ISSUE #83 - August 30th, 2019

ONE

BOOKS - What if I told you there is a sequel to The Social Network movie in book form that follows the supposed bad guys in the movie (the Winklevoss Twins) after the events of the film, and that within the first 40 pages, you'd realize that Mark Zuckerberg was/is the true villain of the Facebook story and did, in fact, completely rip off the twins.  If you didn't know, the Social Network movie was actually based on Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires, and now Mezrich is back with a follow-up of sorts called Bitcoin Billionaires, which picks up where the film left off and then follows the Winklevii (as Zuckerberg calls them in the movie) on their road to potential redemption and respect. Halfway through so far and I can't believe how quickly my opinion of them/Zuck has shifted and flipped. Side note: You might find yourself wanting to delete Facebook on about page 15.

TWO

 NOSTALGIA - Back when I was a writer for Muscle & Fitness in Los Angeles I used to find myself at Gold's Gym in Venice fairly often for stories and photo shoots. On any given day you'd see Arnold or Lou Ferrigno or even The Rock if he was in town. Yesterday, two legends happened to be there and took an amazing photo that was the most popular post I shared this week.  Who were the two legends? Ivan Drago and Apollo Creed themselves (Dolph Lundgren and Carl Weathers)...both looking awesome. I captioned the photo, "If Rocky listened to Duke and threw in the damn towel." If you know, you know. Here's the photo and it definitely made my day.

THREE

HEALTH - I have to admit that I've been wrong about something for a long time. I like to think of myself as well-informed on most health and fitness and nutrition topics, but on the issue of artificial sweeteners it appears I've been wrong and have likely quoted some bad advice to people over the years.  The issue at hand is whether artificial sweeteners will make you fat. It seems that I read some flawed science years ago about how fake sugar can still flood your body with insulin, leading to weight gain, even though you're not actually consuming simple carbs from sugar. It made sense to me and I've seen that theory written about in dozens of places and even by MDs. Then I watched this video by Layne Norton and I think I was wrong. He deconstructs why in about 3 minutes. (Keep in mind, this doesn't mean fake sugar is good for you, or doesn't have other negative side effects on your teeth or whatever, but it likely doesn't cause fat).

FOUR

FOOTBALL - You know what's back this weekend? College football. You know what's awesome? College football. You know who I think the most exciting college football player of all time is? Reggie Bush.  Yeah, the answer surprised me too. I was recently talking to a few buddies about who we thought was the most exciting ever and I rattled off Bo Jackson and Barry Sanders and Rocket Ismail and Tebow and Cam and Randy Moss and some others across a few decades but the more I came back to it, I think play-for-play, hype-for-hype, nobody delivered more often and more spectacularly than Reggie Bush. Every time he touched the ball, and this is no exaggeration, he could score. I found this awesome highlight footage from ESPN of just sideline shots of some of his greatest plays. Definitely worth the watch. The guy could fly. And here's a longer highlight package with some great wide angles.

FIVE

AN EXCELLENT QUOTE ABOUT COACHING:

"A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you've always known you could be.”   – Tom Landry

Thanks for reading! - Jon  Questions? Ideas? Comments? E-mail me (reply to this e-mail) or hit me on Twitter HERE.   And don't forget to FORWARD THE FF5 to a friend! *  *(If you do, I'll send you an awesome "Mean" Joe Green bookmark)