Giving Tuesday (Day 3290 - 11/27/18)

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Stephen starts this vlog mentioning and talking about the passing of Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, his legacy and his disease, ALS. Stephen describes to the vlog his past history with the show SpongeBob SquarePants. He watched it growing up, enjoyed watching it with his parents, and could often be seen sporting SpongeBob pajamas. He also remembers Stephen Hillenburg because he was the one of the creators of one of Stephen's favorite shows - Rocko's Modern Life.

Stephen then talks about the ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (also sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease). He describes how the disease is progressive, affects the nerves in the brain causing a weakening in the muscles of the person with the disease. This in turn impairs the person's ability to talk, walk, eat and breathe. Once diagnosed most people are generally given 2-5 years to live. It has an unknown cause and sadly there is no cure. Stephen brings up the 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge that brought worldwide attention to the disease and raised a lot of money.

It turns out Stephen's college roommate Taylor had a father who had passed away from ALS during their college years, so in 2014 Stephen reached out to him and asked to do a Ice Bucket Challenge in honor of Taylor's dad. Stephen admits that he never ended up doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, probably because he made this plan before PAX and got busy. It was the circumstances of the passing of Stephen Hillenburg that made Stephen remember his plan to raise money for ALS and saw this as his chance to make it right. He isn't dumping ice water on himself, but he decided to make a donation to ALS in honor of Taylor's dad, who oddly enough, was also named Stephen - Stephen Eldredge. Stephen never had the privilege of meeting Stephen Eldredge, and he feels terrible that it took him so long to make this video, but he is happy he finally did it. Given that it is Giving Tuesday he encourages viewers to donate to ALS research or to donate to another cause.