The Five For June 29, 2019

Welcome to the debut of "The Five" Presented by Bobproof. Let’s get right to it.  

1. Melissa Hayden – my friend and colleague who has a rare genetic condition and has endured 12 brain surgeries and three spinal fusions – had an absolutely epic honeymoon. Melissa and Matt recently returned from cruising and traveling through Alaska.

They watched wales, hugged sled dogs, walked to waterfalls, savored the beauty of glaciers, rode a train with glass ceilings and enjoyed delicious food (which included reindeer hotdogs and some of Alaska’s famous salmon and halibut).

The highlight of the non-cruise portion was Denali National Park. Melissa wrote this on her Facebook page: “There are not enough words to describe the beauty in this park. It needs to be on everyone’s bucket list ASAP! We left Denali with tired feet, fresh air in our lungs, and a big bite from the travel bug. There is so much beauty to be found in this crazy world.”

Soon after she returned home, Melissa – being Melissa -- traveled from Green Bay to Chicago to spend a day with Ingrid and her family at Lurie Children’s Hospital. Melissa and Ingrid are two of only 30 people in the world with the same genetic condition and it was the first time in Melissa’s life that she was in the same room with one of them. Melissa and her mom played with Ingrid, talked with the family and then they capped the day off with deep dish pizza.

2. Wow, I have some amazing and talented colleagues (past and present). I worked for several years with Amanda ReCupido at Public Communications Inc. and she wrote this hysterical version of how the movie “When Harry Met Sally” might have played out in 2019. Her story, "Woke Harry Met Sally" was published by McSweeney’s and even was mentioned in the Sunday Long Read, a weekly compilation of the week's best journalism. One of Amanda's best lines from the piece. “A woman seated nearby orders whatever she damn pleases without worrying what anyone else thinks.”

Earlier this week, she also penned "Famous Writing Advice Updated for the Social Media Age." My five favorite lines:

·         “Substitute a GIF every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

·        “Write drunk, edit while only vaping.”

·        “Immature poets imitate; mature poets go to law school.”

·        “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold content vertical inside you.”

·        “Write what you Google.”

For more from Amanda, she is active (and funny) on Twitter and also the co-author with her husband Matt of the children's book Anthony Rizzo Is A Good Italian Boy 

You can be sure this will be the only time I will ever recommend a book having to do with the team that plays south of Miller Park.

3. Sunday’s Prince Fielder Bobblehead Day at Miller Park gives me a perfect opportunity to tell my Prince Fielder story.

I think it was the spring of 2000 and I was writing for the now defunct Boca Raton News. Pope John Paul II (PJP II), one of the schools we covered, had an away game against Prince and Florida Air Academy. It was a long ride to Melbourne, about 120 miles, but seeing The Prince in person was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I really wanted to get there for batting practice. Even though he was still in high school, Prince was something of a legend already. At age 12, he blasted an upper-deck home run at Tiger Stadium. Unfortunately, I was working on another story so I only was able to arrive a few minutes before the first pitch.

I have one dominant memory of the game. PJP II had an excellent, young pitcher who threw pretty hard. He was only a sophomore but a really big kid and I mean he looked like a shrimp compared to The Prince, who even then had to weigh at more than 250 pounds. His fastball caught way too much of the plate, and Prince hit a line-drive to center. This was anything but your average single, though. It was, to this day, partly due to an aluminum bat but mostly due to The Prince, the hardest hit ball I have ever seen live.

To my delight, Prince was drafted by my Milwaukee Brewers and would go on to have a stellar MLB career, which was cut short at age 32 by injury. But not before he belted 312 career home runs (the same number as his father) and helped the Brewers reach the postseason for the first time in more than a quarter century.

4. I have really enjoyed helping coach Liam’s baseball team this season. In Northbrook, for some reason, the teams are not given names like Brewers, Tigers, or Pirates. Instead, the name of the team is the name of the sponsor.

That means Liam has been wearing, with pride, the jersey for Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa. Rolls off the tongue, huh? And, of course, throw the records out the window when Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa faces rivals such as North Shore Pool & Spa or the good folks from AA Service Company.

5. I had some fun with the explosion in the word curate in my last blog post. For those looking for
a more scholarly, sophisticated, pretentious and far less enjoyable article (hopefully) on the topic, well, give three cheers for The New Republic. The article covers curate from every angle, dives into “prestige appropriation,” and features this paragraph: “In bestowing great importance to just picking stuff, curation in its contemporary, ecumenical sense reinforces many of the personal values promoted by neoliberalism: atomized individualism, the thrall of personalization, aestheticized control, and, of course, consumption-as-authenticity."

If you understand anything in that sentence after the words “just picking stuff,” please let this public school educated blogger know.

Blogger's Note: This inaugural edition of "The Five" Presented by Bobproof was proudly curated by Bobproof along with a talented team of curatorial consultants.