Finkel's Fast Five - Issue #6

March 9th, 2018

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets the "ultimate comedian's revenge" and goes to Toby's office at Pendant Publishing to heckle her after she heckles him at a show? This incredible find by Bryan Curtis on Twitter is the writer's version of this, where an author writes basically an 'Unacknowledgements' section, calling out the people who were no help writing his book. This guy opens with "I would like to point out the two following unpleasant individuals..." Then politely rips them. It's tremendous.

Do you know what "tech neck" is? Don't worry, you already have it. It's the horrendous, slumped shoulders, hanging-head posture everyone has from being on their phones too much. A friend of mine who writes for The New York Post, Kirsten Fleming, wrote a story on the new generation of Millennial hunchbacks and how they're coping with real issues of phone-caused neck and back pain. But have no fear, the article offers 5 Easy Stretches you can do during the day to reverse your transformation into Larry King.   I'm doing this full-body, heavy workout once a week now and it's grueling and awesome and can be scaled for any strength or exercise level. It's from my old Muscle & Fitness magazine pal, Doc Jim Stoppani, and it's a twist on the classic 5x5 workout. He calls it 5x5 +1, and it's a brutal twist because it throws a 1 rep heavy lift in the middle of the faster sets. This is perfect if you can't train often or want to make sure at least once a week you hit everything hard. And that concludes our meathead moment.

Want to explode little kid's minds at a birthday party that serves cupcakes? I did this at a friend's house recently. Usually, watching kids eat cupcakes is a frosting-smearing, face-wrecking, sugar-coated disaster. Cupcakes are inherently poorly designed, especially for little hands and little mouths. Next time you're watching kids struggle, tell them that you're going to teach them to make a cupcake sandwich. How? It's easy. Simply twist off the bottom of the cupcake and place it on top of the frosting. Done. Now you have two pieces of cake to hold on to. Don't forget to take a bow as they stare at you in amazement. Trust me.   I'm a sucker for good features about space travel and rockets and visiting the moon and this incredibly awesome National Geographic article talks with astronauts about the experience of seeing their home planet from the cosmos. 555 humans in the history of history have been to outer space and the photos and the space travelers stories are great. Astronaut Samantha Christoforetti put it this way, "You've got this planet beneath you, and a lot of what you see, especially during the day, does not necessarily point to humans... On a geologic timescale, it's almost like we are this flimsy presence..."  Have a great weekend and whatever you do, don't be a flimsy presence!  You can read previous FF5 Issues HERE  - Jon