Vinnie Tortorich

He stood at the opposite end of the bar with a couple of buddies. He was tall with a perfect tan. His hair was long and wavy. It was kind of a sandy brown with blonde streaks in it. And it was thick…as think as a morning fog in San Francisco.

He took his right hand and ran it over the top of his head as he stared at me, his eyes as blue as the Mediterranean, on an August afternoon. It was as if the whole world had disappeared from that bar, except for the two of us. I pretended not to notice that he was checking me out. But I loved every minute of it.

He walked over to meet me with his two buddies following closely behind, looking more like three cattle grazing in the field as they moved closer. He said “Ciao, bella” with a thick Italian accent, causing my knees to buckle.

This was a story my friend Kristine relayed to me a couple of weeks back. She then asked me how quickly she could lose ten pounds.

I told you that to tell you this. I gave her the usual advice, the only kind that works. Cut down on calories overall, and spend more time at the gym. Not doing worthless classes, like pilates or yoga, but the type of exercises that really make you burn the calories, like spinning, treadmill running and stair climbing. I also encouraged her to go on Weight Watchers.

I spoke to my friend about a week later when she called to tell me the plan was working. She had lost five pounds, and wanted to know if there was more she could do. I told her to stay the course. She was doing fine. I also told her she might not lose five pounds the next week, she might lose two.

It’s been three weeks. I heard from my friend again, and she asked me a question that has always bothered and disturbed me: “What do you think about cleansing diets?’ She had all of the usual answers. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher did it. I reminded her that they are actors and not health advisers. Beyonce did it, and she lost weight. Well, she’s a singer. She doesn’t know about health and fitness.

There is no shortage of cleansing diets out there. They all promise to rid your body of the impurities, pesticides and toxins. It’s a way to “start over” with your body.

The people giving this advice? Someone the health food store hired at minimum wage. It always seems these people have way too many piercings and tattoos, and look gaunt and unhealthy.

As a matter of fact, one day I wanted to have a little fun. So I walked into a Whole Foods and asked one of these Bohemian types to help me pick out vitamins and supplements. I then randomly walked up and down the aisles pointing at bottles on the shelves. There seemed to be an answer as to why I needed everything I pointed to, as if I couldn’t live without these products.

I finally said to the girl, “In your opinion, I need one of everything in this store.” And she replied, “Yes.” Then I noted there must be about 3,000 items in the place. I would never leave the house. But I digress.

Do I think the human body needs a cleansing? No. Our body naturally cleanses itself if we eat something really bad for us…it causes us to throw up. Do we need colonics? Or enemas? No. The last time I checked, my ass didn’t come with a spigot.

Do I think multivitamins are a good idea? Yes, I do. I have links here to places like Netrition, where you can find plenty of these products.

Do I think calcium and magnesium supplements are good? Absolutely, yes.

And do I think Italian men are good for women? Probably not. So, good luck, Kristine.

Humans are arrogant. I’m no different. Let’s face it, we all think we know everything. It happens to us when we hit puberty, and it never seems to end. But I gotta tell you, I learned something a few years back from a horse.

I know what you’re thinking, what can a horse teach you? They don’t even have opposing thumbs. Well, a horse taught me something. See, the problem is, most times with humans, when we take something, like medicine or a vitamin, we run the large and common risk of it having a placebo effect.

I told you that to tell you this. Some time back in the mid-1990s when arthritis in my shoulder got really bad, I took a pro-active approach. I spoke to doctors, authorities from the arthritis foundation I had been working with at the time. I bended just about every ear I could. And everyone pointed to glucosamine.

So I went out and bought some glucosamine. The first thing I noticed was it was quite pricey. But I didn’t care, as long as it took care of my problem. The only thing is, after a bottle ran out, my problem was still there. Instead of buying another bottle, I decided to just drop it. Another pill that I had put all of my hopes into didn’t work. I continued to have a stiff, sore, throbbing right shoulder.

Then something strange happened. I fell in love. I was so deeply in love, I moved out of southern California to live on a horse farm in central Kentucky. I noticed one particular horse that was a big-time athlete, that had been sidelined by a vet due to chronic joint problems. The vet said the horse would probably never compete again. The owner, who had tons of money invested in the horse, decided to give it one last shot using glucosamine. I was interested, but had my doubts due to taking glucosamine myself and having no positive results.

I literally administered the product cosamine to the 1,200-pound beast twice daily, sprinkling the supplement into its food. Without getting into the gory details of it all, since that part of the story is quite frankly pretty boring, the horse had stopped limping within four months. A month or two later, the horse was back working. And within a year, the horse carried its rider to a world championship. The one thing that a horse can’t have that a human is saddled with is the placebo effect. The horse didn’t know it was taking a supplement.

In a conversation with the vet who had given me the supplement to give to the horse, he said glucosamine doesn’t have an immediate effect. It’s a build-up. So once again, I too went back to taking glucosamine for my shoulder, which has absolutely no ligament left in it due to several surgeries. Does it help my shoulder? Well, maybe just a little. I still have severe damage there. Where I see the biggest difference is in my 48-year-old hips, knees and ankles, which are pain free and seem to have the same elasticity I had when I was 12.

As always, I have nothing to sell here. I’m just offering a solution that may help others. If you’re going to try glucosamine, commit to a minimum of three months. Don’t take it from me, take it straight from the horse’s mouth.

I was driving down the 101 freeway the other day. So I’m lying…I wasn’t actually driving. I was sitting there, creeping along at three miles an hour. The car right next to me happened to be a brand new Ferrari F430. We’re talking about a car that has over 640 horsepower. Top speed is around 220 miles per hour. It’ll get you to 62 in 3.7 seconds.

All of those stats are pretty impressive. But not on this day. That car was no faster than my Mini Cooper, which couldn’t go from zero to 60 in under a week. That’s the thing about freeways in L.A. It’s like a great equalizer.

I told you that to tell you this. Often as Americans, or even more so as human beings, we have more tools than it takes to get the job done. In the sports world there are examples everywhere. Just look at the fat guy who rode his $10,000 Colnago bike to the coffee shop on a Saturday morning. That bike can only be used to its fullest potential by top pros. Yet with the weekend warrior aboard, not only is it not being used to its fullest potential, but a lesser bike would actually work better in more ways than I care to mention here. But I digress.

There’s one situation where I found that something used in a race application works better than the stuff we should train in. That’s running shoes. Most people who have read this site have either read or are familiar with the book Born to Run. Christopher McDougall does a great job explaining what went wrong in the running community. The book suggests that you may want to try running barefoot or at the very least use a shoe called the Vibram Five Finger.

I’m here to tell you there is another solution I’ve come up with. I use racing flats. These are shoes that are generally meant for racing events only. But I’ve used them successfully in training. Because of the lack of a big cushioning heel, I get the same effect I would from running barefoot or from the Vibram shoe. The only difference is that nobody is looking at me as the wacky barefoot guy. If you need anymore reason to use a racing flat over a running shoe, here it is: they cost less and last longer.

When I came home last night, I noticed several people roaming around the neighborhood. It was obvious that a neighbor’s dog had gotten out. So I got off of my motorcycle with my helmet still on and immediately started looking for the pup. The good news is we found him a few blocks away.

Once the excitement was over with, I walked back to my house with another neighbor. We’ll call her Lisa. Why? Well, that’s actually her name. As I’ve done several times before, I asked Lisa when she and her husband, who both ride bikes, would come for a ride with me. Almost on cue, as she always does, her ready-made answer was, “Oh, we’re not at your level.” I asked, “Lisa, what level is that?” She replied, “You know…the fancy level…with all the high-end bikes and kit.” She was basically saying she wasn’t “sponge worthy.”

I told you that to tell you this. I started thinking about what Lisa had to say. I thought about a lot of comments I hear on a daily basis when I walk into the local Starbucks. Of course, I live Hollywood adjacent. I think this stretches across the bicycling nation. They think unless you pay a lot of money – into the thousands of dollars – you’re not a real cyclist.

How do you determine who’s a real cyclist? Here’s the Vinnie definition. Yes, I used myself in the third person, get over it. Definition: You are a real cyclist when you…wait for it…ride a bike. It doesn’t take special equipment.

To answer the question most people ask me when they want to know my favorite bike or my dream bike, as I’ve mentioned before, I truly love my 30-year-old DeRosa with Columbus SLX tubing (a frame I bought on eBay for under $200). The bike is pieced together like Frankenstein. The frame and fork are both old. The paint job and the drive trane are brand new. I’ve been actually laughed at and criticized for putting such high-end parts and such a paint job on an old bike.

But as my friend Steve said after riding it one day, “It’s the difference between Pamela Anderson and Sophia Loren. They both get the job done, but come on….Sophia Loren!”

I hate scary movies. They don’t scare me. It says right in the title that it’s a scary movie, yet I watch and it’s not scary.

One situation when I love going to scary movies is when I can get one of my friends to come along who talks to the screen. I’m not sure why, or how this even started, but some people literally yell at the movie.

They won’t do it at romantic comedies, nor at action films. My friend Donald would often become a director sitting in the movie, telling the hot chick not to open the door over and over as the suspenseful music got louder and louder. Once she opened the door and got hacked to death, Donald would spend the next few minutes explaining how he told her not to do it.

I told you that to tell you this. I too have a problem. When I watch television, I generally have a constant commentary, especially if it’s a reality show. Sometimes it drives Serena crazy, sometimes she just laughs.

In order to be a good sport the other night, I watched my first and only episode of the Bachelorette. It was the finale. This is where the chick chooses between the last two guys standing. Keep in mind these are two guys she met only a month earlier. Somehow they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together.

At one point she was on the beach with this really suave Spanish kid. All of a sudden it started raining. I don’t know about you, but every time I get caught in the rain, I tend to seek shelter. But not these two love birds. They decided it was time to go into the ocean. And that’s when I noticed for the first time that she was wearing what I refer to as an ass flag. You see it a lot of times on chicks at the beach. Sometimes you’ll see it when women wear tights. By the way, tights are a privilege, not a right. It’s one of those sarongs that you wrap around your waist. You think it says “Oh, I just happen to have this around my waist.” But what it really says is “I’m too effing fat and I don’t want anyone to see my huge ass.”

While I’m on the subject, is it just me or is it every time you see a license plate that says “hot babe” or “sexy mom” it’s always falsely advertised?

I’ve also noticed that fat chicks always seem to have perfect nails. These are the same women who complain they don’t have time to go to the gym. Why am I saying all this? Simple, not to put down fat women or fat people in general. It’s to say that everyone has time for a little exercise and to eat right. After all, you can spend time and money on manicures and pedicures.

The same goes for the sarong. If you can go out of your way to find something to wrap around your waist just to go out on the beach, you can figure out how to keep the weight off in the first place. If you can spend time and effort hiding fat, you can do the same getting rid of it.

– Rodney Dangerfield

Back in the mid-1990s, I was driving through Beverly Hills with a friend of mine, Kristine. She wanted to stop at Starbucks to get a “crap-achino” of some sort. When we were walking out, she was explaining to me about how coffee is low in calories and can raise your metabolism. I turned to her and said, “Yeah, but I’m the only one here having coffee. You would have done better with a 20-inch pizza.”

We then got into a conversation about how between 1991 and 1995 so many gourmet coffee shops had popped up in the area. Where there was a Starbucks, you could be sure to trip over a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf right next door.

She then asked a poignant question, which was odd for Kristine, “What did we do before coffee shops?” Without taking a breath, I said, “These were all frozen yogurt shops.”

At that moment, my friend and I realized that the last bastion of the 1980s was gone. No more hair bands. No more Tawny Kitaen doing splits on the hood of a Jaguar. No more Brat Pack. Who would have thought that Jon Cryer would be the only to come out of it unscathed? I know what you’re thinking, what about Charlie Sheen, Rob Lowe and Robert Downey Jr.? One was drinking, one was tying off and the other was diddling, you do the math. This was a new generation. But I digress.

I told you that to tell you this. It’s a new day. It’s 2010. Starbucks has admitted to financial problems, and has closed tons of locations nationwide. They’re the new kid on the block.

As for cupcakes, you can’t seem to throw a rock around Los Angeles without hitting one of these gourmet shops. Crumbs, Susie Cakes and Sprinkles just to name a few. Not to mention the TLC show dedicated to the whole thing called DC Cupcakes. These two yentas always end up in some sort of peril that they have to dig themselves out of. It’s not unlike when Lucille Ball worked in a candy factory. We used to call it sitcoms, people.

Not to get too far off subject, but remember when TV was free and good? Now we generally pay for crap. But, I digress once again, sorry. Sometimes I have a touch of ADD.

The problem I have with these cupcakes is the sheer decadence involved. The one thing they all seem to have is one and a half inches of icing stacked on top of a piece of cake. Once again, America has figured out how to stay fat.

I can close this with another Rodney Dangerfield quote. “I found there is only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people.” Well, Rodney, I guess that gets easier every day.