🎃 You’ve gourd a friend in me

🏃‍♂️ One foot in front of the other. It doesn’t matter whether you’re fast or slow. Whether you run long distances or short ones. Whether you’re old or young.

Communities constantly unite around great causes and a person’s journey towards a finish line.

Take Jack Nelson. He’s a retired teacher who worked in Oakland public schools for decades. And for basically as long as he was teaching, he was running to benefit those schools. Last week, he laced ‘em up for Oakland one last time, bringing an end to a 31 year effort.

Over all those years and races, Nelson raised $252,000 and ran over 1,500 miles. With each iteration, he fundraised for school causes where he saw need, aiding everything from marching bands to sports teams and beyond.

For his last run, Nelson was joined by a team of students and family, accompanying him on his race into retirement. He credits his dad for motivation: “My dad taught me that no task is too small if it benefits someone or something.”

What an attitude.

But it’s not just Nelson inspiring on the roads. 93-year-old Bogie Jordan battled with West Nile Virus for months in 2019, requiring resuscitation twice and even spending time in a coma. The virus devastated and immobilized him, but he found his way back to his feet. Last week, he completed a “half-mile marathon,” reminding us that adversity only wins if we let it. “Keep fighting,” he said. “Take what you can get and be happy with it.”

Maybe Andy Bernard could’ve taken a pointer from ole Bogie before complaining about his vicious nipple-chafing circle.

👨‍👩‍👦 Make ‘em proud. So long as a parent’s heart is still beating, it’s not too late to make them proud. It helps when you can greet them with the news that you’ve won the Nobel Prize.

Here’s Drew Weissman, 64 years old, phoning his 90-plus-year-old parents to share his triumph.

You can literally feel their pride and their joy radiating through the phone. “You’re the product of our hearts.” Jeez mom, quit embarrassing me in front of my friends!

“You did it, and so young!” was also a gem. 60 is the new thirty, baby! Age is just a number, and an extremely relative one at that.

Okay, so maybe a Nobel Prize doesn’t await most of us. So what?! Whatever your ambitions, if you work hard to achieve them, that should be enough to make anybody proud.

And if you need a starter-achievement, tell ‘em you’re an award-winning newsletter reader. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the best in the biz.

📜 Ancient history made new. Over 2,000 years ago in 79 CE, scrolls were charred by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Like Will Ferrell’s Mustafa in Austin Powers, though, they were still alive, just very badly burned.

The scrolls survived, but because of their crisped and rolled condition, we haven’t been able to make sense of what they actually say. The Herculaneum scrolls, as they’re known, were a vexing irony: massive historical discovery waited on the inner layers of the scrolls….scrolls that literally can’t be unrolled.

I say they were a vexing irony, because that’s all changed.

2,000 years is a long time to wait, but over the last couple decades, researchers have made incredible progress, culminating in a major recent breakthrough. Inspired in part by a $700,000 prize, researchers have succeeded in using digital imaging, scanning technology, and artificial intelligence to “unroll” the scrolls and read their contents without physically tampering with the delicate treasures.

Last week, they achieved what sounds trivial but was completely impossible for the preceding two millennia: they read an entire word - not just letters, but an entire word.

This is some National Treasure stuff right here! You can practically see delight wash over Nic Cage’s face as it’s revealed that the first Greek characters deciphered mean “purple dye” or “clothes of purple.” Riley Poole is unimpressed, but that’s just because he’s naive to the importance of the discovery. Classic Riley.

Writing from the period - when the Roman Empire still ruled - is so exceedingly scarce today. Unrolling the scrolls in their entirety could prove hugely informative in better understanding ancient civilizations. Ladies….if you thought it was weird how often men thought about the Roman Empire before, just wait until we unroll those scrolls!!

Incredible stuff.

Anyways, I’m glad future generations won’t have to wait with baited breath for 2,000 years just to find out my newsletters were filled with nonsense references to movies and TV shows of the 1990s and 2000s.

📺 A reunion about nothing. Speaking of nonsense and TV shows, back in 1998, 76 million people tuned in to watch the finale of a show about nothing. Seinfeld had a dominant nine-season run on NBC, going down as one of the best and most beloved TV series of all-time. Whether you realize it or not, there are jokes made and things said everyday that originate from the quirky sitcom.

As good as the show was, viewers were not as fond of the finale. It was a bloated retrospective that saw characters from throughout the series testify against the gang as they sat trial for violating an obscure Good Samaritan law. Suffice it to say: Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer were never going to be candidates for our Great Samaritan newsletter features.

But for the first time since a brief glimpse at a more modern version of the crew in Curb Your Enthusiasm, tens of millions of fans have hope. At a recent stand-up show, Jerry Seinfeld had this to say.

“Here’s what I’ll tell you, OK, but you can’t tell anybody. Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending. Hasn’t happened yet. And just what you are thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about it. So you’ll see, we’ll see.”

YES!

I need to know how Bob Sacamano got Kramer into NFTs. How Newman has been affected by the waning relevance of mail. How Elaine is faring on Bumble. What George thinks of tipping screens at the coffee shop.

“I got another dirty look for ‘custom-tipping’ today.”

“Why don’t you just pick one of the pre-loaded options?”

“The lowest option was 25%. I ordered a black coffee, Jerry!”

“Why don’t you just make that at home?”

“Because I like the way they make it!”

I’ll leave the rest to Larry David and Jerry.

⏰ Wait a second! Do you ever wonder who decided how large an inch should be? Or a meter? Or how much a pound weighs? What about how long a second should last?!

Whew, some major stoner questions there!

But if you get to thinking about them too hard, your brain quickly twists itself into a tangled web of Christmas lights even Rusty Griswold himself couldn’t untangle.

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to think about it too hard.

It turns out there’s something called the General Conference on Weights and Measures. It’s an intergovernmental organization that decides on just such matters, and on this day in 1967, they literally redefined the duration of a second. They decided a second is the amount of time it takes for a cesium atom to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times.

Ahh….huh?

You know what? Sure. Fine. Let’s go with that. 9,192,631,770 times it is.

SO glad we don’t have to think too hard about this stuff.

🎈 Hot air, hotter fire. It’s like a scene from an action movie.

Our hero witnesses a gas-powered balloon colliding with power lines, erupting into a fiery wreck. Without thinking, he springs into the inferno to help the pilots. One has escaped already, but the other is still at the bottom of the basket.

Our hero musters the strength to pull the pilot out of the blaze to safety. Moments later - BOOM! - an explosion begs the question: what if our hero had been just 30 seconds slower?

Our hero isn’t Bruce Willis or Denzel Washington. It’s not Liam Neeson or Tom Cruise.

It’s Israel Alfaro, a Dallas English teacher. With the help of two others, Alfaro ensured the pilot’s injuries were limited to burns and a broken leg in what could’ve been a far worse situation. This was the scene confronting him in that moment of truth:

Yeah, that’s some action hero stuff alright. Most badass English teacher in the country?

🎃 You’ve gourda be kidding. The fellas are getting desperate to escape fall trips to the pumpkin patch with their ladies. One Kansas City man even hopped inside a pumpkin and paddled 38 miles down the Missouri River just to get back to the couch.

Okay, I made up the motivation, but the achievement is real.

Steve Kueny’s vessel was a 1,299-pound pumpkin which he grew himself, equipped with a few sandbags for stability. His 38 mile voyage narrowly eclipsed the prior record for the longest paddle in a pumpkin. Ever so modest, Kueny describes himself as “just a guy with a pumpkin and a whimsical sense of adventure out to have fun.”

Hell yeah, Steve! What a fall mood!

The pumpkin fun doesn’t stop there. In Minnesota, Travis Gienger recently grew the largest pumpkin in world history. Early in its growth, certain it was primed for greatness, Gienger named the pumpkin “Michael Jordan.” His gut instinct was confirmed, as MJ weighed in at 2,749 pounds.

Apparently, when an Italian contestant grew a record-setting 2,702 pound squash two years ago, MJ took that personally.

It’s gotta be the most newsworthy month for gigantic fruits since James landed the Giant Peach atop the Empire State Building.

🐶 Pups on the pitch. Dogs make just about everything better, sports included. But they aren’t typically welcome at professional sporting events, with rare exceptions. Two such exceptions warmed our hearts over the last couple weeks.

First, it was Jeffrey the Luton Lab, who quickly went viral because….well…look at him!!

Jeffrey has guided his blind owner to and from Luton Town matches for the last six years. Now that Luton have gained promotion to the Premier League, this majestic animal is on display to the world, and we’re all the better for it.

Elsewhere, dogs are finding new homes on the soccer pitch. Recently, Brazilian club Fortaleza and Spanish club Espanyol have walked out onto the pitch with dogs as their mascots, showcasing them for adoption. Imagine going to the match and coming home with a new best friend?

Best day ever. Dogs and sports - match made in heaven! Just for the love of God, keep those dogs away from Dani Rojas…

🏈 All’s well that ends well. Nobody likes the hardo that snatches a home run ball or football from the grips of a youngster. There’s near-universal consensus: that guy sucks.

Imagine the approval rating, then, for a man who swipes a football intended for the mother of his team’s star player. You do NOT mess with mom’s football, but that’s what one Dolphins fan unknowingly did to Tyreek Hill’s mother last weekend.

To his credit, as soon as he became aware of his severe transgression, he forked the ball over, simultaneously restoring his reputation and order to the universe. Hill noticed that the fan turned a wrong into a right, and he wanted to reward him for his troubles….and for becoming a target of the internet’s ire.

The Dolphins receiver surprised the fan at a local restaurant with some signed memorabilia, coolly bringing an end to a saga the fan will never forget. So to all those bleacher bandits: do the right thing. You never know where it’ll get you.

⛳️ An all-time up-and-down. Six years ago, Brett White was diagnosed with an infection of the brain. The infection paralyzed him and robbed him of his ability to speak. For a newly professional golfer, it wasn’t just his livelihood at stake, but his life.

White had to relearn how to walk and talk. And then he had to rebuild his swing.

By 2018, he was back on the course. White credits a focus on daily improvement, achieved through hours of rigorous physical and occupational therapy. While he recovered his basic abilities and eventually even his golfing aptitude relatively fast, the road hasn’t been paved with quick successes and PGA glory.

But last weekend, White made his first ever cut at a PGA event. He qualified for the Sanderson Farms Championship on Monday, then shot 68 on Thursday and 70 on Friday to solidify those first PGA Tour dollars.

After diligently regaining everything he lost, an errant tee shot probably doesn’t seem like much to overcome these days. One day at a time. One shot at a time. Hard work and improvement.

Big golf clap for Brett White.