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 life before eyeglasses, cup storage, maximally dumbed down sports reporting, and more.
Your letters:
Jeff:
What are your thoughts on the tush push potentially being banned?
I know that the owners put off banning the tush push today, but they still left the door open to pull the trigger a month from now. And they’ll probably still ram the proposal through, with a rejiggered ban that tells the world, This isn’t just to punish the Eagles, we swear! The whole thing is deeply stupid and irritating because first of all, no one paid the tush push any mind until Defector alum Kalyn Kahler wrote about it for The Athletic two years ago. Secondly, Kalyn ended that story with the now-retired Jason Kelce telling her, straight up, that the “push” part of the play barely mattered at all:
We’ve been very successful at this play for a long time, and I don’t think the pushers necessarily are adding that much. Well, they do add. But I think we would be very highly effective without the pushers too.
You can accuse Kelce of puffing himself up with this opinion, but since he’s one of the best centers to ever play, he’s more than entitled to it. If you have the best interior line in football, and your starting quarterback can squat more than the dudes blocking for him, you’re going to have the deadliest QB sneak in the game, no matter how you run it. And most of the times I watch Philadelphia run that play, the guys behind Jalen Hurts are giving him a glorified, congratulatory ass pat. They’re not solely relying on Dallas Goedert pushin’ some cushion back there to win the down. They didn’t even need the tush push against Kansas City in the Super Bowl, or against Washington in the NFC title game. They were the superior team in each contest. No “cheating” necessary.
Furthermore, the tush push isn’t a foolproof play. Not for Philly, and not for anyone else. CBS Sports estimates the Eagles converted 39 of 48 attempts last season, which is actually below the league-wide success rate on all QB sneaks since 2019. Meanwhile, I just watched both the Bills and Vikings get stoned when they tried to run that exact play in respective playoff losses. Those two teams didn’t blow key fourth downs because of bad luck, they just couldn’t block the play up. [First Take voice] Oh and by the way, the Chiefs won two straight titles right before this despite never running the QB sneak because they almost lost Patrick Mahomes to that play once. They run the Coward’s Push instead by motioning a tight end under center and making him do it. Hence, there is zero competitive reason to ban this play.
So this is a PR move, and nothing more than that. Teams like the chickenshit Packers (who proposed the ban) are mad at the Eagles and want to score a Pyrrhic victory by stripping Philadelphia of a useful, but not essential, tool in their playbook. Other teams think the play looks like cheating even if it isn’t. And rumor has it that Roger Goodell hates the play, probably because it threatens the integrity of the game or some other bullshit like that. That’s probably enough support for the ban to pass, even though it’ll accomplish nothing. It’s the NFL, as it does every year, telling its customers, Look! We fixed it! about a problem that never existed. I can’t believe I’m defending the Eagles this vociferously, but they’re being made scapegoats for a bunch of crybabies and weirdos who don’t want THAT much football in their football. It’s fucking embarrassing. Tell ‘em, Aaron Glenn.
If you can’t stop this play, that’s on you.
B:
Your review of The Alto Knights when and where? Excellent job by De Niro.
The second I saw that title pop up at the end of the trailer, I was out. The Alto Knights. Are you shitting me with that title? Sounds like the name of an acapella group at West Point. I’m enjoying the second wind that Robert De Niro has found late in his career (especially Killers of the Flower Moon, which features one of his greatest performances). But he still lays plenty of turds, this one personally commissioned by none other than WBD chief David Zaslav himself:
“Rammed through by the C.E.O. on behalf of his elderly cronies, against the best instincts of the people who make movies for a living,” one entertainment writer said. “A type of film that’s 30 years past its sell-by date,” reported another. “A $50 million money pit” that “anyone with any knowledge of the last 50 years of theatrical box office” could have spotted, a third asserted.
Great. This asshole killed Batgirl, HBO, and GQ. Now he’s killed the prestige mob flick, which is my favorite kind of mob flick. This movie was even written by Nicholas Pileggi of Goodfellas, dammit! How do you fuck that up?!
[finds out that Pileggi is 92 years old]
Oh, OK. But look, I haven’t seen Freaky Long Good Friday here, so I’m not qualified to trash it. So let’s head over to Alto Knights’ Metacritic page and see what respectable critics are sayi—WOOF WOOF WOOF THIS THING SOUNDS LIKE A REAL FUCKING DOG. I won’t watch this thing even if it shows up on my Netflix menu.
Arthur:
I’m a (probationary) Federal employee who has recently had to return to office. My office has an open floor plan (no cubicles), and because I’m not a monster, I wear headphones when I listen to music/podcasts. There are a couple people with desks near mine who will have podcasts or videos playing WITHOUT HEADPHONES! Are manners dead? Is shame dead? Is there a non-murder solution for these people in our society?
I’m afraid not. I have been campaigning against this form of noise pollution for years now, so the idea that people would do this in an office makes me want to buy a gun. How else are you gonna get them to stop? Ask politely? Chuck Schumer has already shown us how far that gets you. Maybe you can tell your boss, except that your boss was appointed by third cousin Joel Trump and spends each workday blasting Kid Rock out of a boom box sitting on his desk. So where does that leave you? That’s right: armed with a bazooka and a copy of every book ever written by Emily Post. You and I are gonna have to re-civilize this idiot country, even if we have to do it one shithead at a time.
Meanwhile, if I ever see any of YOU firing up a podcast without headphones on at work, and you work in an office and not at a open construction site, I will lock you in a steam trunk and then throw that trunk into a river. Who’s gonna arrest me for it? WE HAVE NO LAWS ANYMORE! HA!
Dave:
I grew up in a house where glasses, cups, and mugs were stored right side up in the cabinets, and I still do it that way in my house. But there are many homes where they are stored upside down (and in the case of mugs, hung on hooks). Which side you got?
Hang on, let me check our kitchen…
[walks over]
Oh wow, this is curious: some of our cups are stored right side up, and some are NOT. It’s like the New York Times editorial board arranged this cabinet. If it matters (it doesn’t), most of our shit is right side up, while only a few white mugs are the other way around. I remember my wife once asked me to put some glasses away right side up, just in case there was any stray moisture on the inside of them. If you store a wet glass upside down, you risk a potential mildew buildup in that glass. My wife hates mildew even more than she hates Trump, so I have been programmed for mildew prevention in every conceivable circumstance. The woman will make me get up from my chair if I didn’t leave the bathroom fan on long enough for her taste after I’ve showered. Can you believe that shit? It would be an unreasonable demand if I could stand the thought of her ever leaving me.
Jeremy:
On other sports sites, there's an increasing trend of putting up a doctored photo that shows a player in the uniform of the team that they just joined. Why do they do this? I can't think of any other kind of news item (from relatively reputable sources) that’s announced with a faked image. Does this bother anyone else, or am I just overly sensitive to fake AI images creeping in all around us?
No no, you’re not alone. Schefter is always first on the scene with a “here’s how he’s gonna look in a Giants uniform!” Photoshop after some news has dropped. These images always look like shit, and they’re cater to the lowest possible denominator. Hey sports fans, I’m here to report that Davante Adams has signed with the Los Angeles Rams. And in case that sentence was too difficult for you to read, here’s a visual representation of the signing to aid you. Then official team accounts follow up with their own version of the photo. Then every asshole fan out there takes that as license to put any jersey on any player who might join another team at any point in time. The number of trolljob uniform photoshops out there runs in the trillions. Even ChatGPT thinks they’re fucking pointless.
This is how all news is delivered now. No American wants to read an article past the headline, and they never want to watch a video clip that runs longer than 26 seconds. So the media dumbs everything down for their consumers. Important signings are accompanied by a remedial pictograph, Netflix titles every original movie Dramatic Thriller, political movements are built around saying “woke” with maximum disgust for years on end, and entire news reports are boiled down to either one word just a few, all enlarged to three-story font:
That last genre of news delivery has become a running joke among Defector staffers. The second Lamar Jackson runs off the field unexpectedly, our Slack fills up with suggested graphic treatments like DIARRHEA, PAINED, or RUNNING FOR TOILET. It’s gotten to the point now where other outlets are clearly just fucking around with this trend, as they should.
But for real, this is what a tl;dr culture looks like. Context and detail are of no value. Just write SIGNED in crayon across the photo of a dude and that’s enough for the slobbering masses. I’d tell you this is dispiriting, but it’s just one more example on a pile that now reaches the fucking moon.
Michael:
This morning I accidentally used hair gel instead of toothpaste and ended up vomiting in the sink. Not the best start to the week. What's the worst easy morning mishap you've ever had?
If you’re on one of the weight loss drugs like Wegovy, as I am, you know that mild nausea is one of the more common side effects. That was never an issue for me until one morning a few months ago. I had to get some blood work done, which meant I wasn’t allowed to eat the morning of the test. But the nurse said I could have water and/or black coffee if I wanted. That was just the loophole I needed to endure the hell of intermittent intermittent fasting. I used to take my coffee black, so I drank a cup on an empty stomach for a pick-me-up.
The Wegovy didn’t like that. I went to the bathroom before leaving for the nurse’s office, and suddenly the acidity of the coffee hit me. Our main floor bathroom has the sink situated right in front of the toilet. So, with my pants still around my ankles, I leaned forward and KERSPLOOSH! I spewed all of that used Nespresso directly into the sink. I learned my lesson right good that morning. Also, no chunks landed outside of the sink! THE EXCELLENCE OF EXECUTION.
In other morning boners (pun intended), I’ve also banged my coffee mug directly into my teeth while taking a sip. It’s honestly pretty impressive that I’ve managed to live this long.
HALFTIME!
Adam:
The internet says glasses were invented sometime between 1000 and 1300 CE. What do you think life was like for near/far-sighted people before glasses were invented? Asking for my wife because she’s too high to use her phone right now.
I think about this more than you could ever imagine. I know that I just detailed how we live in a deeply stupid country, which is already having tragic effects on world at large. BUT… we still have corrective lenses, not to mention chapstick. If I had to live without either of those things, I’d be dead from insanity within a week. No chance I travel that far back in time if gifted the power. I’d much rather live in 2025 America—shitty, shitty America—than walk around all day with 20/500 vision and my lips dried out like the fucking badlands. Horrible.
But I haven’t really answered Adam’s question yet. What was life like for the visually impaired a millennium ago? Probably the same as it is for anyone who’s too proud to wear glasses right now. You know these people. Some of them are even full grown adults. You tell them they’re blind and then they tell you to fuck off. I was just like that when I was in fourth grade and my mom wanted me to get my first pair of glasses. I told her I’M FINE MOM, GOD! before walking face-first into a telephone pole. You and I are hard-wired for denial, which is likely how we survived the leaner stretches of human history. I guess you could call it a survival instinct, but that’s too flattering. We’re all just stubborn assholes.
Ben:
You worked at an ad agency. Which was more enjoyable/aggravating: working on a campaign for a big national brand/company, or a small local company?
It’s a tradeoff. I’ve done ads for local car dealers and for national telecom behemoths. For small accounts, there are fewer layers of client bullshit to navigate, which gives you better odds of getting a decent idea greenlit than if you were working on a multi-million dollar national campaign that everyone involved in wants to meddle with. That’s nice.
Now here’s the shit part: your small account ad will have a production budget of $5,000 and no one will ever see it. When I had to explain who my clients were to other people, I felt incredibly small-time. I wanted to work on big name accounts more, if only to have those names on my résumé. Because, regardless of account size, you never know if the client is gonna be a pain in the ass or not. I got to do some fun car dealer ads, but that required working with car dealers. They’re just as liable to make the “I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want this” note as the big brand managers are.
Brian:
You recently published a question from a reader who humble bragged about dunking. In my younger years I desperately wanted to dunk. The closest I ever got to dunking on a regulation hoop was a soccer ball in my high school gym as a freshman. I tore up my ankle a few weeks later, which led to chronic ankle problems and ended my hopes of dunking a basketball on a regulation height basket. Do you remember how close you came to dunking?
Touching rim. That’s as far as I got. It was 1997 and I was easily in the best shape of my life, running five miles a day and finally breaking through the 225-pound barrier with my bench press. I figured that I would only get stronger and faster from there. I was on my way to the NFL, my friends. No doubt about it. Soon I’d be able to bench 315, run a sub-4.5 40, and dunk. That last one popped into my mind anytime I crossed by an open court. Maybe today will be the day, I thought.
Then I got a running start—we’re talking from, like, half-court—and leapt for the rim with all of my might. I think I got one of my fingertips to curl over the rim once, but that’s not a firm memory. Rim was my ceiling. I thought I’d eventually progress to hanging on the rim, which is the third base of dunking. I’d already hung on the net, so the rim couldn’t be that far behind. I was mistaken. But that was the year I started to get laid, so I wasn’t that broken up about it.
I do still get the itch to dunk anytime I pass by a hoop, though. This is why pool dunks were invented.
Sam:
Today is Opening Day, and I noticed that one of the backstop sponsors for my beloved Cincinnati Reds is the Ark Encounter, a life size replica of Noah’s Ark in Northern Kentucky run by Christian creationist wackjobs. This reminded me that last year, the Reds’ radio network was branded the “Tri-State Men’s Health Radio Network” after a local ED clinic. This has me wondering, what is the most humiliating company to sponsor your sports team? An ED clinic is not great, but I can’t think of anything worse than “local creationist theme park.”
I don’t even consider an ED sponsor to be that humiliating. Every guy has ED now, and every dick joke has been made about it. It’s just a normal medical condition. If there are still bros out there who are like, I don’t need no Viagra I’M A REAL MAN, that’s how you know they’ve got zero lead in the pencil.
Back to your question. Yes, the creationist theme park is a pretty embarrassing team sponsor to have. But let’s keep in mind that the LA Lakers currently play at Crypto.com Arena, and the Rams and Chargers play at SoFi Stadium. Those are nationally embarrassing sponsors. You don’t even have to be a Lakers fan, and you probably aren’t, to want to hide your face when you see that arena name flash on your TV screen. It’s enough, especially in present times, to make you wonder if there’s a single reputable business in this goddamn country. We’re months away from ivermectin displays at the supermarket, so having your favorite team sponsored by Jesus freaks who deny the existence of dinosaurs is mere prelude. This answer has been brought to you by Bareback Sportsbook.
Lucas:
What is the best band with a horrible name? Inversely, what is the worst band with the best name? U2 shouldn’t be the answer for either.
I’d never name U2 for either honor because they transcended their own name decades ago, same as The Beatles did back in 1960s. Think about the name “The Beatles” for more than five seconds and it registers as corny beyond belief, as befitting Paul McCartney’s legacy. But they were artists of such historic import that they eventually imbued that dorky-ass band name with untold amounts of history, influence, and also some pretty great songs. Once you’re a great band, you can get away with whatever shitty name you came up with back when you were nobodies. Ask Green Day. Billie Joe Armstrong has openly said he fucking hates the name of his band. But then they became one of the biggest selling acts in history, so there are worse things in life to be stuck with.
For Lucas’s first question, I have a personal beef. One of my favorite groups ever is a British rock band named A. You already see the problem with this name, yeah? Just a fucking train wreck, SEO-wise. Sometimes Spotify is like “Here’s a new release by A!” and it’s some weird EDM track from a dude in Belarus. Sugar has the same problem, and that’s my favorite band of all time.
But these aren’t lousy band names so much as they are impractical ones, so here’s my definitive answer for you: The Band. I don’t even LIKE The Band, which makes their sorry-ass name even worse. Yeah yeah I know about the Scorsese movie. Maybe I’ll get to it, but you can’t make me.
Best band name for a lousy group is …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. I was so psyched to listen to their debut album. I made it three songs in before never bothering with them again.
Michael:
One of my sales reps refuses to uses binder clips, and insists on using paperclips for everything. I'm her account manager, therefore I end up replacing her clips with binder clips and then separate them by policy, so that they fit together nicely and can be easily separated. She will go out of her way to remove my binder clips and then cut the stacks in half just to use the paperclips. Is she insane or just set in her own ways?
Oh the latter. People can be weird about office supplies, because it’s one of the few things they can control about the work they have to do day in, and day out. Ask any writer about their favorite pen and you’ll get 2,000 words in response, all handwritten on loose leaf paper. So I understand how someone like your colleague could have a weird mental block where binder clips are somehow the tool of the devil. Maybe she doesn’t like the way they stack. Or maybe she likes making paperclip bracelets like I did back in second grade. Or maybe she has to reset a lot of 1980 electronic devices around the house. Talk with her to find out the answer. But do it GENTLY. Give her a hearty laugh and say, “OK, you clearly prefer paper clips and I don’t. How do we solve this problem?” and then you both settle on gluing everything together from here on out.
Email of the week!
Slappin’ Hams:
I was watching some March Madness on this fine Saturday and, as one does, found myself craving some salty delicious snacks. My pantry provided the following items, all with about the last quarter of their contents remaining:
Pepperoncini Kettle Chips
Sour Cream and Onion Veggie Straws
Pirate’s Booty
Zapp’s Voodoo Chips
I dumped them all into one bowl, something I had neglected to attempt until just then. Did I make sure to completely empty all of the crumbs and dust from each bag into the bowl? Drew, you know I did.
This was a sports-event-elevating experience. Each bite was distinct from the last, trading off the featured flavor profiles with each clumsy, messy bite. My shirt, destroyed. My pupils, dilated. My bloodstream was nearly pure sodium, even before I tipped the combined dusts swimming together at the bottom of the bowl into my pasty maw. It was a psychedelic bloom of flavor tingling my nervous system from tongue to brain.
I had to chase it with some of those frosted, sprinkled sugar cookies from the grocery store just to take the edge off the salt. I very much look forward to my next deep-field snack adventure.
This has been Stoner Kitchen, brought to you by Half Baked, still available on DVD!
