The Summer of Love Is Dead!

San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district used to be a great place to visit, with all of the funky cafes, the head shops, the amazing music stores and a great laid-back vibe, but now it’s turn into a battleground where homeless drunks, stoners, small-time pot dealers and an entire armada of world’s lost children have taken over the area by acting like aggressive bullies and fighting the cops, who are losing the war and don’t really seem to care.

One of our friends was recently assaulted by a gang of homeless stoners in the Haight. He was walking down the street, avoiding eye contact with anyone, when three thugs decided to block him from passing on the sidewalk.

“Hey, there’s a toll here,” one of the slimier miscreants actually spoke.

“Yeah, it’s five bucks each,” another chimed in.

“Yeah, you can afford it,” the Curly of the trio added his two cents.

Like most of us, my friend changed his route and walked out into oncoming traffic to avoid more thuggery.

“We’ll kill you next time we see you around here, asshole,” they said in unison, which makes me think they rehearse regularly.

Luckily, my buddy got out of there in one piece, but he did promise himself to never return to the Haight. (Note: Tourism must be booming!)

This was not the only Haighter story I had heard, so I decided to witness the carnage myself. As a writer, I feel as though I should see things with my own eyes whenever I can. So, I went to the Haight and drove around for awhile, making sure to stay in my vehicle to observe in safety, like going to one of those Wild Animal Parks.

And the animals I observed were no less intimidating, ugly and menacing as described. The thugs are perfectly named--they block off all of the sidewalks they can by sitting and allowing no one to walk past. People are forced to walk through traffic and risk getting hit by cars if they hope to pass. And heaven forbid if you try to walk through the mob.

During the half hour I witnessed this phenomena, not one person confronted the sidewalk sitters. People as a rule don’t want hassles and the average Joe or Jo on the street will take his or her chance getting hit by a car as compared to confronting angry-looking, physically intimidating people who have outnumbered them. This unruly mob doesn’t have guns, but their arsenal, consisting of verbal threats, pit bulls, flying spit and even throwing fists if necessary, is apparently effective.

The Haight has turned into Bartertown, the apocalyptic village featured in the film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I kept expecting to see a fight breaking out between Max (Mel Gibson) and Aunty Entity (Tina Turner) at any time from amongst the dusty minions lining the streets of the Haight.

So, now everyone knows the problem exists. The local media’s all over it. But, those same thugs are sitting there right now, doing the same thing to every passerby they can. Will someone have to die before something gets done? Will it then become a national story so that the city and the cops will suddenly have to spin it their way and pass the blame to anyone and everyone else?
Probably. And that’s the saddest part of this entire tale. Most of time things don’t get done until they have to get done. People only learn things the hard way and this will be another example of that. Count on it.

My 2009 NFL Playoff & Super Bowl Picks

Many sportswriters and/or prognosticators are skittish when they make their NFL postseason selections, but I'm ready to give you mine right now!

This year's playoffs features more parity than in any recent seasons. Will Wild Card teams like Green Bay and the Jets go deep in the brackets? Or will the leading teams (New Orleans & Indy) reach the Promised Land called the Super Bowl? Get your fantasy playoff rosters and your score squares ready, because here I go:

First Round:

Jets vs. Bengals: The Jets are hot and their defense is tough! Jets win!

Ravens vs. Pats: Baltimore is better and improving, but Brady and Moss will prevail. Pats!

Eagles vs. Cowboys: Dallas is ready and primed to make a run & Philly is slumping. Boyz!

Pack vs. Cards: Green Bay is playing a hot hand and Arizona has big holes on defense. Cheese!

Second Round:

Jets vs. Colts: The NY magic ends here. Manning and Addai will make everything right. Colts!

Pats vs. Chargers: San Diego will outscore New England and Belichick will whine. Chargers!

Cowboys vs. Vikings: This could be close, but Dallas will prevail with DEFENSE. Cowboys!

Pack vs. Saints: New Orleans is real, but the Pack is Back. Packers!

Championship Round:

Chargers vs. Colts: Decided by a field goal. (Final score: S.D.: 27-23) Chargers to the Bowl!

Green Bay vs. Cowboys: Decided by a TD. (Final score: 'Boyz: 31-24) Dallas Back on the Grassy Knoll!

Super Bowl:

Chargers vs. Cowboys: San Diego is better and deeper overall. It will be close until the 4th quarter when two crucial turnovers bury the Boyz. (Final: Chargers 30 Cowboys 20. Super Bowl MVP: Phil Rivers)

TV Furniture Has Come A Long Way!

Back in the day, tv stands really didn't exist. If you put your black and white television on a desk or the kitchen counter, that was your T.V. stand. Now, they're over 200 different choices when it come to T.V. stands. You can go high-tech, old school, super quality or discount tier, because the designs, inventory and craftsmanship is off the hook. Enjoy your new T.V. with a great T.V. stand--you'll make the entire viewing experience that much more special.

Invisalign: Make it a New Years Resolution You Keep

How are you doing with your 2010 resolutions? It's now January 5th, which means that 88% of all the resolutions in this country have already been broken. Weight loss, quit smoking and finding Bin Laden to bring him to justice-- these are probably the most popular resolutions in the U.S. In England, all they want is better tea in 2010. They're a more simple bunch. Another resolution that should be easier to stick to, involves doing Orange NJ invisalign. If your teeth are all crooked and they look bad, take a long, serious look at invisalign. Get it done because you'll get it done! Get a smile makeover and you'll build your self-confidence and feel better 100%!

Inside the Scoop on Outer Banks

They ask me to write about the beautiful vacation spot called Outer Banks. Outer Banks vacation homes are supposedly amazing, for laidback activities including watersports, horseback riding, chillin' & thrillin' and just having a blast, Outer Banks has a legacy for fun in the sun. Many uncool celebrities (like G.W. and Tom "Spaceman" Cruise) go there and take up useless space. But, other very cool celebs like Jim Breuer (SNL) and Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters-pictured) hit the scene at Outer Banks and make it a potentially great spot for a vacation.

Graduate to The Next Level

We're a while from graduation plans, but if you're moving onto the next level of life in May/June 2010, get onboard with the plans and buy yourself some high-quality, very attractive and timely photo graduation invitations. A nice photo graduation invite will make you look good as you graduate to REAL LIFE. You worked hard studying, drinking beer, brown-nosing your teachers and parents, and just generally slid through school. Celebrate! Work your relatives for large cash graduation gifts and figure out how you can get the most $$ in your life without working hard or getting caught!

Fat Comics Die Young!

I was a bad fat comedian. Now I'm a slightly chubby former comic. But, I'm ALIVE! When I lose the final 40 pounds I need to shed, I'll be ecstatic. When I look back at the way I lived for 40-plus years, it's amazing I'm not just as dead as Belushi, Candy, Kinnison or Fatty Arbuckle. Those guys never really had a chance to take advantage of the top weight loss pills on the market today. Like my doctor said to me, "You don't see a lot of obese people in their 70's & 80's." Think about it!

Lester Rodney: He Helped Get Jackie in the Game

Lester Rodney, the sports editor and columnist for the American Communist Party newspaper the Daily Worker who crusaded to end segregation in major league baseball in the 1930s and '40s, has died. He was 98.

Mr. Rodney died Sunday December 20th at his home in a retirement community in Walnut Creek, Calif., said his daughter, Amy Rodney.

Beginning in the decade before Jackie Robinson suited up with the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke baseball's color barrier in 1947, Rodney began pressing for the desegregation of baseball via columns and stories in the Daily Worker's sports pages. By joining with the black press, Rodney was able to implement a plan to get a black player on a major league roster.

He called the ban against blacks in the major leagues "un-American" and "the crime of the big leagues."

During World War II, Mr. Rodney served as an Army combat medic in the Pacific. But he was back home in New York to cover Robinson's debut as a Brooklyn Dodger on April 15, 1947.

"It's hard this Opening Day to write straight baseball and not stop to mention the wonderful fact of Jackie Robinson," Mr. Rodney wrote. "You tell yourself it shouldn't be especially wonderful in America, no more wonderful, for instance, than Negro soldiers being with us on the way overseas through submarine-infested waters in 1943."

Clare, Rodney's wife of 58 years, died in 2004.

Writing for the Daily Worker: “I ran the entire sports department, including laying out the sports section and then I had to get my ass to the ball games, and so on and prove myself as a sportswriter. At first, my main objective was to show that we were a real sports section. Then, the one scoop we had never covered smacked me right in the face. No other papers would talk about the amazing fact that halfway through the 20th century in the land of the free, qualified and over-qualified baseball players couldn’t participate in our national pastime. And it was our national pastime back then much more than it is today. There was no NBA or NFL at the level it’s at today. There were no video games, no Internet, no cable TV. If the Dodgers were playing in Brooklyn and a truck pulled up next to you, it would be unthinkable to not hear Red Barber on the radio or people would find it peculiar. Baseball was huge back then. No other paper said anything about the fact that the black players were locked out of major league baseball. If the Negro leagues had a game in town, you could read about the game, but nothing was ever mentioned that these players were not allowed to play in the majors. Did this mean that all of the sportswriters in New York during this time were racists? No, they were ordinary people, but they knew what they could turn into their paper and if they wrote something saying things like, ‘why aren’t these guys playing in the big leagues?’ their editors would have asked them something like, “why are you bringing this stuff up here?’ That was the culture of the times. Racism was accepted. And that was one of the things that attracted me to the Communists. What the Communists were going down in the South was working for black voting rights, putting their bodies were their mouths were.”

The Ban: “I talk to my granddaughter’s friends and I try to make a connection to what happened back then compared to now. I tell them ‘look at Barry Bonds today’, the superstar (this interview was in 2004 right before the steroids hearing). Supposedly everyone knows how great he is, just the same way that people back then knew how good Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were, but they weren’t allowed to play. Unspeakable! It’s dastardly and un-American. Ridiculous! But that’s the way things were back then. Josh Gibson, the greatest catcher who ever put on a uniform, never played an inning of big league baseball, and he died in a bitter, drunken wreck. You know, we’ve really gotten off the hook a little light about this time in our history. And so this is what motivated me to write for the Daily Worker. People will ask me, ‘were you doing this to get the Negroes to join the Communist Party?’ No. I was doing it personally because basically I wanted the ban to end. I was a baseball fan since I was six years old it was the game I loved. I wanted the best players in the game to show their stuff to America. I never met a black player who told me he wanted to stay in the Negro Leagues. That’s ridiculous. If you feel you’re the best violinist in the country and you live in Paducah, you don’t want to stay in Paducah. Of course, you want to play at Carnegie Hall, for the money and the acclaim.”

Jackie Robinson: “Oh, the things Jackie had to go through, you can’t imagine. First of all, he was hit by pitchers twice as much as any other player in baseball. He was called all kinds of names. The first time they played in Philadelphia, they threw a black cat out of their dugout. Why didn’t he say, ‘hey, who needs this, to hell with it, I’m outta here.’ Some people are thrust into historic roles without their understanding, but Jackie was an intensely bright guy and he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what his role was and that’s why he took all this stuff. It has to be the single most heroic act ever performed in the history of sports in this country. I think I can say that. He made a real difference in America.”

The Best Managers He Ever Saw: “Stengel and Durocher are my top managers. They’re the only ones I saw that really know how to manage in the World Series. They wouldn’t hesitate to yank their ace pitcher in the fourth inning or to use an ace in relief. They knew it was a different ball game in the postseason. Charlie Dressen was a good regular season manager, like Dusty Baker, who hasn’t yet shown that he can win a World Series, but managing successfully in the big games defines the great ones.”

Leo Durocher: “I was talking to the Lip. I was chatting with Leo before a game and he suddenly turns to me and says, ‘you know, Rodney—for a #@%!# Communist, you sure know your baseball.”

Don Newcombe: “Newcombe was a corporation guy and he still works for the Dodgers today. But, he knew what what’s going on. His father was a union organizer. He didn’t beat the Yankees often in World Series play and that haunted him. The first time he pitched against the Yankees in his rookie year in ’49, it was a 0-0 game until the bottom of the ninth, when Tommy Heinrich hit one out and beat him.”

McCarthyism: “They didn’t go after me, because I was right out in the open. Many of my friends went down, but I wasn’t a screen writer using another name. As a baseball writer, they didn’t go after me and probably didn’t think of me as a serious Communist. They would kid around it jovially, say things like, ‘hey, does Marx follow the box scores?” Writing about baseball wasn’t perceived as doing politics. They didn’t see me as a threat.”

Joe DiMaggio: “He was a different guy. During his first two years up, before the aura of superstardom socked in on him, he was more convivial. After that, he was very closed-mouthed. You know he never certainly joined in with the rowdies like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, but importantly, he was always curt and monosyllabic with reporters and he became mean-spirited. He was known to be a cheap sonofabitch, a notorious note tipper, and at the end he was over-selling his signature, all that stuff. But, I remember a different DiMaggio. During his first year, I was asked to take Joe down to see a bunch of kids from the International Workers Order, a left wing group. But, Joe agreed to show up and throw out the first ball for their tournament. And he enjoyed it and he really mingled with the kids. He was great. So, something happened to him somewhere along the way. He changed.”

Inside Secrets of the Great Monsters

When I was a kid I used to dream about being the Werewolf of Frankenstein. When other children worshipped heroes like Superman of Batman, I admired the scary monsters of Hollywood. I imagined being in their paws or enormous boots, frightening young virgins and terrifying everyone in town. But, later I found all the real facts--the secrets of these cellulite monsters. For instance, the Werewolf had skin problems and had to spend most of his fortune on under eye cream. And Frankenstein was fleeced by his accountants. In the end, he had to sell the posts on either side of his neck on eBay to pay his bill with the IRS. Just another couple of meaningless factoids from Life On the Edge! Have a Great New Year!

My Shut Your Pie Hole Anti-Diet

As of today, I’ve lost approximately a total of 100 lbs. within a 26-month period, which roughly means a drop of 3.84 lbs. per month. What took me so long, some people have asked me? Losing the weight slowly by gradually changing my diet and lifestyle has helped me keep it off, because now I’m confident that the poundage will stay off forever. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to lose it, because you’re changing your life and in my case, I saved my life. Now maybe I can possibly live into my 70’s or 80’s. How many old people do you see walking around at more than 300 lbs. plus? Not many.

For the first time in 30 years I can wear jeans that aren’t so large that they don’t look like they came from the interior of an old Pontiac. I can sit in the middle of a row at the movie theater, because now if I want to get up I don’t have to worry about stepping on everyone’s feet and sticking my formerly huge ass in their faces during the film.

Back in my obese days, the neighbor kids used to enjoy watching me getting into my 1976 Corvette Sting Ray. I’d have to completely lay down sideways perpendicular to the car while grabbing onto the steering wheel column to hoist myself into the vehicle. It took me five minutes each time and I eventually bent the steering wheel to the point where it required an expensive repair.

My three-decade battle to lose weight consisted of an unending series of false starts and bad endings. When I do the math, I can honestly say that from 1976-2006, I lost an average of 20 lbs. per year, but the problems occurred when I gained approx. 25 lbs. back, like clockwork every year. It’s called yo-yoing and it’s worse for your body than actually keeping the weight on.

My seasons were like this—I’d start off the year with a great push, but I’d lose the weight too quickly. When the weather got cold, around Halloween, I’d start eating like a bear preparing to hibernate. Buffets and happy hours in my town closed down during this time of the year--because of me and a couple of my fellow fatty friends.

So, if I look at the numbers, I can see that in 1976 I weighed roughly 180 lbs. Gaining five-six lbs. per year over 30 years means I gained a total of 150 pounds, to the point where I weighed 340 lbs. So, I know exactly how I got there. Suddenly, the health problems that were predicted became real, including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and a wide assortment of other health issues.

Over the years, I attempted several different diets. Actually I think I tried most of them. Many failed immediately while others worked initially, but eventually I gained all of the weight back. I’ve done it all—from the pineapple diet to Atkins all the way to South Beach and back.

From my personal experience, I can tell you that many of these diets are ineffective, while several are actually dangerous. Here is a quick review of some of these:

NutriSystems is a rip-off for many reasons. The main one is the food tastes nasty. In addition, after you’ve purchased a month’s food, you still have to go to the store to buy fruit, vegetables and dairy. They don’t provide complete meals.

If I’m already going to the store, why can’t I buy all of the healthy food I will consume there? It tastes better and costs less overall than what they’re selling me. Some people say that they will lose weight more easily by eating pre-measured controlled portions. If you don’t have enough will power to determine portions on your own, how will you do after you go back to eating normally? Will you live the rest of your life eating out of these little TV dinner trays? The failure rate with NutriSystems is logically high.

Weight Watchers is a little better, but the meal substitutions are still not a great idea. You need to learn new eating habits if you’re going to keep the weight off and this is essentially not the way to do it. The food with Weight Watchers is bland, but at least edible. The meals contain a lot of sugar and fat. And the customer service is terrible. If you do get somebody on the phone, it’s usually someone clueless. Once I asked one of their reps about how much one particular entrée contained cholesterol and she said, “I just looked at the ingredients listed on the side of the package and there’s no cholesterol in it.”

Both of NutriSystems and Weight Watchers make money by selling you sub-par frozen food. Everything else—like counseling or support—is weak or non-existent. Weight Watchers promotes group counseling, which really wasn’t effective for me. Sitting around with a bunch of overweight people talking about food is an exercise in frustration. One time several of us left a counseling session to go to In ‘N Out. It was more enabling than anything else.

Jenny Craig is the worst of all of these types of diet programs. They’re so hard-sell that if you agree to buy all their food, management tapes and extras, you’ll end up broke. It’s the timeshare program of the diet industry. And once they’ve got you hooked, they’ll try to sell you anything and everything. It’s the ultimate “turn and burn” program and I can’t recommend it even remotely.

I’ve also tried things like Isagenix, Atkins and The Zone. All of these have admirable aspects, but in the end you have to change your life gradually. The diet might give you a good start, but in the end replacing meals is a formula for failure. Losing 60-80 lbs. in 8-10 months will make you look and feel good, right up until you gain every pound back.

Atkins was popular until people realized that meat-heavy diets lead to heart attacks. High-protein diets with lots of red meat and very few carbohydrates are not healthy. Evidence proves that these types of diets will eventually result in atherosclerotic plaque build-up and cardiac arrhythmia.

So, what’s my diet technique? After all my research and hit and miss experiences, I am the ideal guinea pig for how do lose weight right.

So, here it is. I call it the Shut Your Pie Hole Anti-Diet. And it’s simple. The ideal amount of weight to comfortably lose and keep it off is in increments of 10. That’s right, 10 lbs. You slash your calories by cutting out dairy (sorry, no cheese and ice cream), bread and sugar. Then, you limit eating red meat to a maximum of twice per week.

Then, start with physical exercise 5 times per week. Start off walking for 20 minutes twice per day. Do it at your own pace. Soon you will feel better and within no time you’ll be running, biking or whatever you prefer. I like swimming. It’s a gradual thing, but the more energy you get, the more you’ll want to do work our harder. When I started, I couldn’t make it to the corner without panting. The old bag ladies in my neighborhood were racing past me on these insane San Francisco hills, but now I lap them and they don’t like it.


Then, I joined Club One on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. The people there are so supportive and they really inspired me to get into a workout regime that I can stick to. Physical exercise is the key, because if I cheat and eat a chili dog or a few slices of pizza, it's not a tragedy!

Why lose only 10 lbs. at a time? Here is the logic. If you lose 40 lbs., for example, in three months, your body freaks out. It starts asking you what happened. It feels like you’ve starved yourself and soon your body will try to re-gain that weight back any way it can.

If you lose just 10 pounds, your body is not shocked. Lose it and maintain that weight for 5 months. Then, go lose another 10 and do it all again. You can only lose 20 lbs. per year with this system, but you’ll keep it off using this technique.

The problem is that most people want to lose the weight fast, just like everything else. And many folks don’t want to work out on a regular basis. How many of you bought club memberships that you never used? All of us have probably done it.

Regular exercise is the key. If you embrace physical exertion of any type, it will allow you to treat yourself to your favorite foods once in a while. If you feel deprived, you won’t succeed. My theory about food is pick your spots and enjoy a decadent, unhealthy meal as an exception. Just because you’re trying to lose weight doesn’t mean you can’t live it up now and again.

So, that’s my plan in a nutshell. The 10-lb. set point concept makes a lot of sense. It took me a long time to find the right approach to shedding pounds and this is it. The one thing to remember is that it’s a complete lifestyle change. If it takes four years to lose 80 lbs., so be it. You’re not in a rush, because you know you’ll eventually get there. And the best thing is you’ll never gain it back.

Many folks have helped me in my quest, including of course my wife, who implemented a healthier diet and Greg Hubbard at the Haight Ashbury Clinic, who has been so supportive and has given me nothing but great advice.

Make 2010 the year you do it. It will change your life in so many different ways. And living is the best part of it!