Back when I was maybe 19, guys would go, 'I can kick your butt!' So I had a few showdowns. To my advantage, I learned martial arts, and what you really learn is not to fight.

It's fun times. It's part of the experience. All rookies have to do it. Hopefully in a few years, I'll watch other people do it.

L.A. is wonderful. They have something called sleep dentistry. You just go there, and they put you to sleep and go, 'Drrrrrr,' and by the time you wake up a few hours later, you have a whole new set of teeth. I mean, whatever you want them to do.

There are so few of them and they are so tiny that we have little idea how to study them today.

In the next few months, there's no upside. And this winter, we're going to feel it more noticeably as people pay record gas prices and record home-heating bills.

I would say we're within a week or so. We're ready now but there are a few more pieces to put in.

Hopefully we learned our lesson in a few of those matches.

In the next few weeks, they will have polished at least 14 songs so they will have a good set ready to perform.

If they didn't pause after Katrina, they are not going to pause in the next few months.

We just have to be better defensively, me included. We've slipped the last few weeks, and we don't want to waste a good start by not playing better in the field.