Danica Patrick kicks off summer by racing around Italy on a beautiful yacht, Bears fans are furious & steak!
We get Saturday Screencaps rolling this morning with the sun shining, the birds chirping, the humidity rising and that smell of summer in the air. I can't stop thinking about those road trips. Those golf scrambles where your phone magically doesn't work for 4 1/2 glorious hours. No work calls. No Zooms. Just one with nature.
That's what Danica Patrick is up to on this Saturday morning. From the look of things, she took off for Italy where she's on a yacht doing what people do on yachts. No work calls. No late-Friday Slack messages to address. She's just out there living life after making a boatload of money in her career.
This is how you celebrate summer. Bikinis. Shrimp buffets (or whatever seafood she's eating). Late-night DJ sets in some Italian coastal city. Great wine. Bottomless mimosas. Sun. Surf.
ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON’T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!
Personally, I'm going to celebrate summer this weekend by making good on my wedding anniversary promise to Mrs. Screencaps that we'll go to one of our favorite stores — a local rock store — to pick out decorative rocks for her garden. Then, I'll probably sit by the pool. Hopefully for hours.
No phones. No Zooms. No Slacks. Those are the rules after this column is put to bed.
Someone literally paid for a plane to fly a banner over the field with the words "call verbal diarrhea divorce attorney" flying for everyone to see. And the plane circled the fields.
Crazy, right? Earlier this week, on our local Facebook page, some guy was complaining about a local divorce attorney he hired for his divorce, but the man was mad that his attorney destroyed his ex-wife in the case. The newly divorced man was actually mad at how bad his attorney had fleeced his ex-wife.
Is that why the banner flew last night? I don't know. What I do know is that people seem to have some money they should spend on a nice weekend getaway.
That would be Cal Poly vs. West Virginia (noon, ESPN2) with a trip to Omaha on the line for the Mountaineers. This would be a first in school history and would be a shot in the arm to Jell-O shot sales in Omaha, that's for sure.
We need programs like West Virginia playing in Omaha in mid-June. We need them singing John Denver's song at least once in Omaha like they're the Savannah Bananas of college baseball. Imagine 30,000, or how many ever they can get into Omaha, singing along to a song released in 1971. These are the sports moments that are just meant to be. Let's see if the sports gods can dial it up on a Saturday afternoon.
– Bill offers up this one: Got one for you, Joe. Many years ago I was playing the Purdue University course in Lafayette, Indiana with a couple of friends. McCormick Road runs right behind one of the holes with the green very close to the road. On that hole I hit a five iron second shot but overcooked it and flew the green. I watched as my ball hit the asphalt of the road, then bounced up and hit a passing red pickup truck. With a REALLY loud bang. The driver gets out after screeching to a stop and he’s pissed.
My buddy and I hid behind a tree so he couldn’t see who hit the ball. He looks around for a few moments and then gets back into his truck and leaves. Here’s the key to the story - after bouncing on the road, then hitting the passing truck my ball was deflected right back into the middle of the green. Which is probably why the dude left. All he saw was a golf ball in the middle of the green and that couldn’t have possibly been the one that hit his truck, right?I kept that golf ball for a long while because it had a nice red paint scrape on it.
Missed the birdie putt but came away with a four and I call that a quality up-and-down, pickup truck deflection style.
– Eric P., who recently ripped me for my Screencaps effort only to say he was sorry, writes: I was playing in a tournament at a course south of Seattle a number of years ago. On the practice green, my playing partner was revisiting a story about how lucky I had been on a trip to Vegas we took prior; which I of course denied and said the green zeros on a roulette table are a green light for skilled chip stackers.
I mean, who doesn’t know that if you stack your chips at one corner of the said number, it will increase the chance of the ball falling on your number by 20%?? Duh.. So we are on the first tee and I hook my driver so far left, it goes over a fence towards the road. It’s a 375 yard dog leg left, and it looks like it will hit a truck that’s headed away from us’ the ball hits the back of the truck as it continues down the road; rattles around and the bounce out of the back, over the fence and stops fifty yards from the green in the fairway.
My playing partner just looked at me and said congratulations, one shot in and we know who’s going to win this weekend.On a side note, on another trip to Vegas, we were leaving the Circus Circus Steakhouse, which most people wouldn’t try, but don’t know that it is one of the highest rated steak houses in Vegas, and the same friend mentioned my proclivity for luck, and this time, all I could do was bend over and pick up a 50.00 pay out voucher that someone had dropped off the floor, and say " so you are saying this doesn’t take skill?, I’ll pay for the cab."
These sound far fetched, but I swear they are absolutely true.
– Jim in Raleigh writes: Many years ago, I was playing in a qualifier for the NYS (New York State) Men's Amateur when I was 16 (I was scratch back then). We played in threesomes, and the 1st tee was along a four lane road to our left. First guy gets up, & duck hooks one into the road. We hear the windshield smash, then the inevitable screeching of brakes getting slammed on.
He gets up again to hit shot three, and does the exact same thing. He grabbed his bag & quit, without ever getting off the 1st tee. I had to hit next, & I blocked it right about 40 yards. Impossible to follow that !
– Jack in Missouri is a first-time emailer: Saw article on Foxnews.com. I never believed in these Nest and similar thermostats precisely because they could allow outside control of them: BY THE CHINESE GOVT! and then the local power company.
Electronic door locks, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. Too many people letting device populate their homes and over which they have little to no control. I believe lot-Tech is best tech. I do worry about my pacemaker: is the telemetry functionality made in China, and can China tell me: You are terminated?
– Drew in Katy, TX checked in on smart meters and thermostats: I’m not claiming to be an expert here . . . but the company that I was working for in the mid-1980s which used a considerable amount of electricity in Texas signed up for interruptible power contracts. The company’s base electricity rate was reduced in exchange for the willingness to shut down their electricity use if the utility required that load reduction. Google AI gives a pretty good summary of the process if you type in "industrial interruptible power contract to save money". BTW – I never remember the power actually getting cut to our company.
It’s interesting to see the power distributors now tricking individuals to sign up for interruptible power with no real benefit to the consumer. I would think that the bigger impact would still be from shutting off major industrial users. But that would require the power distributors to pay the financial incentives for the privilege to do that. So, the next question as the AI data centers blow the roof off of U.S. electrical demand, why not require that they be the swing load in the grid instead of individuals ??? What will it hurt if your child suddenly can’t use AI to do his/her homework to get to travel ball practice on time ?
– Candler in Duluth, GA writes: Hey, Joe. It’s been a while, but you should know that we are still mowing on Thursdays and spreading the word of the league far and wide. It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years since I started sending in mowing reports and pictures of my sons mowing. They are about to be seniors, and as the grandmothers always told us, it sure does go by fast.
To the reader last week who asked whether or not he should let the kids tear up his yard playing wiffle ball (Millennial Brandon I think), absolutely let them tear it up! We still play wiffle ball in the backyard with my sons and their friends, and I’m suspicious that those will be some of their favorite memories from their growing up years.
THURSDAY NIGHT MOWING LEAGUE WANTS 40 MILLION AMERICANS TO STOP WASTING WEEKENDS ON THEIR LAWNS
I meant to send you this earlier in the week, but last weekend we went to see YOUR Reds play MY Braves in Cincinnati. It was a lot of fun, and we thought the ballpark was really cool overlooking the river. My sons’ best friend (in the middle of the picture) just graduated, so we made this trip his graduation celebration.
It was fun seeing the mowing reports today. Suzanne continues to excel and impress! We’ll be sure to send in a few reports this summer. The Dawgs first pitch is at 11am tomorrow, and it feels good to have the yard work done and a WIDE OPEN Saturday! Enjoy the weekend!
Kinsey: They truly do grow up fast. On my Gmail, I have photos of the Candler B boys tearing up their yard with big wiffle ball games and other moments of kids being kids. It hit me this morning of just how long I've been doing this at OutKick.
I even missed my sixth anniversary with the company on June 1. If you would have told me all those years ago (six years on the Internet is like 20 years of a normal career) that all of this stuff would've happened to me over that span, I would've thought you were insane.
I now have a 100 gig Gmail account that is 76% full. I have heard from tens of thousands of readers over those six years. I've had some incredible moments along the way. None of that would've been possible without the vision that Clay Travis laid out to me early in 2020 as the world was about to go mad.
What a run it has been.
SUNBURN, SKY-HIGH ELECTRIC BILLS, AND OTHER AWFUL THINGS THAT MAKE SUMMER QUIETLY TERRIBLE
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That is it this morning. I have to get outside and #RespectSummer. You only get so many of them in life. Just think of how many June weekends you get to enjoy in life. That is why we MUST get out, get our feet into the grass and soak it in.
Take care and I'll see you guys on Monday.