Slow

PHOENIX — As hockey fever grips Los Angeles, Dodgers President Stan Kasten said he plans to explore whether the Kings could play in an NHL Winter Classic game at Dodger Stadium. "Facility-wise, we could certainly handle it," Kasten said. The NHL has yet to award its New Year's Day showcase to a warm-weather city. The Dodgers could offer baseball's largest stadium and the iconic backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. Kasten, former president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers, said technology would allow ice to remain playable for an outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium but said he was unsure if the league would be interested.

Kevin Durant might be listed at 6-feet-9, but an Oklahoma City teammate called the star forward 6-10. And Lakers Coach Mike Brown went so far as to call Durant a 7-footer. No matter, Durant's contribution Saturday was immeasurable in the pivotal Game 4 of the Western Conference best-of-seven semifinal series. Not only did he drain the go-ahead three-pointer with 13.7 seconds left in a 103-100 victory over the Lakers, but he applied stifling defense to Kobe Bryant down the stretch, using his long arms to alter every shot.

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Had enough of life in the fast lane and looking to take it down a notch or two? You might seek guidance from a colony of deep-sea microbes harvested from the barren depths of the Pacific Ocean that are progressing so slowly, they almost appear to be dead. Just how plodding are these ancient creatures, who are buried about 100 feet deep in the seabed? Some of them haven't received any new food for 86 million years, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth. And they are using up oxygen at rates 10,000 times slower than their counterparts on the surface of the ocean floor.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

The Oprah Winfrey Network seems to have everything needed to succeed: some of the best creative minds in the business, strong financial backing, a loyal audience and enthusiastic advertisers eager to buy commercial time. But more than 20 months after the announcement that Winfrey was teaming with Discovery Communications Inc. to create a cable channel that celebrates her ethos, "Living your best life," not much has happened -- except for a revolving door of executives. Three top programmers abruptly left the Los Angeles-based network in recent months, and development spending has been cut. OWN was supposed to have launched by now, but its debut has been pushed back to mid-2010.

Brian Price, once a wrecking ball on UCLA's defensive line, has beaten long odds to return to the NFL after two off-season surgeries aimed at keeping his hamstrings attached to his pelvis, rather than breaking loose and coiling down the backs of his thighs. For Price, who will start at defensive tackle Sunday for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his excruciating recovery was a 10-step process. Meaning just two months ago, he could run only 10 steps. "You have these doubts in your head at times," said Price, a second-round pick of the Buccaneers in 2010 who, because of his congenitally malformed pelvis, spent the last half of his rookie season on injured reserve.

In his May 17 "Trust Me On This" column, John Schulian extolled Leonard Gardner's "Fat City" but lamented the fact that Gardner has published comparatively little since the appearance of that novel. "The word that filtered back from his editors . . .," Schulian wrote, "was that Gardner was slow. Painfully, agonizingly slow." Those words reminded me of a story I heard from Margaret Cummings, who for many years administered the James D. Phelan literary awards from the Phelan offices in San Francisco.

RE "A Slow Hand" [Aug. 14]: It's quite obvious that Jim Jarmusch has "an adverse reaction to thinking about what will happen next" and isn't "interested in sentiment or life lessons." In "Broken Flowers," nothing happened ever! It was more than just slow and subtle; it was downright lethargic and pointless -- no sentiment whatsoever, no life lessons, not even an ending. I've never seen people jump out of their seats so fast to exit a theater. Everyone was bored out of their minds.

WASHINGTON - Whatever else they achieve, back-to-back summits of world leaders this weekend hosted by President Obama will showcase the perks of incumbency. An American president with sagging approval ratings on the top campaign issue - the anemic economic recovery - will stand in the spotlight as a seasoned world leader. On Friday, Obama welcomed leaders of the major industrialized nations, the so-called G-8, for an overnight economic gathering at Camp David, the presidential retreat in western Maryland.

When Javier Ortiz collapsed in his backyard in Echo Park, rescuers were stationed in a firehouse just a half-mile away. But the Los Angeles Fire Department dispatcher who answered the 911 call from Ortiz's daughter took more than 2 1/2 minutes to send the firefighters -- nearly three times longer than a national standard for processing calls for help. By the time rescuers arrived, more than six minutes had passed since the Fire Department picked up the call, records show. Ortiz later died, and it is impossible to say whether a faster response would have saved him. But his case illustrates a significant weakness at one of the nation's largest fire agencies: Dispatchers lose precious seconds in hundreds of thousands of calls for medical aid each year.

OKLAHOMA CITY - Score one for youth. And speed. And rest. And fun. The Oklahoma City Thunder couldn't have looked much better than it did during the 119-90 bruising it applied to the Lakers on Monday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena. It was the opener of the Western Conference semifinals and the series could close quickly. PHOTOS: Lakers vs. Thunder, Game 1 Most people picked the Lakers to lose Game1. Few picked them to be embarrassed. They trailed by 35 in the third quarter, were blanked in fastbreak points (13-0)

Marc Gasol has awakened, and that's bad news for the Clippers. The All-Star center poured in 23 points and pulled down nine rebounds Friday, spinning, slicing and generally frustrating Clippers big men all night during the Grizzles' 90-88 Game 6 victory at Staples Center. It was Gasol's second consecutive 23-point game after an abysmal start to the playoffs that rivaled the current slump of his brother, Lakers power forward Pau Gasol. In his first four games, Gasol averaged just more than 10 points, and the Grizzles lost three of four.

BEIJING — Inflation in China moderated last month in another sign that the world's second-largest economy is cooling. Consumer prices grew 3.4% from a year earlier, China's National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. That's down from 3.6% year-over-year growth in March. "We think the inflation outlook for this year is benign," analysts at IHS Global Insight in Beijing told clients in a research note Friday. The data release comes a day after China reported surprisingly weak trade numbers for April.

Many interested parties pondered exactly how injured Chris Paul was Friday, eyeballing the All-Star guard's every movement to see if a sprained hip was enough to slow down a player Memphis defenders had yet to control. When it turned out that Paul - yes, Chris Paul - was human and that he wouldn't be his usual dominant, unstoppable, clutch self, it meant another Clipper suddenly had some impossibly large sneakers to fill. Eric Bledsoe wasn't sure before the game if he would get that chance against Memphis in Game 6 at Staples Center.

Re "Life, Liberty Wasted in the Pursuit of Sappiness," Commentary, Sept. 3: I believe Eric L. Rozenman was right on with his belief that modern-day America twists Thomas Jefferson's words. I agree that we are not happy and will not be happy if we keep rushing all the time, even when eating and abusing our bodies. We all need to slow down and take a good look at what happiness is. Once we can determine what true happiness is, we can truly pursue it. Thank you for your insight on our society.

It seems as though many people have forgotten the importance of driving well. Recently I saw many potential accidents where the main cause was speeding. I wonder, where is everyone going? What could be so important to risk your life and someone else's? I do not think that people realize the danger they put themselves and others in by forgetting the laws of the road in hopes of arriving at their destination a few minutes earlier. If we could just slow down our lives and stop to smell the roses, maybe then we could see that we need to enjoy life, not speed past it. Katie Francois San Juan Capistrano

The ranks of obese Americans are expected to swell even further in the coming years, rising from 36% of the adult population today to 42% by 2030, experts said Monday. Kicking off a government-led conference on the public health ramifications of all those expanding waistlines, the authors of a new report estimated that the cost of treating those additional obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other medical conditions would add up to nearly $550 billion over the next two decades.

TEHRAN — On a recent trip to a city on the Persian Gulf, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood in the back of a pickup as it made its way through a thick crowd clamoring for his attention when an older, disheveled man began to shout at him. "Ahmadinejad, I am hungry, Ahmadinejad, I am hungry," he pleaded desperately. The man banged on the pickup's front window to get the notice of the president, who leaned forward as the two exchanged a few words. A young woman then climbed onto the hood of the vehicle and told the leader, "I have problems.