It's Not the Humidity; It's the Miami Heat

From the messy desk of Paul Levine...

I had some minor foot surgery this morning, so no tap dancing tonight.  No Sony Tennis Open.  No practicing 50-yard field goals.  And a short blog.

First, a Word (and Photo) About the Miami Heat

First, my son Michael always accuses me of leaving athletic events early to beat the traffic.  Proof positive I stayed to the final gun of last night's Miami Heat 2-point victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.  The photo is Chris Bosh's last second block of Damian Lillard's shot.  If you look closely, you can see me in the brown jacket just behind Lillard's airborne right foot.  And if you look in the second row to the left, you can spot  Mitchell Kaplan (black shirt, beard), owner of the legendary Books & Books, here in Coral Gables and elsewhere.

Mark Twain Would Love the Miami Heat

Opening Lines:  Next in my series of opening lines I love. The opener of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is well known. Not only does it make us wonder about the narrator, it PLUGS Twain's earlier novel. Now, that's chutzpah. In fact, Twain, much like Dickens, was a helluva self-promoter. Here's the line:

"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter."

What Would the Duke Think of Birdman's Tattoos?

I don't know what John Wayne would think of Chris Andersen's heavily tattooed body? I imagine he would not like it as much as Mark Twain would.

This is brought to mind because today's New York Times has a MAJOR review of pal Scott Eyman's new biography, "John Wayne: The Life and Legend." There are surprises:

He was a heavy smoker and hard drinker, like many of his characters, but also an avid chess player and book lover who could quote Shakespeare and Dickens (and who, Mr. Eyman reports, “had a surprising taste for Tolkien”). He collected Eastern woodblock prints and kachina dolls, and his impoverished childhood left him with a love of catalog shopping, buying so many presents for his children and friends that “mail order packages would arrive in bunches, 10 or 20 at a time.”

I was never a huge fan of The Duke...or his acting. And while this infuriates many of my friends, I just hate "The Searchers,"  and not just for its blatant racism.  But that's a subject for another day.

Paul Levine