Steven Kotler

What's So Bad About Performance Enhancement?

Steven Kotler
Last Thursday, after 21 months in preparation, Senator George Mitchell issued his report on the abuse of performance-enhancing substances in major-league baseball. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said the report was “a call to action” and did his best to assure everyone, treating the unveiling of the Mitchell Report as if......

The God of Sperm

Steven Kotler
The world’s largest collections of stored genetic material are found in Sussex, England, Spitsbergen, Norway — and Los Angeles. Sussex hosts the Millennium See...

Dog On a Ledge

Steven Kotler
About a year ago, the New Zealand Herald ran a story about a historic bridge on the west coast of Scotland that had become the site of an unprecedented series of canine suicides. Apparently, in the months preceding the article, so many dogs had taken to leaping over the railing......
(Photography by Christopher Wray-McCann

The Heidi Chronicles

Steven Kotler
If you get on the freeway in Los Angeles and drive east into the dead heat of the Mojave Desert, take a left past the red rock spires of the Spring Mountains, then continue down lonely roads, past a string of one-horse towns and barren landscapes and a wide sky......

King of Clubs

Steven Kotler
Paul Sapiano’s condo off Vine is the most pimped-out pad to be found in Hollywood since Austin Powers wrapped. Faux-gold statues of King Tut stand on glass shelves; crystal chandeliers hang from high ceilings. The walls are papered with purple-velvet paisley swirls offset against a lighter maroon background. The only......
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Return to the Sea

Steven Kotler
Sample Mix Following are excerpts from new books by Weekly contributors Steven Kotler and Ernest Hardy. Both authors will be reading on Thursday, May 25, 6 p.m., at Boardner’s, 1652 N. Cherokee Ave., Hollywood. When I think back on my time in New Mexico, one night stands out clearer than......
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Photo by Kevin Scanlon

The Jock's Itch

Steven Kotler
Petros Papadakis, 28, has a lisp. He has hemorrhoids. He has the dubious distinction of being the captain of the worst football team in USC history. And every weekday from noon until 2 p.m. since 2003 he’s had a talk show on “SoCal’s nonstop sports station,” 1540 — The Ticket,......

Fresh Meat

Steven Kotler
A wave of excitement ripples across the field. Someone nearby whispers, “Leinart and Bush.” Necks crane, grown men quiver and Petros Papadakis says, “the fucking Beatles.” Last Sunday, the NFL held its Pro Day workouts at USC, and Papadakis, host of the generally irascible, occasionally nonsensical Petros Papadakis Show on......

The Stem-Cell Debate Gets Silly

Steven Kotler
IN 2004, CALIFORNIA VOTERS passed Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which authorizes the state to issue $3 billion in bonds to fund stem-cell research. The initiative also created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine — a 29-person oversight committee — in charge of dispersing that......

Balls Out

Steven Kotler
If the funniest man in America can’t make you laugh, he’ll show you his balls. That’s right, his testicles. He’ll let them dangle and jiggle and if the sheer sight of them doesn’t get to you, then he’ll start bounding up and down and running all around until those balls......