Isagenix: Day 30 is Finally Here!

Today is the 30th day of my 30-Day Isagenix Program. Tomorrow I’ll have the final numbers. I continue to feel great and my energy is still up. Yesterday I did a Cleanse Day and it was also a deadline day for the newspaper I work for, so I must admit I was in a fairly foul mood all day (see above photo). But, this morning I popped out of bed at 6 am feeling rejuvenated. Stay tuned for my 30-Day assessment tomorrow!

Bullfighting is Bulls---!

A 14-year-old matador who left Spain to escape his home country's ban on young bullfighters was nearly gored to death in a Mexican ring, his lung punctured by a 900-pound bull. The matador was not willing to talk about the incident and the bull was unavailable for comment.
Jairo Miguel, who has been bullfighting professionally in Mexico for about the past two years, was fighting at the Aguascalientes Monumental Bull Ring on Sunday when a bull named Hidrocalido rushed him at top speed and lifted him in the air, appearing to carry him several yards with one horn firmly lodged in his thorax. The expression on the young matador’s face was one of surprise and distaste. “How dare the bull fight back!” he must have been thinking.
"I'm dying, dad, I'm dying," government news agency Notimex quoted Jairo as saying immediately after the goring. “But, I did save money on my car insurance by calling Geico,” he said.
Jairo's father, Antonio Sanchez Caceres, is also a well-known bullfighter who came with him to Mexico from Spain and was reportedly at the ring on Sunday when his son was injured. The parents could not immediately be reached for comment.
The slightly built, baby-faced Jairo was billed as the youngest matador in the world when he came to Mexico almost two years ago at age 12, apparently to escape Spain's ban on bullfighters younger than 16. He once told reporters he had cried prior to a fight.
In his two years in the Mexican ring, Jairo has scored some victories that earned him the right to cut off the defeated bulls' ears. One time he won and was presented with a set of fresh Rocky Mountain Oysters. But he has also been trampled and knocked around.
In Spain, an aspiring "torero" must be at least 16 to begin training with small bulls but is not allowed to kill a bull in the ring before he or she is 18, said an official from the Royal Bullfighting Federation of Spain. Unless, of course, they can get a permission slip from their parents, which means they can get a bullfighting learner’s permit at age 15.
But in Mexico, some start as young as 12 or 13, and there appears to be a rush toward ever-younger fighters who have become a growing attraction in Latin America. In Mexico, young bullfighters are also known as “Pocos Estupidos Supremos” which, when translated into English, means “Little Human Pinatas.”
Dr. Carlos Hernandez Sanchez said Jairo was the youngest goring victim he had ever treated. But he does not think he was too young to be in the ring.
"These are injuries that happen. He's a great bullfighter," Hernandez Sanchez said. “His depth perception sucks, however.”
Dr. Luis Romero, the surgeon who operated on Jairo at Aguascalientes' Guadalupe Clinic, said the bull's horn brushed his aorta and came about an inch from his heart.
"He was lucky, if you can call somebody who has been gored by a bull lucky," he said. “if it had gored him in the juevos, now that would be unlucky.”
If the four-inch gash had been one inch closer to the heart, "this surely would have been a catastrophe where it would have been very difficult to control" the bleeding.
Jairo was connected to a respirator on Monday but doctors were confident they could restore much of his lung function and expected him to recover.
Jairo's injury revived a debate in Mexico about young bullfighters.
Inaki Negrete, of the Mexican Association of Fighting Bull Breeders, said the responsibility for young bullfighters rests largely with their families, who are often the ones who encourage their sons to go into bullfighting in the first place.
"Normally, it's the parents of these children — and they are children — who put them into bullfighting schools," Negrete said. "It depends on individual judgment."
Maria Lopes of the International Movement Against Bullfights said both parents and governments that allow children to bullfight should be held responsible.
"Children, many from poor families, are seduced into the world of bullfighting by promises of fame, glory and above all, money," she said.
"What happened to Jairo Miguel is lamentable, but it is the result of laws that allow children to participate in bull fights," Lopes said in a written statement.
Jairo was not even the youngest matador to gain notoriety in Mexico. In 2005, Rafita Mirabal, then age 8, started in the ring, also in Aguascalientes, a bullfighting-crazed city 260 miles northwest of Mexico City.
"Rafita," as he was known, began facing down younger, smaller bulls and calves, but the animals still outweighed him by hundreds of pounds.
The trend appears to have taken off in the late 1990s, when famed Spanish bullfighter Julian Lopez Escobar, "El Juli," made his debut in Mexico in 1997 at age 14.
"Rafita Mirabal is too little in my view," said Negrete. While the animals he fights are younger, they can still break bones.
"It's very dangerous," Negrete said.
Bullfighting is fairly popular in Mexico, but is far from a national sport. Sunday's accident occurred at the popular San Marcos Fair, where bullfights are one of the main attractions.
Isn’t it time that this inhumane “sport” be eliminated worldwide? I put bullfighting in the same boat with cock fighting and pit bull fighting. The old days when an animal or human being had to be harmed or die to have fun should be a thing of the distant past. The Romans had the lions and the Christians, the Aztecs did human sacrifices and the KKK opted for lynchings. All of these rituals no longer exist. Well, almost all of them. So, I believe it’s safe to say that bullfighting should be the next to go.
We’re supposedly a more humane, more compassionate society today. We’re supposed to be able to see the errors of our pasts and correct them. We still haven’t figured that out when it comes to war. But, maybe we can make a baby step in the right direction and outlaw bullfighting!

HotelReservations.com is the Real Thing!

I found a great web site called www.hotelreservations.com. There are a ton of hotel, car rental and flight web sites out there, but this one has a lot of cool features, bells and whistles that the others don’t seem to have. HotelReservations.com is the whole package. Besides being able to save up to 70 percent off on hotels, car rentals, and flights, this site has some great deals on such things as vacation rentals, vacation packages, bed and breakfast places, condo rentals, and other categories they call Hot Deals, Family Fun, Beach Hotels, Gambling and Spa vacations. You can also get incredible deals on cruises, as well as super discounts on group bookings if you happen to be traveling with friends, or an organization, etc. HotelReservations.com also offers helpful tips on things like credit card safety. But, one of the best things is the international flavor of HotelReservations.com. They offer hotel and vacation deals in places throughout Europe and all over the world, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Switzerland and Australia. They even offer $100 rebates on some trips and bookings. Another convenient service they offer at HotelReservations.com is that if you don’t want to book a hotel, rental car or flight online, you can call them directly at: (800) 447-4136. When it comes to a web site like this, I rate it on two major things: 1.) Ease of use and 2.) The savings it offers. If it’s too time-consuming and difficult to use, then a site like this is not practical. Time is money and it you’re wasting a bunch of it trying to get a good deal, it just defeats the purpose. Secondly, it has to give you a good deal. A lot of these supposed discount locating sites don’t follow through and you can, in many cases, get a better or the same exact offer going direct. Not so with HotelReservations.com. This web site is the real thing and I highly recommend it. The next time I need a hotel (which I do at least 1-2 times per month for business) I’ll be giving it a go!

San Francisco Gives Robin Williams a Long-Overdue Award

It’s finally happening. The City by the Bay is honoring its greatest living comedian and actor, a man who started out at the City’s comedy clubs, made it on TV as a funny alien and eventually rose to the pinnacle of movie stardom.

The San Francisco Film Society is laying its prestigious acting prize on the city's biggest star and it’s long overdue. The fast-talking man with a mind like a steel trap, a creative force in everything he’s tried, is getting the ultimate film honor and no one deserves it more.
The Oscar-winning actor and stand-up comedian will get the Society's Peter J. Owens Award at an awards dinner May 3 at the St. Francis Hotel as part of the 50th annual San Francisco Film International Film Festival.

The award, named for cultural philanthropist and Film Society board member Peter Owens, is given to an actor whose work "exemplifies brilliance, independence and integrity.'' Previous recipients include Ed Harris (2006), Dustin Hoffman (2003), Sean Penn (1999) and Annette Bening (1997).

On May 4, Williams, 55, who polished his comedic talent in local clubs, will be interviewed onstage at San Francisco's Castro Theatre in a program featuring a retrospective of clips from his many films and director Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King,'' starring Williams.
When I was doing standup comedy in this town in the late 80’s and 90’s, I had the pleasure of meeting Robin on several occasions. He would come into SF comedy clubs like the Holy City Zoo and the Other Café late at night to try out new material and he always killed. There was an electricity in the air on those nights that you can’t quantify or understand unless you were there.

On one particular occasion, it was around 1 am and I was performing at a place in San Francisco called Cobb’s at an open mic. I was the very last comic to take the stage and halfway through my set Robin walked in. There must have been 10 people in the audience at that point, mainly drunks and homeless types. But Williams got up there and slayed them. He did 45 minutes of jokes and improvisational stuff that was absolutely brilliant. The next day I actually considered giving up doing standup forever.

Besides Williams, the 2007 SF Film Festival's other major award recipients, as previously announced, are all men: George Lucas, honored with a one-time only Irving M. Levin Award; director Spike Lee (whose Acts III and IV of his Hurricane Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke," will screen); and scriptwriter Peter Morgan (coming off a strong year with "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland").

Other award recipients include film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, to be honored at a screening of "The Iron Mask," a silent romp whose restoration he directed. The Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award goes to Dutch documentary filmmaker Heddy Honigmann; her film "Forever," about the famous Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, will be shown.

The festival's first-ever Midnight Awards, a tribute to young actors, recognize Rosario Dawson ("Rent") and Daly City native Sam Rockwell ("Confessions of a Dangerous Mind").
For information about the May 3 Film Society Awards Night, call (415) 551-5190. For tickets and information about the Williams tribute at the Castro, call (925) 866-9559 or go to http://www.sffs.org/.

The Art of Baseball

What are baseball bats, baseballs and bases doing in an art gallery and shouldn’t Sandy Koufax be on the sports pages instead of hanging on a wall? Well, it must be time for the 10th Annual Art of Baseball exhibition at the George Krevsky Gallery located at 77 Geary Street in San Francisco. This year’s show, Spring Training started on March 15th and continues through Saturday, April 28th. Forty artists from across the country have been invited to create their interpretation of our National Pastime. Paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture, on the theme of baseball, line the walls of a gallery normally showing Modernist art by such well-known artists as Thomas Hart Benton and Milton Avery.

Immortals like Honus Wagner, Satchel Paige, and Roberto Clemente can be seen, as well as Pacific Coast League favorites and sandlot players playing for the love of the game. Among the highlights of this year’s show are Carl Hugo Beetz’ canvas painted in 1938 of a White Sox exhibition game and Benjamin Blackburn’s contemporary wood sculpture of Honus Wagner’s famous Tobacco card. Artworks based on historical images of the 1934 Boston Red Sox, and the San Francisco Seals vs. the Oakland Oaks, were created by Bay Area printmaker Stacey Carter, Jennifer Ettinger’s homage to Satchel Paige and Tina Hoggatt’s porcelain enamel paintings on steel are all featured. Ebbets Field, now only a memory, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, the DiMaggio brothers, and a young Ted Williams all create an atmosphere that will touch the hearts of art enthusiasts and sports fans alike.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 am to 5:30 pm and visuals can be seen on the website at http://www.georgekrevskygallery.com/.

Taking A Day Off

I'm just kicking back today. It's a beautifully sunny day in San Francisco, so I'm going to enjoy it.

Al Owes A Sharp Apology

Now that he’s played a huge part in bringing down Don Imus, Al Sharpton needs to start making some apologies of his own to the Duke University lacrosse players who were exonerated of rape charges this week. Sharpton pre-judged these poor guys and found a second career slamming them incessantly in the media and now he has to be held responsible for his racist remarks.

Sharpton called the players “rich white boys” and announced to the world that they were guilty before any evidence was presented in court. As far as Sharpton was concerned, they were guilty until proven innocent. It was just another chance for the sharp-tongued one to bash white folks.

Do you think he would have cared for a minute about the Duke case if these players had been accused of raping a white stripper? Or what if it the players themsleves had been black? Would Al have gotten so enthusiastically involved then?

Al Sharpton's words caused turmoil on the Duke campus and threw flames on an already blazing fire. This kind of lynch mob mentality is supposed to be one of the things Sharpton abhors. Which he does – as long as it fits in with his own personal agenda.

What did Sharpy want from the whole thing anyway? The answer is simple. Face time -- on CNN, The O'Reilly Report, MSNBC, Court TV and every major network in this country. Which he got big-time, because controversy means viewers -- something Sharpton is well aware of. As they say, hating gets ratings. And Al Sharpton can hate white people with the best of them, regardless of whether they deserve it or not.

Now, I’m not saying Don Imus was in any way justified in what he said about the Rutgers Women’s basketball team. He deserves everything he got. I support CBS for booting him off the air. There is no excuse for racism of any kind in the world, period. But, when you call kids “rich white boys” and vilify them as completely as Sharpton did, I have a problem with that.

I remember one summer when I was home on vacation from college, my father (who is of Italian heritage) said he believed that Spike Lee was a racist because of a scene in his movie “Do the Right Thing” where some black youths destroy an Italian family’s pizzeria. I distinctly recall looking my dad in the eye and replying, “Dad, how can you say something like that? Black people can’t be racists!”

Well guess what? ANYONE can be a racist.

Al Sharpton is a deft opportunist, as he showed us long ago with the Tawana Brawley rape hoax. The man makes a living out of chastising mostly white people for their wrongs against the black race. But, when he’s wrong, which it’s been proven he was in this instance, where is his apology? Why does he get to keep his radio show?

Sharpton has made a fortune from race-related commentary throughout the years and it’s time he was forced to be held accountable for incendiary comments like the ones he made against the Duke lacrosse players.

There cannot be a double standard and that has nothing to do with race. But, it does have everything to do with what's right. People from every race, color or creed should be able to see that rather clearly.

There is no doubt in my mind that Al Sharpton owes those players an apology. But, do you think it’s forthcoming? Don’t count on it!

Isagenix Day 26: Let's Talk Turkey!

It’s Day 26 of My 30-Day Isagenix Program and I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank all of the turkeys out there in the world. Turkey has been one of the main things that I’ve been eating to stay within my 400-600 calorie per day allotment. It’s a very lean, high-protein meat that’s delicious and filling and oh-so-good for you. I eat it sliced on whole wheat bread with mustard (no mayo) and tomatoes and so far it’s been a godsend. Today I received my shipment of Isagenix products – the ones I’ll be using for my next 30-Day Program. This time around, I’m using a bunch of other stuff which I’ll tell you about over the next few weeks. If you ever want more information about Isagenix, you call always visit my Isagenix web site. Since I’m fairly new to the program, I may not know it all. But, what I don’t know I can always find out from my Isagenix Counselor, a great guy named John Ettama.

Good Riddance to an Old Racist!

Don Imus is officially off the air. And all I can say is let the champagne flow. It should really be a national holiday. He is a hack and should have been taken off the air long ago. The fact that Imus survived in the business for as long as he did is testament to the fact that disc jockeys are right near the bottom of the entertainment talent totem poll.
Imus was chronically unfunny, unoriginal and I can’t believe anyone ever even listened to him, but they obviously did. My only worry now is that some other radio station hungry for ratings will hire him. The man should just retire and walk off into the sunset.
CBS fired the embattled talk show host and canceled his longstanding radio program after an uproar over his racist and sexist comments. The network made the announcement after coming under fierce pressure to fire him the day after MSNBC pulled the plug on his televised simulcast.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that Imus made racist, inappropriate remarks all the time. But, I guess this was the final straw. He’s a burnt-out old dinosaur. He reminds me of an Alzheimer’s patient in a senior care facility who just babbles away. The only difference is that guy in the old folks home isn’t broadcast all over the country, and Imus was.
Before he was fired from CBS, a defiant Don Imus took to the airwaves and spoke about MSNBC pulling his TV show.
On the air, Imus said, "Some of the stuff that MSNBC has done this morning is frankly unethical, and I've asked them to stop doing it."
He also took a swing at MSNBC, saying, "These (bastards) they went after me. They got me. But they didn't catch me asleep."
Imus conducted a telethon to benefit three children's charities, which was scheduled to be simulcast on his MSNBC show. Instead viewers saw a graphic that read, "Imus Off MSNBC."
MSNBC scrambled to replace Imus with live newscasts. NBC News president Steve Kapas was a guest and explained the network's decision to pull Imus' show, saying, "When people who work for me come to me and say 'this could be my daughter,' I have to do something."
Last week on his radio show, Imus described the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "hardcore," "nappy-headed hos."
The Rutgers players who have captured the hearts of the nation made a special appearance via satellite on the Oprah Winfrey show
Oprah told the team, "I speak for everyone I know when I say you all have made us all proud by how you've handled this whole ordeal."
Coach Vivian Stringer gave her first reaction to Imus losing his TV show, saying she and the team are waiting to judge him for themselves. "We want to have an opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting," she said. They should slam dunk his ass!
And she revealed that meeting could take place "very very soon."
But the meeting is too late to save Imus's job.

My Interview with Jim Landis

The other day I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Landis, a former MLB player who played from 1957 to 1967, primarily with the Chicago White Sox. He was known as an incredible centerfielder and the winner of five consecutive Gold Gloves from 1960 to 1964. He was an all-star in 1962 and also played in the 1959 World Series for the Chisox, batting .292 with 7 hits in a losing cause vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1961, he had a career year, knocking in 80 runs while batting .283. He finished in the top 5 in stolen bases for the American League a total of 5 times.