1) Time for a lil summer update, see what's up, see what the dilly, see what's the haps, see what's really goin' on...First of all, we signed WALTER RAY ALLEN. Listen, in Casa Minutos, there are really only three basketball players that matter. I mean really matter. One, Udonis Haslem - no one is chiller, no one bleeds Miami more than UD. No one matters more than UD. Two, Dwyane Wade. He's the best player in franchise history - by a mile. He's one of the best players in the history of the league. I mean, he's not one of the 10 best, no, but he's certainly one of the greatest two guards of all-time, any list of all-time guards has to include him. He's won one title as Finals MVP, then constructed a totally different team that went to back-to-back Finals and won another title. Not many players in the history of the league have a resume better than that. Three, Walter Ray Allen. I'm from Connecticut; he's the all-time Connecticut hero. No one has ever represented a state better than he has repped our state - he is bright, personable, cool, and the best shooter in the history of the NBA. He starred in a major motion picture ("He Got Game"). He won a title a couple of years ago, albeit under difficult and extremely unpleasant circumstances. Maybe most importantly, he went bald gracefully - in this way, his signing alone should be a major positive (Lebron - do you feel me?). For the last five years or so, he's been in basketball hell, surrounded by the douchiest collection of players in NBA history. Now, not only has he been freed from Boston's chamber of douche-y horrors, he's taken less money to come to Miami to spot up and fire open triples for two months next spring when the playoffs roll around. AND HE'S PLAYING WITH UDONIS HASLEM AND DWYANE WADE!!! THE ONLY THREE BASKETBALL PLAYERS WHO MATTER - ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
2) Well, LeBron won us an Olympic gold medal, just like Dwyane won us one in 2008. You're welcome again, America.
3) Listen, as I wrote many times in this blog, I supported whatever Dwight Howard felt he had to do to get out of Orlando. Just because the city is so dreadful, it is probably the worst playing situation in the NBA, outside of Boston. I didn't really want him to end up on the Lakers - although, to my credit, I think I predicted about 400 times that this was where he would end up - because with Kobe, Pau Gasol, and Steve Nash, that team would be a super-big problem in the Finals. But it sure is better than some Eastern Conference team building a squad around him capable of making it difficult for Miami to make it to the Finals. Whewwwww! I played this one straight up, too - easily could have tried to reverse jinx him off of Brooklyn or Atlanta or the Knicks, but I didn't. I sincerely felt like he would end up in LA all along, I said so, and it worked out for us. Sometimes honesty pays off - not often, true, but sometimes...Smooottthhhh sailing in the Eastern Conference, peoples!
4) NBA champ Almario Vernard Chalmers' Twitter Corner: "For one of my last vacations I think I wanna go back to Alaska for the State Fair. Who wanna go wit me? The fair food is amazing. Turkey leg."
5) Okay, so me and the fam went up to New England, where I'm from, for about ten days. I noticed a couple of things. One, a lot of white people where I come from. A lottttt. I mean, we really have a legacy of whiteness up there. Our absolute lack of diversity is noticeable, and not a little bit inspiring...Second, and more importantly, just like down here: YOU CAN'T FUCKING PARK ANYWHERE JUST BY USING COMMON SENSE!!! Yes, I got another parking ticket. As M.Minutos is my witness, and she was, I drove around for at least, umm, 4 minutes trying to find a parking spot on a Newport side street that didn't require a neighborhood parking sticker. Exactly - a neighborhood parking sticker. The heck? "Yeah, I know these are public streets with, like, businesses and restaurants and stuff that people want to go to, but you can only park on them if you have a special sticker that you pay for." Oh, my bad, that totally makes sense. But at least you didn't fail to put up a sign anywhere for three blocks either way identifying this particular street as sticker-worthy, then slap a $25 ticket on my mom's Volvo station wagon six minutes after I put it in park. Je-sus! Guess what, Mr. Po-lice-Meter-Maid - I'm paying that ticket! You know why? Because I parked illegally there so I could run in and booty your sister before you got off your shift! Best $25 I ever spent...Predictably, upon my return to South Florida, The Captain placed all the blame on me, claiming that I probably just didn't look hard enough for a restricted parking sign. Guess where else people had that attitude? Munich, in 1939 - "oh, no - the government's just trying to help people figure out where to park! Yeah, whites over here, Jews over here, blacks over there...you know, they're just trying to keep everything organized!"
6) This is a totally true story: my family has a beach house in Jamestown, Rhode Island, which is just across the bridge from Newport. It's a small little little island and the house is within easy walking distance of the "downtown" - one small street of fairly upscale restaurants and drinking establishments (it's kind of a fancy island). Every night, M.Minutos and I would walk into town after dinner and have a cocktail or two. One evening we were joined by Great Friend of the Blog Plumber and his wife. We went to the outside bar at this little restaurant Fish. We hadn't been in there for 5 minutes before I looked over to my left and saw the great American actor Conrad Bain. You know: Mr. Drummond from "Different Strokes!" This dude:
I mean, understandably, I was excited. Some of my companions were skeptical but, honestly, there really wasn't a credible argument that he wasn't Conrad Bain. Okay, there was one potentially credible argument - M.Minutos googled him on her phone and learned that he has a twin brother named Bonar Bain - but, really, would Bonar Bain be at an outside patio bar at Fish in Jamestown, Rhode Island? Exactly - no, he wouldn't. So Mr. Drummond and his companions - a handsome woman of about 80, and another elderly couple, were seated at a high "bar-type" table, and there were some low-slung couches directly behind them. As soon as those couches were vacated, I scooted over there to get a better view, and also to hear if he was going to talk at all about raising two young black kids (hey I'm just like Mr.D!) - he didn't, unfortunately. I also may have convinced a couple sitting nearby us that this was indeed Mr. Drummond, and there may have been some pointing, some whispering, and some chortling. Finally, after a long while, Drummond got up to leave, and this woman whom I had included in my stakeout gestures him over and says, "Do you know you look like a very famous actor?" - by the way, I appreciated the effort, but this made me mad; he didn't look like him, he was him! But before she could even get it all out, Drummond interrupted her, looked out over all of us, and goes, "Do you people know you look like a bunch of toads in a swamp?" And then he strode (drunkenly) off! HAAAAAAA!!! This was the best possible thing he could have said! M.Minutos and I have been arguing about it since the moment he said it - she thinks, somehow, that he was saying we were all on drugs. I don't really follow her logic, but she is very adamant. I think he was basically calling us nincompoops, and that since we were sitting down there on low-slung couches, he kind of played off that imagery, like we were down below him like toads in a swamp. Either way, the most important thing? He didn't deny that he was Mr. Drummond! Score!!!...Epilogue: the next night for a brief moment I thought Kurt Russell was at Spinnaker's Ice Cream Shop, but a closer look revealed that it wasn't him.
Back soon! Enjoy the rest of your summer! Oh yeah, one more thing: Champs.
