1. A Tale of Two Dwights

“Would I ever leave this company? Look, I’m all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I’m being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly… I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.”

I had planned to do an exhaustive search of Dwight Schrute quotes, but this was actually the first one I happened upon. Now, we all know that Dwight Howard isn’t pulling a Rod Tidwell here (“Show me the money!”). Still, there’s something askew when two Hall of Famers who played with you last season have to be dragged into a conference room during their summer vacations (I’m sure Kobe loved leaving his Newport Beach crib for this) to entreat you to remain in a relationship. What could Kobe or Steve Nash really tell Howard during that two-hour meeting that he didn’t already know from being their teammate last season? “Hey, we’ve added Ryan Kelly!”

So now Howard has retreated to his Aspen hideaway (Kobe’s parting advice: Do NOT, whatever you do, order the room service) and hopefully will realize that if he wants to win a championship, he’ll be playing for a team on which he is not the leading scorer. Personally, I believe that team should be Golden State. Young nucleus and outstanding team chemistry. The Rockets should also be in the mix, but would you rather reside in San Francisco or Houston? Is that even a question?

We all love the Mamba (don’t we?), and he’s the fiercest competitor of his generation. But his window is closing and if you’re Dwight’s representation, you know the Lakers are no better than a second-round out unless they upgrade the lineup with youth. That isn’t happening right away.

2. Mount Marathon 2013: A New Men’s Record, and No One Disappears

Our favorite bizarre foot race, Alaska’s Mount Marathon Race, took place for the 86th time yesterday in Seward (that’s the 3,022-foot mountain’s name; the distance is closer to a 5-K). Eric Strabel, the cross-country skiing coach at Alaska-Pacific University, won the climb-up-and-clamber-down trek in a record time of 42:55 (Bill Spencer, a former Olympic skier, set the previous record in 1981).

What makes Mount Marathon memorable? The degrees. The mountain grade itself is 38 degrees, while the temperatures ranged from the low 50s on Fifth Avenue in Seward to below-freezing at the summit. Race officials actually handed out blankets to runners at the mountain’s peak, i.e., the race’s halfway point. “That’s the coldest I’ve ever been,” said 69 year-old Sandy Johnson of Anchorage.

When an Alaskan confides that it’s the coldest he’s ever been, you pay attention.

3. Pigging Out

Yesterday I ran a photo of Tahrir Square and suggested that Americans would only gather in groups so large for concerts, victory parades or a new iPhone. How naïve I am. I should’ve added “Competitive Eating Contests.” I do hope/expect that extraterrestrials will one day descend upon this planet and use footage of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest to demonstrate to us that as a species we deserve to be enslaved until we become more highly evolved.

The only saving grace of the competition (and, yes, I’ll accede that Joey Chestnut, having set a record –69 franks– in yesterday’s annual Fourth of July event, is the Eric Strabel of this event) was learning that women’s champion Sonya Thomas refers to herself as one of the “Four Horsemen of the Esophagus.” That’s good. Slow clap, LOL, the works….  

4. Don’t Blame It on Rio An Awful Film from 1984

Here’s an interesting piece from ESPN.com about next summer’s World Cup that Brazil will host. The tournament will have 12 host sites, and it’s probably worth informing/reminding you that Brazil (3.29 million square miles) is greater in size than the contiguous 48 States (2.96 million square miles) (it’s comparisons such as these that give us an excuse to type “contiguous”…we can do so contiguously…).

And Brazil fully intends to showcase all of its wonders. Hence, while the most populous cities, Rio de Janeiro (6.3 million) and Sao Paulo (11.2 million) will host matches, so will Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas state, which is located at the confluence of two major rivers (it’s the Pittsburgh of Brazil?). Manaus is a swift four-hour flight to the northwest of Rio. If you prefer to drive, the driving distance is 2,771 miles.

Then again, isn’t that part of the adventure? Manaus does have a soccer club, but it isn’t even in the top 100 in the nation. A new stadium is being built for the World Cup and below you can see why:

5. So I Married An Axe-Murderer A Bridge

Jodi Rose, an Australian artist, married a 600 year-old French bridge last month, wreaking havoc in the writers’ rooms at all late-night talk shows as each pundit tried to conjure the cleverest line. “Jodi has an edifice complex?” “This will take a toll on their relationship?”  “A French husband that won’t cheat? That’s the unbelievable part!”

Anyway, on the same site we found photos of Nina Agdal, who probably will never need to resort to marrying an inanimate object…unless she marries a septuagenarian Greek shipping magnate or similarly aged financier. And, in modeling, there is always that possibility.