Boom! This is Books & Biceps #373!

Thanks to everyone who has shared this newsletter with a buddy or fellow sophisticated meathead. In fact, if an awesome B&B reader shared this with you, add your e-mail with the subscribe button below:

If you’re a new subscriber you’ll love this profile that the New Yorker ran on us.

And if you missed my interview with The Terminal List’s Jack Carr in last week’s issue, about his new book, CRY HAVOC, read it here.

HEAT 2: A Novel by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner

“Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat, if you feel the heat around the corner.”

“For me, the action is the juice.”

These are a few of my favorite lines of dialogue from the iconic movie, Heat, by Michael Mann. And if you follow entertainment news at all, then you know that on Tuesday it was announced that the sequel, Heat 2, is coming together with Mann directing and Leonardo DiCaprio potentially starring with Bradley Cooper, Adam Driver and Austin Butler. That’s a sick cast for a potentially sick sequel that is based on, if you didn’t know it, a phenomenal book.

Three years ago, Mann, along with author Meg Gardiner, wrote a sequel (and prequel) to Heat in novel form and it was phenomenal.

The story includes every single thing you could possibly want from revisiting the iconic characters from the film.

We get deep and intriguing backstory on Pacino’s Vincent Hanna, DeNiro’s McCauley and Kilmer’s Chris Sheherlis. We also get clever, explosive dialogue true to the characters and it’s impossible not to read the lines without DeNiro and Pacino’s voices in your head, which is a good thing…

We learn how their respective crews came together, how they crossed paths in Chicago in ‘88 and what happened after the finale to the movie in 1995. There are new heists, new villains, new over-the-top scenes and characters…

This is one of the most fun, action-packed, enjoyable reads I’ve had in a while, which is why I’m so pumped to hear about the film.

In addition to the actors mentioned above, presumably, Pacino could be involved somehow. There’s a lot of excitement for this one so be prepared for it and read it now. Also, the paperback is only $11. Easy purchase.

Order Heat 2 here.

This week I headed down to a sweet gym to work out with elite trainer, Rashaad Slowley, for a cover story I’m writing for Midlife Male. The piece will come out next month so be sure to subscribe here so you can read it.

I loved the workout Rashaad put us through, which was part HIIT, part cardio and part total body:

Superset the following FOUR TIMES EACH:

1) 25-Yard Sled Pull & 25-Yard Sled Push / 12 by 45-pound plate abs bicycle kicks

2) 10-Pull Ups / 1-minute Ski Erg full speed

3) 10-Dumbbell Military Squat Presses / 1-Minute Assault Bike

This took about 45 minutes and it wiped me out. You’ll get the full cover story, interview and more next month over at Midlife Male.

I’ve done my share of ocean swims, with the longest being the famous 2-Mile Pier-to-Pier swim from Hermosa Beach to Manhattan Beach in Southern California.

Depending on the currents and tides and waves and wind, the swim could take 40 minutes or an hour and a half. I think my slowest time was 1 hour and 8 minutes or so. These days, I train mostly for 50s and 100s in the pool, which keeps me in good enough shape to tackle a 1 or 2 mile ocean swim three or four times a year but that’s it.I’m not a true open water distance swimmer.

And I’m NOTHING like this guy, who spent over 5 months swimming AROUND England without every touching land, swimming for 12 hours a day and sleeping on his tiny support boat. You’ve got to see how many Red Bulls and bananas this dude consumed during his quest:

RIP MIKE GREENWELL. One of my favorite baseball players growing up passed away on Thursday afternoon. If you don’t know Greenwell, the 2x MLB All-Star, 1988 MVP Runner Up, Red Sox Hall of Famer, alligator wrestler and stock car racer, you should. He was a legend. I’ve had this poster up in every place I’ve lived since the 3rd grade and it currently anchors the Flex Factory. Here are some thoughts on his passing:

If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join 27K of us at Midlife Male.

I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week I tackled a topic I never expected to write about: Small Talk. Trust me. Even if you hate it, which I understand, my defense of small talk is compelling, I promise. I even give examples:

Whenever this time of year rolls around in college sports, where football is in full swing and basketball is in pre-season, I think of my buddy and the subject of one of my biographies a few years ago, Charlie Ward, who was a Heisman Trophy-winning, National Championship-winning quarterback for Florida State, while ALSO taking them to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament as the starting point guard.

If this happened today, Charlie would be worth, oh, I don’t know, $10 million/year minimum in NIL money.

This was the first big, full-on, fully immersed biography I wrote, interviewing a ton of people, including Tony Dungy, Jeff Van Gundy, Spike Lee, Warrick Dunn and more. I’m super proud of it and if you were a sports fan in the 90s, you’ll love it.

The highlight of the book had to be the signing we did at Madison Square Garden during a Knicks game. Could not have been cooler.

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