Gladiators

Picture this: It's ancient Rome and two gladiators are battling each other to the death. Finally, a wild crowd points its thumbs down as one man kills another in the name of sport. Now picture this: It's the 20th Century and two boxers are fighting. A large crowd is screaming as one man beats another into submission in the name of sport. Tell me, do these two scenes differ very much? DAVID K. LI San Dimas

They are a distant relative of the sandals originally worn by the ancient Greeks and Romans. At the spring-summer 2013 fashion collections, designers such as Tom Ford, Alexander Wang and Joseph Altuzarra featured innovative knee-high-and-above versions on the runways, taking shoe envy to new heights. They are arrestingly sexy. And for many, they summon up a blow-the-wheels-off-your-chariot feeling of female empowerment. Some ladies might even take on a gladiator mentality if it came down to a fellow shopper reaching for the single pair left in her size.

Football deaths. Apparently this is the biggest tragedy in the history of man, given all the coverage I've seen. As a society, we should be embarrassed that Jesse Jackson and Johnnie Cochran need to get involved so as to direct our focus on the players, make money and a bigger name for themselves, and not focus on the true problem. So now this is a problem? Puhleeze! Just because these football deaths are in the news doesn't mean they haven't been occurring since the dawn of Rome, the gladiators and the Olympics.

The first scene of "The Last Gladiators," a documentary that brings extraordinary insight to hockey's vanishing breed of enforcers, features a closeup of a man's hands. It takes only a few seconds to realize who they belong to and how appropriate that image is. The hands are scarred, the fingers misshapen and the knuckles flattened. They're surprisingly small. "I have my mother's hands," a raspy voice says, turning those hands toward the camera for better inspection. The voice and hands belong to Chris "Knuckles" Nilan, one of the NHL's most feared fighters during an era when enforcers were featured players.

Teams know what to expect when they face Cerritos Gahr in basketball. The Gladiators put on a relentless full-court press. Oak Park certainly prepared for it, but the Eagles found out Friday night that there's no way to simulate Gahr's athleticism and quickness in practice, and by the time they finally adjusted, it was too late. "Turnovers were the name of the game," Oak Park Coach Aaron Shaw said after his team's 64-50 loss in a Southern Section Division 3A second-round playoff game at Gahr.

Sometimes a guy just has to ungird his inner gladiator. Sergio Iacomoni used to look up from his desk at Banca d'Italia and wonder about the likes of Spartacus. He consumed books on ancient Rome. He tracked news of archaeological digs -- daily fare in Italy -- for nuggets on how gladiators might have trained or lived. He socialized with buddies -- accountants and bureaucrats cooped up in their own office or government jobs -- who shared the same Walter Mitty daydreams. "One day, we were talking.

Gahr High School is ranked No. 1 in the Southern Section 3A baseball poll and for good reason. The Gladiators showed off their talents at a holiday tournament in Las Vegas over the spring break and walked away with the tournament title with four convincing wins. The San Gabriel Valley League school outscored its opponents 48-6. The Gladiators won three of the four games by margins of 12 or more runs. Gahr (16-2 overall) plays at Warren High School on Friday.

The Gladstone High School baseball program is not steeped in winning tradition. For that matter, neither are the other teams at the 1,150-student school in Azusa. The last time the Gladiators won a championship in any sport was in 1973 when they defeated Sonora for the CIF Southern Section 2-A baseball title. That was the senior year for Gladstone's Jack Clark, now star first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals.

ROME -- Archaeologists scraping away centuries of grime covering the walls of the Colosseum in Rome have discovered that the massive amphitheater was once painted with riotous colors. Experts working on the walls of one of the corridors that once led Romans to their seats to watch bloody gladiatorial shows have discovered traces of brilliant reds, light blue, green and black, proving the drab gray stonework of the Colosseum was once a Technicolor feast. Graffiti celebrating gladiatorial triumphs and scrawled phalluses also can be found on the plasterwork, which has been painstakingly revealed by scraping off dirt and dust.

Greg Gerardi, Irvine High School offensive tackle, played a big part in the Vaqueros' 32-21 nonleague win over Gahr, Thursday at Hanford Rants Stadium in front of 500. He was a big factor because Gerardi is, well, big. Six-feet seven-inches, 240-pounds big. The Gladiators (1-4, 2-7) don't have a player taller than 6-2. Can you say, mismatch? Gahr clearly had no one who could handle Gerardi as he created gaping holes in the line.

ROME -- Archaeologists scraping away centuries of grime covering the walls of the Colosseum in Rome have discovered that the massive amphitheater was once painted with riotous colors. Experts working on the walls of one of the corridors that once led Romans to their seats to watch bloody gladiatorial shows have discovered traces of brilliant reds, light blue, green and black, proving the drab gray stonework of the Colosseum was once a Technicolor feast. Graffiti celebrating gladiatorial triumphs and scrawled phalluses also can be found on the plasterwork, which has been painstakingly revealed by scraping off dirt and dust.

Based on Tuesday night's presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York, here is a five-point plan: -- Moderator Candy Crowley, like Supreme Court justices, should be appointed for life. -- The town hall format, which allows the candidates to circle each other like prize fighters or come nose-to-nose like bickering spouses, is the best. As the Sundance Kid so famously said, "I'm better when I move. " -- CNN, seriously, lose that undecided voter crawl. It is completely distracting and simply absurd - how much value can there be in the real-time reactions of 35 undecided voters in Ohio?

Steve Lavin was searching for a lunch spot near his TriBeCa loft one frigid morning a few months ago when a St. John's athletics official walking alongside the coach mentioned a few details about his remodeled basketball office. As Lavin had requested, the wall facing an adjacent hallway had been replaced by floor-to-ceiling glass to provide an increased sense of accessibility. There was also something Lavin hadn't asked for: a cross bearing a likeness of Jesus that had been left behind by the previous occupants.

No one wanted Jay Cutler on the field as much as the former Chicago Bears linebacker considered the NFL's toughest player of all time. Yet Dick Butkus isn't among the masses of Monday morning quarterbacks skewering the Bears quarterback. Cutler left Sunday's NFC championship game at Chicago's storied Soldier Field in the third quarter because of a left knee injury that Bears Coach Lovie Smith revealed Monday to be a sprained ligament. On the sideline, Cutler maintained a mostly passionless expression as a trip to the Super Bowl evaporated with bitter rival Green Bay's 21-14 victory over the Bears.

Simon Atherton and his team crafted more than 900 swords, shields and other weaponry for "Clash of the Titans," but he's always been a pretty peaceful guy. "I don't really like shooting animals and things," he said. "And even though weapons like firearms and swords are functional, there is a lot of artistic input that goes into the weapons as well. People decorate them and make them into things that are quite beautiful. So all of these crafts that come into it fascinate me -- engraving, working with wood to make the stocks and the handles for swords."

My heart sinks when I open a new SF or fantasy novel for potential review, only to see the word " Prologue." Though not necessarily long, these scene-setters can be inscrutable, particularly when you realize you're holding Volume 3 in the second of four linked star-faring trilogies. "Ten thousand years have passed since the S'rwrwa annexed the outer colonies of the Confederation," one of these might begin, "enslaving its peoples by means of superior firepower and the Naxx, an antiquated form of mass hypnosis perfected by the rogue wizards known as the Qmzic.

With starting forward Melanie Pearson on the bench in foul trouble most of the game, top-seeded Woodbridge needed a lift. Erin Stovall rose to the occasion, scoring 28 points to lead the Warriors past Cerritos Gahr, 70-63, in a Southern Section Division II-AA semifinal game Saturday at Concordia University. Stovall scored 14 points in the fourth quarter as Woodbridge held off the Gladiators, who had trailed by as many as 15, but cut the lead to three with two minutes remaining.

I have watched Assemblyman Tom Hayden's bill to bar Soka University from using the term university from the bill's introduction by Hayden--"Mr. Special Interest"--to its present state after many in-depth revisions. The bill was originally so poorly written that it directly attacked thousands of small businesses around the state. I am interested because I support Soka University establishing a campus in our community. The school would be an educational, environmental, cultural and economical benefit.

Teams know what to expect when they face Cerritos Gahr in basketball. The Gladiators put on a relentless full-court press. Oak Park certainly prepared for it, but the Eagles found out Friday night that there's no way to simulate Gahr's athleticism and quickness in practice, and by the time they finally adjusted, it was too late. "Turnovers were the name of the game," Oak Park Coach Aaron Shaw said after his team's 64-50 loss in a Southern Section Division 3A second-round playoff game at Gahr.

The gladiators of ancient Rome may have endured horribly violent lives, but they also saw plenty of overheated sex. At least that's the version of history on display in "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," a sword-and-sandals epic that Starz, the premium cable network, rolls out Jan. 22. Viewers who recall the old Kirk Douglas film about the Roman slave who leads an uprising may rub their eyes in disbelief. The Starz take has naked flesh to spare, not to mention more blood than the Red Cross.