| City Paper's Annual Guide to Buying People's Affections
Buying presents conjures up conflicting emotions. You want to show your friends and family how much you care about them, and nothing beats the look on the face of the person you love when he or she opens the perfect present, but perfect presents are hard to come by. Finding them often involves hours of mall-crawling and money you can ill afford to spend. And then there's all the guilt associated with being a big, fat consumer, which is exacerbated by the fact that you have to use so much fossil fuel to lug yourself from store to store in the car, which is pretty much your only option because our public transportation sucks. So this year, as it is every year, City Paper is here to help. We've got gift suggestions for every budget, from a $1.50 bumper sticker to a $4,800 piece of art--though most of our gift suggestions are much closer in price to the former.
Doctors slam 'Rambo' for drug comments
The star of "Rambo" admits his bronze-sculpture physique isn't exactly natural. Fueling the controversy, Sylvester Stallone also encouraged the use of human growth hormones and testosterone. His splashy comments and rippling muscles have spawned criticism from physicians who call his statements reckless. "It's appalling for someone that kids look up to to come out and say something like that," said Dr. Edward Snell, director of primary sports medicine at Allegheny General Hospital. Mr. Stallone's statements don't "come from a knowledgeable place," he said. Dr. Johnny Benjamin, chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Indian River Medical Center in Vero Beach, Fla., also had a slam for Rambo. "Everyone is so concerned about baseball stars and the alleged use of these substances," he said.
After Vegas test, Kahne sees a return to past glory
How ironic that Kahne's latest step in his "comeback" occurred at the same track, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he says his 2007 season took a dagger to the heart. "Last year our test went pretty good until I blew a right front tire and crashed my car that I had won all the races with," Kahne said during Tuesday's lunch break. "That was kind of the year at that point." A year ago, Cup teams came to Vegas to test for the first time after the 1.5-mile speedway had been reconfigured and repaved. Kahne had the fastest speed that Monday afternoon using the Dodge chassis with which he had won a league-high six races the previous season; but crashed it in the closing moments of practice. Looking back, it seems that event put him and his team into a spiral from which they never recovered.
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