To: Florida college sports fans

From: Missouri alumnus and City Link associate editor Dan Sweeney

Re: Kansas Jayhawks

Hi, guys. Let me start out by saying that I don’t ask much in this old world. Just a day at a beachside bar every couple of weeks, and maybe a good rock concert every month or three. But one thing I will not — nay, cannot — put up with is the idea of the Kansas Jayhawks in the NCAA Championship.

I know you guys have your rivalries. Hell, one of the biggest is between Florida and Florida State, the two schools at which I direct this missive. I understand that, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have to be blunt: You don’t know what rivalry even means. Missouri-Kansas is one of the oldest in college sports, second only to Harvard-Yale, and who really gives a damn about that? Missouri-Kansas’ hate fest is based not in the niceties of the bluebloods of the Ivy League, who mightily fight out their loathing for one another in rowing crews and glee clubs. Our own rivalry started in the bloody guerrilla war between Kansas and Missouri throughout the Civil War — even the Jayhawks’ name stems from the name of a paramilitary group from that era. How many other NCAA teams are named after a terrorist organization? Not many, I’d bet. I haven’t heard any fight songs cheering on the state university Al-Qaedas or the dear old college IRA Volunteers. (I’m pretty sure Tennessee takes its name from a different set of volunteers.)

One year while I was in college, the Jayhawks came to Missouri to play football, and their band actually had to be escorted from the stands after the first quarter for their own safety. A few months back, I noticed one of my neighbors had a Kansas Jayhawks license-plate border. I saw him getting out of his car one day recently and said, “So you’re the Jayhawk?” He looked up expectantly, happily, perhaps hoping to find a brother Kansan. Instead, he saw me, in my Mizzou Journalism T-shirt. “Oh, God,” he said, before turning and going inside his condo.

We have not spoken since.

The point is, with my own school out in the first round, and with both the Noles and the Gators still very much alive, I’m depending on one or the other of you to kill this damned team before it makes the championship. It’s a moral imperative. I realize you still have a little way to go before that fateful game may take place. Florida State has to get past an alarmingly ass-kicking Virginia Commonwealth, and Florida has to knock out either Butler or Wisconsin and Brigham Young, which remains surprisingly competitive despite cutting star forward Brandon Davies for fucking, which the school’s administration was apparently shocked to learn happens among college students. I understand that you have your sights on these games, that the Jayhawks are only on the horizon for you. But the idea that the team may take the title is first in my mind when it comes to sports these days, and only you can stop this nightmare from coming true. Besides, you both know you want a Florida State-Florida Final Four game. What passes for your own “rivalry” demands it.

So come on, Florida basketball teams! For the sake of your own schools’ historic moments, for the sake of my sanity, for the sake of human decency everywhere, do whatever you have to do to stop the Jayhawks. Put on a hard foul, and then kick ’em when they’re down. Remember: They’re not people. They’re Jayhawks.

OK,
Dan Sweeney

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by Dan Sweeney

The last time I saw Barack Obama in person was on the eve of the 2008 election, when he held a massive campaign rally at the BankAtlantic Center. I call it a campaign rally, but it was more of a pre-coronation ceremony. John McCain’s shame-laden defeat was all but assured at that point, no matter how much the cable-news networks insisted on pretending the election would be an epic contest. Of course, much has changed in the ensuing years. Obama no longer represents the hope of angry liberals boiling from eight years of Bushian ineptitude. If anything, liberals are as angry with Obama as anyone these days. His appearance this past Friday at Miami Central High School with Jeb Bush says everything you need to know about how he sees himself in regard to the previous administration. The fact that Obama was here to speak about education and shared the stage with Florida’s own proto-Scott Walker even as teachers fought for their livelihoods in Wisconsin only added to the oddity.

It also settled once and for all the question of whether Jeb will run for president, in 2012, 2016 or ever. A Republican primary opponent need only replay clips from this appearance to cast Jeb’s hypothetical presidential run into outer darkness. As for Obama, liberal angst over the man neither begins nor ends at education. There’s the failure to close Guantánamo, though that was chiefly due to a bunch of oh-so-tough, why-do-you-hate-our-troops Republicans suddenly turning into gibbering jellyfish upon learning that detainees might go to supermax prisons in the States.

Many liberals also were upset over the lack of action on gay rights, especially the failure to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, though those critiques have largely been reduced to, “What took you so long?” which is rarely a valid complaint in politics.

There were the compromises that pleased no one, health care being chief among them. The public option, liberals’ fallback, compromise position from their Medicare for all desires, disintegrated early in the negotiations. As much as conservatives loathe Obamacare, liberals wrote it off as a giveaway to the insurance industry.

Then, of course, there were the goddamned wars. Fifty thousand troops still in Iraq, despite that war’s alleged ending, and the ongoing horror show in Afghanistan, which left nine Afghan children dead at the hands of our hardware just three days before Obama’s appearance in Miami. Who does approve of this guy these days? His approval numbers have hovered at or just below 50 percent since September 2009, but who are these people? Approval of the president seems more a factor of disapproval of Republicans than anything else. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don’t know what I stand for, but I know I’m against the troglodytes with the tea bags and the Gadsden flags. And if they hate Obama, well, he must be our man, regardless of the actual policy changes — or, in the case of war and education, lack thereof.

One thing that surprisingly hadn’t changed since before Obama was elected was the ease of entry. I pulled into the parking lot at Miami Central, showed my ID to someone at the gate who checked my name off a list, parked my car, showed my ID to another person who checked me off an identical list, and then emptied my pockets before a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s deputy ran a metal-detecting wand over me. After that, I got my things and headed inside. The process was exactly the same as it had been at the BankAtlantic Center. I had been expecting something more — bomb-sniffing dogs, people demanding to know why I had visited Istanbul a couple of years ago or something — but that was it. Inside the gymnasium, even the pre-event PA music included some of the same songs as it had during the campaign. Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” blared over the speakers as I made my way inside.

One set of bleachers had been pulled out, occupied by Miami Central students, most of them wearing the school’s particular shade of green. (Go Rockets!) The other bleachers had been stacked away against the wall to make room for the press, who sat at tables, looking bored. Finally, out on the basketball court, rows of seats had been set up for the audience — teachers, principals, Democratic apparatchiks and the like. After an hour of playing Live Poker Pro on my phone (I play as Danny Aces, look for me on the large tables), I knew the president was about to get to the podium when I spotted the heavyweights making their way to their seats. Namely, newly minted Rep. Frederica Wilson jostled through the audience, as easy to pick out in a crowd as always, given her notably unusual fashion sense. On this occasion, she wore a white, straw cowboy hat covered in black sequins with a matching black-and-white dress. At the same time, the national press came pouring in the back door. But unlike in 2008, I didn’t spot any of the celeb-journalists in the mix. No Candy Crowleys or Richard Wolffes. Just a bunch of bored, middle-aged lifers in the ever-diminishing world of print journalism, riding the dinosaur to its inevitable end. After them came a small army of sheriff’s deputies and Secret Service agents, who stood guard by the back door.

I sat alone at the table closest to that door, ridiculously conspicuous among the staid press corps in goat-skin cowboy boots and a purple shirt, surrounded by edgy security types with military haircuts, earpieces and Oakley shades, along with Lord-knows-what hardware under the jackets. But this wasn’t worrisome under the circumstances. I was, after all, on the list.

Jeb Bush and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took the stage first, with Jeb stepping up to the podium. He gave a quick speech about working together, accountability for schools and threw out a “give the teachers a hand” applause line, despite his entire tenure in Tallahassee comprising a protracted war on Florida’s teachers. He then introduced the president, who came onstage to roaring applause, got out one line — “It is good to be here today” — and was then drowned out with further adulation. He thanked Jeb, saying he was “best known as the brother of Marvin Bush,” and lauded the “lowest unemployment rate in two years.” He did not cite the specific rate that had come out earlier that day, 8.9 percent, probably because it’s not exactly a breathtaking number. He mentioned the necessity of high-speed rail, just after Gov. Rick Scott had officially turned down $2.5 billion in federal money for high-speed rail earlier in the day. But mostly, he talked about education, citing Miami Central as a great turnaround story, the school having gone from a 36 percent graduation rate to 63 percent. He proposed 100,000 new math and science teachers over the next decade. He asserted that, despite the tough times, he wouldn’t cut education. “I am not willing to give up on any child,” he said as he wrapped up the speech, “I am not willing to accept failure in America.”

Massive applause, and it sure does sound good. I realize now that Barack Obama is the Grateful Dead of American politicians. You can’t look at the recorded work — the policy initiatives or studio albums — you just have to concentrate on the live experience. And then, somehow, it all makes sense.

Contact Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com.

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By now, any news junkie worth the name knows that Rick Sanchez parted ways with CNN last Friday after he went on the radio show Stand Up! With Pete Dominick and unloaded on The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Jews in general. You can read the whole transcript of the interview here, but here’s a few samples for purposes of this essay:

PD: It’s a pretty strong words calling Jon Stewart a bigot calling anybody a bigot. Give me an example?

RS: That’s what happens when you watch yourself on his show every day and all they ever do is call you stupid.

PD: Well if he’s bigoted against the ignorant fine! If he’s bigoted against the apathetic and he’s being elitist saying that others are stupid, but what group specifically … calling somebody a bigot, but against who?

RS: Anybody who’s different from you are. Anybody, anybody who’s not from your frame of reference. Anybody who doesn’t look and sound exactly like the people that you grew up with, the people that you put on your show who always reflect somebody who’s I’m bringing in to sit around me, you know who’s very different from me. I mean I’m sorry but I just don’t buy this thing that the only people out there who are prejudiced are the right, there’s people who are prejudiced on both sides.

….

RS: I must have at some point. But yeah, look my point is very simple. I see stuff O’Reilly and Glenn Beck do and I say, “wow that’s very discriminatory, that’s very prejudicial.” And I look at stuff that Colbert and Jon Stewart do and I think, “wow that’s very prejudicial.” So, you know we have a tendency to only look at one side. I’m saying we ought to be able to look at both sides. That’s all I’m saying.

PD: I certainly agree with that but–

RS: So, if we’re going to call one side bigoted, we probably got to look at the other side and say the same thing.

….

And then there was the second part of the interview, in which Sanchez said the bit that probably got him fired:

He’s such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]… Please, what are you kidding? … I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]

But let’s leave aside the obviously anti-Semitic a la Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jews-secretly-run-the-world stuff. We all know that should have gone into the garbage bin of history back in 1945.

Instead, I want to look at those first two quotes from the interview. Let’s take the last one first. Sanchez claims that, if we look at Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and the rest of those deeply weird, cryptofascist swine at Fox News and say, “Hey, those guys are racist assholes,” we probably need to say the same thing about the other side.

Why?

Sanchez offers no real evidence for the left being as bigoted as the right. He’s just so wrapped up in the golden rule of American media — presenting both sides of any topic, even if one side of the topic is obviously evil, stupid or evil-stupid — that he utters this phrase as if it should be taken for granted. But of course, it should not. To stay within the anti-Semitic theme, for example, if a television host discusses the Holocaust, does he have to have a Holocaust denier on? What about a member of the Flat Earth Society whenever we discuss geography? A religio-crazy anti-evolution nut whenever we discuss biology?

The point is, there are not two sides to every topic. Or if there are, one of those sides is often demonstrably, woefully wrong. And yet Sanchez seems convinced that, not only must we offer both sides of every issue, we must also assume both sides to be guilty of the same transgressions in their arguments for or against. That’s not just wrong, it’s stupid.

Which brings me to the first quote I pasted above. Sanchez assumed that Stewart and Colbert were both anti-Hispanic bigots because they were constantly lampooning him as an anti-intellectual, dim-witted buffoon. But they didn’t do this because Sanchez is a Cuban-American — they did it because he’s an anti-intellectual, dim-witted buffoon. His ethnicity doesn’t enter into it.

The list of Sanchez’s idiocy is tedious to tell and harsh to hear, to paraphrase the Bard. (Note to Rick: “The Bard” is a nickname for William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was a British playwright and poet active at the turn of the 17th century. The 17th century is the 1600s. A British person is from England.) Where to begin? My fellow South Floridians are more familiar with Sanchez’s work than most of the country, as he worked in local stations here in the 1980s and 1990s. They’ll tell you all about his squatting over maps during the Persian Gulf War, or about the time that an expert on orphaned children explained that, after losing their parents, children sometimes fill the void by overachieving, which led Rick to say brightly, “So it can be a good thing?”

In the story I just linked, the New Times Broward/Palm Beach’s Bob Norman recalled that and other great faux pas from Sanchez’s early career, like the time a fellow told him that he now pays 200 times what he paid for medical malpractice insurance in 1980, when he paid $800, and Sanchez replied, “Good God, that’s $500,000!”

Er … no. No it’s not.

Or the time he had Jesse Jackson on his show and referred to him as “Mr. Sharpton.”

There are many more examples in that story, which Norman ends by thanking MSNBC (Sanchez’s employer at the time) for supplying the man with a teleprompter, and wishing fervently that it never breaks.

And it never did. But after he got to CNN, Sanchez proved that he’s incapable even of proper teleprompter use.

He also thought Hawaii was just off the coast of Peru, had to ask what “9 meters” meant “in English,” referred to the Great Barrier Reef as being “off the coast of Alaska,” and thought Iceland was too cold for volcanoes. In that last clip, he also mentioned that when you think of volcanoes, you think of Hawaii and “other long words like that.”

Sanchez built his CNN show, Rick’s List, around Twitter, and the fact that Sanchez embraced, to a much greater extent than any of his contemporaries, the most facile and disposable form of communication invented by modern man should have surprised no one.

Glenn Beck referred to Sanchez as, “quite possibly the dumbest man on television,” and he may have been right, Beck being his closest competition. It takes one to know one, I suppose.

Send Sanchezisms to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. Photos by Jackie Gerena.

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by Dan Sweeney

In the thick cluster of humanity squished into one corner of the second story of the Moore Building this past Friday, one serious fan of the Hold Steady complained loudly that the crowd had no energy. “What’s their problem, man?” he demanded. “This is just the greatest damn band.”

He was right, on both counts. My estimation of the group has fallen slightly with the recent release of Heaven Is Whenever, but in the latter half of the 2000s, the Hold Steady was the greatest rock band in America. And when it opened with the slide-guitar strains of “The Sweet Part of the City,” there was little applause from the folks at the Heineken Inspire event, much less outright cheering or fist-pumping — the sort of cathartic excess that generally greets the arrival of the band at a rock concert. But maybe that’s because this wasn’t a Hold Steady crowd.

The event was organized by Heineken, a frequent advertiser with City Link, and the Moore Building was as good a place as any in Miami to host the show. Essentially a three-story atrium over a spacious first floor, the Moore Building had been transformed into a booze commercial come to life. First floor: two bars. Second floor: more bars, and stands offering tacos, sliders and surprisingly good paella. Third floor: couches in front of flat-screen TVs showing Goodfellas, Old School and other cinematic pop-culture winners, along with four Wii stations and more beer, plus a spot at one end that would silk-screen T-shirts while you waited. Cold War Kids and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes also performed. And all of it was free, including admission, to the lucky few who had managed to score tickets online.

But those lucky few were not necessarily fans of the Hold Steady. This was a tastemaking event. All the semi-influentials were there. The music editors of both the Miami and Broward editions of New Times turned out, as did a half-dozen photographers, freelance or otherwise, from as many different publications. Anachronistic freelance nightlife writer John Hood peacocked about the place. And hell, I was there, whatever that means. The whole crowd bore the eerily familiar visages of people I had seen before, but could not quite place where; other parties, other clubs, other concerts, strewn throughout the decade I have spent attending these functions in the greater South Florida area.

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So when “The Sweet Part of the City” started up and that one Hold Steady fan screamed at the top of his lungs, accompanied by a longhaired fellow on air guitar, it wasn’t all that surprising that the rest of the jaded crowd just shuffled along. The relatively sparse crowd sat on couches, scored free T-shirts, played Wii golf and got along with the variety of other distractions Heineken had offered them. The only packed part of the house was on the second floor, near the stage, where a thick press of people cursed at one another and preened. But with clear Plexiglas in front of the band, it could easily be seen from the first floor. The whole setup seemed a touch goofy, but logistics demanded the second-floor stage; the entrance to the building took up one end of the first floor, while the spiraling stairs leading ever upward took up the other end.

The long distance between the band and most of the audience, coupled with the too-cool-to-applaud personas of the same, proved problematic for the Hold Steady, a band that relies heavily on crowd energy. The band took the stage as the music from the final showdown in For a Few Dollars More blared over the PA, and that confrontational tune proved oddly apropos, the Hold Steady trying to win over a decadent crowd. The set relied heavily on Heaven Is Whenever. “The Sweet Part of the City” was followed by “Rock Problems,” and two more songs in the 11-song set came from that album. Of the remainder, three came from the previous album, Stay Positive, and three came from the album before that. Of the band’s first two albums, only “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” off 2004’s Separation Sunday, made the set. As always when I see the Hold Steady, I hoped to hear “Constructive Summer,” but the band did not answer my prayer. Still, given the lack of energy in the room, it was a decent set. Besides, it’s always fun to watch Craig Finn. No one on the planet seems to have more fun being a rock star.

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Cold War Kids, unfortunately, had a man down after guitarist Jonnie Russell sliced his hand open backstage. But the band was game, and the resulting concert was different than what I’d expect from Cold War Kids, with the bass and drums dominating and giving the band a much-heavier tone than usual. The name suited the band; it sounded like a group of guys who grew up at the ass end of the Russo-American Cold War, an amalgam of Manchester, new wave and the dark background of Reagan promising that the end of the world would happen in our lifetimes. The middle of the group’s set paired the nonsensical 2008 hit “Hang Me Out To Dry” with the stark, desperate “We Used To Vacation.”

“I promised to my wife and children I’d never touch another drink as long as I live,” frontman Nathan Willett sang. Ho, ho! Not exactly Heineken-approved lyrics there. But the quiet sadness of “Vacation” following the wailing “Hang Me Out To Dry” was the highlight of the show. Even the seen-it-all-before crowd at the Moore Building couldn’t help but sing along.

Send free beer to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com.

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by Dan Sweeney

For the first time in a long time, I was excited about SunFest. Maybe the first time since 2003, when James Brown and Bob Dylan headlined, though 2008, with Parliament Funkadelic and Michael Franti and Spearhead on Wednesday, and the Black Crowes, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the Tossers and the Academy Is on Saturday was also a notable break in the colossal ennui with which I and my fellow music snobs (as well as most folks born after 1980) greeted SunFest lineups throughout the past decade.

As in 2003 and ’08, this year’s SunFest offered two days that were particularly noteworthy. Thursday promised to be especially sweet with the announcement that the Flaming Lips would be headlining. The Lips, as anyone who has seen them will tell you, are one of the greatest live acts in rock ’n’ roll: confetti cannons, giant rubber balls, hordes of backup dancers dressed in costumes such as Santa’s helpers or aliens, a massive ball in which lead singer Wayne Coyne rolls out over the crowd … Oh, and the music’s pretty good. And so I was crushed when I learned the Lips had pulled out of SunFest after the hospitalization of the band’s lead guitarist, Steven Drozd.

With REO Speedwagon and Smash Mouth headlining Friday and Shinedown and the Charlie Daniels Band headlining Saturday, that left Sunday. Happily, Sunday included Nas and Damian Marley’s project, Distant Relatives, as well as headlining appearances by Ben Harper, the B-52’s and Flogging Molly. Despite arriving in West Palm Beach just in time to catch the latter half of Nas and Marley’s set, parking proved surprisingly easy — I got the very last spot available at the Banyan Street Garage and laughed cruelly as the parking attendant stepped behind my car to turn away everyone else in line. Suckers!

But it turned out that, when it comes to SunFest, we are all suckers. The festival’s organizers have figured out a way to monetize almost everything. Port-a-potties were free, but restroom trailers — termed “VIPee” — cost $5 for an all-day pass. This seemed like the worst kind of squeezing for dollars, but according to my wife, who went ahead and paid the fiver, it was money well spent. I just held my nose and hit the Port-a-Potties. This was not my first time at the rodeo.

After a few tunes from Distant Relatives’ forthcoming album, which comes out May 18, Nas and Marley did a few of their own tunes, as well as a Bob Marley cover. Damian, like all the Marley children, is practically obligated to do so. In this case, it was a fun, funky version of “Could You Be Loved.” We left that stage quickly after that, as we had to cross the entire festival grounds to get to the stage on which ska-punk outfit Big D and the Kids Table would play at 5:45 p.m. While including sax and trumpet players, Big D lacked the trombone that is a necessity to the ska sound. It also added a pair of pretty backup singers who wore matching dresses and danced synchronously, which is an impressive thing to keep up throughout an entire set of rapid-fire, ska-ish punk rock.

As Big D neared the end of its set, more and more green T-shirts could be seen throughout the crowd; Flogging Molly was up next. Shamrock tattoos here and there. Small children wearing green outfits with catchy one-liners about being Irish, or being drunk, or some combination of the two, drunkenness and Irishness being commonly paired. It is said, after all, that God invented whiskey to prevent the Irish from taking over the world, and there is some truth to this.

Finally, after Big D ended its set and a long line of Green Day songs had played over the PA, a DJ from 103.1 FM introduced Skindred lead singer Benji Webbe, who in turn introduced Flogging Molly, who failed to take the stage. One more tune played over the PA, and finally, the band marched onstage to massive approval from the crowd, which now numbered a few thousand. Flogging Molly opened with “(No More) Paddy’s Lament,” and the crowd in front of the stage started to go wild. A gigantic black spike of a Mohawk could be seen in the middle of it, and judging by the way it thrashed around, it was getting violent in there. The band followed that up with “The Likes of You Again,” a personal favorite, and one that is apparently a preferred tune for many a Flogging Molly fan, because if the crowd was moshing around for that first song, it went lunatic for this one. A sandal flew over the crowd in a wide arc. Someone threw a beer. And then, things started to get really messy. With a shoutout to the guy with the gargantuan liberty spikes — “Now that is an impressive Mohawk. This next one’s for that guy” — lead singer Dave King led the group into “Selfish Man.” The craze of the inner crowd started bleeding out to the edges. Ordinarily, I’d pump a fist in the air and throw myself into the person next to me, but I did have my wife to consider. We picked up and moved on to the B-52’s.

The crowd at the B-52’s stage was 10 times the size of the Flogging Molly crowd and half as energetic. Way down near the stage, I could make out some tiny figures who appeared to be having a good time. Onstage, Kate Pierson danced around with the same abandon as the backup singers for Big D and the Kids Table, despite being more than twice their age. But near me, at the back end of the crowd, a little girl sat in a chair and read a book. Couples and families lounged around in lawn chairs. And that’s all well and good. SunFest prides itself on being an all-ages, family-friendly affair, but these people looked as if they’d rather be back in their living rooms, maybe with a nice glass of Chardonnay and the TV tuned to American Idol.

We left as quickly as we arrived.

On the way out of the place, we caught a few songs by Ben Harper. Far more mellow than either of the other headliners, Harper sang in that soft, sweet voice that makes almost all his tunes sound like love songs, whether they be about oppression, conformity or even the greatest ode to marijuana since Peter Tosh commanded us to “Legalize It.” (That last tune would be “Burn One Down.”)

The lights at Harper’s stage were dimmed. The crowd, like that at the B-52’s, wasn’t moving much. But they were holding hands, wrapping their arms around one another, or sitting close and passing around a joint. No one said very much, but neither did they look like they wanted to be anywhere else.

We left SunFest and got a slice of pizza.

Send weed anthems to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

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There are just so many people I could blame for this. Jerry Bruckheimer, for producing this crap. Or maybe Jeffrey Lieber for creating it. But I suppose I have to lay the primary blame at the feet of CBS, for making the decision to air the brain-bustingly stupid, eye-poppingly annoying Miami Medical, the first two episodes of which flew under my radar before I caught the third one this past Friday. Look, it’s bad enough that Bruckheimer has already given most of America a cartoonish view of our fair city with CSI:Miami, a show that, like Miami Medical, is not actually filmed here and bears almost no similarity to the actual city. But what else do you expect from Bruckheimer, who has helmed the worst of Hollywood dollar-chasing trash (see: Armageddon) and whose best efforts have, with time, come to have little more than kitsch value (see: Top Gun)? And where would Lieber be had J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof not taken his half-baked idea for a Lord of the Flies-style drama and turned it into Lost? We can’t blame Bruckheimer or Lieber, then; they are doing what is in their nature — creating execrable piles of shit that entertain only with the aid of nitrous oxide. But CBS should’ve seen this dreck for what it was.

It’s not just that the new CBS drama offers the sort of miserable writing that has proven a hallmark of Bruckheimer-produced shows, though it does. The dialogue in Miami Medical reads like a retarded Grey’s Anatomy, with one female doc even referring to a love interest by a ridiculous nickname (in this case, “Wedding Reception Boy” replaces “McDreamy”).

It’s not just that the acting is painfully bad, though it is — each role in the show is a medical-drama stock character. Mike Vogel plays the handsome hot shot. Elizabeth Hernois is the fresh-faced, just-out-of-med-school doc. Jeremy Northam, the brilliant but troubled leader. Lana Parrilla takes on the role of preternaturally calm den mother, a Bruckheimer chestnut best exhibited by Emily Proctor on CSI:Miami in a role that leaves me impatiently waiting for some street punk to just kill off Calleigh Duquesne already. Not to get off on a CSI tangent, but it’s especially damning that Proctor’s character can be the most annoying one on a show that features sunglass-wielding caricature Horatio Caine, a bit of lunacy recently lampooned on Burn Notice, a show about Miami that actually takes place in Miami.

But back to Miami Medical. It’s not just that the plots amount to the worst medical show clichés, though they do. In the third episode, a metal pole impales a man who remains surprisingly alive and even conscious, a one-in-a-million accident that previously occurred at fictional hospitals in Seattle and Chicago before striking down some poor schlub in Miami.

No, all these things — bad acting, worse writing and a complete misunderstanding of the profession being depicted — are to be expected in a Bruckheimer work. More than anything, what bugs the hell out of me is the total ignorance of Miami, the city that this show calls home in the same way that a loser in junior-high claims to have a girlfriend in Canada. The four doctor roles include the British Northam and two people just barely old enough to be out of med school, both of whom are not just white, but blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan supermen. The fourth doctor is the show’s token Cuban, played by a Puerto Rican actress from New York who pronounces “Florida” in a way no Miamian ever would. Token black nurse Tuck Brody, played by Cuba Gooding Jr.’s little brother Omar, barely made an appearance in the episode. Look, here’s a clue, Miami Medical writers: Their blond hair and blue eyes makes those two actors a minority in Miami. Token Cuban? Are you kidding me? This show should have a token white.

Last week, the doctors taking care of teenage beating victim Josie Ratley held a press conference. They were, to a man and woman, either Jewish or Hispanic — and that’s in slightly more white-bread Broward County. And speaking of the Chosen People, are you really going to have a medical drama set in Miami without a Jewish doctor? Really? Anyway, leave that omission aside and just consider the Hispanic factor. By way of comparison, I perused the actual physician directory for Miami Children’s Hospital. Here are the surnames, in alphabetical order: Abella-Blanco, Abreu-Hernandez, Acevedo, Acosta, another Acosta … and then there’s an Adams! Finally, a name that … oh, wait. First name: Jose. To continue: Aguero, Aguilar, Alegria, Alfonso — you get the idea. The rest of the directory is pretty much the same, from Ballesteros to Estevez to Pila-Collazo to Tejero to Zambrano, with the odd Goldberg and Rothenberg thrown in for color, or lack thereof.

Miami Medical wants to tie its fortunes to the oh-so-hip city of Miami without actually representing Miami, as though we had French fries with mayonnaise at our ball games instead of arepas. It’s not overt racism, per se, because it’s not a specific rejection of a given race — at least, I don’t think it is. Instead, it’s merely the assumption on the part of a bunch of mostly white, suburban, middle-class writers that the rest of America looks largely white, suburban and middle-class. Sometimes, that assumption works, like when you’re writing for The Middle. In the case of Miami, where white, suburban and middle-class is the exception to the rule, it just makes you look like an ass.

There is a right way to set a dramatic show in a specific city (see: Treme) and a wrong way (see: everything Jerry Bruckheimer has done, ever). And goddamn it, I am sick and tired of Miami being given the wrong treatment. Nothing has changed since Crockett and Tubbs drove a Ferrari down Collins. I have had enough. If you want to set your show in Miami, film it here. Or at the very least, try visiting.

Better yet, how about we pass a law banning any more shows about doctors, police or lawyers? If I see one more hard-boiled cop, crusading lawyer or troubled-yet-brilliant doctor on my TV, I’m taking it upon myself to write a show about talentless producers, hack writers and soulless TV execs who all get kidnapped, tortured, tied to chairs and forced to watch Horatio Caine remove his sunglasses over and over and over. I’ll call it Court Room Crime Scene, MD, and if Jerry Bruckheimer is willing to make an appearance, I’ll make it a reality show.

Send do-not-resuscitate orders to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

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Beat the drums and hold the phone — the Marlins’ opening weekend kicked off this past Friday, beginning the team’s penultimate season at Sun Life Stadium (ne Land Shark, Pro Player, Joe Robbie, etc.). After a disappointing Friday night game that saw the Fish receive an old-fashioned stomping at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers, I held out little hope as I picked up my tickets at will call Saturday. Besides, I was conflicted from the get-go. Baseball is the only sport in which I hold some loyalty for every team from an area in which I’ve lived. As a Los Angeles native who then moved to Colorado, Missouri and finally here, I generally cheer for whichever of the Dodgers, Rockies, Cardinals or Marlins happens to make it to the playoffs. The fact that all these teams are, coincidentally, in the National League, has certainly colored my love of the game, leaving me with a generalized loathing for all things American League, including both the Yankees and the Red Sox and the designated hitter, which I regard with the same sort of rank suspicion tea partyers have for health care reform.

But once I got to my seat (in the fabulous club level, the result of discounted opening-weekend tickets), any doubt that I would root for the Marlins quickly left my mind. The flag probably played some part in that — like everyone who went through the gates, I was handed a Marlins flag upon entry. Immediately following that, I was beset upon by the Florida Manatees, the Marlins’ Rubenesque, all-male cheerleading squad. By the time I got through all the high-fives from big Samoans and teal-clad Santa Clauses, rooting against the Marlins at their own park, however brief their future here may be, seemed like cruel, backbiting assholery. The Marlins may be the only team in the country in which rooting for the home team is a contrarian act. At Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park, rooting for the visitors is self-destructive, death-wish behavior. A friend from Missouri once wore his Kansas City Royals gear to Yankee Stadium and left at the seventh inning stretch after his entire section chanted, “You’re gonna die.” People from the Midwest, who leave front doors unlocked and greet neighbors with friendly waves, are not prepared for that sort of fan interaction.

While cheering for the Marlins at Sun Life doesn’t necessitate filling out a last will and testament, it does leave one with that outsider feeling usually relegated to visiting fans. Even on Saturday, amid some 25,000 South Florida baseball aficionados, the Dodgers and the Marlins were about equally represented, except for the moments when Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez came to the plate, during which the great home-run bomber and alleged steroid shooter was hailed with boos. But being a Marlins fan paid early dividends as the Fish drew first blood with a run in the first inning. A scoreless second inning prompted a visit indoors, where a large food court offered the usual popcorn and hot dogs, as well as pizza, steak sandwiches and several other options, all in an air-conditioned environment. I have been to the mountaintop, and it is club level.

The Dodgers sent three home in the third as I ate a foot-long in climate-controlled comfort. The tribal influence of sport had taken over, and while I came in a fan of both teams, I cursed as though the Dodgers were some terrible mix of AL nightmares. The Yankee Sox. There sat Joe Torre, stone-faced as ever, as the last Dodgers run of the inning crossed home plate. Bastard. But the Marlins roared back in the fourth with three runs of their own, and kept a one-run lead through the next several innings, until the benighted Marlins bullpen allowed two runs in the eighth and then another in the top of the ninth, making it 6-4 Dodgers. I was back in my seat by that time, being taunted by a pair of children in Dodgers T-shirts who sat a couple of rows above me. Foul little brats. Torre tots. Yankee Sox larvae. Early childhood memories of Dodger Stadium, cheering for Steve Garvey in 1982, after he had become an institution there, vanished from my mind. I had never loved the Dodgers.

“Boo!” I screamed as Manny Ramirez made his final appearance of the game, with all the lust of a man trashing a hated rival. “Booooooooo!”

But it looked like a hopeless endeavor, especially after Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp knocked out a home run off Marlins closer Jose Veras in the top of the ninth. But then, to start the bottom of the ninth, Gaby Sanchez hit a single. Then, the hapless Dodgers reliever nailed pinch-hitter Wes Helms in the foot. The Fish sent in Emilio Bonifacio to pinch-run for pinch-hitter Helms. With men on first and second and no outs, Chris Coghlan came up ready to make a sacrifice bunt, but he was walked to load the bases. No outs, bases loaded and in came pinch-hitter Ronny Paulino, who promptly knocked out a 400-foot double to tie the game.

I was screaming at this point, you understand. On my feet, shouting myself hoarse, waving my Marlins flag, contemplating flipping those kids the bird, with Coghlan on third, Paulino on second and up to bat is solid slugger Hanley Ramirez, whom the Dodgers promptly walked. Up came Jorge Cantu. First pitch, a high crack to the outfield, caught by Kemp, but Coghlan tagged up and dashed for home. Kemp whipped the ball to home plate, but it was high, Coghlan crossed home and the Marlins won. The dugout cleared. It was as if they’d just won the Series. The kids behind me left, dejected, and I remembered being 5 years old, watching as Garvey struck out with the Dodgers down by one.

“Next time,” I yelled, my voice now a rasp, as they file out behind me. “You’ll get ’em next time.”

And why not? It was the start of the season, and there were 157 next times.

Hit easy grounders to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

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by Dan Sweeney

Spring is here, and for a certain segment of the population, that means one thing: Fishing. Dolphin start appearing in South Florida about this time of year, adding to the kingfish and sailfish already prowling our waters. Soon, the tuna will be coming. And while I am not an angler in any real sense of the word, I do enjoy the pastime, so it was with a great deal of anticipation that I arrived early in the morning at the house of my mother-in-law and her husband, Dave, this past Sunday for a bit of ocean-fishing. We were joined on the excursion by Ron, a serious sportsman who is so South Florida that his wife once tended bar at Alabama Jack’s, and Skip, my father-in-law’s 30-year-old neighbor who was equally capable in the angling arts. We set out aboard the good ship Hermaine Squeeze with plenty of provisions — sandwiches, beer, water, rods and reels, beer, life jackets, GPS system, beer and so on. We navigated the canals of the Venice of the Americas, heading ever closer toward the Intracoastal and, from there, the ocean via Hillsboro Inlet. As we headed toward our first stop, a waterside gas station and bait shop, Skip demonstrated a knot dubbed the Bimini Twist, which, when completed, resulted in a dual fishing line near the hook, so that a fish that broke one line would still be doomed. The knot required a massive loop of line, but Skip tied it by himself nevertheless, using his feet and mouth as well as both hands.

When we pulled up to the station, the old men who sold bait and filled tanks laughed at us and refused to sell us live bait. “You’ll be back in 30 minutes,” one said in a British accent, “and I won’t give refunds. Why don’t you just go out and, if you decide to make a day of it, buy some closer to the inlet? But you’ll be back.”

Dave, a burly fellow built like a barrel, seemed perturbed at this news, but Ron and Skip both laughed it off. All of them had seen weather reports the night before that called for smooth waters in the morning, with winds and waves picking up in the afternoon. We gassed up and went on. But the storms were coming in quicker than expected. After we had passed Flannigan’s House and April’s Bar — two spots known only to the weird society of boaters in this particular area of Pompano Beach, one of which is an over-the-top nautically themed house, the other an abode whose friendly residents have put up a large sign reading, “April’s Bar” over their canal-facing back yard — we got our first sight of the waters of Hillsboro Inlet. Four-to-six-foot swells dashed against the rocky outcrop that marked the inlet’s jagged northern end. Boats twice our size were idling, waiting it out.

“Well, should we go out?” Dave asked as he fiddled with the radio, the weather report coming in through squawks and static.

“We didn’t come all this way to sit here,” Ron retorted.

Dave put the throttle down and we headed into the waves. The inlet was the worst of it, but I had thought that, after getting past the breakers, the seas would calm down a bit. I had found this to be the case with surfing. But when one is aboard a motorized vehicle, plowing into the waves, it’s a different story. Up one wave, and then the bow slams into the next, water spraying over the deck. “I ain’t never been out when it’s this rough,” Dave muttered. He stood at the wheel, guiding the ship eastward. Skip and Ron hung on behind, and I sat in the seat next to the captain’s, laughing like a maniac as the water thrashed over us. Skip equipped a line with a planer and tossed it off the boat. Ron shot another line off the port side, and the two started fishing the choppy waters. I began tossing all the loose equipment below deck, even the cooler with the beer. As I dropped the life jackets below, Dave warned, “Don’t put those things too far away.” He turned back to face the oncoming rush of water, repeating as he did so, “I ain’t never been out when it’s this rough.”

We hadn’t fished long before we abandoned the idea as a futile endeavor. Dave started to turn the boat in a wide arc, a quick turn being impossible with the two lines in the water. Just as we ran parallel to the incoming waves, the trawler line began spinning out of control and a black shape loomed under the water. Skip grabbed the pole and leaned back. Dave pulled back on the throttle. The black shape grew larger, larger still, and some sort of mutant, prehistoric sailfish leapt out of the water, glinted briefly in the sun, and then dove back down into the dark sea.

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” I drawled. A huge wave hit the side of the Hermaine Squeeze, and the ship listed sickeningly to portside, water pouring in. Beyond that wave, to the east, the swells only looked bigger.

“We’ve got to head in,” Dave said.

“No, we’ll lose the fish!” Skip yelled as Ron reeled in his own line, stowed the rod and went to help Skip.

Another wave pounded the boat, and the door at my feet, which led below deck, banged open, the contents of the cooler spilling out. I grabbed a passing Coors Light and cracked it open.

“Hey, gimme one of those,” Dave said as he spun the wheel, heading toward shore. I took a long drink, continuing to gulp down the beer as I snatched another can as it rolled by and tossed it to Dave. Dave nodded his thanks and, with one hand on the wheel, opened the beer and took a long drink.

“I ain’t never been out when it’s this rough,” he said.

Another jarring force hit the side of the boat, but we had our stern to the waves now; it was the fish. The great monster fish whose demise Skip and Ron were plotting. But then, another of the huge waves hit us, shoving the boat toward shore, and the line snapped with an audible twang. Skip stumbled across the deck, landing in a pile of beers that had gathered astern. Ron wiped sea spray from his mustache and cursed the ocean gods as the fish made good its escape. Another big wave and we were shoved into the inlet and back to the calm waters of the canal.

We all had Coors in hand as we passed by the old Englishman. He hooted and hollered and crowed that he’d been right, that the waters were too rough for fishing. But we knew better. We had ours, but it had gotten away. And it was this big, I tell ya. This big.

Exactly one third of this story is a fish tale. The rest is a story about fish. Contact Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

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by Dan Sweeney

This has been a grim week for the sporting crowd. March Madness has been just that — insanity. The person currently (as of the morning of Monday, March 22) leading in my bracket pool picked No. 11 seed Washington to go to the Final Four. The next two in line are some nutter who picked St. Mary’s to get to the Elite Eight and, improbably, Barack Obama. Just for fun, the president’s picks were placed in our pool, and the commander in chief is currently running in second place on the strength of his prescient first-round calls, such as No. 13 seed Murray State over No. 4 Vanderbilt and his correct prediction that three of the No. 10 seeds would beat their No. 7 opponents, with the lone exception being the Florida Gators. But the president’s bracket has fallen to pieces since that first round, and he’ll have a hard time staying in the top five as this thing goes on.

Not that I’ll be the one to usurp the throne. My own bracket is the most busted thing I’ve seen since the early-morning hours at the poker tables at the Hard Rock, when the punk kids in gold chains are calling their parents for more money and the fast times are all moving on to the Cheetah or Scarlett’s Cabaret.

Maybe the president deserves the win. Hell, the man seems to have a fine eye for close scores, as this past Sunday’s 219-212 health-care vote shows. Not that Obama really had a big hand in the final tally. What passed was a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from the various wants and needs of dozens of representatives and senators. The fact that any bill got passed among the pork-hungry halls of Congress had me recalling the final words of Farmer Hoggett in Babe: “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

So even before the Madness was over, I had written it off, from a betting man’s perspective, at least. From that of a fan, it’s actually one of the more-enjoyable spectacles college basketball has offered in years. If a low-end team such as Cornell, Washington, or those glorious Jayhawk-killers Northern Iowa can get into the championship game — past the few real killers left in the tourney, like Duke or my pick to win it all, Kentucky — they will be singing folk songs about that team in the not-far-distant future.

Come gather ’round boys and I’ll tell you a tale

Over a few shots of whiskey or tankards of ale

’Bout the team that killed the Jayhawks and won the big game

The Panthers are mighty, folk from Cedar Falls will say the same.

But not me. I have no love for the GMJ*. But with its improbable victory, Northern Iowa is as responsible as anything for my decision this past Saturday to give college basketball amiss and try my hand at the track. It had been years since I’d been to Gulfstream Park. On my last visit, the park had just installed its first slot machines following the legalization of gambling at pari-mutuels in Florida and was desperately trying to haul in gamblers with various scattershot concepts, not the least of which was the booking of rock bands that had passed their primes somewhere about 1988. I saw Cheap Trick at Gulfstream, if I remember correctly, as well as the Georgia Satellites.

Those days are gone. Gulfstream Park has become a sprawling complex of restaurants, bars, clubs and casino, with horse racing as something of an afterthought, the exception being this past Saturday’s Florida Derby, the most important race in the state of Florida, as its winner is considered a prime candidate to take the Kentucky Derby (see: Barbaro). Twelve races were slated for that day, with the Derby itself being the 11th race. I arrived just as the third race was getting under way, parked my car somewhere in Outer Mongolia, and took a shuttle to the track.

Thousands of people had turned out for the race. Even in a place as massive as Gulfstream Park, just getting through the crowd proved to be an arduous task. I shoved past great flocks of women in gigantic hats, men smoking fat cigars, everyone with their racing forms at the ready. After getting my credentials and stopping by the media room, a library-quiet place with several TVs, an unused pool table and a crop of horse-racing journalists who could best be described as hailing from central casting, I headed to a wagering counter to place bets on the races that were left in the day, which started with race seven, and then decamped to the Playwright Irish Pub to have some shepherd’s pie and Guinness. A fantastically built place, the Playwright is reminiscent of Durty Nelly’s, a pub in Bunratty, Ireland, that dates back to the 1600s. Unfortunately, in keeping with the thick crowds, it was impossible to find a spot. One group of assholes had laid claim to half the bar, though none of them was there. They had draped their racing forms over the bar to symbolize that it would be occupied for the duration of the Derby. I ate standing up.

In the seventh race, I bet on a 10-1 shot to place. It showed. (For the nonracing crowd, I bet on the horse to come in second or first, and it came in third.) In the eighth, I bet an 8-2 exacta. The horses came in 8-7. (Translation: I bet on the No. 8 horse to come in first and the No. 2 horse to come in second, and while I was right about the No. 8 horse, the No. 7 horse came in second instead of the No. 2.) It was like that through the rest of the races. A bad history of barely missed opportunities. Finally, for the Florida Derby, I made it down to the track. I had money on an exacta and on Lentenor, a brother of the doomed Barbaro, to show. This, surely, would turn my luck around. After all, I was right by the track, so as to yell and thus affect the outcome of the race. At least, that seemed to be the plan for everyone around me. With the horses out of the gates, the riotous cheering went up. Cheering on the horses is different than the typical spectator sport. More of the crowd has skin in the game, of course, as the litter of lost betting tickets on the ground attested. But also, the typical sport offers only two choices — side A or side B. Here, a hundred people could be cheering for a hundred different outcomes.

“C’mon, First Dude!”

“C’mon, Best Actor!”

“C’mon, Radiohead and Rule, in that order!”

That last one was me.

But the first- and second-place finishers were 15-1 shots Ice Box and Pleasant Prince, both of which are headed to Kentucky, along with third-place pony Rule. When I turned around and saw a sea of dejected faces, I could only think of March Madness. The damned long shots had killed us again.

(*Goddamn Motherfucking Jayhawks, the only name by which any self-respecting Missouri grad may refer to the team.)

Send busted brackets and torn tickets to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

The NCAA Tournament seeds were announced this past weekend, and so the madness begins. For general sports aficionados, this represents the last great moment in sports before the long doldrums of spring and summer, populated only by meaningless, crushingly dull pre-All-Star break baseball. This year’s All-Star game falls on my birthday, and I still don’t give a rat’s ass about July 13. And the space in between is the sort of meaningless, ennui-filled gap that finds sports fans wondering about the larger questions in life and waxing existential. It’s no accident that Hunter Thompson’s suicide note was headlined “Football season is over.” After March Madness, I can only count on the Florida Derby to get me through March, and then even horse racing abandons us to fate until the Triple Crown races begin in May. So grab for the gusto while you can, because the month of April is best spent in a self-medicated, comalike state.

Now, before I go dispensing March Madness advice, I should point out that I am not a professional handicapper, though I am well-acquainted with one or two and my own history with tournament calls puts me well above the national average. I came in second in a pool of 200 people last year, and I won the same pool the year before, when I called all No. 1 seeds going to the Final Four for the first time in tournament history. This year’s NCAA Tournament promises less predictability, and therefore more fun, than years past. I have at least one big upset in the first round in each region: San Diego State over Tennessee in the Midwest, Minnesota over Xavier in the West, Cornell over Temple in the East, and both Utah St. over Texas A&M and Siena over Purdue in the weirdly seeded South. I also have Louisville beating Duke in the second round in that region before going down to Siena in the Sweet 16, though, so clearly I have gone around the bend and none of my predictions should be trusted.

Overall, this will be the year of Kentucky. Hatred could be clouding my judgment here, though, because as a Missouri grad, I come preprogrammed with a psychotic loathing of everything Kansas. I have the Goddamned Motherfucking Jayhawks (the only way in which I’m able to refer to the team) going to the championship game, in which I have them suffering a humiliating, crushing, tail-between-the-legs-all-the-way-back-to-the-flat-land-from-which-you-came defeat at the hands of the Kentucky Wildcats. And why not? For reasons no one has been able to properly explain, the Goddamned Motherfucking Jayhawks (herewith referred to by the acronym GMJ for the sake of both brevity and propriety), despite being the overall No. 1 team in the tournament, have been placed in the most difficult region, where they’ll be forced to beat back vicious bucketmongers such as Maryland and Georgetown (or possibly Ohio State, though I think Georgetown has the Buckeyes’ number). But the GMJ is good enough to get to the big game regardless of its position, unlike its rival, my alma mater, which won’t even make it past first-round opponent Clemson due to injuries.

As for Florida-based schools getting anywhere this year, don’t bet on it. And I don’t mean that simply as an idiom for “unlikely.” Seriously, do not bet money on either Florida or Florida State making it out of the first round. Florida State will go up against Gonzaga, which may be the most unfairly seeded team in the entire tournament; its No. 8 seed in the West region belongs behind a name such as Xavier or Butler instead. And the Gators face Brigham Young University, whose sixth man is God.

In the end, the Final Four will be Syracuse, Kentucky, the GMJ and Villanova, who will crush the hoop dreams of poor Siena in the Elite Eight. And by the time that happens, this month’s other major sports attraction, the Florida Derby, will already have come and gone, occurring as it does this Saturday at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach. The race is an excellent indicator of ponies that will be big contenders for the Kentucky Derby. Two of the horses racing the Florida Derby, Rule and Eskendereya, are trained by the same team and represent two of the finest pieces of horseflesh at the race, though Rule is a bit more of a long shot than Eskendereya. Whatever. My money’s on the exacta. Well, that and a long line of cheap bourbon drinks. After all, like any athlete, I need to begin my training early, and a taste for mediocre bourbon is absolutely essential to enjoying the Kentucky Derby. No doubt my winnings from the NCAA bracket and this weekend’s Florida Derby will cover my mint julep budget in May.

Send your NCAA tournament picks to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney’s stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

Note: An earlier version of this story read “Rule and Eskendereya are owned by the same team.” They are not. They are trained by the same team. The story has been updated to reflect the correction. Additionally, after this story was posted, Eskendereya dropped out of the Florida Derby, making mention of that horse a moot point. We regret the error.