Big Foot & Black Bears, Tracy Chapman & the Grammys, and Two Cheers for the Barbie Meltdown

Welcome to the Good Times. We all need a break, and we’d love to be yours in your regular news diet. Count on us for great reads, amusements, and fascinating stuff from the last week or so (in 5 mins or less).

Yes, we're doing this to amuse America (and ourselves), but we’ll also donate 10% of revenue to education charities when we start monetizing (not to worry though, this will remain a free newsletter). So kick back and enjoy.

The Good Times Roundup

MEDIA: ESPN, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery form joint venture to stream sports. It's like deja vu all over again. In 2006, two old media titans, Fox and NBCU, formed a JV to combat piracy and capture audience (and dollars) from online video. It became Hulu, and now 18 years later, it appears the same playbook's being deployed. The streaming world's vastly more complex now, but the goal's the same: capture audience, and grab as much money as you can for the content you have. This JV will hasten cable’s demise, but the hope's new revenues will eventually exceed those lost, and audiences will stay loyal to this new venture for a while. Looming are the richest companies on the planet (Apple, Amazon, Google) ready to outbid old media for live sports when their rights expire, which makes this in effect a race against the clock. Stay tuned - expected launch this Fall.

BIG FOOT: Big Foot sightings closely correlated with black bears (except in Florida). Big Foot sightings and black bear populations seem to go hand-in-hand, scientists have observed. Per a study in the Journal of Zoology, for every 5,000 black bears in a given state, one Big Foot sighting is reported (roughly speaking, on average, etc.). But one state really outdoes itself on the black-bear-to-Big-Foot ratio - in Florida, where only 4,000 black bears reside, 339 Big Foot sightings have been reported, making a sasquatch 423 times more likely to be spotted in the Sunshine state.

Curious… or totally on-brand? Leaning toward the latter. 

TRACY CHAPMAN: In her first public performance in 9 years, Tracy Chapman commanded the admiration of all at the Grammys:

MAC: The Apple Macintosh turns 40. It was January 24, 1984 when Steve Jobs presented the first Mac on stage in Cupertino. Ever the showman, Jobs had Macintosh 'introduce itself' with a computerized voice and run a sizzle reel of graphics while the Chariots of Fire theme song played overhead. The audience went nuts. 'It was the first popular personal computer to have a mouse-driven, menu-oriented user interface rather than a simple command line' as the Verge put it, setting personal computing down its path to world domination. The iPhone is Apple's flagship product now, but desktop computing's still relevant: 'We run Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, on Mac,' noted Greg Joswiak, Apple SVP of Marketing. Indeed. Happy bday Mac.

SUPER BOWL: Not since Macaulay Culkin grilled Uncle Buck has a kid interviewed adults so well. Jeremiah Fennell, an 11-year-old from Las Vegas, made the rounds as an NFL Network reporter on the Super Bowl's opening night and showed he may be the second coming of Bob Costas:

Take the Day Off 🍕

It's National Pizza Day. Grab that 18' pie you've been craving. It’s Friday, you earned it. 

With every newsletter we'll run a featured article on topics ranging from kids, dogs, news, sports, or anything in between. Thanks for reading and without further delay...  

Today's Article: Critics and Crowds

The Oscar nominations were announced a couple weeks ago and as night follows day, an avalanche of opining followed about who got screwed the worst. Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, Barbie's Director and lead Actress respectively, failed to net nominations and Hollywood remains beside itself. 

Full disclosure, I never saw the movie, so I can't say whether either 'deserved' nominations, and I have no interest in pondering what-this-says-about-us as a society.

But at least this year’s fight's about something everyone saw (except me of course) - 'Barbie' grossed more at the box office ($1.4B) than the last ten Best Picture winners combined ($1.36B), and given movies’ existential battle to stay relevant, it seems like a miss to leave Gerwig and Robbie out. 

Movies hold a fraction of the cultural power they used to - that’s mostly the iPhone’s fault, but Hollywood's not blameless either. In the 90s and 2000s, 10 of the 20 Best Picture winners had equal or higher scores with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes than with critics. 

But in the 2010s, only one did. And so far in the 2020s, zero. 

Shift focus to arthouse fare and what happens? Viewers mostly say 'the hell with this.'

I normally ignore ‘controversies’ like this or roll my eyes in a self-satisfied act of smugness, but this time I'm giving two cheers for the Barbie freakout. Lord willing, masses and snobs can finally enjoy (and fight about) the same stuff again. 

Which brings me to Godzilla Minus One, the rare blockbuster that's crushing it with everyone (Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 98%, Critics Score: 98%). 

I went to a '4D experience' IMAX screening last weekend (note: the 4D was a mistake... I didn't seek that out) and caught the black and white reissue. 

Life as a toddler Dad doesn't offer many windows for movies so this was a treat. Side note: just before my daughter was born, a good friend and fellow movie-lover pulled me aside. He lowered his brow and with a seriousness comparable to the plastics guy in The Graduate said 'I'm going to give you advice no one else will: go to a movie right now. Just trust me, do it.' He patted me on the back.

And he was right. Catching the next screening of whatever whenever with a three-year-old's sort of impossible, but on this particular Saturday Dad had a hall pass, and that meant Godzilla.

The movie's set in Japan in 1947 as the country reconciles itself with defeat after WWII, and our main character's a veteran pilot racked with guilt from shirking his duty during the war - he faked engine troubles to avoid a kamikaze mission and shortly after that, froze in an early encounter with Godzilla. 

He's aimless and broken, but purpose enters his life when a young woman with an orphaned infant girl shows up at his door. They move in together, he gets a job, and he cares for both of them. 

But this is a monster movie, so his demons come roaring back in the form of a bigger and badder Godzilla who comes ashore in Tokyo. And seeking redemption, our aspiring hero steps forward to fight the menace. 

By that time, the beginning of Act 2, you're invested in the story. Our hero's flawed but you pull for his redemption for his family's sake (the little girl steals the show, by the way). And the action sequences that follow pay just the right amount of homage to the original - Godzilla's slow and hulking, but this time modern effects make the whole thing brilliant. 

I won't spoil anything, but Godzilla Minus One is a great story wrapped in a dazzling experience. The film's Director, Takashi Yamazaki, spent three years writing the script and it shows, and within a week of its US release, it became the highest-grossing Japanese live-action release ever in North America despite hardly any marketing. To keep up with demand, theater chains kept expanding its number of screens. 

And the cherry on top: the movie netted a Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination a couple weeks ago. 

Cheers to the Academy for recognizing another crowd-pleaser the critics can tolerate. But pro tip, skip the 4D experience. Stationary seats, you have my affection and all of my movie-going dollars going forward.

More Good Stuff

• The Chuck Norris school of Karate 1972

• What exactly is 'new car smell?'

• Steve Jobs presenting the 1st Mac in 1984

• Lane Kiffin’s 1st trip to Buc-ee's: ‘My life will never be the same’

• Airlines with the most legroom ranked

• Gary Sheffield's son, a chip off the ole block

• A 70s Hamm's ad where a guy drives around with a bear in a jeep

• Agassi / Roddick vs. McEnroe / Chang in pickleball

Lastly, a hilarious clip

Is the chicken local?