In the end, the Miami Heat — so full of bluster, dance moves, promise and pyrotechnics last July — went out with not so much a whimper (because even that takes effort), but more of a shrug, in a 105–95 loss. And as their aged, largely silent fans shuffled to the parking lot, heading home to face an uncertain off-season of oppressive heat and 5:30 dinners, they were probably wondering: We paid so much money for this?

LeBron “Coma-Toast” James has another one of his textbook Finals games, largely invisible in its most crucial moments, content with setting up people named Mario Chalmers, Juwan Howard and Udonis Haslem to shoulder the burden that he is being paid to. After a first quarter in which he hit several key jumpers and began to look like his normal, dominant self, James retreated back into his shell, like a turtle at a honey badger convention. Had he not been wearing that white headband, cleverly coordinated with the T-shirts the fans were sporting, I would have had trouble picking him out of the crowd. He finished the game with 21–6–4, but averaged just over three points in the fourth quarters of the Finals’ six games. Not three shots, three points.

Uncharacteristically, Dwyane Wade was another underperforming mega-bazillionaire last night, regularly turning the ball over, and driving into untenable positions on the baseline and kicking it out, not to James, who was somewhere beyond the arc covering his eyes, but to… Eddie House? Still, his performance during the series will be remembered not for Game Six, but for the way it established that the Heat is his team and that he is one of the NBA’s three best players.

The only member of the Heat who could hold his head high was Chris Bosh, and not just because it appears to be five sizes smaller than his frame, but because he played with effort and zeal on both ends. It’s ironic that the guy who was seen as the “okay, you can come, too” in the deal, was the one that came to play. The fact that he was visibly sobbing as he headed into the locker room afterward was sad, and not in a pathetic way. At least he looked like he cared. Beyond that, he was the only member of the big three that didn’t appear overwhelmed at the end, when the players, each reluctant to shoot, were running a variation of the Princeton offense, minus the back cuts. What was clear was that no one, besides for Mario Chalmers, wanted to shoot the ball.

Even for someone as craven as me (and I mean that in the nicest sense), it was sad to see just how completely the Miami Heat capitulated to a visiting team, especially when their fans were expecting a multitude of NBA titles. And let’s face it: they aren’t getting any younger. (My apologies to the guy who keeps writing in, wondering why I make fun of the Heat fan base. My answer: Because I have eyes and they work.)

They had been beaten, at home, so thoroughly, that just before the half, when a guy on the Mavericks whose last name I had thought was Tahini, hit a wobbly elbowed mid-range jumper to take a 53–51 lead, I texted my friend and said, “Well, this one’s over.” You could just tell. Eventual Finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki had two points by then, on awful shooting, and his team was still winning. Jason Terry was positively heroic, scoring 27 points and beating defenders, including James, off the dribble. JJ Barea had 15, Shawn Marion had 12, and Jason Kidd and Deshawn Stevenson had 9 apiece. Brian Cardinal spelled Tyson Chandler for 12 minutes and had some pretty violent fouls and drew a charge, chipping in 3 points.

And even when the Heat and Mavericks were trading runs in the first half, it seemed like the fight had gone out of the Heat. It took six games, but Dallas managed to do something the rest of the league had been unable to: shut the Heat up.

During a postgame press conference, filled with inappropriate questions (sample: “Guys, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect at all, but did you two choke?”), LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were asked to make some sense of what had just transpired. Of the two, Wade was more thoughtful, talking about how well the Mavericks played and expressing confidence that his team would eventually get over the hump.

James, who seemed indifferent (“No, it doesn’t bother me that everyone roots against me. Not at all.”), actually suggested — and I’m paraphrasing here — that everyone who booed him was a loser with a crummy life and when they are done pointing out the obvious — that he, again, shrunk in the Finals — they will return to their awful, miserable existences, while he will still be a multimillionaire in South Beach. It was a brief glimpse into his world — a world that for the foreseeable future, thankfully, does not include any nifty dance moves or a parade. And the Heat did have a really cool parade planned, in case you were wondering.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo of Jason Terry celebrating in Miami last night via Terrence J.

Well maybe it helps prevent E. coli or something: “Apples are at the top of the list of produce most contaminated with pesticides in a report published today by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a public health advocacy group.”

Good news, Manhattan: You’re about to get an International House of Pancakes! Can Shoney’s be far behind? [Via]

“Most of the hair that gets shorn is from men. That gets sold to chemical companies and gets reduced to an amino acid called L-cystine, which is used as a leavening agent in baking goods.”
 — Hi, I’m trying not to throw up. Here’s a great primer on Scott Carney’s look at the markets for humans and their parts. Obviously the incredibly large industry of kidney-harvesting is more truly disgusting but, ack: human hair food. I guess the world isn’t really quite that flat after all, since white babies are worth more in the adoption market and expensive organs in “the west” fetch next to nothing to their original owners in “the east.”

If your favorite neighborhood in Manhattan is what I like to call The Plastic Wig and Lousy Trinket Import District, or Little New Lagos, or, as they once called it, Tin Pan Alley, or, more boringly, North Flatiron, you will enjoy this oral history of 28th and Broadway. Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth was headquartered there, for one thing. (Fun fact: Mother Earth went defunct in 1917, at the same time that, around the corner, at 28 W. 28th Street, the Everard Baths was already becoming a gathering place for the gays.)

It’s on! The East River Ferry now roams oddly about Wall Street, Midtown, Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Long Island City. Most importantly: it’s free for the first four days. Liveblogging ensues. Hrag Vartanian caught it in this photo pulling into the North 6th Street terminal in Williamsburg, so we know it’s actually real.

“The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people’s trash. Under current rules, agents cannot use such techniques until they open a ‘preliminary investigation,’ which — unlike an assessment — requires a factual basis for suspecting someone of wrongdoing. But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant. Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others.”
 — There are lots of reasons why the liberalization of rules in the F.B.I.’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide seems like a very bad idea. But the announcement of the changes gives a clue as to what might really be going on in the new video for the Belle and Sebastian’s “Come On Sister.”

Ike Turner, too. (Who, you know, you probably suspected was working for the government all along.)

And Johnny Rivers, who was more upfront about it.

A British lady broke up with her boyfriend.

by Jaime Green

Ladies and gents, it’s America’s most important and most revered awards show for the most important and revered arts! Tonight, literally all of America will stop and join — what’s that you say? It’s the Heat-Mavericks game six? Oh. Well then… tonight, some of the gays and theater ladies will come together to hide from basketball and indulge in the not-at-all rigged awards system that heaps praise upon select, very expensive productions at a very small number of designated New York City theaters; awards are nominated by literally a couple dozen people and then chosen by all of 750 professional voters. This system serves to make almost everyone feel bad, except a very few rich people! (And yes, also some fine young actors and creators who have exciting new plays.) But also: Neil Patrick Harris is hosting! Who is still only 37. So let’s come together in the comments and celebrate this hot mess, right here with our own theatrically inclined hostess Jaime Green!

• There are a million places to take a new summer lover this weekend. (Besides the beach and the zoo. The zoo, even if it is evil, is at least a great spot for a date.) In particular, in New York: the Figment Project, which is a loose pile of activities, performances and general weirdnesses. (Much of it overly organic or a bit twee!) Governors Island is going to be a total freakshow. Get your face painted, hippie.

• “The Architecture of Doom” just recently went on Netflix Instant. The 20-year-old documentary is about what kind of buildings Hitler really liked!

• Saturday is World Naked Bike Ride Day! Find one near you!

• Music of Schubert and Glass at the Met on Saturday.

• True Grit just came out on DVD.

• Tree of Life rolls out to such fine cities as Boston, Baltimore, Philly, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago and more.

• An opening of a group show of recent VCU sculpture students, at The Boiler/Pierogi, so you know what the kids are up to. Opens tonight in North Williamsburg.

• And near that, the Renegade Craft Fair happens in McCarren Park this weekend.

• Have you read China Miéville’s Embassytown yet?

• Or you could read about The World’s Greatest Cowboy, Why Emma Watson Really Left Brown — or brush up on things that you can say to a friend who’s ill or why people are so very irksome.

Photo by Roblawol