Happy Holidays!
We are about to head into what has to be the least productive work week in the United States, so buckle up and enjoy.
I am not sure what Tom Brady is going to do next year - he’s still playing decent, but the team around him is not just bad it’s playing incredibly uninspired football. With his personal life in tatters, he either will want to retire and try and be there for his kids, or … he’s going to go somewhere new. There’s plenty of time to project where that might be, but this is as good as any to show this photo, which got a lot of traction last year. These guys are the same ages in these photos:
That’s weird, right? I mean, Tom looks young for his age because he’s a maniac with fitness and diet, but Blanda doesn’t look like any 43 year old I know. Perhaps if I knew a few more coal miners or stevedores, that might be different. The world has changed.
As I prepare for my trip to Ireland this coming summer, I have gotten onto a chat group with fellow golf sickos who live in Ireland. One of them happens to be an insanely talented photographer named Mike Hyde of Carefree Golf Photography - he shared these recent winter photos of Royal County Down and they just blow my mind:
I think I’m happy to be playing it in what should at least be warmer weather than this, but god, that’s just beautiful stuff.
Sticking with golf, we have a little debate in our Slack group about if you could choose either 1) Always hitting a 300-yard drive off the tee or 2) one-putting every green … which would you choose? To me, the answer is simple - but it also gets at what you care about. Hitting a bomb every time would indisputably be more FUN, and if that’s your sole metric, you can stop right there. But one-putting EVERY green? I average about 34 putts per round (I think - I don’t really keep track) and am often worse than that. Is there ANYTHING else I could do that would potentially reduce every score of mine by 16 strokes? There is not. I’d literally be a scratch golfer if I could do that, maybe better. If I hit a bomb off the tee, I’d for sure improve my scores, but by 16 strokes? No chance, no way.
I’ve posted some of his work here before, but I was gifted a years subscription to Joe Posnanski’s substack (thanks buddy) and his recent post on one my all-time favorite players is so good. You might not be able to see all of it, but if you can, please enjoy.
Here’s the kind of thing I think about. If you watch any pro sports on TV, you’ve probably seen Kevin Hart doing his DraftKings commercials. What gets me every time is that there’s no world in which THIS is actually Kevin Hart’s grandma sofa or house:
Even this one - look, it’s a nice looking pool and such, but you know what Hart is worth, right? This is … a bit pedestrian for a guy with his bank account:
I can hear the pitches about why this is the case - make this something for “every man” even if Hart isn’t that guy anymore. Show Hart in one of his mansions and maybe folks can’t relate and think only truly wealthy people should be betting recklessly on their phones. (This is, perhaps, true.)
On the other side of things, Jamie Foxx is promoting BetMGM and his commercial is … quite different. He’s in a massive MGM suite filled with gorgeous people, calling one celebrity after another trying to get a betting tip.
I don’t know why these two marketing campaigns are so dramatically different for essentially the same product, but this is the stuff I think about while sitting on my butt watching football.
Happy Festivus, everybody!
Something on Brady ... he is crushing everyone else in quickest to get rid of the football and my theory is he can't take hits anymore (not that I blame him, as we're roughly the same age). I think this is hampering their offense. I could be wrong, though. Just a thought.