Where to find a rhinestone dog collar in South Beach

	Former Falcon Ray Buchanan wore a rhinestone dog collar to Media Day before Super Bowl XXXIII. AP
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MIAMI BEACH -- I am writing this from the bed in my hotel room, which isn't so much a choice as it is a necessity, given that most of the rooms at the Doubletree Surfcomber in South Beach do not include desks.

When you're a writer, particularly one who will literally stay up all night Sunday while producing the Super Bowl game story for Sports Illustrated, desks tend to come in handy. Alas, I will suck it up, prop up my head with a couple of pillows and put the lap in laptop, 21st Century style.

And that sucks, because it will slow me down, and the longer it takes to write this, the longer you'll have to wait to read about the time I bought Ray Buchanan's dog collar the night before Media Day. But I digress ...

If it sounds like I'm complaining here on my first full day in South Florida -- at the start of the nine-day assignment that serves as the apex of my professional year -- well, what can I tell you? I'm a sportswriter, and it comes with the territory. Send a sportswriter on a date with Halle Berry, and he'll come home bitching about her earrings or whining that the restaurant wouldn't accept his type of credit card, thus depriving him of precious airline miles.

Besides, I'm not totally devoid of perspective. I woke up this morning, threw on shorts and my short-sleeved Cal Underarmour T-shirt and went for a run on the beach, splashed the warm ocean water on my face and walked past the hotel's resplendent pool area -- well, at least the part of it that wasn't being used as a Best Damn Sports Show set. Then I made some rounds at the media center and ate lunch, outdoors (turkey burger with avocado, thank you very much), with colleague Jeff Chadiha, with whom I had valiantly tried -- and, for the most part, failed -- to scare up some excitement on Ocean Drive Sunday night.

Soon we will be off in search of all things Urlacher, which is never a bad place to be. And tonight the Colts arrive, meaning Miami resident Edgerrin James will be looking to celebrate the AFC Championship he didn't win with a bunch of his old friends.

(And yes, I'm being serious: James is not ambivalent about the Colts' success in the wake of his departure via free agency in the least. He is legitimately excited for his former teammates, period. He has also been insisting, correctly, since the start of the playoffs that the Colts would make it here. "I'm listening to him talking all confident, like it's in the bag," Indy wideout Reggie Wayne told me over dinner last week, "and I'm wondering, 'What the hell does he know that I don't?'")

Tomorrow is Media Day, which leads me to my next topic of conversation...

Super Bowl Flashback Of The Day

Eight years ago, on the Monday night before the Super Bowl, Falcons cornerback Ray Buchanan and I had dinner at a posh South Beach restaurant. We then walked down to the building on 12th and Washington that at the time served as the headquarters of Luke Records and sat with rap legend Luther Campbell in his, uh, colorful office.

"I really want to do something special for Media Day," Buchanan told Campbell, to whom he had just been introduced. "I want to make some sort of a statement. We're the underdogs, and I was thinking I'd wear a dog collar."