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​Friday Inspiration 555

My friend Nick, who grew up in northwest Iowa, had an uncle who won two demolition derbies using the same car, and Nick would always say, "Not 'entered' two demolition derbies, WON two demolition derbies." I have not been to a demolition derby in decades, but I appreciated this stylish short film about a derby, and I have to say, I really didn't think the one guy was going to do as well as he did after he lost a wheel in the early round. (video)

I am grateful to call both these guys my friends, and was excited to listen to their conversation: Ed Roberson interviewed Fitz Cahall about his life, his creative career, and his new campaign, Save Public Lands—which you can help with, even if you don’t listen to the podcast: You can add your signature to this letter in about 15 seconds, and it’ll be delivered to Washington DC and statehouses tomorrow, September 26, Public Lands Day.

If you saw my news last week about my new book, So Far, So Good: 40 Dads Talk About Becoming Parents and How They Figured it Out, and you’d like to read a sample chapter, I put one online here. ALSO: I put together some images explaining some of the illustrations in the book, and those appear at the bottom of this newsletter, so if you’d like to see those, keep scrolling down.

Fun fact: I have drawn probably a couple hundred pie charts at this point, and since a pie chart necessitates a circle for the “pie” part, I just keep tracing the same circle that I have saved in my drawing app. I am not getting any better at drawing circles, as this delightfully frustrating website proved. Would you like to try to draw a perfect circle and find out how not-perfect it is? Not to brag, but I managed one that scored 91.0%. (via kottke)

Injinji is sponsoring this week’s newsletter, and I am still loving their Trail Midweight Crew, which I now own in three different colors, including the ones Courtney Dauwalter is wearing on the product page. Good enough for the GOAT’s toes, good enough for my toes. If you’d like to save 20% off your order of any Injinji socks use the code FWSEMI26 after you click this link to visit the website.

I believe I shared this viral video of this guy Oladimeji Ajegbile a few months back—it’s a collection of selfie clips of him riding a bike with his 2-year-old seated in front of him, narrating, and is probably one of the most adorable videos of all time. Well, it turns out Oladimeji, aka Dim, is a bit of a runner, and Zoë and I used that as an excuse to interview him on The Trailhead a couple weeks ago. I gotta say, he's a fascinating character.

Speaking of Zoë: She wrote one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time, a satirical piece titled “We’re Not Like Other Running Brands. We’re a Cool Running Brand.” Which contains gems like this bit:
“Other brands tell you to push your limits.
That’s because other brands still think running is about running.
We reject limits. We also reject joy, comfort, women’s specific sizing, legible typography, and product descriptions that tell you whether the shorts have pockets.”

I loved this piece Jonah at Blackbird Spyplane wrote about his previous life as a celebrity profile writer for Rolling Stone (and his current life writing profiles for the New York Times Magazine, when he’s not writing Blackbird Spyplane). The bit that really struck me, though, was when he says that when they write profiles of people who have a younger following, they get lots of comments asking where they can listen to the profile or watch a video of it.

I am not sure if anyone besides the companies involved loves corporate-sponsored stadium names? This essay, "Fifth Third Park Is A Terrible Stadium Name," captures our collective disdain (and/or indifference), and I laughed out loud in my office reading the last line. [GIFT LINK]

I don’t know why I (and a bunch of other people, apparently) am so into this 62-second video of “the sounds of retro technology,” but I can now almost see my clunky old point-and-shoot digital camera now (not sure what I did with it?).
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Books I’m Currently Reading:

• ​Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

I missed the boat on Andrea Gibson’s poetry during their lifetime, only discovering them through the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light this year. When I told Hilary about the movie, she of course said, “Oh, I have one of their books in my office,” and grabbed Lord of the Butterflies for me. Which I am now reading at the rate of one or two poems per night, and loving it.

• ​Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us by Herman Pontzer

Herman Pontzer's research came up a bunch when I was writing my book Ultra-Something, and we're interviewing him on The Trailhead podcast in a few weeks, so I of course have to read his latest book. I'm very pleased at the tone and his writing voice so far and am really interested to see where he takes us on his tour of the human body.

• ​Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

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As promised, some of the stories behind the illustrations in So Far, So Good: 40 Dads Talk About Becoming Parents and How They Figured it Out:

Click here for more info or to buy So Far, So Good: 40 Dads Talk About Becoming Parents and How They Figured it Out.​

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