Buck Wild

As soon as Paulo Crimber realized his son John wanted to become a professional bull rider, he knew he either had to support him wholeheartedly or accept the fact that John was going to run off and do it anyway, whether he liked it or not. After all, Paulo was once young and determined—some might say bullheaded—to be a professional rider, too, but his mother didn’t like the idea. Spinning around on the back of a 1,500-pound beast was just too dangerous, she said. What if he got hurt?

If you ruminate on all the things that could go wrong, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll never swing your leg across a bull’s back and white knuckle your way through the wildest, most spine-snapping eight-second ride of your life. Don’t think about becoming the one in fifteen who gets hurt riding a bull, or whether you’ll bust your knee, get a concussion, or, on the rare occasion, die.

“Just think about having fun doing what you love,” John says.

That’s the way his father has always approached the sport, and he became a Hall of Fame rider, then a judge, then a coach in the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) league. Now he’s John’s first professional team coach. On the heels of John’s second-place finish in this year’s PBR World Finals, Paulo, who coaches Florida’s newest professional sports team, the Florida Freedom, selected his 18-year-old son first in the draft. Now the Crimbers—plus a roster stacked with 11 other riders—hope to bring the excitement of bull riding to South Florida (and perhaps even a championship or two).

To read more about the Crimbers and the Florida Freedom, click here for my latest feature about the most dangerous eight seconds in sports. As a writer, this was a fun deep-dive into a world that is utterly different from the one I live in, and I sincerely appreciated the time the Crimbers took to talk to me about how and why they do what they do, their love for the bulls, and unbridled passion for the sport. Plus, I learned a little bit (and you will too) about how judges score these rides. There's a little more to it than "you fall off and you lose."

Writing prompt: Reflect on your relationship to risk-taking, then write about how willing you are to take a risk and why? Are you completely risk-averse? A daredevil? Or are there certain, more calculated risks you are willing to take? Name those risks. What do you think your willingness to risk – or not – stems from?

Speaking of wild rides...

Truth? I have a deep and abiding love for Legos. If I had the office space (I do not) and time (ditto), I would go buck wild buying them. Instead, I have to be selective about the sets I buy. My Legos usually fit into the vintage or bookish aesthetic. Sometimes I see a set outside of those parameters and get excited, but a fellow Lego-loving friend (who also restricts himself to a collecting theme) steps in to remind me that "no, that's not what you're about."

Yes, we are at the stage in our lives where we get existential over Legos.

At any rate, I've been getting these emails about Pharrell Williams-themed Lego sets, and after thinking "oh those are cute" I had to check myself (Control yourself. You don't collect space-themed stuff.). Instead I've been wondering if Williams is out to take over the world. Like, is it not enough for him to write and produce hit songs, and be in charge of menswear at Louis Vuitton, and run his own skincare line? Does he need to rule Lego too? Mind you, I don't have issues with any of this. But somewhere in the midst of all the dark and foreboding news out there, I missed that Williams had been getting approached by people who wanted to do a documentary about his life. He was reticent about it at first, but then he realized he might be able to reach the most people – his three kids included – if he told his story using animated Legos. That documentary, Piece by Piece, comes out today, and it's safe to say I'm probably going to see it at some point, in part because it will include a Lego Snoop Dogg (among other luminaries).

Williams was on NPR this week and had a lot of really interesting things to say. Among them:

• He has something called synesthesia, where he sees musical notes as colors. For example, he sees the notes in his hit song "Happy" in gradients of yellow (probably the single-most joyful color there is in my book) with some bits of brown. Not everyone with synesthesia sees the same colors with the same notes. It just depends on the individual.
• He said growing up in public housing was a joyful experience that turned a lot of coal into diamonds. "[It's] a place full of untapped potential, like a tree teeming with low-hanging fruit," he says. "If you are willing to take the time to go there and shake the tree, you can get some of that fruit." When record producer Teddy Riley set up a recording studio in Virginia Beach, he plucked Williams from said tree and began teaching him about the music business.
• Williams believes in doing the most, but saying the least. There is power in that.
• Piece by Piece took five years to animate.
• After he and Robin Thicke were sued by Marvin Gaye's estate, which claimed that Thicke's song "Blurred Lines" copied Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give it Up", Williams got a master's degree in music theory to better understand why he and Thicke lost that case. Now he's pursuing a PhD in the subject, which I think is pretty impressive, given all that he has going on in his life.

Here's a question: If you were to make a Lego biopic about someone, who would it be and why? Reply to this email with your answer and I'll share the replies in a coming letter, along with my own answers.

Quote

Some people say there's nothing new under the sun. I still think that there's room to create, you know. And intuition doesn't necessarily come from under this sun. It comes from within.

– Pharrell Williams

Endnotes

What I'm looking forward to: Making a chicken and andouille gumbo this weekend. Ole Miss versus LSU in Baton Rouge. Cooler temperatures.

Interesting tidbit: As a newbie author in the 1950s, Kurt Vonnegut was looking for other streams of income so he could support himself and his family. Seventy years later, that game, General Headquarters, is now for sale at Barnes & Noble. Here's The New York Times' report on what it took to bring it to market.

AI-yi-yi: Sometime within the past year, I was talking to another author about whether any of her books had been used without permission to train artificial intelligence to create writerly texts. Some of her books had been used, according to one database, and one of my books had been too. Now, according to another NYT report, a startup called Created by Humans is trying to help authors like us license their books to some of these AI places. Because the thing is, AI is here. There's no escaping it. The question for writers and any other creative is what can we do about it. A lot of high profile investors are involved in tackling this question, and I'm looking forward to seeing where their efforts lead.

Where I hope you'll donate this week: Western North Carolina is still in bad shape from Hurricane Helene. Please consider a donation to Beloved Asheville, Foothills Food Hub, Operation Airdrop, United Way of Asheville, BINC Foundation, or any other local relief group that can get aid to the people who need it most. Florida has been hit hard by Hurricane Milton, too. Please consider donating to organizations there that might be able to help those who have contended with two big storms in less than a month.