Ted Lasso Bows Out, Prison vs. Harvard Rematch, and Top Gun: Maverick's Still Going (in Japan)

Welcome to the Good Times, your stop for great writing, amusements, and fascinating stuff from the last few days (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. So kick back and enjoy.

The Good Times Roundup

ENTERTAINMENT: Top Gun: Maverick celebrates 1 year of theatrical release in Japan. Top Gun: Maverick is now the top grossing movie ever in Japan and it's still in theaters more than a year after its release. The global box office total's now just under $1.5B, all without China. Tom Cruise may've indeed saved Hollywood's ass.

EDUCATION: Prison vs. Harvard: the debate rematch. In 2015, the Harvard College Debating Union debated Bard Prison Initiative students and famously lost. Bard went on to defeat Brown and Duke as well and amassed a 12-4 record overall, owing their success to 'obsessive preparation, teamwork and more life experience than most of their opponents.' Crazy note: the Bard team never had internet access (and still doesn't). All research was done with books, printouts, and discussion with friends and family. Harvard wanted a rematch, and a couple months ago they got it - this time they bested the Bard team, 2-1 in the judges vote. Rubber match here we come (go Bard!).

CANDY: Americans caught trying to smuggle fruit rollups into Israel. Fruit roll-ups have flown off the shelves in Israel due to a Tik-Tok craze, driving prices up ~16x what they cost in the US and creating a market for 'smugglers.' Israeli customs recently caught two couples with 650 lbs in suitcases. Did customs seize the stash? Unclear.

SPORTS: Ronald Acuña goes from 1st to 3rd on a walk. Ronald Acuña caught the Dodgers napping on a routine walk. Worth the 30 seconds:

TECH / AI: New Go-playing trick defeats advanced Go AI. There's a blind spot in all that intelligence. Sorta the equivalent of an AI baseball manager falling for the hidden ball trick, an advanced Go AI fell repeatedly for a tactic that human amateurs know to dodge, resulting in repeated losses. The implications for AI in general could be far-reaching: gaps in training have small consequences in Go, but perhaps not-so-much for things like self-driving cars or cancer treatments. Human relevance is here for a bit longer it appears.

Take the Day Off 🦆

It’s National Donald Duck Day. What a legend:

• Winner of an Academy Award (Best Short Film 1943)

• Inspiration for the Oregon Ducks original mascot (1947)

• Co-host of the 1958 Oscars

• Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2004)

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: Friends on Screen, The Ted Lasso Finale

Sometimes messes are so fun you just ignore the disarray. Swept up, you surrender to the ride. 'Love, Actually,' the Golden State Warriors (circa 2016), and the Savannah Bananas all come to mind. And now the Ted Lasso series finale.

I think we all knew what was coming after episode 11's 'cliffhanger.' Ted's Mom challenged him to go home and what was good guy Ted gonna do - he quit immediately, and we cheered him on.

There were plenty of absurd moments too - the diamond dogs howled, Rupert became a full-on cartoon character, and Beard wore a thong (coulda done without that). But those were the few duds in the fireworks finale.

Ted Lasso premiered in August 2020 (a super time for everyone) to basically no hype. Apple greenlit it based on the most inauspicious source material, a 2013 NBC commercial, but then friends and family started raving, and one even gushed that it was the second coming of 'Friday Night Lights.' I once hung a 'Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose' plaque in my bathroom (before I got married) so that was enough for me.

One episode led to another, which eventually led to all of season 1. My wife and I watched in our rental apartment in Charlotte, our makeshift home after we left LA in Covid's early days, and the show delivered much-needed breaks from reality.

Watching a relentless American optimist win over a bunch of cynics, ourselves included, was a joy. It was never perfect but we didn't care, and critics didn't either (20 emmy nominations for season 1 and a 92% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes). Perfect wasn't the point, so when season 2 veered into seriousness and experimentation (looking at you 'Beard After Hours') it almost lost me, but thankfully season 3 was a bonanza of fun.

Even so, lots of super serious types just can't stand all the fun we're having. Right on cue, they’ve emerged to smug-up everything again now that the pandemic's behind us ('Good Riddance,' says The Guardian, ‘Can We All Finally Admit ‘Ted Lasso’ is a Terrible Show’ says The Federalist).

These people probably hate rainbows and apple pie and they'd love to explain why you should too (climate change, fructose). Ignore them. If you could measure joy-per-viewer, Ted Lasso would lap the competition, and it’s more than a little nuts that TV execs don't seem to care. This stuck out recently - taken from a big explainer in Vulture about how entertainment's gone off the rails (with both business and programming strategies):

Making stuff audiences love? Someone else's job.

So odd. If Ted Lasso had premiered 20 years ago I wonder if it would've made a dent, but nowadays it’s a purple unicorn. And now the hunt begins for its second coming. Fingers crossed the spinoff rumors have legs.

More Good Stuff

• The shoes that defined sneaker culture

• Caught on camera: world's only all-white albino panda

• Georgia officials ask people to stop taking naked driver's license photos

• Why so many people are afraid of clowns

• Google used dogs to develop robot agility course

• Why layouts at grocery stores change so often

Lastly, a Good Tune