh?

There are a couple of things we do know at this point. Our nursery will be decorated with a safari theme, and if the bump turns out to be a girl, her name will be Sophia, and if a boy, his first name will be Richard in honor of my Dad. We intend to call a boy by his middle name, though, but that moniker has yet to be determined, as has a middle name for Sophia. I’m going to try to persuade my glowing bride to allow me to conduct an online poll right here on the blog after we narrow down our final choices, but I have serious doubts as to whether that will fly.

Next doctor visit is in three weeks. Watch the video below!

If you pitched Superman as a brand new character to the studios today, they’d laugh you out of the room. He can fly, he’s bullet proof, has freeze breath, heat vision, x-ray vision, incredible super-strength, incredible super-hearing, can somehow breathe in space and under water, can’t be burnt or frozen, and can only be weakened or killed by a scarce radioactive rock from his annihilated home planet millions of light-years away. What’s dramatic about that? It’s like making a movie about God (or in the case of Superman Returns, Jesus), and with the notable exception of The Passion of the Christ, it’s hard for most of us to empathize with an omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful being. Beyond that, the whole kryptonite thing is ludicrous. You just know going into every movie that it will always come down to a stupid green stone.

Spiderman is a decent superhero, and I’ve always loved The X-Men, but Batman is by far the best. Why? Because he’s NOT a super hero. He’s mortal. He has no super powers. His crime-fighting ability is based on intense martial arts training and intelligent use of technology. He has a much cooler costume than The Man of Steel, plus he moonlights as a billionaire playboy as opposed to a love-struck junior reporter. But Batman’s true greatness is in his dark side. He’s complicated. He’s not twinkling blue eyes, super-nova smile, curly cowlick, and just-give-me-some-sunshine-and-a-phone-booth-so-I-can-save-the-world perky. Batman is the Dark Knight. A ninja. He’s angry. Vengeful. Human. I suppose there is a modicum of pathos in the idea that poor Kal-El is the last of his race, and that he bares the burden of being a lonely deity among we lost mortals. But really. Is that worse than seeing your parents shot and killed after suffering through opera? I think not.

After seeing Superman Returns in the theater, I watched Batman Begins again at home. These two “reboots” (phrase courtesy of Mark Dempsey) were attempts to revise classic heroes that had been driven to painful deaths. Superman IV and Batman and Robin were both atrocious culminations to franchises that had declined rapidly from their glorious inceptions. Superman Returns to enormous spectacle and little substance, while Batman Begins simply, with a real person; a mortal human being with whom we can identify. So, in my humble, non-heat-emitting eyes, the battle of the reboots goes to the Caped Crusader. Meanwhile, the hot $300 million Hollywood question that has now sent a select few screenwriters scrambling is: where will Lex Luther get his next chunk of killer kryptonite?

It’s July 8th and that means I’m another year older. This one is a little more signficant than others, though, and not just because I plucked another gray hair, or because my body aches a little more and for a lot longer than it used to after a grueling climb up the stairs. This is my last birthday as a non-father. Knocking wood that all goes well, this time next year my son or daughter will be in the vicinity of seven months old. By then, the shift from the mostly “me-centered” life I enjoyed as a child and single adult, which became the “us-centered” life I lead as a married man, will have transformed completely into a “child-centered” existence. I’m fortunate to have many friends whom have had babies recently. It’s remarkable to see the big-bang-like explosion of joy in their lives, and the equally amazing shift in their focus and perspective. Of course, we must keep working, continue to love our spouses, enjoy friendships and pursue hobbies, but when a child comes — as I’ve been told — there can be no mistake that he or she becomes the center of the universe.

I’m always a little bummed on this day each year as I grow longer in the tooth, but even as the momment of true transition is still five months away, I will celebrate this birthday as a milestone of far more significance than 16 when I could drive, 18 when I could vote, 21 when I could drink, or 25 when my insurance rates were supposed to have gone down. I count myself as fortunate today. Some would say blessed. In love. Healthy. Not broke. And the father of rapidly growing, hopefully healthy little bump who will make every birthday after this more special than I could have ever imagined possible.

These are photo booth shots of my lovely bride and I on the eve of my birthday taken at The Short Stop bar in Echo Park, where we (I) enjoyed a drink with our friends JT and Jan before heading to The Echo to see our favorite band, The Submarines.