05/28/04

LC040528

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Turning Los Angeles into America's slot machine capital. Larry
Flynt thinks it's a good idea, but so does the county sheriff.

Lee Baca>> I don't have a stake in what people like to do with
their money. What I have a stake in is the public safety of the
people of Los Angeles County.

Val>> And then, a new way to worship. Like so many trends, it
was born in Southern California, but will it play in Peoria?

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> You've probably heard of the governor's efforts to
persuade Native-Americans to pony up more of their casino cash,
but you may not have heard of another proposal, a proposal that
would bring gambling to the very heart of Los Angeles. The plan
is all about putting slot machines where they've never been
before, including a poker club owned by Larry Flynt. And as
Philip Bruce reports, some high stakes and high rollers are
driving the measure.

Philip Bruce>> It may not be the biggest card club in Los
Angeles County, but it clearly has the biggest name. Drive by
Larry Flynt's Hustler Casino in Gardena and you get an eyeful of
the brand that took porn to a new level, but that's where it
ends. Inside, the casino is rated PG. No sexy models in lewd
poses, just pure poker and blackjack and a few California
specialty card games thrown in for good measure.

John Poindexter>> You walk in, it's a nice casino. Taking him
away from it, it's just a casino. It's a nice casino to be
here. I mean, it's quiet, it's clean. You know, it's good
gambling. The name really doesn't matter who owns it. I don't
think half the people don't even know what he looks like and
he's here.

Philip Bruce>> He's here, all right, but it's hard to imagine
that anyone doesn't know him. Most nights you'll see Larry
Flynt seated at his favorite corner table surrounded by a big
stack of chips and a crowd of fellow high rollers. Porn may be
Flynt's business, but poker is his passion. Here in Gardena,
he's managed to merge the two.

Larry Flynt>> I'm not looking to be some sort of gambling mogul
in the state or anything like that. We've got a casino here in
Southern California which is doing very well and it gives me a
place for recreation.

Philip Bruce>> Make no mistake, though. To Flynt, the gambling
business is more than just fun and games. That's why he's one
of the driving forces behind a new statewide initiative that
would allow Vegas style slot machines in card clubs like his.
Right now, California's Native-American tribes have a lock on
slot machines and they're making a fortune with them. But since
the Indians have been reluctant to share the wealth with the
state, Flynt says it's time to give the card clubs a piece of
the action.

Unlike the tribal casinos, the card clubs would pay one-third of
their earnings in taxes at a time when the state is desperate
for cash. That's why, when you walk in the door of the Hustler
Casino, you get a chance to sign a petition to put the issue to
a statewide vote.

Larry Flynt>> There are a lot of people that don't like
gambling, but there's a hell of a lot more people that don't
want their taxes raised. So if they can get funds into the
state coffers, the state programs, without slashing social
programs or raising taxes, you know, people are going to take
the gambling over that.

Philip Bruce>> Slot machines are the cash cows of gaming.
That's why everyone wants them and, if the statewide initiative
passes, Flynt alone will get one thousand slots here in Gardena.
But card clubs aren't the only ones that would cash in. So
would racetracks like Hollywood Park, which could get as many as
three thousand slot machines. The same is true for the
legendary Santa Anita Raceway near Pasadena.

Add them all together and you get thirty thousand slot machines
across California, a whopping number that would turn Los Angeles
into one of the world's biggest gaming capitals with more slot
machines here than in all of Las Vegas. If the card clubs and
the racetracks in Los Angeles County get slot machines, how
would that likely manifest itself? What would be the practical
impact that we would all see from that?

Professor Ralph Rossum>> I suppose the most immediate and
dramatic impact is that it would bring casinos from rural areas
where most of the Indian reservations are presently located and
where most of the gaming casinos are located. It will bring all
of those right into the midst of our major metropolitan areas.
I think a lot of people are going to be much less enthusiastic
about major gaming right in their own neighborhoods in their own
cities.

Philip Bruce>> Professor Ralph Rossum heads the Rose Institute
of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College. He
points out that the card club initiative is just one measure
that would greatly expand gambling in California. For example,
the Agua Caliente tribe in Palm Springs is pushing its own
ballot measure that would offer the state about nine percent of
the yearly profits from tribal casinos. But in exchange for
that, they want something.

Professor Ralph Rossum>> They want unlimited slot machines, and
this is dividing the gaming tribes themselves because the
smaller gaming tribes worry that, if the bigger ones can add
another thousand or two thousand machines, they will become such
attractive meccas in destinations that it will be at the
detriment of the smaller, less impressive casinos that are left
in the dust.

Philip Bruce>> The backdrop for all of this is the governor's
plan to extract about one billion dollars from the state's
gaming tribes in exchange for letting them greatly expand their
business. And as those negotiations move forward, the governor
is trying to keep the card clubs and people like Larry Flynt at
arm's length.

Larry Flynt>> I don't know what's on the governor's mind. All
I know is, the initiative, when we first drafted the initiative,
we took it to the governor and he refused to take a position on
it at that time because he had not completed his negotiations
with the Indians.

Philip Bruce>> But look who is on Larry Flynt's side. Los
Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. He's promoting slot machines
for card rooms and racetracks and claims the revenue for law
enforcement and at-risk youth programs makes sense. Those card
club and racetrack operators also happen to be some of Baca's
major campaign donors, prompting a few to criticize the sheriff
for siding with the likes of the man who publishes Hustler.

Lee Baca>> I'm not a big person with these girl magazines.
It's not one of my pastimes. But at the same time, I also don't
even gamble. So I don't have a stake in what people like to do
with their money or their reading interests. What I have a
stake in is the public safety of the people of Los Angeles
County and I don't have stable revenue. I won't have any stable
revenue for at least five years due to the economy.

Philip Bruce>> At the same time, Baca is strongly opposing
efforts by the Tongva Indians to build a tribal casino in
Compton. He says that kind of gaming, which would not be
taxable or controllable, is the last thing that Los Angeles
County needs. But the sheriff has no trouble with the notion of
thirty thousand slot machines at the card clubs and the
racetracks, since that would mean no new gambling operations.

Lee Baca>> My biggest concern is for the average better that
goes in there thinking they're going to get rich quick. I mean,
that has always been the concern of all of us that worry about
people who somewhat wager away the milk money, as they say, but
that's their choice and this is America.

Philip Bruce>> Larry Flynt has always dreamed of a chance to
add slots to his casino. He even had the place pre-wired for
the machines just in case, but he never dreamed the chance would
come so soon. And he says it wouldn't have if the tribal
casinos had only shared some of their fortune with the state.

Larry Flynt>> By the Indians being greedy and not wanting to
give the state anything after making billions of dollars, they
shot themselves in the foot, you know? I mean, at some period
in time, greed don't make sense.

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Val>> Looking young is an obsession here in Southern
California, but looking young and staying healthy is what Dr.
Judith Reichman is an expert on. You may remember Dr. Judith
Reichman from her specials on PBS. She also practices and
teaches at Cedar Sinai Medical Center and UCLA and she's an
author. Her latest book is "Slow Your Clock Down: The Complete
Guide to a Healthy, Younger You". This is your fourth book and
it's the most comprehensive yet. It starts from our
reproductive years all the way to death virtually (laughter).

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Well, no. The whole idea was that we
wanted to increase our health span and our "wellgevity". Those
are two words that I think are very important. So I started
with our reproductive time clock because we do have a time
clock. Actually in that chapter, I tell the story of my patient
who came in and she was crying that "he ran away with my sperm".
It was a woman who kept postponing having her children until she
was forty and then her husband ran away with someone he met at
the gym with twenty-eight year old eggs.

The issue is, what can you do at forty? I talk about that and I
talk about the issue of what happens as we get older. What
happens to our eggs? Can we freeze them? What are the
therapies out there? How late can we wait? In today's world,
with our multitasking and delaying, with our education and our
careers, we do want to know how to wait.

Val>> Well, we can do more than ever before.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Absolutely. And I give all the different
options that you can have as far as reproductive technologies in
the crazy world of reproduction today. I tell how much it
costs, how do you find the right doctor, where do you go and
what can your expectations be. I also tell women that, you
know, maybe the importance here is getting pregnant and not
raising a child, so you really have to look into your psyche.

Val>> You also deal with -- this is your specialty -- hormone
replacement therapy as women go into menopause.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Yes. Peri-menopause, a time when we
think that an alien has taken over our bodies and our hormones
go up and down, what to do, what are the symptoms, when to freak
and when not to, menopause, the whole issue of hormone
replacement. I really go into all of the studies, the newest
ones out there, and try to explain to women what they mean, how
to interpret them, do they apply to me, does it apply to the
hormones my doctor gave me, what are the best hormones and, if I
don't take hormones, what can I do? I think women need choices.
This is a major transition in our lifetime. It's probably less
of a transition than puberty, but it is a major transition. I'm
trying to help them go through it. Not get through it, but go
through it.

Val>> And updated information is really important too because
of the recent scares that have come along with hormone
replacement therapy. A lot of women backed away thinking, oh,
my God, I can't do it. But you're saying no. You look
carefully.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Absolutely. And nothing is set in stone.
If a woman is having a lot of symptoms in her early fifties and
wants to treat them, she is not making a decision as to what
she's going to do in her sixties and seventies. I remind them
that most of the studies out there really deal with women whose
average age is sixty-three and may not apply to a fifty-one year
old who can't sleep, who's having terrible night sweats, hot
flashes and feels that a fog has come over her brain and just
has tremendous symptoms.

Val>> You have an interesting chapter called Minuets -- it
deals with exercise -- Minuets and exercises?

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Minuets and other exercises to maintain a
longer life. What I tell women is that it doesn't matter what
you're doing. It could be a stately minuet. That's dancing to
perhaps walking, or it could be that you're going to go out
there and rap and you're going to really, you know, shake it up.
But the issue is, do something.

I give the lazy woman's schedule. What you can do, the least
amount without sweating, that will maintain your health. I try
to explain to women why it's so important. At one point, I say
there is no medicine that I or any other doctor can give you,
aside perhaps an antibiotic for some life-threatening infection,
that will have the impact on your longevity and health that
exercise will have.

Val>> And exercise effects so many things. You know, whenever
I read about disease or ailments or whatever, there is virtually
none that does not benefit.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Absolutely. From Alzheimer's to
depression to heart disease to osteoporosis to osteoarthritis,
the issue of weight, the issue of keeping your muscle mass built
up. As we get older, by the way, we lose muscle mass and the
only way we can combat that is with exercise. Guess what
happens when we lose the muscle mass? We get it replaced by fat
and fat doesn't metabolize the calories as well, so we get into
this vicious cycle of laying down more fat. That's what I try
to explain in that chapter.

Val>> Obviously, if you eat well and exercise and so forth,
you're probably going to do a lot of preventative maintenance on
yourself, but there are certain diseases that you think you need
to zero in on and really prevent.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Absolutely. And I give the stories of
women who came in for one reason and I did, say, a cholesterol
test or I say to go get your mammogram or you must get your
colonoscopy, and the effect it's had on their ultimate lifespan
because we picked up a disease early enough to make a
difference. I think the stories tell a lot, but I really
emphasize to women that you cannot live in the twenty-first
century and practice nineteenth century medicine. If you don't
get the tests at the right time, you will not prevent the
disease or detect it early enough to make a difference.

So what I do here is give a schedule. I tell women that you
need to do this once a month, for example, a self breast exam.
You need to do this once a year. When to do your pap smears,
when to get a pelvic exam, what to do every two years, what to
do every three or four. It's a list that you can really copy
off, put on your refrigerator, on your bulletin board. It's
like what they give you when you get a car (laughter). It says
how often you have to take the car in. Well, this is taking
your body in and getting the tests so that it will run well for
as long as you want it to run.

Val>> So, hopefully, healthy body and healthy mind. You know,
we have virtually an Alzheimer's epidemic in this country going
on. What can we do to keep our brains alive?

Dr. Judith Reichman>> I talk about brain muscle power and what
we can do to work out our brains. Most of what we know from a
medical point of view has got to do with preventing plaque
formation, closing of the arteries, so what we tell women to do
for heart disease applies for brain disease and brain aging. I
also talk about some of the new diagnostic testing we have. If
you think your memory is going, what can you do? Is this just
that I'm forgetting and I'm overtaxed and I have too many things
on my mind, or is this truly an onset of memory loss with age
or, worse yet, Alzheimer's or dementia.

We talk about the new smart drugs out there and what they can
do, and also the effect of depression on our brain and the fact
that depression itself can shorten our lives and cause disease,
and ways to combat that, so I go over all the anti-depressants
also.

Val>> Because it really is, in the end, mind, body, soul, even
mood. Everything in the end contributes to our health.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Absolutely. What I've tried to do is, in
various chapters, go into detail what we need to know and sort
of a minimum of what you need to get in order to maintain the
lifestyle you want through the years to come and I talk about
the years to come in my last chapter.

Val>> And you also do confess how old you are.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Yes. I'm fifty-eight and I'm very proud
of it (laughter). I also say that I want to live to 120. The
reason I said 120 is there's this wonderful Hebrew expression
that means "May you live to 120". Every time you have an
anniversary or birthday, someone will say, "May you live to
120". So I figured I'll over-achieve and I'll try to get to
120. I may die getting there (laughter), but I'm going to try.

So I confess what I do and I tell everybody, look, I've read the
literature, I'm supposed to know the secrets. This is what I
decided to do and I have done the good, the bad and the lazy,
but I'm also trying to improve. I go through my diet, my
exercise program, my skin care program, my hormone program, the
tests I get, the tests I haven't gotten, and it's sort of a
confession of a female doctor who's supposed to know it all and
what she's doing to get to that 120.

Val>> Well, Dr. Reichman, I hope we'll be back in fifty years
to check up on you and talk to you about yet another book.
Thank you very much.

Dr. Judith Reichman>> Val, I expect to do it.

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Val>> Customer service isn't a concept that's normally
associated with religion, but in San Diego County, a new mega
church is breaking some new ground in that area. The idea is to
make the worshiping experience more user-friendly. That may
seem a little odd, but as Saul Gonzalez tells us, it's drawing
believers back into the fold.

[Film Clip]

Saul Gonzalez>> Worship the way that's comfortable for you.
That's the idea attracting a growing number of parishioners to
San Diego County's North Coast Church. Here, simultaneous
services, all with their own mood, music and prayer leaders,
range from rock and roll cool for Generation X and the baby
boomer crowd to old-fashioned and hymn-filled for
traditionalists, to coffee house casual for people wanting
informality and a cup of java with their prayers.

All of these worlds of worship are just steps from one another
at this nondenominational evangelical church's home, a converted
industrial park that feels like a religious street fair. The
inspiration for what this church is doing, offering its
congregation a boutique approach to worship, comes from a place
where freedom of choice and variety are celebrated, the American
shopping mall. It's an example of retail thinking in the
service of religious faith.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> I'm very comfortable with the consumer
mindset and to use that as a tool to help reach people as long
as I'm not compromising the message.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> "We often assume that enthusiasm
equals spiritual maturity."

Saul Gonzalez>> Larry Osborne is North Coast's pastor and the
man behind his church's ala carte approach to faith.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> People have very strong opinions about
worship. I think God's taste is much broader than most
Christians' taste, but we have this tendency to think that God
likes only what I like. Having all these venues allows us to
have worship of various styles with the same message.

Saul Gonzalez>> The theme chapels were started three years ago
when growing attendance made it impossible for parishioners to
all fit under one roof in North Coast's original worship space.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> It really started with the idea of
having an overflow room that was a reward. The first thing I
thought of was why don't we serve Starbucks coffee?

Saul Gonzalez>> The church's congregation of six thousand
embraces the smorgasbord of worship experiences North Coast
offers and attendance continues to grow.

Wendy Perkins>> So you're sharing together, you know, as a body
of differences and you celebrate it.

Saul Gonzalez>> So it's almost like neighborhoods within a
larger community.

Wendy Perkins>> Definitely, definitely, under the same
leadership.

Saul Gonzalez>> Carl and Wendy Perkins discovered North Coast
just over a year ago and faithfully attend the church's rock and
roll venue called "The Edge".

Carl Perkins>> You're experiencing some kind of energy you
like, associated with the word of God and the message you're
giving. I think it keeps you more interested in learning, more
awake, more absorbing of what's going on.

Saul Gonzalez>> For those seeking a more conservative mood in
their worship service, there is the venue called "Traditions".

Joyce Olson>> That's our music. It's the kind of music that we
experienced in church and even on the radio as children when we
were growing up.

Saul Gonzalez>> Then there is the Video Café whose attractions
are a laid-back atmosphere, coffee and plenty of snacks. Video
Café regulars, Kim and Curtis Sonoda, say North Coast's variety
of services helps bridge generation gaps in worship.

Kim Sonoda>> We just find that the variety is great because you
can bring different family members like you said. If you've got
a mom and dad that are older and want to be in "Traditions", you
can break off, have the kids go here, mom and dad go there,
brother wants "The Edge", you know, and then still meet up out
in the plaza.

Saul Gonzalez>> Freedom of choice.

Kim Sonoda>> Yeah.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> People at first come and one of their
first responses is, wow, this isn't what I expected. I remember
one gentleman saying does it count as church if it's fun? Yes,
it does.

Saul Gonzalez>> Yet when the fun stops and the sermon begins,
technology allows the congregation to share in one common
evangelical religious message. From the main chapel called "The
Sanctuary", Pastor Osborne's services are telecast to jumbo
video screens in the other venues, turning many churches into
one. Saturday evening sermons are broadcast live to all the
venues. However, Sunday morning worshipers outside of the main
chapel watch a taped playback of their pastor's previous night's
message. The church's technical director is Dennis Choy. He
says worshipers are accustomed to interacting with their pastor
on the big screen instead of in person.

Dennis Choy>> I think we definitely are in the media
generation. People are accustomed to watching things on screen.
That's okay. You can't have everything on screen, but there is
a piece of it that people naturally can handle. It's just like
he's there to them.

Saul Gonzalez>> Pastor Osborne hopes North Coast's worship as
you wish approach to faith will serve as a model for other
churches who wish to grow without losing their sense of
community.

Reverend Larry Osborne>> Well, I have a little saying that
leaders like it big, most people like it small. Larger churches
are left and right realizing that once we've hit a certain size,
we've got to find ways to make ourselves feel smaller. It's
just much easier to connect. We're a real church then. We're
not a big show.

Val>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For all of us
at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next
time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, an entire program devoted to
people who've made a difference, including a nun who is helping
former gang members shed their old lives.

>> We're removing tattoos, visible tattoos, so that they can
get jobs and so that they can join mainstream American life.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.