🍔 Super-size the good vibes!

💪 Hell yeah, brother. Imagine this: you’re driving down the highway when a car unexpectedly swerves across lanes to reach an exit. The car clips yours, sending it flipping end-over-end until you come to rest upside down.

This must be the end.

And just when you begin to make sense of what happened and determine whether or not you’re alive, a knight in shining sleeveless armor appears. A knight with a bleach-blond goatee and a bandana wrapped around his head. Then, he opens his mouth, and the voice that escapes confirms the suspicions you deemed too insane to be true.

It’s Hulk Hogan.

It turns out the wrestling icon and his friend were driving behind the accident when it unfolded in front of them. They immediately pulled over and hurried into the action. Hogan’s friend, Jake Rask, popped the airbag, and the two men pulled a seventeen-year-old girl from the driver’s seat. While she was shaken up, she was mostly unscathed.

Turns out the Hulkster’s entrance song told no lies. He is indeed a real American, fighting for what’s right, fighting for your life.

Hell yeah, brother.

 🍿 Not a bad gig. Ryan Gosling won an Oscar, married Eva Mendes, turned Ken into an unforgettable character, starred in some of our favorite movies, and gave David Lindhagen a well-deserved punch to the face. While many will be quick to point out that he was, in fact, a liability at cornerback in Remember the Titans, his character’s porous defense is not enough to make us think less of the actor.

We need no reminders that he rocks, and frankly, we don’t need to discover new reasons why he’s awesome. But that’s exactly what Steve Carell gave us in his speech honoring Gosling at the SBIFF Excellence in Film award dinner.

Steve nailed it: annoying as hell! On top of everything else, the guy is kind and wholesome?! Come on.

But this isn’t even a new development. Some knew this as early as 2011, when a video of Gosling breaking up a fight between two strangers on the streets of Manhattan went viral.

Maybe he’s just Ken, but he’s also a threat to join Keanu Reeves in the Case of the Mondays Hall of Fame.

🧸 Lost and found. Children and stuffed animals share an unbreakable bond, forged by a child’s realization that they have a reliable friend and confidant at a time when that stability is most welcome. It’s never easy to lose a friend, and for a child that perhaps hasn’t yet experienced much loss, it’s no different with a stuffed animal.

When a little boy left his stuffed giraffe, “Cutie,” in Paris, he was devastated. We assume even the suggestion that his beloved giraffe would soon film a so-bad-it’s-good Netflix show built on every perceived cliché about France called Cutie in Paris was not enough to assuage his mourning.

Where else do you go when in need of global help but TikTok? Fortunately, his mother is a travel influencer, and her pleas, issued in ‘Tok form, were greeted with an outpouring of support…and a rescue for Cutie. There’s enough good left in the world for total strangers to find and ship a boy’s stuffed animal across the world. And their reunion proves that admirable effort was well worth it:

@haileyoutside

The sweetest reunion 🥹♥️♥️ #momlife #momtok #momsoftiktok #travelfamily #familyadventures

Is it dusty in here, or am I just upset that I will indeed continue to sink hours of my life into Emily in Paris?

⌨️ His type of gift. He loved writing stories and making books…until his teacher told him he had horrible handwriting.

My man’s confidence was shattered. The only thing that teacher taught us was how to totally suck. But the boy was not entirely deterred. Instead, he eyed a solution that would allow him to continue exercising his creativity without being hamstrung by his handwriting.

So for Christmas, he asked for a typewriter.

Santa came through for our story-writing king, and the boy’s reaction was one of pure jubilation as he imagined the endless possibilities this gift would unlock. Put differently: lil homie was pumped.

caitlin.teal

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Imagine when he finds out about word processing?! Take shelter, because that tornado of excitement is going to decimate everything in its path. For now, the sound of his fingers punching those typewriter keys will tell the story of a resilient dream that survived and thrived. They’ll also drown out the haters and their nonsense complaints about his handwriting.

Take it from me, pal: my handwriting is hot garbage, and I write a pretty mid good-news newsletter, so….

📼 No spoilers, I’m recording it. You ever miss VHS tapes?! Not really, huh?

While few experiences could match the thrill of a Friday night Blockbuster trip, the technology itself seems pretty arcane by today’s standards. You need to rewind to the beginning of the movie? No problem, that’ll only take five minutes, and your VCR will get so molten lava hot that you’ll threaten your home with the threat of a blazing inferno.

It turns out, though, that some good did come of the humble VHS. It was with the VHS that people first discovered the ability to record their favorite television programs in the event they weren’t at home. But that was a radical idea at the time…and a controversial one.

It was on this day in 1984 that the Supreme Court ruled that home use of VCRs to record programs for later viewing was not a violation of copyright laws, paving the way for the eventual rise of TiVo and DVR.

Honestly, about time the little guy scored a win!

A world in which a person can’t use their own VCR to record the show of their choice and watch it at a time of their choosing is not a world I want to live in! If I can’t record Who Wants to be a Millionaire, what’s the point of all this? Oh, I’m just supposed to miss the first time somebody wins the million?! Say it ain’t so, Regis!

Fortunately, it’s 2024, and that world has long since evolved, but maybe it never would’ve without a righteous ruling from the Court.

⛷️ “No worries, I got you.” By the time Janet He realized it, it was too late: she was engulfed in an avalanche on the slopes at a Palisades Tahoe ski resort. The falling snow roared, carrying her right to the edge of a cliff, where she thankfully came to rest before toppling over. Her mask allowed her some breathing room in the midst of her icy burial, but she couldn’t move, and that air might not last.

She could’ve been settling in for a long stay - or wondering just how close that cliff was - but before more snow could come to send her over the edge, a voice suddenly called out: “No worries, I got you.” A fellow skier arrived, quickly freeing He from the snow. With a hug and a quick photo, he was on his way. Janet praised not only his help, but all those from ski patrol to strangers who came by to see if she was okay.

And she was going down an easy trail! You’d think the avalanche would at least have the decency to leave the green circles alone. No integrity - shame on you, avalanche. Fortunately, the skier who saved the day has plenty of it.

🍔 Big Macs, big achievement. Remember Super Size Me?! The documentary where a man eats McDonald’s for every meal and had to super size his order if asked?

Well, it turns out that guy was really making a meal of it, pun very much intended. My tummy hurts. I don’t feel good. I’m tired of eating McDonald’s. My insides are dying a slow and painful death. Wah, wah, wah. Build a bridge and get over it, guy!*

You know who’s undeterred by a daily helping of Mickey Ds? Donald Gorske.

The appropriately named gentleman from Wisconsin has eaten a Big Mac on 33,400 consecutive days and counting, dating all the way back to 1972. Five decades of chowing down on what he calls “the best hamburger sandwich ever made.”

Why?

Because he freaking loves hamburgers and wants to eat them every day, that’s why! And after all this time and all those Big Macs, he still looks forward to his daily dose. All that’s left to do is legally change his name from “Donald” to “McDonald.”

Alternatively, I would absolutely insist my friends refer to me as “Big Mac” or “Mac.” I’d answer to nothing else. Maybe “the Hamburglar.”

Fair is fair: you eat a sandwich every day for 50 years, you reserve the right to be nicknamed after it. I once ate a sandwich called the “Hot Chick” over 100 times in a semester of college; fortunately, that did not stick as a nickname.

*We’re just teasing, Morgan Spurlock. We know eating one Big Mac isn’t the same as eating exclusively McDonald’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We also recognize that not everyone can be an absolute alpha like Don Gorske.

👋 Farewell to The Hooded One. After nearly a quarter century of unprecedented success, the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick amicably parted ways last week. The decision brings an end to an era of cutoff hoodie-wearing, scowl-bearing coaching greatness on the Patriots sideline. And while many rightfully know Belichick to be a grumpy curmudgeon, any evidence to the contrary is remarkably refreshing.

That’s what we have here, in a video of Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss discussing his upcoming Halloween party with the coach. It’s a must-watch, humanizing moment, and the conclusion will shock you into laughter.

Johnny Depp could never. Form too smooth on those roller skates.

“It’s a great holiday. Candy and costume, how can you beat that?!”

🧠 Welcome back, Woodland. Last year, PGA golfer Gary Woodland experienced anxiety seizures and extreme fear and anxiety about death. Anxiety, of course, is common, but this was different. It turns out, Woodland had a lesion on his brain, right in the part of it that controls fear and anxiety, triggering his episodes at night.

While medication helped with seizures, the fear persisted, and in September, Woodland moved ahead with brain surgery to remove the lesion. The lesion pressed right against his optic tract as well, adding fear of lost vision to the already boiling stew of terror in Woodland’s mind. But the operation was successful, and the lesion was benign.

After several months of rehab that followed several months of wondering if he’d die, Woodland returned to the tee this weekend in Hawaii for the first time. He heard those sweet words: “Now, on the tee, from Topeka, Kansas, a warm aloha for Gary Woodland.”

Those are words he wasn’t sure he’d hear ever again. This weekend, they were the most beautiful song ever sung.

🤝 Hey brother. Picture this: you’re in the midst of the biggest moment of your career, jaw clenched and breath quickening with stress. As you lean over to gather yourself and your thoughts, you feel a pat on the shoulder. You look up, and, in the most unexpected of moments, it’s your sibling.

That was Jim Harbaugh on Monday night, trying to coach his beloved Michigan Wolverines to a National Championship. In the middle of the second quarter, he looked up to see his brother, John, standing next to him to offer a warm smile, a hug, and a few words of encouragement. Low key, a wild move by John to stop by mid-game, but nobody knows his brother better than him, and the gesture was happily received, producing one of the more wholesome moments of the season.

A couple hours later, Jim and his alma-mater were officially the champions of college football.