Imagine this: you are living in the west suburbs and working in downtown Chicago every day. Driving downtown is not seen as the best method of transportation, as there is a train that runs every 30 minutes and takes you straight to the Wells Street Station in the Loop. This train has an enormous amount of stops that covers a huge part of the Fox Valley area, which means that you probably live within a mile or two of a station and thus wouldn’t need to drive far (or drive at all) to get there.

If you say the term “Spags gonna Spags” to virtually any Chiefs fan, they’ll know exactly what you mean by that. We’ve talked at length here about Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s tendencies to throw various coverages and blitzes at opposing quarterbacks (like when he put Tua and Miami in a torture chamber in last year’s playoffs). And Spagnuolo’s tendency to dial up pressure in the biggest moments is well known.

If you follow combat sports online, you’ve no doubt heard more than you ever cared to about “the bag,” that metaphorical sack of money waiting at the end of the rainbow for successful athletes and promoters. Who got the bag? Who fumbled it? Just how big was this bag anyway? What does that thing weigh? In our world, at least, you can trace the concept back to 1964 and the great Muhammad Ali sitting on a literal pile of cash like the world’s prettiest Scrooge McDuck.

Hello and happy Friday my dears. If you missed last week’s gift guide in the great Buying Weekend Rush, you can read it here. And in the spirit of gifting, the next five people to purchase a paid subscription—for a friend or as a gift—will receive a cookbook in the mail from me, with a little note and some recommendations. You can give a gift subscription through this link, or upgrade to paid here:

How do you “reduce the drag” and make yourself the most available to daily output in your creative practice? To help with ideas, we turn to Holiday Mathis, who has written over eight million words in her daily, syndicated horoscopes. Talk about learning how to negotiate the daily grind! In this episode, we talk about how improvisation rules help in daily discipline, about Holiday’s muses and how she serves them and great advice from a soap opera actor.