From a Hollywood perspective, Brett Favre is a master storyteller and screenwriter. We’re talking William Goldman and Syd Field good. Perhaps there’s a ghostwriter involved, but regardless, Number 4 is spinning the most delicious, Jimmy Stewart-esque tale since It’s a Wonderful Life, and isn’t it just a wonderful life in Viking country now?

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Oh, how my Echo Park neighborhood—home of Dodger Stadium—weeps. Slugger and stooge Manny Ramirez has tested positive for a banned substance and is suspended for fifty games.

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Every winter I pay homage to my Minnesota roots and journey within thirty minutes of Yosemite National Park (this isn’t Southern California anymore) to Mammoth Mountain and SoCal’s Mecca for skiing and snowboarding. A volcanic peak that lives up to its name, Mammoth is nestled in California’s Easter Sierras and is just five hours, or a one-hour flight, from Los Angeles. It ranks regularly as one as the top resorts in the country, with quality snow that extends the ski season into June and some years July 4th. Ski Magazine called the “unbound terrain park system” the best in North America, which can only be attributed to the West Coast’s religious surf-and-skate culture. It’s a place of incredible peace, beauty, and powerful skiing--much like the ice hills of Afton Alps that taught me the importance of a good edge.

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I only have two resolutions in 2009:
1) Look more sporty
2) Be more thankful

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Hulk Hogan bared his soul on Larry King Live Tuesday night as he talked openly about the incarceration of his son for reckless driving, i.e. putting his passenger in a coma. You can see the show here.

The Hulk stroked his wispy handlebar mustache like a gym-rat sage, but his eyes showed true weariness and even a glimmer of humility . . . or maybe that was Larry King’s drool reflected in the whites of The Hulk’s eyes. As I’m sure you know, the man made famous by WWF was nothing but a pawn to the Floridian judicial system, which apparently has treated his son to quite a tour of mental wards, maximum security cells, and breaches of inmate privacy. To add even more lactic acid to the Hulk’s pecks, he’s in the middle of a messy divorce in which his estranged wife is now demanding that he be thrown in jail for not paying his share of their $4.2 million Las Vegas condo. It’s enough to make you wish he’d just take his charm and hyper-masculinity to Iraq.

Seeing a macho man near tears, a man who made millions selling an unsustainable brand of  hyper-masculinity, is truly an interesting study and leaves us puny, sensitive, New Age males feeling quite redemptive. Despite rumors to the contrary, the sculpted men of wrestling have feelings, tear ducts, and bouts of hopelessness. This truth must be terrible for branding, and I would think Hogan won’t be ordering us to “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM” anytime soon. (Was that Fallon's campaign?)

Regardless, The Hulk, along with his reality show, is living a life much too conflicted with his public persona, and we at LA Log will no longer tolerate it. Therefore, LA Log is officially calling The Hulk a “girlie man”, a termed used by Gov. Schwarzenegger to describe uncooperative California democrats.

The Hulk is not cooperating with our image of him and, therefore, is dead to this blog.

Who will be next?

In a post-game radio interview last night, after scoring seventeen points in the fourth quarter alone to send his team to the NBA Finals, Kobe Bryant declared that he couldn’t talk long, he was off to see a midnight showing of Sex and the City, which opens today.

I could not believe it. As the NBA’s MVP of the season and this series with the Spurs, he’s riding a high few athletes ever reach, and he’s going to cap it all off with the wedding of Mr. Big and Carrie Bradshaw?

A few minutes later, a caller on the post-game show likened Kobe to a basketball god but then asked, “Why’s he going to see a bunch of cougars on the big screen?”

It’s a good question. The radio host tried to play it off that it was for some QT with the wife. Certainly such an Adonis as Kobe wouldn’t find entertainment in watching women discuss penis size at champagne brunches. Oh, no, he’s just keeping the little lady happy . . .

Or, is Kobe’s interest in Sex and the City, the most anticipated female movie of my lifetime, a look into the controversial baller’s soul? Does Kobe see himself in Carrie Bradshaw and her often-wayward pursuit of the fairy tale relationship?

Perhaps Kobe thinks that just one more NBA Championship will wash away his sins, his loneliness, his complaining, and bring him true happiness, just like Bradshaw’s quest for a life with Mr. Big.

But as Bradshaw appears to learn in her new movie (I’m only guessing from the Chekovian trailer), her pursuit of the idyllic wedding just might ruin her relationship. Will Kobe’s quest for a storybook season lead him even farther away from his true love, his Mr. Big, a teddy bear by the name of Shaq?

Wow, I feel for Kobe. He should totally go shopping tomorrow and splurge on some Jimmy Choos for game one.

Los Angeles set aside its beloved Lakers this week and became a real baseball town.

On Saturday, the Dodgers counted more than 115,000 people in attendance to see an exhibition game against the Red Sox at the Los Angeles Coliseum. It’s all part of the LA Dodgers 50th anniversary. Incidentally, the Coliseum was the Dodger’s first home field when they moved to LA in 1958.

Then yesterday, after fighter jets soared over Dodger Stadium, scaring the bejesus out of me (fighter jets in the middle of the day in Los Angeles can only mean Armageddon), Joe Torre’s Blue Men took the field in a an opening day romp.

The LA BLOG HQ is located within walking distance from Dodger Stadium in Echo Park. Regretfully, its staff was not given time off for the afternoon opening day baseball game.

All the while, back in Minnesota, Torii Hunter, the SoCal defector, suffered his first Angelic loss, despite being given a heroe’s welcome. Even the LA Times took note of the Twin Cities’ hospitality and frigid weather. LA Times sports columnist Bill Dwyre wrote:

It was a baseball season opening game, and they came in mukluks and galoshes…. The very phrase "baseball opener" brings visions of flowers blooming, walks in the park, short-sleeve shirts. Here, you had the unmistakable feel of ice and slush under foot, the metallic sound of snowplows clanking on the pavement, the view of your own breath.

If they tailgated, the grills were to warm hands, not cook burgers. And if they tailgated, they were in need of psychological examination -- even here, where cold is a way of life and real estate is topsoil on frozen tundra.

The attendance was the best here for a home opener since 1993, when they drew 51,617.

"Impressive," agreed Angels Manager Mike Scioscia. "And to think, when they left, probably 8,000 of them had their cars snowed in."

It will be warm by July, and by then these deserving faithful may be rooting for something really good.

“And These Deserving Faithful.” I like it, and I like his prediction.

Speaking of Hunter: In February, the LA Times wrote a fascinating bio piece on the new Angels’s rise from poverty to the big leagues, unlike anything I’d see in the Star Tribune. Here it is again. Did the Strib ever do such a look, and if not, why? I can’t imagine he kept his past so obscured from the press. Any ideas, Sid?   

“David, don’t you miss the feeling of the pump?”

Terrance, the Brazilian jujutsu ultimate fighter turned U.S citizen turned Gold's Gym membership salesman extraordinaire, gave me a cocky Schwarzenegger smile, as if you to say, “You are girlie man. Come be a manly man.”

He smelled of dime store cologne and wore tight-fitting dress pants with pin stripes. He sported plump Jennie-O biceps and arms that, when folded, stretched the sleeves of his Gold's Gym–issued polo to near threads.

“I don’t know,” I responded coyly. “I’m not really into gyms.”

It’s true. I’ve never been a gym guy. And in LA, everybody’s got a gym. So you can imagine my abs and my ego.

Since there are about 40 million gym memberships in the United States, I have to believe that LA has at least a million of them. We like to think we are a very fit people. Sadly, fifty percent of Los Angeles County is overweight or obese, so we’re doing a pretty darn good job of fooling the country and ourselves.

I don’t want you to think I’m a slob. Back in my heyday, I was a competitive runner, a Nordic ski racer, a hiker . . . pretty much a Will Steger, but without the dog hair on my fleeces.

In my mind, working out has always meant working outside. Los Angeles, a city covered in smog and with the least amount of park space per capita, is not ideal for a fitness bunny like me. For six years, I’ve tried to navigate an outdoor fitness regime, and I’ve done a poor job. Now, two weeks into thirty, I made a trip to Gold’s to get fit and hopefully meet a heavily tattooed out-of-work-actress-turned-militant-spin-instructor with whom I could have a torrid affair atop an elliptical machine (with the machine set to the mountain stage, of course).

Regretfully, every great fantasy comes with a price, and Terrance wasn’t giving me the numbers I wanted. Fifteen months at a grand and he’d throw in the towel service. I shook my head. Too much. Terrance slapped the table and said, “What if you get a smoothie, and then we talk about this some more? On the house?”

Not one to pass up a free anything, I agreed. I ordered my smoothie, told the juice bar guy that I didn’t want any protein additive. He looked at me with disbelief.

“You’re suppose to be ingesting three times your body weight in grams of protein, daily . . . daily.”

I may have his fitness directive incorrect, but regardless, I was taken back. Then again, this guy had nicely sculpted boobs bustin’ through his wife beater, so he must know something. They don’t give the juice-bar-jerk job to just anybody

Seated back with Terrance, sucking on my Fuzzy Peach smoothie—which tasted like rotten peaches covered in chalk—we returned to negotiations.

“Those smoothies can get addicting—be careful,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and told me stories of his jujutsu fighting days, what it meant for him to be a competitor. He talked about how the sport gave him goofy ears, made him a tenacious fighter, and ultimately exhausted him. Once he left the sport, he lost his athletic drive, became unfit, and then found Gold’s. Perhaps my visit to Gold’s today was a little like his so many years ago, he pondered.

“You’re a skier, right?” He said. I nodded. “Jeez, I’d pay $5,000 to shoot down the mountains the way you professionals do . . .”

He let his deep thought linger, then said, “I’ll give you fifteen months for $700.”

I coughed on some unblended protein powder, then recovered.

“Got any free trial memberships?”

He begrudgingly opened his drawer. “I guarantee you’ll get hooked after a week. Next weekend, let’s talk again, but I think you’ve found a gym home.”

Since becoming a free trialer at Gold’s last Saturday, I’ve worked out at Gold's zero times and have run for thirty minutes around my neighborhood three times. My membership expires on Saturday.