Henry Winkler Is On His Fishing Trip, Thank Heavens

Unless you are a hopelessly discourse-addicted political journalist, a billionaire whose mind was rotted out from the inside by the internet, or the type of smooth-brained AI evangelist who says things like “my sentient chatbot tells me when to drink water,” there are really only two legitimate reasons to use Twitter in 2026:

• To see what those freaks are up to
• To look at pictures of Henry Winkler on his fishing trips

This second one will never not be delightful to me, just the thing where the guy who played The Fonz goes off to some river or lake once or twice a year and spends a solid week documenting his haul using a text-based website designed for sickos who like to yell at each other. These are the most Facebook/Instagram posts you can imagine and he’s out here heaving them into a snake pit a dozen at a time. It makes me so happy. I hope he never stops.

That’s why it was so thrilling to me when a friend of mine sent me a text on Sunday that contained nothing but this…

Oh, heck yes.

Freaking heck yes.

FREAKING HECK YES.

Look how happy this man is. Look at the sheer joy on his entire face. People spend their whole lives chasing that feeling. People spend thousands of dollars looking for it. And Henry Winkler finds it on a river every year and shares in with the world. What a benevolent king.

I actually had the pleasure of interviewing Henry years ago. I asked him all the questions the public relations person very much wanted me to ask him, but there was no way I was letting my time run out without bringing up the fish pictures.

The first question. Do you have a fishing trip planned for this summer?

Oh, I do. I live for them.

That’s fantastic. The second question is actually just a dumb idea that I’m going to pitch to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. Have you ever considered hosting a fishing show where you and another guest go out on the boat together, and it’s like a podcast, but it’s just a super-relaxing half-hour of you and another celebrity telling Hollywood stories while you’re fishing?

Well, let me tell you, I love that idea. I have never done that, but I love that.

My gift to you. If you ever want to do it, I would watch the hell out of that show.

Thank you so much, really.

The point of sharing this is less to brag that I interviewed Henry Winkler than it is to confirm what you already suspected about Henry Winkler: he is a very patient and kind man who will humor you while you ramble your lunatic ideas at him.

Again, what a king. Look at him thrive.

”Hey, Brian,” you ponder, “why is Henry Winkler wearing what appears to be a babushka in that picture?”

Well, first of all, Henry Winkler would never question your fashion choices, so your question is rude on its face, and second of all MAYBE HIS EARS WERE COLD GEEZ.

The nerve of you people, honestly.

What I like about this picture isn’t just that he posted an out of focus fish picture where his smiling face is blurry in the background.

What I like about this picture is that…

… he posted the exact same blurry picture 22 minutes later with a different caption.

It’s so pure and charming I think I might start crying.

LOOK AT HENRY WINKLER

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS

LOOK AT HIM

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YES

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Alan Sepinwall and Kathryn VanArendonk have a new TV podcast that premiered this week, which is great news for people with ears 

— email signup required for this one, but Spencer Hall and Holly Anderson continue to nail the independent media thing in ways I admire a lot

— really incredible blog here about the first game of the Spurs-Thunder series and what Victor Wembanyama is out here doing

— about a dozen laugh-out-loud lines in this piece by Josh Gondelman

— I suspect I will watch The Hawk

— this thing in Vulture about social media publicity being a cynically engineered psyop bummed me out a lot lol

— good headline: "Seth Rogen Says If 'Your Instinct Is to Use AI' to Write Scripts, 'You Shouldn’t Be a Writer'

— good lede: “Some residents of the Buckhead neighborhood in Atlanta got ‘Waymo’ than they expected as a seemingly endless parade of completely empty, fully autonomous, self-driving robotaxis entered their dead-end road.”

— cool interview with Craig Mazin, who wrote my beloved sheep movie

— yes, hello, Weird Al musical

— the zoos in Pittsburgh and Boston traded gorillas

— a bear tried to break into a bakery

— “24 hours with 3 teenage birders: Welcome to the World Series of Birding”

— “Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I.”

— I read the GQ profile of Marcello Hernandez and then I remembered how much I love his Sebastian Maniscalco impression so then I watched that again

Okay, that's it for this week. Please subscribe and share and do not go on Twitter.