“My ex and I did have kind of different values in regard to lifestyle. He got pretty annoyed with me and one time he said, ‘You know, you think life is just one big fucking playground.’ I went, ‘Well, yeah, it is.’” —Betty Birrell (video)
Look, there’s journalism, and there’s this writer taking the time to interview some experts, compile a ton of research, write a few thousand words, in an attempt to answer the question: Is Tom Cruise any good at running? Also, appearing in this piece, the line “Cruise is the Meryl Streep of running.” (thanks, Ed and Alex)
I have linked to Mike Sowden’s Everything Is Amazing newsletter several times before, because it really is a joy to read. Mike did me the honor of interviewing me about creating, writing, and a bunch of other things a couple weeks ago, and he put the transcript of our conversation in last week’s newsletter.
I don’t know how big the Venn diagram overlap is between people who a) read this newsletter b) like baseball jerseys and c) like golden age hip hop, but if you are one of those people, you might like one of these jerseys
Sky Bridge 721, the largest suspension walkway in the world, is now open
Yeti, who, as I understand it does most of their business selling coolers and drinkware, is now trying their hand at publishing, with a beautiful book called Whitewater, featuring photography and writing by a bunch of extremely talented folks (like Kevin Fedarko and Forest Woodward), and it’s out now in a limited edition. If you’d like to buy a copy of the book and also donate to American Rivers and also enter to win a spot on a 17-day Grand Canyon river trip in October 2022, you can do that on the American Rivers website.
Yes please, bring back hand-illustrated restaurant menus
—Brendan