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Moon Houses, Mike Leach's Fake Call Sheet, and Michelangelo's 'Secret Room'

Author

Ed Festa
November 03, 2023

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

MOON: NASA wants to build houses on the moon with 3-D printers. MOON Houses! In its latest 'moonshot' project, NASA wants to blast a 3-D printer to the moon and use lunar materials to build houses. Transporting materials from earth is too expensive (each additional kilogram carried on rockets costs $1M), so the space agency wants to 'use-what's-up-there' to build, and they've set 2040 as their target for not just the first house, but the first subdivision. If that timeline seems nuts, this humble newsletter writer agrees, but per seven NASA scientists interviewed by the New York Times, the goal's entirely possible. And businesses are lining up: GM's now developing car batteries for lunar rovers, and Nokia 'aims to deliver 4G to the moon by 2024.' Starbucks? Not mentioned.

MICKEY MANTLE: You can now own shares in Mickey Mantle's boyhood home for $7. Scooped up by a collectibles company, Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce, OK is now available for fractional ownership with shares starting at $7 (the house's total valuation is $329K). Rally, the company behind the gambit, wants to make the site a destination 'like Graceland or in parts of Motown, where... people will visit given the opportunity.' 

ART: Are 'secret room' drawings under the Medici Chapel Michelangelo's? The Medici Chapel in Florence, home to some of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures, will open a basement room to the public this month where drawings looking a lot like the master's work adorn the walls. The room's discovery was an accident - in 1975, the Medici Chapel team was looking for a new exit for tourists when they found a trapdoor under a wardrobe and steps to this room. The theory goes that Michelangelo hid there in 1530 when the Medici returned to power (he'd supported their ouster years earlier and the establishment of a Republic). Was he there? And did he doodle on the walls? Scholars are divided, but now the public gets to weigh in.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: In 1999, Mike Leach created a fake call sheet for Texas to find in the Red River Rivalry. While the Michigan sign-stealing 'scandal' rages, this video has made the rounds in college football circles. Classic Mike Leach:

SOCCER: Meet Jude Bellingham, Real Madrid's best player at age 20 and hailed as soccer's 'Lebron James'. Retiring numbers is an American sports tradition, but Birmingham City, the first professional club of English superstar Jude Bellingham, hung Bellingham's no. 22 in the rafters after only one season. At age 16. Four years later, Bellingham now stars on the sport's biggest stage with Real Madrid, scoring 13 goals in his first 13 games, including two this past weekend against hated rival Barcelona. The WSJ profile above paints a portrait of an athlete with Lebron-level physical gifts and Jeter-like confidence - fascinating read about maybe the most promising English player in history.

Take the Day Off 🥪

It's National Sandwich Day. Shout out to Bill's Sandwich Palace, our favorite local spot in Nashville, where the portions could satisfy horses and everything tastes superb.

With every newsletter we'll run a featured article on topics ranging from kids, dogs, news, sports, or anything in between. We aim to amuse - put another way, if Mark Twain were alive today we'd desperately try to hire him. Thanks for reading and without further delay...  

Today's Article: Yankee Stadium Ghosts

I'm not sure how my Dad managed it but my nephew (his grandson), a proud North Carolina Tar Heel and Raleigh, NC resident, is a Yankees fan.

An outcome that implausible deserves some backstory, the full details of which I confess I don't know, but I have borne witness to many gifts showered upon said impressionable soul + thundering sermons about 'the most successful team in the history of pro sports.'

'27 world championships. No one else is even close,' my Dad has repeated for the more than decade of my nephew's life (and my entire life).

But how far can sermonizing really go? Backroom bribery's been rumored, but if a deal's been cut - a sort of devil-went-down-to-Raleigh arrangement - neither side's copped to it. Yet here we are, with a kid strutting through his North Carolina elementary school halls with pinstripes and a number 2 (Jeter, of course) on his back - we'll get to how he came to possess that jersey shortly.

Mind you, I’m not bothered by this. My Dad went to work on me in the cradle and despite leaving the Northeast when I was 3 (I'm 43 now), the Yankees are still my American League team. If shenanigans have gone down, I'm fine to look the other way, ends justifying means and all.

Still, as parents know, holding loyalty’s tough as kids age and competing influences vy for their attention. I started to notice my Dad looking suspiciously at my brother-in-law's SF Giants hat, no doubt wondering what's discussed when he's not there to police the conversation, and the Southeast remains strong Braves country. Not to mention Tar Heel basketball's stranglehold in those parts.

But the 'break-glass-in-case-of-emergency' moment may have been when my Dad failed to onboard my nephew to the New York Giants bandwagon. He's a Niners fan, and rightly so having been born in San Francisco. But the spurning stung.

Something had to be done, so a desperate plan was hatched.

I was recruited to play a role. The setup was 'a birthday trip to New York' packed with activities, a perfect smokescreen, where I joined as a surprise for the Red Sox / Yankees game at Yankee Stadium.

There my nephew was sitting in his hotel lobby, beaming in his Yankee t-shirt.

Not sure if this lock-loyalty-for-life Hail Mary would work, my Dad was nervous. But it seemed we were off to a good start, and we all packed into a car and headed to the stadium.

It was hot that day my friends, and we sat in the sun in the upper deck on the first base side. I got my first beer (the first of many, for hydration purposes) and settled in. My Dad elbowed into a seat next to my nephew and assumed the role of host / tour guide, pointing out iconic parts like the facade, monument park, and the '27 world championship banners.'

But we needed more than just pretty sights to close this deal - the Yankees needed to deliver, and if we were especially lucky, the ghosts of legends past would work their charms. As Derek Jeter famously put it, 'I've always said there are ghosts in Yankee Stadium because it seems like just strange things happen all the time.'

Those ghosts are fickle though as Yankee fans know - they don't come on command (2004 ALCS...?) and it seemed a bit much to wish for something special. A win would do just fine.

And to that end, the Yankees jumped out to a 3 run lead, setting a nice tone. The Red Sox came back with 2 in the top of the 3rd to pull within a run, but in the bottom of the 4th, the Yankees batted around, and at the end of 4, the score was 11-2 Yankees. Beer number 2 was ordered.

A win almost certainly secure, my Dad turned to persuasion tactic number 2 and took my nephew shopping. They returned fifteen minutes later, one of them sporting a new Derek Jeter jersey.

We ate peanuts, we laughed, we may've even ordered ice cream (anything to help the full court press charm offensive).

But at this point, I'm convinced the ghosts huddled and conducted their own assessment of our progress. Maybe they knew something we didn't (my nephew was humoring us? and our efforts were falling short?). Because then, a 'strange thing' happened. As mentioned, we were in the upper deck on the first base side, safely out of foul ball range to my eyes, until a ball off the bat of Matt Carpenter (I think) shot into the air and began its high arc in our direction. It kept arcing our way, propelled by a gale of wind from perhaps the ghost of Mickey Mantle himself, before coming down a few seats away in the row behind us. Dozens of hands pawed at it, rolling it toward us before my sister, my nephew's Mom, snagged it faster than a kid grabbing a candy bar. She hot potato'ed it over to my nephew, who then held it up for the section to admire - they applauded, and I sat dumbstruck.

We spent the rest of the game high on the excitement and talking through my nephew's plans to show off the ball back home. Winning the World Series couldn't have delivered a better mood, and my Dad sat smugly satisfied for the remaining innings.

It's been more than a year since that upper deck miracle, and I haven't confirmed that my nephew's still a Yankee fan because maybe I'm a little smug too - how could it be any other way? Competing loyalties will come and go, but through them all, my nephew can always remember what happened when he donned pinstripes at Yankee Stadium. A miracle, and a Red Sox loss by double digits (final score: 13-2).

Well done, ghosts. We await your encore (World Series 2024?). Actually forget I asked - we defer. Fielder's choice for the next miracle.

More Good Stuff

Lastly, a Minute of Comedy

Norm Macdonald on Bill Cosby.