Vinnie Tortorich

I could be wrong about this, but almost everything I’ve ever learned in life, I’ve learned from Saturday Night Live.

I haven’t actually seen the show since the Eddie Murphy days, also known as the last time it was funny. Even earlier, the first “Not Ready for Primetime Players” hit on some funny and poignant subjects. I guess it was 1975 or so when they did the skit called “Shimmer Floor Wax.”

As it turned out, it was a dessert topping and floor wax all in one. The idea was, if you dropped your dessert on the floor, Shimmer would shine it up.

A lot of things were like that in the 1970s. It was a time when we tried to invent one thing that did several things.

Saturday Night Live would pick up on these things and run with it. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, we have cell phones that do more than a Swiss Army knife would. Our cell phones are no longer just a telephone. It’s our answering machine, a texting device, a paging device, a camera and if you have 3G service, a mini-computer. That’s not to mention GPS, etc., etc.

Apparently companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gamble haven’t followed suit. They make money by creating more products. In order to create a product, you first have to create a need.

I told you that to tell you this. Like most women, my girlfriend Serena decided that her laundry room had to be a different shade of white. Therefore, it needed to be painted.

The good news is, she didn’t ask me to do it. She actually got an over-competent source in our friend Randy, who is a contractor. Randy gladly took the job, mainly because he likes the way I make coffee. But I could be way off on that.

The only thing Randy required was for Serena to remove everything from the cabinet. Now this is a small cabinet that I never look into. The only product I ever use from the laundry room is laundry detergent, and it’s not in that cabinet. All of that stuff was moved to the table where I write this blog.

These are the products: Capture Soil Release Premist, Oxi Clean, charcoal lighter fluid, Penquin Ultra Dry, Suade & Nubuck Cleaner, Lysol Bathroom Cleaner, Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, Lexol Leather Cleaner, Septi Cleans, Mr. Clean with Febreze Fresh Scent, Bissell Fiber Cleansing Formula, Magic Sizing, Soft Scrub Total Bath and Bowl, Old English Wood Cleaner, Surfaceguard Penetrating Sealer, Scrub Off Water Spot Remover, Fabuloso Cleaner, Easy Off One Step, Easy Off Microwave Wipes, bleach, Goo Gone, Simple Green, Easy Off Bam, Windex, Swiffer Wetjet, Pledge, Brawn Toilet Bowl Cleaner and Easy Off Oven and Grill Cleaner.

Got all that?

I asked Serena if this was all of the cleaning products. She said no, there was more under the sink and in the bathrooms. It was merely a portion of what we use.

To be perfectly honest, I’m embarrassed. I’ve always taken pride in being conservative. I even shower with natural soaps, trying to do my part for the environment. But here I am, one of the biggest offenders.

Will I demand we get rid of all of these? No. I want to have a clean, disinfected house like the next person. But in the name of using less chemicals and having fewer plastic bottles, I am working on combining several of these to use for different applications.

We’ve also started using natural products. But not nearly enough. I’m connected to an affiliate right here on this site called Gaiam.

Once we’re finished with the current products, I’ll take my own advice and use the products from Gaiam to further erase my footprint from the destruction of the planet.

Sorry to get on my soapbox, but at least it’s a box of natural soap. Thank you very much.

This weekend there was a Hollywood wedding between Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer. My girlfriend’s sister, Samantha Scott Thomas, and her actor boyfriend, Bert Portal, attended the affair in Malibu.

Since they were in town, I had dinner with Samantha and Bert. Of course, the whole conversation was about the wedding and who wore what. And as usual, I could care less.

It all got me thinking as I was leaving Malibu. I thought about marriage and weddings. I’ve always felt like it’s an outdated contract. But there is something that disturbs me even more than that. I’ve often heard young people say, and I’m quoting, “It’s time to get married, I’ve had my fun.”

It’s as if they’re saying that once they get married life is over with and there will be no more fun. If that’s true, why get married in the first place? The proof is in the statistics. Most marriages don’t last.

But that’s beside the point. I’m here to tell you that life is never over. Not until you stop breathing.

I told you that to tell you this. There’s an ultra cycling race taking off Saturday in Utah. It’s called the Hoodoo 500. As with all ultra racing, once the gun goes off, whoever gets to the 500 mile mark first will win.

I’m not doing the race this year. I’ve never done that particular race. But I’ll be crewing for a close friend of mine, David Holt.

Last year David won the race in 34 hours and 27 minutes. He’s also won other races in the past couple of years, notably the Sebring 24-hour race. He held the record at the Davis 24-hour race. And he’s come in second, and no worse than fifth, in the Furnace Creek 508.

Here’s the part that makes David so amazing. All of the races I’ve just mentioned happened after his 50th birthday.

Before you go off thinking David won these races in his age group, think again. He wins these events out right. At 57 years old, he’s generally beating people less than half of his age.

David does all of this and still holds a position as a vice president in a large company. He is an absolute inspiration to me, and many others.

People often tell me that they would run a marathon, or write a book, or climb Mount Everest…if only they had the time. The next time you think you can’t, or don’t have time, remember the man who has a wife, raised two sons, holds a full-time job and still manages to train before work and at lunch. With the aid of bicycle lights, he can also train at night.

I can’t say enough about how inspiring he is. Clearly, David is still having fun, and has a lot more fun ahead of him.

There’s nothing ridiculous about that.

I was standing in a horse barn one day. I was talking to one of the barn hands. I looked down the row of stalls and saw someone I didn’t know standing there.

The horse had its head peering out and the woman was making all kinds of motions around the horse’s head but not actually touching the animal. Her hands were waving slowly kind of like Barbara Eden when she danced on the I Dream of Jeannie sitcom. This woman’s movements were slower and more labored. It was as if she was moving her hands through a giant bowl of Jello.

So I asked the groom who I was standing next to, let’s call him Bobby, since that was his name, about the woman. I asked, “Bobby, what’s that woman doing?” He explained to me that she was a horse psychic who had been hired by the owner of the horse. I repeated back to him in disbelief, “A horse psychic?!” He replied, “Yeah, that’s right.”

He went on to explain that the owner wanted to know what his horse was thinking. The psychic was charging $500 for 20 minutes. Bobby then said, “Hell, give me $500, I’ll tell you what that horse is thinking. It’s thinking, ‘I need some more alfalfa and grains.'”

I told you that to tell you this. I live in southern California, commonly known around the country as the land of fruit and nuts. People will buy into anything.

One of those things happens to be chiropractic care. The thought pattern is that the body needs alignment. And before I get a hundred e-mails about scoliosis and other conditions, I’m here to tell you general exercise will do more for such conditions than chiropractic care, which will do absolutely nothing.

Here’s some news: Your body is not out of alignment. And even it was, a glorified knuckle-popper will not be able to get it back into alignment. Some of these idiots refer to themselves as doctors. But they’re not doctors. If someone was having a heart attack on an airplane and someone yelled out for a doctor, these idiots wouldn’t be of any help. But I digress.

So you may ask. What’s the popping noise I hear when a chiropractor works on my back? That noise is the same sound as when you pop your knuckles. It’s not like your fingers get straighter when you pop your knuckles. The noise is simply nitrogen bubbles that build up between joints and pop from the quick release. It’s kind of like popping gum between teeth.

So the next time you have a sore neck or a tight back, do yourself a favor and pop a couple of Advil. And know you’ve just saved a ton of money.

I was talking to a client today, and we got into a discussion about basketball players. She was telling me how she thought they must be in such incredible shape to do perform well while dead tired. Having been on my high school basketball team, I was able to offer some information.

You have to be in great shape to play basketball so that sprinting up and down the court doesn’t actually mean much to you. It’s more about executing the skills to win the game. In other words, the very base level that is expected of you as a basketball player, is to constantly be in peak physical shape. You never want to be in a situation where you have to admit to a coach or a teammate that you’re just too tired, especially if you miss an important shot.

The client then went on to tell a story about how she got into shape for hiking trips. Lots of climbing through mountains was involved. She described it as she had done all this work to get to the peak of a mountain, look around, and it was over with. At that point, I realized that she had missed the whole point.

I told you that to tell you this. Our destination in life is far less important than the journey. I don’t want to get all mushy on you here, but often in endurance sports, the journey is all there is.

Let me explain. The average person who has never won a marathon – yet has a background in jogging – can safely get in shape for a marathon in about six months. If your only goal is to finish with a respectable time (say, four hours), you’d have to put in several hundred miles and tons of training time. This is no easy feat when you consider work and family time.

After all of that, crossing the finish line will happen in less than one second.

I told you all of that to tell you this. In my practice as a fitness trainer, I’ve often had extremely overweight people ask me how long it would take them to lose weight.

I’ve never answered that question. And in almost every case, people who ask that question end up failing. Even if they lose 100 to 150 pounds, ultimately they put it back on.

By asking that question, you’ve set yourself up for failure. If I as an ultra cyclist think about the end of the race, I’m already defeated.There is so much work to be done in between starting and actually finishing a race.

That’s why I like Weight Watchers. It’s not an end result. Life is what happens while you’re waiting for life to begin. Weight Watchers is all about making life changes. The program takes it one day at a time, one week at a time, and so on. The goal is not the end, it’s just another beginning.

Just like with the marathon, it’s all about the journey, not about the destination.

I was at Target tonight picking up a Hamilton Beach Custom Grind coffee grinder. No, I’m not a blowhard who has to grind his coffee because he needs it that fresh. I have a totally different reason for a coffee grinder. I grind my vitamins. I dump them in water and I drink them as a liquid. What most people don’t realize is that your teeth are the first stop of your digestive system. Grinding vitamins makes the rest easy on the system.

Lately I’ve been using some vitamins you might want to try, if you’re so inclined. Go to UltraSupreme.Vemma.com. They have a liquid vitamin that I love. Give it a shot. No pun intended.

The only thing I’m grinding these days is my calcium pills and glucosamine. And until Vemma comes out with that pill in a liquid form, I will continue to do so.

I told you that to tell you this. While standing in a checkout line, just past the magazine section that had its usual cover shots of the Kardashians and the Bachelorette (Remember her? Ass-flag girl…she’s apparently been “betrayed” already. But I digress).

There was no shortage of Nintendo Wii disks with every game you can imagine, from bowling to tennis to fishing. You name it, it was there. There was even an aerobics game.

Really, folks, have we become this addicted to electronics? We can’t leave the house to go to a tennis court or a bowling alley or a gym? I love the computer like the next guy. I love that tons of people visit my site and read my rants every day. I like to visit other sites. But is the computer keeping us inside a little too much?

We use it to play electronic sports, virtual reality games, dating services and masturbation (has anyone seen Playboy‘s stock lately?). I say it’s time we get out. Go take an aerobics class. Go to a batting cage. Try a bowling alley. And for crying out loud, have real sex.

I live near Calabasas, California. It’s a pretty innocuous community, sprinkled with celebrities and your basic Los Angeles nouveau riche. The reason I bring it up is because Calabasas has a law. A law that seems to pop up in different communities around southern California. It’s gaining popularity around the country, as I’ve heard of other communities adopting similar laws. I like the law. And a lot of other people like the law. But I’m here to tell you that it’s a thousand percent unconstitutional. What am I referring to? The law that effectively bans cigarette smoking indoors or outdoors. But you can smoke pot. It’s legal, and you can buy it up and down Ventura Boulevard in any strip mall. All you need is a prescription. Note: Chiropractors are glorified knuckle-poppers, and not doctors.

I love that there are no cigarette butts on the ground, no smelly ashtrays and when I leave a bar after having a beer, I don’t smell like a cigarette butt. So this all leaves me quite conflicted. I like not getting second-hand smoke. But this law challenges exactly what this country is all about – freedom.

I told you that to tell you this. It seems like these laws are put into place to protect us. I think we have too much protection in the world today. At one time in this country, people drove without seatbelts, cars didn’t have airbags, heavy equipment didn’t make a beeping sound while backing up and you never saw a stick figure demonstrating the correct way to ride an escalator.

This all keeps the idiots of the world alive, so they can procreate and supply us with more idiots. I’ve said many times on this site, and everyone who’s ever ridden a bicycle with me knows, my only rule when riding is to wear a helmet. I’ve been known to go out and buy someone a helmet just to ride with me. I’m passionate about it. Wearing a helmet only makes sense.

Yesterday on a bike ride with my friends, Karen and Caroline, we ran across this idiot. Karen pulled out her camera phone and snapped a couple of photos. By the way, though you can’t see traffic in the photos, this is a road in Calabasas that cars frequently fly through.

So I challenge you, Calabasas. If you really want to save people’s lives, don’t ban smoking, at the very least, make it mandatory that children wear helmets. There are a great many helmets out there. You can shop for them right through this site. I recommend you check out REI and Amazon if you are in the market for a good helmet.