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Those are the two dogs who won me a few dollars at the Naples-Fort Myers Greyhound Track this weekend. I won't mention the eight greyhounds who I picked to win, yet didn't. They chased a chase rabbit named Sparky who looked nothing like a rabbit. But they flew around the track regardless, and the retirees flew (well, waddled briskly) to the betting window.

I mention this not to promote gambling, which is why I won't explain quinelas and trifecta boxes. It's just that there is no dog racing in North Carolina. Nor horse racing, jai alai or lotteries, for that matter. Florida has all of that, but no state income tax. Go figure.

Other things I learned during my holiday-weekend visit to my mom in Punta Gorda, the town Hurricane Charley tried to wipe out a year ago:

Hockey is alive and well on the outskirts of the Everglades, where temps are well into the 90s lately. The Florida Everblades -- get it? -- lost Game 5 of the ECHL Kelly Cup Finals at Trenton, but still have a chance with Game 6 being Wednesday night back in Ft. Myers -- they have a nice building a few miles from the dog track. Here it June, and the ECHL playoffs are still going somewhere far, far away from Greensboro. They're even televising the games on a local network and you can keep up with the series on Andy Kent's Blades Blog at the Naples Daily News site.

Boating is still the No.1 sport in Southwest Florida. The intracoastal waterway looked like Wendover at rush hour as I flew in.

Annakin Skywalker fashions a killer Jedi mullet in "Revenge of the Sith," which I saw with the family Tuesday when our golf outing got rained out. A precursor to Luke's 1977/galaxy far, far away 'do in Star Wars, part IV.

Oh, and I learned that the Droid leader has emphysema even though he's allegedly robotic, and the chancellor is evil -- didn't see that coming. Hope I didn't ruin it for anyone.

In events that played out elsewhere, I learned that the Red Sox can still humiliate the Yankees (won 17-1 Saturday) but not whether Duke could humiliate UVa twice in one year in lacrosse (beat 'em 17-2 early this year but Johns Hopkins humiliated the Cavs in the NCAA semis instead, denying us a Duke-Virginia final Monday).

We also learned that FBI honcho W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat" -- the newspaper industry's all-time greatest unnamed source -- and that the French don't like, or trust, the EU Constitution.