Finkel's Fast Five - Issue #4

February 23rd, 2018

Thanks for opening! Let's get started:

I highly recommend this long form feature on Merv Bodnarchuk, a man fond of Coors Light and Clamato juice who spent half a million dollars on a curling "super team" with one caveat - he had to be on the squad. It is so good I can't believe the Coen Brothers haven't turned it into a movie yet. It was written by Guy Lawson (@GuyLawson2) almost twenty years ago and with the Winter Olympics front-and-center, it's the perfect time to curl up to a good piece of writing on...curling. There's a 40% chance it winds up as an Amazon Prime series at some point. You read it here first.

I love when inadvertent typos completely change the meaning of signs or titles and this one for the Peter Rabbit movie is fantastic and hilarious. It was spotted by the always-clever author Steve Rushin and he tops it off with the perfect comment.

There are two kinds of TV watchers in the world... Those who think The Wire is the greatest show of all time...and those poor unfortunate souls who haven't seen it yet. If you're in the first group, one of my favorite writers, JP Abrams, has a new book out this week, All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire. It is a dream come true for Wire fans. I loved Abrams' first book, Boys Among Men about LeBron, Kobe, Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett's entry into the NBA so I'm psyched for this one. Just got it yesterday. You can also check out www.jonathanabramsbooks.com for more info.

My brother recommended the Netflix documentary Icarus to me and it is one of the more insane docs you'll ever see.
It begins with an amateur cyclist trying to replicate Lance Armstrong's doping regimen and evolves into an inside look at the greatest Olympic sports scandal in world history with former KGB agents, secret rooms in doping labs, people "disappearing", death threats and international statements by Vladimir Putin denying absolutely everything, including a statement that the needles inserted into Ivan Drago's shoulders in Rocky IV were just B-vitamin shots. You should definitely watch it (and I added the part about Drago...even Putin wouldn't go that far).

I just finished the awesome book, Sting Like A Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971 by the great Leigh Montville. The book is fascinating and contains some of the best anecdotes about Ali's fights and opponents that I've ever read, including this one, involving Ernie Terrell complaining about the font of his name on fight promotion posters: Terrell demonstrated early in the promotion [of the fight] that he wanted respect. Upset that the billing on posters for the fight had his name listed in a smaller typeface than Ali's name, he said that he would pull out of the fight if this was not changed in 48 hours. "In some cases my name looks like the fine print on an insurance policy," Terrell said. "In other cases, the letters on my name are no bigger than the cheapest price for a ticket. I have an 89-year-old grandmother and she knows better than to do something like that." The posters were changed.

Have a great weekend and don't let anyone put your name on a poster in a small font!

You can read previous FF5 Issues HERE

- Jon