Crush

SEA GATE, N.Y. -- Michael Szajngarten stopped picking up pieces of his shattered home to look through the hole Hurricane Sandy ripped in his living room wall, giving him an unobstructed ocean view. “I hear we'll get snow soon,” he said.  “I just feel like it's insult to injury.” Just outside were remnants of a concrete sea wall, a barrier built to protect homes here from high surf and storm surge. But super storm Sandy crushed parts of the wall, and a new storm -- a nor'easter -- is brewing in the Atlantic, threatening to hit the coast again.

It's official. The Lakers won't go 0-82. They beat the unimpressive Detroit Pistons, 108-79, gladly taking victory Sunday and avoiding their first 0-4 start since 1957. Dwight Howard had 28 points and Lakers fans could briefly forget the news that Steve Nash might miss up to four weeks because of a small fracture in his left leg. The Lakers acknowledged publicly that Nash would miss at least one week, but another three weeks could ultimately be tacked onto that assessment in a worst-case scenario, according to a person familiar with the situation.

It was Johnathan Franklin's night. Will it become UCLA's season? The Bruins wake today with a new all-time leading rusher, as Franklin chased down Gaston Green's career record on the first possession against Arizona on Saturday. But when the Bruins wipe the sleep from their eyes, the realization may come that the college football monopoly in Los Angeles just might be over. Franklin's serpentine 37-yard touchdown pushed him past Green and started a long and profitable evening for the Bruins.

Disney's new "Wreck-It Ralph," set in the world of video games will likely take the high score at the box office this weekend, but studio executives are unsure what effect the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy will have on movie attendance. The animated feature about a fictional game villain seeking acceptance in an arcade filled with characters licensed from real games such as "Street Fighter," "Pac-Man" and "Q*bert" should open to between $45 million and $50 million this weekend, according to people who have seen pre-release surveys.

El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero thought he had a winner on his hands when he placed a measure on the November ballot to tax sugary drinks. The working-class San Gabriel Valley city was facing the possibility of insolvency, and it has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in the state. So Quintero was confident he could sell the tax to residents. But then the beverage industry converged on El Monte, turning the race into the most expensive campaign in the city's history - and giving it an increasingly David-versus-Goliath feel.

George S. McGovern, an icon of American liberalism who campaigned for the White House with moral fervor against President Richard M. Nixon and the Vietnam War but lost in a thundering landslide, has died. He was 90. McGovern died Sunday morning while under hospice care in Sioux Falls, S.D., said family spokesman Steve Hildebrand. He had been hospitalized for various illnesses and injuries since suffering a serious fall last December. A three-term U.S. senator from South Dakota, McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

The recent bankruptcies of Stockton and San Bernardino have again highlighted the fragility of many California cities' finances. In each case, the burden of public pensions has been blamed for the financial problems. However true that may be in the short run, the pension blame game masks another, deeper problem for the state's taxpayers: the hidden but crushing cost of sprawl. It's true that pensions are an increasingly visible strain on city budgets. As a former mayor of Ventura - a city that is not going bankrupt - I can attest that rapidly rising pension costs are a huge problem that must be dealt with aggressively.

It's the midway point of the high school football season, and there have been so many strange, unexpected developments that not even the most competent psychic could have predicted what has transpired. Among the shock and awe: Long Beach Poly, an 18-time Southern Section champion, lost a game, 56-0. Carson, an 11-time City Section champion, lost a game, 72-0. Quarterback Johnny Stanton of Santa Margarita passed for 132 yards and ran for 100 yards against Ventura St. Bonaventure, then found out after the game his season was over because of a torn ACL and torn meniscus.

No Antonio Gates, no Ryan Mathews. No problem for the San Diego Chargers, who routed the Tennessee Titans, 38-10, on Sunday to improve to 2-0. With the All-Pro tight end nursing a rib injury and the speedy running back still sidelined after breaking his collarbone this summer, the Chargers received huge contributions from Dante Rosario, who had three touchdown receptions, and Jackie Battle, who rushed for 69 yards and two touchdowns in 14 carries....

My Heart Is an Idiot Essays Davy Rothbart Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 320 pp, $26 The love of Davy Rothbart's life is a character from Allison Anders' 1992 film "Gas Food Lodging. " Shade, played by Fairuza Balk, is the wan and ephemerally beautiful daughter of a New Mexico trailer park waitress. From the day Rothbart - the editor of Found magazine and a "This American Life" favorite - first saw the film, he's fallen only for women with slivers of Shade to them: wraithlike girls who are often more fiction than fact.