Heather Graham Ends The Year In A Bikini In A Ski Lodge Hot Tub,

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

We made it: This is Issue No. 366 of Screencaps for 2024

That’s right, it was a leap year for those keeping track at home.

Between SeanJo and myself, we didn’t miss a day. Edition after edition. Day after day. Instagram model after Instagram model. There were slow times. There were times when you guys were sending in hundreds of sunset photos. Some good. Some not so good.

There were times when some of you were sending your kids off to military academies. There were moments where you were reflecting on graduations and becoming empty nesters.

There were Millennials who made their email debuts and reminded the Baby Boomers that they are well-equipped to help push the greatest country in the history of the world forward.

My 2024 started with a professional job title for the first time in my life and that meant I was no longer just blogging away on a daily basis. As an OutKick Senior Editor – Content Development, my days went from grinding away at post after post to grinding away on posts and serving as an advisor to other members of the staff.

Part of that job included helping Matt Reigle develop his ‘Gripe Report’ column. It also included taking on projects like turning Mike Gunzelman, ‘Gunz’, into a key member of the OutKick Culture Department.

Gunz is now a pageview machine. He’s shown traffic increases each month since July when I got my hands on him. December will be the biggest month of this guy’s Internet life.

It meant becoming SeanJo’s manager. There’s not much to manage with SeanJo, but he’s still reporting to me and working closely with me.

I mention those projects because one of my biggest concerns is that someone will think I’m slacking because they don’t see 10 posts per day with my byline.

Hey loser, you’re milking a title.

In 2024, I quickly learned that adding “senior editor” to a title also means adding Zoom calls to your daily schedule. I’m now in more meetings than ever in my career, but it also means that I have a hand in shaping the future of this website.

At this point in my career, that’s bigger than hitting a post count on a daily basis. I am quickly recognizing what the next stage of my career looks like.

One thing that will never change is that this column will kick off my morning and your morning.

Either I’ll have to lose a bunch of fingers or they’ll have to pry this column from my cold dead hands. I’m not going anywhere. Promise.

What does 2025 hold for me and this column?

I keep throwing around this idea of a “Screencaps Roadtrip Across America” project. I’m not talking literally across America. A week sounds more manageable. Maybe a week in the spring and fall.

My vision is to make it a combination of the 2024 Masters trip, the 2024 Ragnar Relay trip, and the Two-Club Invitational mixed in with garage beers and maybe living the patio life while listening to Yacht Rock. I also keep coming back to content that involves Vern in SW Washington and his salmon fishing adventures.

Ultimately, the idea is, What does life look like for America in 2025?

Growing up, I was fascinated by Charles Kuralt traveling across the country just to see what’s going on. No, I don’t have a mistress in North Dakota or wherever Kuralt was traveling to quite often.

Another addition to Screencaps will be a newsletter. It’s coming.

Why a newsletter? For years, readers have told me once they miss a couple of days, they miss big themes and a newsletter would help bring it all together on a weekly basis. It will also give me a chance to slow down and write deeper responses to emails.

My morning schedule looks like this:

6 a.m. to 8 a.m. — curate the Instagram models, the fans fighting, the food, the travel, the pop culture, the Moment of Dale Earnhardt, etc.

8 a.m. to 8:58 a.m. — write the main body of Screencaps, edit emails, put the puzzle pieces together

8:58-9 a.m. — hit publish, tweet, RT from OutKick, put links on Facebook

The newsletter would give me more than an hour to get back to more creative writing which I think will help develop future Screencaps topics.

And there will be a change to Screencaps on Facebook. The private group is great to serve as an official hangout for readers, but it’s too private. I will be developing a public account. If we’re going to grow Screencaps, there needs to be a public element AND the private element.

Here’s to a healthy and prosperous 2025. Let’s do another 365 days.

Pray for Stanley-succin’ Travel Ball moms in 2025

No, I will not stop my crusade in 2025. Don’t bother sending me an email talking me off the cliff because I’m on the right side of history.

I need to take a moment to compliment Dan Campbell for being a man of his word

I sat there last night fully expecting the Lions to sit their starters after a rough start against the 49ers. Then it never happened. Dan Campbell just kept dumping out his big balls on the table and John Lynch was left no choice but to sit there and admire Dan’s balls as he kept going for it on 4th down and his defense kept picking off Brock Purdy.

Then it all made sense: Dan wanted the juices flowing as the Lions flew across the country last night with a date with the Vikings for what will end up being up one of the biggest games in Lions history.

He wanted his team to get a good night of sleep without any regrets while returning from San Francisco.

Sunday night in Detroit is going to be a spectacle.

Yes, I turned down Bengals-Steelers tickets from Screencaps reader Tom H.

Tom H. came to me with a similar offer as he made a couple of years ago: Let’s go to the Bengals-Steelers game and use my tickets.

FOUR TICKETS. Great tickets. Heated VIP concession area. Nice lounge couches and tables to eat and suck down Iron City.

Two years ago, it was myself and Mig and Tom’s buddies at the Bengals-Steelers game. This year, Tom was offering me a ticket and the chance to bring three of you along to turn it into a real spectacle.

But, it’s Screencaps the III’s birthday.

Just wasn’t meant to be. Let’s see what the schedule maker does with 2025-26.

What is up with so many cars driving around with no tail lights in the dark?

I asked, and it didn’t take long for Screencaps experts to weigh in on this one.

– Allen K. tells me:

I believe this to be an issue with cars that have daylight running lights (DRLs). It’s generally a good idea, but when the DRLs are on (all the time) they light up a small light up front and (from my experience in a rental one weekend) a PORTION of the dash lights/gauge cluster/interior controls – but NOT the tail lights).

When it’s dark, people can see enough of the goings-on inside to not notice that the lights are not on.

From my experience, it’s near impossible to get these people to realize that they are driving around in the dark without their lights on.

I was behind such a person a few weeks ago. He was in the left lane on an interstate. I flashed my high beams a couple times with no effect. I then tried turning my fog lights on and off (thinking that flashing my high beams may mean that I wanted the slower driver to vacate the passing lane). He did eventually move over and as I passed him he was giving me the bird. I did (probably foolishly) roll down my window to try to tell him to turn his lights on, but he just honked and kept giving me the bird.

My car automatically turns on all the lights when it gets dark enough and I cannot turn them off when driving – I think the ability to do that behind such a person is the most obvious way to get them to notice.

— Gene in the Rock, who says he is a Nissan master technician and a long-time biker, writes:

The trend in the auto industry since about ’17 is for almost all cars to have “Daytime Running Lights” (DRL’s), which light the front of the car whenever all the other lights are off. They’ve been mandatory in Canada for many years. There’s a lot of good actuarial data that they do work to prevent accidents, particularly t-bone collisions at intersections. It’s just the industry catching up with motorcyclists, who have long known the value of “lights on” as a weapon against rolling-stop idiots.

Kinsey:

Is there an alert that should tell these people they’re driving around in the dark with daytime running lights on?

Gene:

Lol, not unless the car has an “auto lights” system.

I think it’s because there’s no real regulation of how bright you can make the DRL’s. Some OEM’s like Hyundai/Kia have got pretty carried away with making the front end an LED light show. In consequence people don’t notice their low beams are actually off after dark. Kind of like driving around with one headlight out — you’d be surprised how many people don’t notice that until the second bulb fails and they’re driving dark. The older Canadian DRL systems never had that issue because they all worked by putting the headlights in series electrically, creating a “dimbulb” setup that really was too dim to drive. The LED lighting revolution has changed all that.

Now, exactly what to do about it? I dunno.

— Jaime in Uuhhmmble, TX emails:

Re your comment about people driving with tail lights out. I suspect
that they are driving around with their daytime running lights on
instead of taking the effort to move the headlight switch to lights on.
With DRL selected, you only get front headlights and dash lights; for
some reason this setting doesn’t turn on the tail lights. Everyone
seems to run their car headlights on the auto setting these days, just
another way automation is making us all dumber. I miss my ’76 Trans Am
something fierce these days…

The Spaniards don’t need Sonos or some modern technology

— Mike T. checks in this morning (I think he’s eating lunch) from Spain:

Now I know where my kids stereo system from ’99 is.

They hang bull mounts instead of deer in Spain

– Mike T. says:

Bull hall of fame in Cádiz, Spain tapas bar.

Screencaps readers share the memorabilia rarities in their collections

– Joe in Elmira, NY shares a story:

My sports memorabilia rarity is a baseball that my Dad had that he wouldn’t let Babe Ruth Sign.

Attached is the story about the ball, NYT news article from 1938 about the game, news photo and a current photo of the ball.

— Chris B. reports in:

My sister-in-law moonlighted in marketing and was an intern for a company that helped with the 2002 All Star game at Staples Center where they honored the 1980 Olympic team. This was the first time they were all together, I forget who but there was one guy who never came to any of these and finally did. Luckily, she’s able to grab two hockey sticks and gets the whole team to sign them. I forget how I got them, but they’re both laying around somewhere I believe at my parent’s house.

I take them down to a place in Costa Mesa, CA (Not ideal for PK, but I can share the info to anybody who wants it) and he does both the sticks for me. I keep one and gift the other one to my brother. I guess the place that did this had to tell multiple people it wasn’t for sale as many asked, so if PK is looking to make some money on this he easily could.

There’s a plaque with all the players names in the Olympic rings and we were able to find an old Sports Illustrated with them on the cover. Just had to cut the bottom portion of this one out due to the sticker of the address it mailed to.

On Vivek, immigration, travel ball and how it relates to Americans slacking off

This was meant to be a joke, but then it resonated with people.

– Jim F. writes:

Great question and undoubtedly the answer is culture and where parents place the priorities for their kids. So I can’t claim purity on this issue our sons did play in quasi- travel leagues with limited travel involved.

What I will say are two things- first they were born in the early 1990’s and did not have social media as a distraction and secondly that at the public schools that our sons went to, we demanded that they do their best in school and held them to high standards(give a lot of credit to my wife) which they did push back against.

I encouraged them strongly to get a BS degree in engineering because I worked in manufacturing my entire career and I did not have an engineering degree, and I would have benefited had I earned one. We expected them to take AP classes in high school and expected strong (not perfect- and they weren’t) academics and supported them as they played high school sports (football and baseball).

There was some conflict with them in high school over this, sometimes they weren’t happy with us and we weren’t with them. In the end a decade later they both are degreed engineers from great state universities, both working as leaders/managers, not purely engineers for about the last few years.

Great careers, married with kids- my wife and I could not be prouder of them. Finally my advice is- sons and daughters should be encouraged to become engineering students in college and they need to prepare academically to do so, which means setting priorities for the kids and some conflict will occur along they way- we were their parents(and loved them as such) not their friends.

Teenagers should not be told to “fulfill their dreams as a career”- they need to be told to prepare to get a job and it will be work, the purpose is to be able to afford a decent standard of living and that your teenage dream career can become a great a hobby once they make enough money to pay the bills. Anyone with an engineering degree( and not everyone wants to, or should, but more can, than do today) has worked relatively hard in school and has a rigorous analytical background and can do anything they want to later in life with a huge advantage over their peers.

I know there are child “phenoms” in the real world who had the talent and drive to become pro athletes, musicians, etc and did follow their dreams and good for them. Most kids don’t fall in that category and parents if honest will know fairly soon if their kids do or don’t have the ability ( or the parent the resources $$) to make it as a pro. There were a lot of Dads I heard talk about their son getting a scholarship to a D-1 football program from youth leagues and into high school- probably only one or two of a couple hundred did. Honest assessment of children, encouragement, priorities, standards, and be prepared for conflict are what parents should expect.

The US was the global leader in engineering and technical leadership not that long ago, and can be again with American kids, getting the job done.

Toys you’ll never forget

– Gen X Warren emails:

Really enjoyed Bradon’s (Brandon?) story about the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier he got as a kid. When I sent the link to that Screencaps to my friends, I made sure to note that they needed to read that story. My friends are around his age and we all had those figures, although I was more into Transformers than Joe. I don’t think I knew anyone whose parents bought them the carrier, but I think a friend of a friend did. And we were all jealous.

In the mid-80s, Transformers and G.I. Joe were the biggest thing. I remember being 8 or 9, and a group of us would surround a lucky kid with a new Transformer figure as he transformed it into a vehicle, plane, etc., all marveling at how cool that was.

For me, the ‘holy grail’ was Unicron, the planet transformer the late, great Orson Welles voiced in the 1986 Transformers movie. They never released a figure then, but finally did so in 2003. My buddy and I had to get one despite being in our 20s. I think Gen X and older Millennials collect figures. Here’s what that Unicron figure looked like (Armada): https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Unicron/toys#Armada

Today, I have a collection of Marvel Select figures (Iron Man, Captain America, etc.) on some shelves, along with original artwork by my favorite comic book artists from the 80s and 90s.

As an FAU Owls fan, I was able to buy authentic, framed pictures and autographs of Coaches Howard Schnellenberger and Lane Kiffin and they’re displayed on my home office wall, and bought through a local autograph company. I have a Dusty Mays image and autograph, but need to get that framed (still sad he left for Michigan, but it was inevitable he wasn’t staying). I regret not going to the celebration of the FAU MBB team in the spring of 2023 after they were bounced from the Final Four. I could’ve met all the players and gotten their autographs. That’s my next mission to get so I can add it to my FAU Athletics wall.