ISSUE #81 - August 16th, 2019

Before we begin, just a quick thank you to Sean for forwarding the FF5 to five friends last week. I'll get in touch for your address and your copy of David Epstein's new book, Range, will be in the mail ASAP. Appreciate everyone's support and I'll run another contest next week!

ONE

FITNESS - The last few years I've noticed whenever I throw a football or baseball my shoulder crunches and clicks like someone's blasting the intro to DMX's Ruff Ryder Anthem directly into my rotator cuff. It sounds cool, but it hurts like hell.  On Tuesday morning as I was leaving the pool bright and early, I ran into my friend and fellow FF5 reader, Terrance, who was lifting. I was rubbing my shoulder and when I told him about the crunching, he said he had the same thing. I figure there's no way we're alone here... So I did some research, and I found a 5-minute video with a stretch that, amazingly, eased the clicking within minutes. And over time, it's supposed to stop it entirely (if you catch any major trouble early). If you're nodding your head reading this, watch this video and let me know if it worked for you.

TWO

 NOSTALGIA - Big name match-ups are the lifeblood of entertainment. We want Ali vs. Frazier. We want Magic vs. Bird. We want King Kong vs. Godzilla. In football, true one-on-one match-ups involving all-time greats are hard to come by... But in the 90s, a few times a year, we got the best wide receiver ever, Jerry Rice, squaring up against the best corner ever, Deion Sanders.  With Hard Knocks and the NFL's preseason in full swing, I was thinking about Prime Time in his prime and those match-ups with Rice and of course, there's a great highlight reel of their match-ups on YouTube, including when they've talked to each other about their playing days. My favorite part might be at the beginning, when Deion, standing across the line of scrimmage as a Falcon, tries to shake hands with Rice who, cold as ever, completely ignores him. Check it out here.

THREE

PODCASTS - Every few months I surf around the podcast universe and sign up for new feeds that look interesting or that I've heard about one way or another. I recently came across Peter Kafka's podcast, Recode Media, and in particular his episode with Taylor Lorenz, a writer for The Atlantic.  Lorenz has been an expert on internet culture from the beginning and when it comes to things like the 'influencer industry', Twitter, social media trends and stuff like why the hell everyone under 18 is on something called TikTok, she's your woman. If you're feeling a little behind on the entire social media/internet world or are wondering where we're headed, give this one a listen.

FOUR

GOOD PEOPLE - My son's favorite basketball player is Isaiah Thomas, who hasn't played on the Celtics (our team) in two full seasons. He still wears his IT Celtics shirt once a week or so and almost every time he puts it on he asks me when Thomas is going to be back on the Celtics. I don't have the heart to tell him likely never, but Isaiah is his guy.   I posted a picture of him wearing the shirt with a short version of his love for IT and I tagged Isaiah because I thought he'd think it was cool or cute or something. The guy's got a million followers so I doubted he'd even see it. Then I checked my notifications on Twitter that afternoon and I had almost a thousand mentions (just a dozen or so more than normal - HA). Isaiah saw the tweet, retweeted it, and then said if we get to DC (he plays for the Wizards) he'd meet my son and give him a jersey. Now that's a good dude... and all I've heard since is how he's awesome with stuff like this and does it all the time. Very cool. He gets it and I have a lot of respect for that. Needless to say, my boy is pumped and we'll figure out the meet and greet when the season starts. Here's the picture, tweet and exchange - we're at 20k likes and counting.

FIVE

A QUOTE ABOUT PERSPECTIVE AND BEING KIND:

"When I was young, I admired people who were clever. Now that I am old, I admire people who are kind.”   – Martin Buber, Austrian Philosopher