Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about boobs, herbs, shoes, vegetarian chili, and more.
A week from today, I’ll be on the road with my wife carting our daughter off to college. Given the Toy Story 3-esque emotions that are bound to ensue from that process, I won’t be able to host the bag next week. Instead, your emcee will be Defector’s favorite houseguest, Brandy Jensen. Email Brandy your questions here, and then watch as she answers them with a deft touch that I have forever lacked. You know the drill by now, so get after it.
Meantime, your letters:
Ben:
With JJ McCarthy already done for the season, I was wondering which sports injury was the biggest gut punch to you in your life as a fan. Not necessarily a life/career threatening situation (Hamlin, Alex Smith, etc.), but something that happened to a player on one of your teams that had you inexplicably moping around maybe more than necessary.
The obvious answer on my end is Korey Stringer, who died of heat stroke in Vikings training camp back at the turn of the century. Death is the worst injury, because it has a comeback timeline of never. Boo. When I become president, I will initiate a Death Moonshot that will cure this affliction once and for all.
The toughest injuries for me to stomach aren’t the ones that come in the preseason, but the ones that happen late in the year. Once December arrives, the arc of your team’s season is clear. You’re either shitty, decent but with little Super Bowl hopes, or really good. And if your team is really good that year, your excitement for their title prospects is at its peak. So when a vital player on your team—let’s say RT Brian O’Neill in 2022—goes down that late, it rips your fucking heart out. You just spent four months watching that dude play. You know how important he is to the operation. Now you’re fucked, just when you were about to do some cool shit. Those are the injuries that sting the most. Ask any Raiders fan who had to watch Connor Cook start a playoff game for them.
By the way, it took me a full week to mentally recover from J.J. McCarthy going down, mostly because it was a surprise injury. Like death, surprise injuries can and must be outlawed. McCarthy spent the entire offseason and training camp dazzling every coach, player, analyst, and beat writer who saw his progression. Then he went into his first preseason game, had one lousy series, and then proceeded to look like God’s honest truth the rest of the way. He walked off the field on his own power and I was certain that he was going to be a stud. Everyone was. If you follow the Vikings, you know that they have never drafted a QB in my lifetime who gave off that kind of feeling. Not Teddy Bridgewater. Not even Daunte Culpepper. Certainly not Christian Ponder. But fuck me, this kid looked like a potential All-Pro in every important way in that stupid preseason game. He still has work to do, but I have no doubt he’ll do that work capably. No one who covers the Vikings does. They all saw it, and said it. Sam Darnold was still the QB1, but not for much longer.
Two days later, McCarthy missed practice because his knee was sore. A day after that, Oh actually you won’t see him again until another calendar year has passed. I was so annoyed. If a guy is gonna get put down for the year, I should at least get to SEE it. I should at least get to watch his leg snap like a twig on the field, so that I can emotionally process it with the rest of my teammates (NOTE: I am not a member of the team). Instead, I gotta learn this shit from Adam Schefter on a random Tuesday afternoon. Same shit happened with Danielle Hunter three years ago. A little tweak noted late in the postgame becomes the end a day later. The worst.
Also, I still think McCarthy—who I’ve taken to calling “the kid,” because I am insufferable—will be a star. That’s not hopium talking. I knew Daunte Culpepper would never learn to get rid of the ball quickly. I knew that Teddy Bridgewater would never magically grow Brett Favre’s arm. And I knew that Ponder was a dud pretty much from the first day. Given that history, I figured that McCarthy would have some glaring deficiency of his own once he got meaningful playing time. Instead, the kid won me over almost instantly, and not because Jim Harbaugh thinks he’s a great guy. It’s because the motherfucker can ball. That’s not a take. I am reporting this information to you. If he ever plays in the preseason again, those responsible WILL be prosecuted.
Steve:
Is it OK to yell at your kids? My wife says it's never OK to yell at a child. I think it's fine to yell at a child when necessary. I'm not talking cursing out your kid, but more like raising your voice if they aren't listening, or yelling because they're about to do something dangerous or unsafe. I like to call it my, "big boy voice" and it doesn't get used very often. My wife says it's never okay and a sign that you didn't parent properly.
Your wife is correct that yelling is the last resort of a parent who’s out of ideas. The problem is that you cannot raise young children without finding yourself in that mental wilderness many, many times over. You’re a new parent. You don’t have experience in this line of work, and your son just smashed his little brother in the face with a juice cup. Forget about whether or not it’s morally defensible to yell at a kid in this situation; you’re probably gonna do it anyway. Then the kid will laugh in your face and you’ll wonder if shooting them is the only course of action left. It is not. Do not shoot your kids.
No one who has been in the parenting trenches has kept an indoor voice all the way through. This is because little kids are fuckers. It’s an awful moment when you first encounter your own child being nasty. This is the love of your life. Your reason for being. All of your hopes and dreams are embodied in this person. So why did they just kick you in the shin for no reason? Don’t they realize how much you love them? Maybe the sting of the lash will set them right!
I wish I’d handled a lot of my early days parenting better, but the truth is that I didn’t know how. Every parent has to learn how to talk to their kids in a way that’ll get them to listen. This is not an instant process. It takes time, planning, experience, and reading a shitload of boring parenting books. You’ll never get it 100 percent right, and you’ll resort to all trial and error on a near daily basis. So the only way to learn that yelling at your kids doesn’t work … is by yelling at them.
That’s how I finally sorted it out. My dad was a yeller. My mom was a yeller. So I started out my fatherhood career, naturally, as a yeller. I assumed yelling would work, whether or not it was the right thing to do. But it didn’t work, so I’d find myself not only still unable to settle my kid down, but also pissed at myself for blowing my stack. Irritation garnished with self-loathing. I could have read a million pages on why this form of discipline was ineffective, but I still wouldn’t have understood it innately until I was trapped in a yelling situation myself. Same goes for any parent not named God, and God let his own kid die.
I haven’t yelled at any of my kids in years. This is because all of us are older and wiser, and because I did work on all of the mental health issues that had me yelling at shit OTHER than my kids: traffic, bills, slow restaurant service, spilling literally anything messy, and 500 other things. I can now tell you, with great authority, that yelling at your kids isn’t OK. I can also say that, if you think it’s possible to raise a kid without doing a single thing you regret, you must have a team of British nannies at your disposal 24/7. The rest of us have to fuck up first before we get it right. You have to WANT to get it right. If you don’t, my empathy has a hard ceiling.
Chris:
Which is more aesthetically pleasing: watching a football team drive left to right or right to left?
I have never thought about this before you asked, and yet I now immediately believe it’s left to right. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because I’m right-handed. But then again, all news crawls scroll right to left, and I’d freak out if they did the opposite. Life is one grand mystery, is it not?
Also, when teams switch directions after every quarter, I’m still disoriented for a good half a second.
Geoff:
Whenever I hear the name Rosamund Pike, I immediately think of the phrase “Rosamund Pike’s huge, heaving boobs,” which you wrote in a 2017 Jambaroo. I think the word "heaving" as a descriptor is what makes it memorable for me. Am I deranged, do you remember writing this, and are there any phrases you've read or written that you immediately associate with someone?
Yeah, that sounds like something I’d write in 2017. Apologies to Rosamund Pike, and her boobs, for being so objectifying. Pike was incredible in Saltburn, along with numerous other films, so it’s not fair of me to be so crass in discussing her talents. Also, I finally saw Gone Girl not so long ago, and I’d really prefer she not come find me and slit my throat. That’s not a woman you wanna fuck with.
As for the terminology itself, I am definitely not the first person to use “heaving” as a descriptor for breasts. It’s a standard-issue modifier, not unlike “vaunted” defenses or “dialed-up” blitzes on third and long. So neither Rosamund Pike’s name, nor the word “heaving,” are instant mental triggers for me. I have to go much deeper into my personal history to find such turns of phrase. For example, the word “heavenly” turns me on due a very specific memory. No famous people were involved, but they didn’t have to be. It was a heavenly moment all the same. I’m going to stop talking now.
Andy:
How many foreign national flags can the average Trump voter identify and name?
Top of my head: definitely Canada, England, Jamaica, Israel (because of the star), the old USSR flag, and … maybe Japan? Maybe China? My confidence is waning now. You’re talking to a guy who routinely gets the flags of Texas, Cuba, and Puerto Rico mixed up. Those places are very much distinct from one another, but fuck me if I know what a flag with just one star and a few stripes is trying to tell me.
Dave:
What's the best spice for performative cooking? I'm want our guests to know I'm good at cooking. My answers are whole nutmeg if you go after it with a microplane, and anything you pestle.
You know, the secret to my salmon is the rosemary in the butter sauce …
You’ll kill me for this copout of an answer, but in my experience herbs are the thing you want for showcase cooking. Anyone can grab a shaker of cumin and sprinkle it into their dish, but you’ll look like a real pro if you tear up some basil leaves (straight from your garden!) and adorn a fat bowl of homemade pasta with them. Or grab a mezzaluna and go to town on a bunch of chives for a showstopper. Your guests will be putty in your hands. Whether Robin Givens is also wowed is another matter.
(Zaa’tar is my answer on the spice end.)
HALFTIME!
Alex:
What football position do you think has the best athletes?
It’s between wideouts and pass rushers. With apologies to Micah Parsons, I’ve watched plenty of slow-ass DEs in my time. Meanwhile, most wideouts can run at Olympic speed, jump over horses, and catch anything that comes within five feet of them (Jerry Jeudy excepted). Also, I swear that former Cowboys KR Kevin Williams (let’s remember some guys!) could squat upwards of 600-700 pounds. This wasn’t some 350-pound DT manning the 3-technique. We’re talking about just this little fast dude who could still lift a fucking Toyota over his head. Not anyone I’m gonna beat in an arm wrestling match. So wideouts get my vote.
Honorable mention goes to tight ends, some of whom I’m told are also quite good at basketball.
Kevin:
I was at the gym yesterday and realized that when I'm getting dressed after my shower, I put my socks and shoes sock/shoe/sock/shoe, which is insane in any other context than, "I don't want my clean feet/socks to touch this gross ass floor." While I think this is a legitimate line of thought, I'm wondering if you have any similar quirks to this, where if someone saw you do it they'd be wildly confused, but it actually tracks if you follow your internal logic.
I’ve done it that way at times, but only when I’m dealing with a wet floor or muddy terrain. If my socks can’t touch the ground, then I have no choice but to fully dress one foot before moving over to the other. In any other instance, that ordering would trip up my brain. Wait, this doesn’t go like this. I can’t leave one foot naked for such an extended period of time (three seconds). It makes me feel weird.
It’s not easy for me to think of my own quirks, because I don’t think of them as quirky. I need someone else to point out that I’m a freak, know what I mean? For example, whenever I go to a fro-yo joint (pretend it’s 2002 and that fro-yo is still everywhere), I always put the toppings in my cup first. The toppings are the whole point of fro-yo, and I don’t like them spilling out of the top of the cup. So I layer that shit on the bottom, pump the yogurt on top, mix it up, and there you go. When I told my daughter this, she LOST HER SHIT. She was, like, grossed out that I would do this. Even after I explained my process to her, she was appalled. I still think she’s the weird one, not me.
Also, I wear a hoodie every day, even when it’s 95 outside. I have a separate pile of summer hoodies in my closet just for this purpose. My summer hoodies make me feel homey AND they protect me from the sun should I venture outside. My wife remains baffled. I’ll complain about the heat and she’ll be like THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE WEARING A FUCKING HOODIE. Then I take my hoodie off for two minutes, feel weird, and then put it back on again. Then I turn on a fan. Diagnose me as you see fit.
Tim:
As a lifelong sports fan who has reached an age where it feels a bit weird to wear football jerseys, is there a cut-off age where you find an old man wearing a teenagers' jersey to be a bit creepy? It is kosher to be 53 and wearing an Anthony Edwards jersey in public, or is it a young person's game?
Rock that jersey, amigo! So what if you’re too old to play the game anymore? It’s still fun to imagine that you can. It’s fun to imagine that you magically become Like Ant when you put on his jersey, throwing down insane dunks and nailing step-back jumpers like it’s nothing. Sports are fantasy, and jerseys help make the fantasy feel closer than it actually is. It’s not like you cut off a player’s skin so that you can wear it as a mask. THAT would be creepy. But wearing team merch, so long as you didn’t get it from Fanatics? That’s all good. No commonsense American will ding you for it.
Personally, I recently started a tradition where I buy a new jersey before every football season. This year’s jersey was Dallas Turner. Cost me $30 on DHGate. I probably look silly in it. I don’t care. I AM READY FOR SOME FOOTBAW!
Paul:
I am going to take a stab at making your chili. I have a dilemma, however, in that my girlfriend is currently observing vegetarianism for Lent. Do you have any specific tweaks you'd recommend if you were to (or have) make this recipe without meat?
I tried making chili with Beyond Beef once, because I like Beyond Beef burgers. But oddly, fake ground meat only works for me in hamburger form. Put it in chili, and suddenly it doesn’t work. I have no idea why, perhaps because I have no idea what’s actually in Beyond Beef. I need real meat flavor in my chili, and I need the thickening agent that fat provides.
My mom makes a good veggie chili, and the way she gets it thick and hearty is by adding extra beans. If I were making my own, I’d probably bean it up just like her. Failing that, I’d start off by making a roux in the pot, or I’d add some corn starch to the veggies as they seared. No idea if it’d work, but that’s how I’d play it. I bet our commenters will know better on this one than I will.
Mark:
Should a band introduce themselves by name at some point during their live performance? I always get a kick out of it. I feel like even at his peak, Michael Jackson should have said, "Hi, I'm Michael Jackson." one time per show.
Most artists do that. At the very least, any frontman will usually introduce everyone else on the stage. You know that routine. “On the bass, Derek Smalls. He wrote this.” It’s a good way to get a pop from the crowd while also taking a small, in-show break. I’ve never gone to a concert hoping that a band will introduce itself outright, and sometimes they don’t. But I always smile whenever they add that little dash of formality to the proceedings, especially if they do it with flair (The Struts), or if they’re world-famous and sheepishly introducing themselves just for a kick. Hi, everyone. My name is Taylor Swift [crowd roars].
The real place I’m torn is if an artist should always tell you what song they’re about to play. This can be incredibly cheesy when done badly (Here’s a little song we call "Silent Lucidity”), but it prevents those awkward moments where you need a solid 30 seconds to figure out what song they’re playing before you go, “OMG this is ‘Raining Blood’! Fuck yeah!” Also, artists will often introduce a song if it’s A) new, or B) a shitty deep cut you didn’t want to hear. I saw the Stones once at the old Foxboro Stadium, and at one point Mick, in full salesman mode, told the crowd, “Fiss is a new song called Out. Of. Control!” Everyone took that as a cue to go piss.
Karl:
As a Kiwi that's way too big a fan of the Packers despite never setting foot on US soil, I can't help but wonder if there's a limit to how real of a fan I can be. I know that, at its core, most sports fandom is based on arbitrarily living in some random plot of land. But I do feel like there's something to be gained in that. So while I can enjoy the Packers front office somehow pulling Jordan Love out of nowhere to stunt on the NFC North for another decade, I can't help but feel like I'm missing something when Wisconsin may as well be Narnia to me. Am I crazy for considering this, or is there a level of fandom that is just off the table for me because I didn't grow up surrounded by it?
That’s a totally normal hangup. I have spent almost all my life as a long-distance fan of my team, and I know I’m missing out on the fan culture happening on the ground back in my team’s home state. The Vikings aren’t always on local TV here. Bars aren’t festooned all over with their logo. Nobody on the street is wearing their merch. That makes the fan experience much different than if I was still living amongst my people in the Twin Cities.
But that doesn’t mean I’m a lesser fan than the natives. Caring is what makes you a real fan, and the advent of Sunday Ticket, the internet, and podcasts makes the job of caring much easier from oceans away. I care a lot about my team. The fact that I spent a full week mourning a preseason injury to a rookie QB, who wasn’t even supposed to play the full season, should tell you as much. If you, Karl, are equally invested in the gruesome Packers, you too get to call yourself a real fan. And I get to tell you to fuck off!
Email of the week!
Thomas:
I pass by this business every day on my way to work
That slogan would also make sense for a massage parlor.
