College Football, Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, and the UK's Caterpillar Cake War

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 and affordable housing charities when we start monetizing (not to worry though, this will remain a free newsletter). So kick back and enjoy.

The Good Times Roundup

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: College football fans couldn't help but chuckle last weekend when the PAC-12, the zombie conference whose members bolted for better TV money (in theory!), drew an enormous TV audience thanks to Coach Prime's Colorado Buffaloes and went 13-0. Two questions:

• The rich TV contracts these schools covet have historically been paid by cable networks, but cable TV’s famously imploding. So will the new buyers (Apple, Amazon, etc.), with less competition in the bidding process, pay as much or more?

• Fans also seem to hate conference realignment (including yours truly), so will audiences shrink after the dust settles? Smaller audiences mean less TV 💰.

If the answers are no and yes to the above, expect books to be written about how shortsightedness undid the 2nd most popular sport in America.

NAPS: Science may be confirming what Spaniards have known forever: naps are good. Benefits include boosted cognitive performance in the short-term + slower loss of brain volume and possibly better heart health. Caveats abound for all of this, but I'd really hate for that to get in the way of my favored sweeping conclusion (read: I should nap more).

.AI DOMAINS: Anguilla pockets unexpected millions from selling .ai domains. Startups keen to ride the AI wave have slapped .ai on their URLs, and the people of Anguilla are thankful. For every new 2-yr .ai registration, Anguilla gets $140, and this year the tiny island expects to collect more than 4X what it did last year (~$30M total, equal to ~10% of the country's GDP). It's a boon for the tourist destination post-COVID, and the payoffs should continue well into 2024.

MOVIES: 'Ferrari,' the Enzo Ferrari biopic from Michael Mann, bowed last week at the Venice Film Festival. If Italy + beautiful cars are your thing, enjoy:

WEATHER: Join the millions stunned to learn that 30% chance of rain doesn’t mean it’s 30% likely it’ll rain - no, no dear reader, it’s the result of an equation only meteorologists seem to know called ‘Probability of Precipitation.’ To take an example, we could have guaranteed rain coming (100% probability) but only for 30% of your town - hence a '30% chance of rain.’ So if you’re in the unlucky side of town you’re getting rained on, guaranteed. Weather persons, if you'd made this clear up front, we'd blame you far less for being wrong seemingly all the time.

AMERICANS ABROAD: Humor writer Harrison Scott Key.

Take the Day Off 🐕

It's National Dog Walker Appreciation Day. Today's the day to salute your best friend's best friend.

Today we're thrilled to welcome our first guest writer, Catherine Sproul. Catherine's on a mission to tell stories about trivial disputes that escalate to hilarious heights - she's calling the series 'Petty Beefs' and we couldn't be happier to publish her first volume here. So without further delay... 

Petty Beefs, Vol.1: The Caterpillar Cake War

In 1990, Marks and Spencer revealed its newest birthday cake offering: Colin the Caterpillar. This buttercream-filled, chocolate-encrusted sponge cake soon became the rage for children’s birthdays on the rainy isle. He is so popular that, on his 30^th birthday in 2020, M&S declared August 26^th to be National Colin the Caterpillar Day.

He has a girlfriend, Connie, who is distinguished by a pink bow. His presence has graced us through limited-edition cakes in addition to the OG flavor (unchanged since its launch), including Colin the Groom and Connie the Bride wedding cakes, Count Colin cakes and maggot gummies for Halloween, and Coffee Morning Colin to support cancer research.

Want to bring Colin from chrysalis to life at home? Fear not – there are also Colin the Caterpillar Cake Jars for home baking. Jonesing for a snack but not the whole experience? Fear not again – you can purchase his white chocolate face as a single or in bags of minis. Colin was even rumored to make an appearance in the birthday parties at 10 Downing Street that thumbed their noses at the then-imposed COVID lockdowns.

Needless to say, M&S and the entirety of England seems to be obsessed with this freaking caterpillar.

Over the years, such an obsession has not gone without copycats. Morrison’s introduced the world to Morris the Caterpillar. Charlie the Caterpillar leapt into action at Co-Op. Cecil the Caterpillar waved from Waitrose. Clyde the Caterpillar slid in from under Asda. Wiggles the Caterpillar delighted us at Sainsbury's. Clive the Caterpillar showed up at One Stop. Curly the Caterpillar couldn’t be missed at Tesco with his gluten-free cousin Carl (who lives with his gluten-free family of Frieda the Caterpillar from Asda and Eric the Caterpillar from Sainsbury’s).

And, for the purposes of today, a bloke named Cuthbert the Caterpillar crawled out of Aldi.

M&S had seen enough. 9 copycats, fine. But 10? How dare you. M&S couldn’t allow for such blatant disregard of the sacred tradition they had cultivated over three decades. In early 2021, they filed a lawsuit against Aldi for Cuthbert, a cake that they deemed was dangerously close in aesthetic to their cherished Colin while significantly undercutting Colin in price and quality. They took the claim to the high courts in order “to protect Colin, Connie, and our reputation for freshness, quality, innovation and value.”

Cuthbert: a coattails riding son of a bitch. Heaven forbid a substandard cake is tasted by a 6 year old at a birthday party, his mother devastated that a seemingly casual shopping trip to Aldi ended in a core memory of disappointment.

Britons Take Sides as the Legal Battle Begins

The suit dragged out over 8 months. During that time, the beef went from simply amusing to downright fantastic. Thousands of concerned citizens took sides. Do you stick with the original Colin? Does he have the right to claim his place as the true caterpillar cake? Or is Colin just being a bully and Cuthbert needs to be freed from the shackles of the caterpillar cake caste system? Who is Colin to judge a caterpillar’s right to live harassment-free? Who is Cuthbert to unabashedly steal a 30-year-old and insanely niche birthday cake tradition?

After the initial filing of the suit, Aldi took to Twitter. They launched the hashtag #FreeCuthbert and looked to the community for support. Their first tweet received 20,000 likes and sparked intense arguments. On the Cuthbert side, supporters scoffed: “What next? Maybe Marks and Spencer will claim they copied milk.” On the Colin side, the integrity of innovation was on the table. “We don't accept this type of replica in fashion or perfume or sportswear or any other industry, blatant copying piggybacking on others’ investment and creativity.”

Fueled and encouraged by the community response, Aldi proceeded to go straight savage on Twitter.

Aldi digs into the anti-bullying rhetoric👆. And as the suit evolves, fears of jailing Cuthbert mounted👇.

This particular tweet 👇 is giving “this amateur sketch” from the leprechaun news story of the early 2000s.

Papa’s Fish and Chips on Cleethorpes Pier (previously known for having created the World’s Largest Pig in a Blanket) launched a limited-edition deep-fried Colin in support of Cuthbert and to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Their hashtag, #SnitchesGetBattered, bragged of the battering they were delivering to Colin and his fascist regime.

In Scotland, a chip shop followed suit and also sold battered Colin the Caterpillar minis. The owner said, “It’s a wee bit silly but hopefully they’ll just cancel it and let (Aldi) do their thing.”

In a delicious moment of irony in early 2022, M&S was sued by Lacoste for – you got it – copycatting. Aldi offered their team of lawyers to help on the case.

Cuthbert Comes Home

After months of discussion, the two companies settled for an undisclosed amount. They decided that England was ready for a world where Colins and Cuthberts could live side by side. After the settlement, M&S came out to say: “The objective of the claim was to protect the IP [intellectual property] in our Colin the Caterpillar cake and we are very pleased with the outcome.” Meanwhile, Aldi stuck with their Free Cuthbert stance: “Cuthbert is free and looking forward to seeing all his fans again very soon.”

It is unclear what exactly changed, but to be honest I’m just happy that Cuthbert Twitter can live on.

Since the settlement, Aldi has continued their warfare against Colin’s mothership. This has included taking out of home advertisements to the front of M&S stores…

Source: The Guardian

…to throwing an all-caterpillar birthday party this past April…

… to sponsoring a Cuthbert Caterpillar running the London Marathon… Aldi Stores on Twitter: "Watching the marathon tomorrow?" 

… to digging them on Coronation Colin…

… to poking the beast to demonstrate how ridiculous a caterpillar fight can get.

For those of us in the United States, let us be happy that we never experienced such a war on our turf, seeing that no one ever wanted to copy the analogous Carvel offerings of the 1970s: Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss (though we did take it one step in that direction when Cookie O’Puss was introduced for St. Patrick's Day in the ‘80s).

Until then… there’s always only one Cuthbert.

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Lastly, a minute of comedy

When Seinfeld couldn’t get through a scene with Bryan Cranston without cracking.