Even a Day of Pampering Can’t Relieve All the Stress

The wife had an idea.

Frankly, I’m not sure there is anything worse in life.

The last time she had one of those I spent a football Sunday holding sweaty hands and walking from shop to shop in Laguna Beach.

“You seem to be under a lot of stress,” she said, and I couldn’t very well tell her it happens every time she gets an idea, or the Lakers start a new season.

She gave me a gift certificate for a massage and facial at the Glen Ivy Day Spa in the Brea Mall. “You can get a manicure and pedicure too,” she said, as if acting like Phil Jackson or Richard Simmons for a day is going to reduce stress.

The nice thing about the spa’s location is that it’s adjacent to Sears, so you can be looking over the hammers and other stuff we men use, and then slip unnoticed into the fu-fu world next door.

“So you’re getting the men’s facial?” the receptionist announced to the entire mall. “We also have a deluxe buff and polish.”

“For the face?”

“No, your nails,” she said, and she might as well have been pulling them off the way this was going.

Inside the men’s locker room I met Isaac Guerrero, a supervisor who was selling me on the idea that it’s all right for today’s modern man to take care of himself until he took off his shoes and socks and showed me his white nails with painted black spiders on each big toe.

I suddenly had this image of Tom Lasorda standing there, painted blue toenails and the McCourts pictured on each big toe, and you can see what stress can do to a person.

I got the call for the massage, Susan asking me to remove all my clothes, and I can tell you, nothing like this happens at home.

Susan seemed determined to remove my head from my neck, a chill running up my spine when I realized I should’ve asked if she was a friend of the McCourts. Susan had me moaning, and like I said, nothing like this happens at home. No question I felt better when she was done -- thrilled I had survived.

I moved onto Kasey for the facial, who braced her legs against the wall while trying to remove my nose. She called it “exfoliation,” but now that I know her boyfriend works at Staples Center, I call it Tim Leiweke’s payback.

I passed on the manicure and pedicure, but told Guerrero I’d certainly recommend a day at the spa to the folks who regularly e-mail. I’ve seen what stress has done to them.

*

PETE CARROLL had an idea too. A bad idea.

USC is No. 1, and with that comes extraordinary attention, and I’m sure Uncle Pete has warned his players to be extra special in using good judgment.

Well, he didn’t. He staged a Halloween prank that had one of his players getting upset, storming off the field, and then making it appear as if he were jumping from a tall building. It was shown on ESPN over and over again.

How many parents have sent their child off to college, confident the child had been raised right but still worrying about the pressure kids face trying to fit in or survive on a college campus -- the high rate of teenage suicide always in the back of the mind?

How did that prank play with them? Or with the depressed kid who might’ve seen it on TV?

“The majority of people are going to take it as humor, but we have 30,000 students on this campus and how many millions in L.A.?” said Dr. Bradford King, director of USC’s student counseling services. “There is another serious side to this [prank], and a better model for students in distress -- than taking one’s life -- and that’s reaching out to talk to somebody.

“If Carroll had asked me for my opinion, I would’ve asked him, ‘Isn’t there a better way to engage the guys?’ I think it’s important to have fun, and Carroll has done a very good job with that, but now we’re getting into a gray area.

“As Americans we joke about everything, but on the other side of this there are people who think about hurting themselves. It’s a very serious issue on this, and every campus.”

*

PR SPECIALIST Steve Brener extended an invitation to the Saddle Ranch Chop House at Universal Studios City Walk because he had an idea, something to do with a bull expert, he said, which had me wondering if Lasorda would be there.

When I arrived, though, he had pro bull rider, Justin McBride, teaching Channel 5’s Damon Andrews how to ride a mechanical bull. Picture Jackie Slater after Thanksgiving dinner trying to climb aboard.

As soon as Andrews got on, he fell off. He tried again, and fell off. I wonder what would’ve happened had they started the machine.

As for McBride, the World Finals’ leader entering this weekend’s competition in Las Vegas with a chance to win more than $1 million, he was the only cowboy among 45 finalists in the prelims to stay on three bulls the required eight seconds.

I tried interviewing McBride, but he hails from Oklahoma, so I couldn’t understand a word he said. Brener translated, telling me McBride was also a Sooner fan and doesn’t think much of our local college football teams.

That took some nerve, which explained why he rides bulls. Tonight he gets on “Little Yellow Jacket,” the bull of the year because no one has stayed on him.

“It’s only a matter of time before someone rides him,” McBride said through Brener. “USC will get beat too. It’s only a matter of time.”

Speaking as a die-hard Little Yellow Jacket fan -- until he loses, I just hope McBride puts up a better fight than the Sooners.

T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.