Straights & Curves: Holy fools
Ted Lasso's uplifting ridiculousness and other stories.
Welcome back to Breakfast Club’s Straights & Curves digest for curious athletes and outdoorsy folks: 5 stories to start your week, recapped to read in less than 4 minutes.
5) Ted Lasso: Holy fool
Why is Lasso so compelling? Tish Harrison-Warren posits that the title character from Apple’s hit TV show follows the religious archetype of the holy fool. (NY Times)
Truth within silliness. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the holy fool is a person who flouts social conventions to demonstrate allegiance to God. They feign insanity, provoking both outrage and new perspective through unruly goofiness.
Lasso, an American football coach, knows nothing about soccer. He angers fans with his unconcern about winning matches.
He wins them over by leaning into his own ridiculousness to point out that what’s seen as “success” in the world of professional English football is hollow and vain.
Ted is not a perfect man:
“Lasso carries around an aching loneliness. His marriage has dissolved. He longs to be nearer to his son back in the States. Yet his incessant, childlike faith in people — his foolishness — allows Ted to lavish love on those around him. And wherever he goes — from the locker room to a meeting of the Diamond Dogs, his makeshift male support group — community flourishes.”
4) New WR in the 100K
Aleksandr Sorokin skimmed 6 seconds off his existing 100-kilometer world record in Vilnius, Lithuania. (iRunFar)
6:05:35. That’s 5:53 per mile (or 3:39 per kilometer) for 62.2 miles.
Deal him in. In an interview with iRunFar, Sorokin, a casino dealer, described ditching booze and cigarettes to start running.
3) Exhausting history
A new book from George Vigarello, A History of Fatigue, studies the history of being tired.
Shifting paradigms. Europeans’ understanding of fatigue changed over time. Medievals worried about the drip and flow of fluids. Enlightenment philosophes considered fatigue a matter of exhausted filaments, fibers, and nerves.
Crispy modernity. 19th-century industrialists re-conceptualized the human frame as a machine furnace that burned food as fuel, language still evident for modern workers who worry about “stress” and “burn out.”
Dig deeper. Anthony Lane reviews the book with typical verve for the New Yorker, questioning if the history of fatigue might actually be a history of work.
2) Running’s mental game
For Mental Health Awareness Month, Outside curated articles on running and the brain. Here are some favs:
Trail running is good for mental health. Adventurous running with varying movements and immersion in nature “can lead to better relationships and a better work life balance.”
Allie Ostrander’s radical transparency. The NCAA track champ embraces a candid approach to her eating disorder recovery, bringing fans along for the journey.
Musical connections. A study suggests that playing music and running may promote similar brain changes.
1) Tori Bowie’s Mysterious Death
As Bowie’s hometown of Sandhill, Mississippi celebrated the life of the three-time Olympic medalist, a New York Times piece by Talya Minsberg describes a community still struggling for answers after the sprinter’s unexpected death.
No cause of death has been released as toxicology tests are pending. Minsberg notes, “Bowie had been pregnant, but it was unclear whether she carried to term before she died.”
Recruited to Southern Mississippi to play basketball, Bowie thrived in track & field. At Rio, she earned a silver in the 100m, bronze in the 200m, and gold in the 4 x 100m.
An Olympic NBC film segment featured Bowie’s love of her hometown: “One day I hope that I can come to Sandhill and there’s this huge sign that says, ‘Welcome to Sandhill, home of Tory Bowie.”’ (YouTube)
Weekly run
Breakfast Club meets every Thursday for an 8-mile run:
When and Where: 6:30am at Lake Temescal in Oakland, CA
Pace: ~7:00 to 7:40 pace with a few hundred feet of climbing
Quick splits
Behold the Taco Bell Innovation Lab. Ever iterating, ever refining, the lab has a tech company sensibility, coding in cow fat and tortillas. Explore the product teams that developed the Crunchwrap Supreme and Dorritos Locos Tacos. (New Yorker)
From clock towers to GPS on your wrist. Watchmaker Rebecca Struthers’s new book argues the evolution of the watch “reflected and developed our relationship with time.” As watches evolved from public church towers to portable timepieces, time became a resource of elites and eventually the masses. (Reviews: Economist, Telegraph)
Mannequins are weirder than you think. From plastic models, to digital Instagram avatars, what can fake bodies tell us about our clothes and ourselves? (Articles of Interest)
Imagining an environment. A fascinating podcast conversation about the theme of environmental stewardship in Hayao Miyazaki’s movies, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and My Neighbor Totoro. Miyazaki’s wonderful animated films are streaming now on HBO Max. (Imaginary Worlds)
Tweets of the week
Parting thought
“Those who go for it, as a rule, will never comprehend the urge to let it be.”
- Anthony Lane
That’s all for this week. Thanks for subscribing.
Find me on Twitter, Strava, and now Notes. Get a Breakfast Club Fractel hat in our Swag Shop or by becoming a supporting subscriber.