Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about democracy, belts, bar soap, optimal diner orders, and more.
Happy Election Day, everyone! I hope you voted early and often. I know I did!
Your letters:
Beef Supreme:
I saw a bottle of artisanal-ass hot honey for like, $25. It seems to be having its pumpkin-spice moment. I was mucking around in the kitchen recently and put some Crystal hot sauce in honey for some guests and everyone went bonkers for it. Is hot honey bullshit?
Of course it is. It’s all marketing. Putting hot honey on something is just an easy way of making something ordinary sound fancier than it is. Fried chicken sandwiches are a dime a dozen, but the second you see a hot-honey fried chicken sandwich, your lizard brain goes, Whoa that sounds crazy different and artisanal! Suddenly you’re out a cool $18. We have a bottle of Trader Joe’s hot honey in the cupboard. No one has used it. That thing is gonna sit on the shelf for another two years before either my wife or I say, “Why is this still here? I’m sick of looking at it.” And then into the trash it goes. I already feel like a chump.
I wish I sat on the secret Freemason committee that decides new food trends. You know what I’d pitch to the room? Candied plantains. You think I wouldn’t absolutely ruin a tub of candied plantain ice cream, or make billions off a candied plantain latte? Think again, muchacho! I know my flavor profiles.
Gary:
What's the point of voting for Democrats? I love the idea of universal healthcare, protecting the environment, and just in general not being a douche. The Democrats seem to be more closely aligned to these platforms. But damn if I don't lose faith in the political system daily. The Haley Stevens thing reminds me of when, in 2020, Bernie was doing his damnedest to win, and all the corporate Democrat shills got in line behind Biden, because nothing is more important for this country than the status quo. Why am I voting for a party that clearly doesn't care about playing fair? Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is one of those candidates that you see once in a blue moon who actually seems like he gives a shit. I'm just dejected by this move by Stevens. Help give me inspiration as I limp to the polls Tuesday.
Whoa hey buddy, I’m supposed to be the election day killjoy here! Don’t you go stealing my sunshine!
In all seriousness, it’s very easy to watch Democrats play with their food over and over again and go the full South Park in response. You get sick of the entire system, cynical about that system ever improving, and then you decide that voting at all is a waste of your time. But that’s college-kid shit. We are grownups now, and being a grownup means doing the right thing even if you know that it may not amount to anything. It sucks, and sometimes I wish that I was 19 again and didn’t give a fuck about any of this. But life has forced the issue, so I have to do what I have to do.
I have zero faith in the Democratic Party, regardless of what happens tonight. Why would I, after seeing what I’ve seen from them? But sitting out an election, or doing the whole “I’ll vote for a third party!” act, does me more harm than voting for the chump party ever could. Because for as terminally ineffective as Democrats are, they’re still miles better than the GOP, which is now so blatantly corrupt and evil that even Najee Harris can see it. Conservatism was a lie from the start. Keep those fuckers in power and they’ll just continue cutting everything to pieces. Vote against them and you at least stanch the bleeding for a while.
Democracy is grim work, and it’s never finished. That means that you and I will live our entire lives without our home country becoming a true Eden. You accept that reality, while also basking in the fact that you’re free, as an American, to be publicly unhappy with your leaders … even the ones you voted for. President Assman has tried his best to quash dissent in his trademark slipshod manner but in the aggregate, it’s been a failed effort. You still get to vote today, and you still get to chew out any rep whom you feel isn’t living up to the job. That’s not much, but it’s a good deal better than, say, Russia has to offer. Voting is a celebration of that freedom, and an expression of your own moral values. It’s good for you, even if the results end up letting you down.
Kevin:
Pants should have more belt loops. Agree?
As someone who, on multiple occasions, has missed a loop while putting on a belt and then gone out in public, I do not. Nothing makes me feel like a grade school dropout more than realizing I was out all day wearing pants wrong. Add more loops to negotiate and I’ll have even more down moments like that. No can do. Gotta keep my self-esteem on the level.
Jordan:
My wife believes that leaving the aluminum foil cover on containers of sour cream, tahini, etc. preserves the contents of the container better. I maintain that the lid does that work just fine, thank you, and that the foil cover is only effective until its seal is broken. Meanwhile, dealing with the foil cover for the duration of the container's time in your fridge is ANNOYING. Right? RIGHT?
I may or may not have had a similar disagreement with my better half. The way I resolved the issue was thusly: If I go into the fridge and there’s an open container that has the foil peeled back, I just leave it that way. It’s not worth starting a whole ado over it. But if I’m the one opening that big tub of yogurt for the first time… RRRRRRRIP! Bye bye to you, foil. Perfectly cozy arrangement.
Besides, I’ve attended enough counseling sessions to know that any “that little thing you do drives me fucking nuts!” beef between spouses is, predictably, not about the little thing at all. So now, my wife and I make sure that our big talks are about the actual big stuff, and not whether or not I’m the asshole for not keeping our sour cream fresh enough.
Mike:
Did you guys bring a school photo day set up to the most recent Defector retreat? These new profile pictures are something...
That ellipsis on the end frankly sounds like you don’t like our new headshots. Rude.
Jeff:
I noticed what appeared to be a new headshot/author's photo at the bottom of the Jamboroo this week. As a photographer with a ton of writer and artist friends who ask me to do their author headshots so that, "They can have something different", and then proceed to shit on any idea than deviates even a scintilla from the norm, let me ask you: What ingredients make a good author's photo? And what's the best/worst ones you've ever had?
See, Mike? Jeff asked this question much more nicely. Now don’t you feel ashamed for what you’ve done?
Anyway, the Defector staff had our annual meetings just over a month ago and we hired a professional photographer to take groups photos AND individual headshots. These headshots took a matter of seconds for each member of the Defector staff. I had no requests for the photographer, because I’ve tried enough DIY headshots over my career that I know that anything a pro wants me to do will be better than whatever, overwrought bullshit I can demand of them.
Because too many writers think there’s a certain way a serious writer must look. I don’t want any of that. I don’t wanna do the “resting my chin on my hand” thing that every pair of glasses at the Wall York Post does. I don’t wanna stare thoughtfully off camera, like I’m contemplating the nature of man. I just want a normal photo that doesn’t make me look like a fucking idiot. I trusted the photographers to give me that and HEY PRESTO! That’s just what I got. Now you may say I look stupid anyway, but that’s because you’re being a dick. Like Mike!
BG:
Shepherds Bush, London. I assume it's where sickos go to drink.
(It's a great pub... with bad food, fwiw)
Oh shit, we’ve got our own British pub! Nice! I have no idea what the word “Weld” means in that name, but I’ve always liked inscrutable British signage, especially at premier league games. “Custom tailoring with the faff!”
Dunk:
I have longtime friends who used to devour basketball with me but don't even watch our home team these days. I have new friends who either don't keep up at all or do so by getting ESPN alerts. This is frustrating because they know about everything but know of nothing, so there's very minimal conversations to be had. I don't think I'm putting in that much effort to keep up, yet it seems like everyone else is hardly making an effort at all. Am I the anomaly here?
Well wait, do your friends all have kids? Because that tends to siphon off a good amount of your time watching sports/movies/TV shows. However, I’ll allow that some people just naturally grow apart from whatever sports they used to watch. My old Kissing Suzy Kolber colleague Jack Kogod can’t be bothered to watch the NFL at all anymore. I’m not mad or sad about it, it’s just how shit changes. Same way I can barely muster a single fuck about college basketball anymore, even at tourney time. I used to watch Big Monday on ESPN religiously back in the 1990s. Now? Fuck that. I’d rather watch a movie. Then if I try talking up sports with some old friend later on and they draw a blank, I can easily pivot to, “Hey man, you see that Elizabeth Holmes doc? That lady and her baby daddy are fucking lunatics!” And boom. Off we go. Always pays to diversify your conversational portfolio.
HALFTIME!
Dennis:
I'm a bar soap guy. Like most people, when the bar I'm using is wafer thin, I open a new one and smush the old, thin bar into the new one. The problem is, for soaps that are hard (I'm an Irish Spring devotee), it's 50/50 odds at best that the two bars will stick together. Here's the idea: make the new bars with a space that will fit the old, worn-out bar into it. This accomplishes a few things: a better user experience, plus brand loyalty because you want that killer feature. Should we bring this idea to big soap? I doubt it's patentable or very valuable, but who knows?
I can’t answer a bar soap question without linking to this old Dan Kois piece about bar soap that’s far more entertaining than any piece on the subject has any right to be. I was damn near convinced to switch back to bar soap after reading it. Did I? No, but I thought about it! That has to count for something!
Anyway Dennis, your idea for a bar of Coast that has a pre-made alcove for easy fusing is totally patentable. Elizabeth Holmes got a zillion patents for a machine that didn’t even work, so I see no reason why your idea can’t be filed. I bet the brand managers at Procter & Gamble would lose their fucking minds if they stumbled into that sort of category differentiator. Not even kidding. I had a copywriter friend who was in a meeting with Frito Lay executives when one of the suits boasted about a new technology that would allow like an extra 0.5 mg of flavor dust to stay on a potato chip. When she snickered at his proclamation, he fucking WENT OFF on her. That’s how insane corporate America can get about this shit. So I say that you, Dennis, should design that patent and file your idea right now. Don’t let BIG BAR steal it from you. It’s not that stupid of an idea!
Will it persuade me to finally switch back to bar soap if it becomes reality? Again, no. But I might be convinced to think about it.
Kurt:
I think that this 2026 Brewers team is my favorite sports team of all time. I love their coach, I know and care about every single player, and they have been a blast to watch. The 2006-2007 Chicago Bears team is now my second, where Devin Hester and peanut punch Tillman were in their prime. Yours?
Mine remains the 1987 and 1991 Minnesota Twins, for obvious reasons. Not only did those Twins win the World Series (apparently for the last time), but those were two of the most dramatic, incredible World Series ever played. The Twinkies of yore also had Kirby Puckett, who remains my favorite baseball player of all time. Plus they had the Homer Hankies, which were a novel idea before every other playoff team in every other sport adopted playoff cheering swag of their own. These were great teams that were also LOVABLE, which is a rare thing. Puck would later be accused of some truly nasty shit, so I can’t fan out TOO hard about it. But those are my favorite sports teams of all time, by a healthy margin.
My favorite Vikings team of all time was the 1998 squad, but that story didn’t quite have a fairy tale ending. Alas.
Now it’s time for me to provide some non-homer answers to Kurt’s question. Outside of Minnesota, here are my favorite teams of all time, off the top of my head:
-2026 New York Knicks
-1990 New York Giants
-1993 Chicago Bulls
-1994 New York Rangers
-1994 Arkansas Razorbacks (MCBB)
-1989 Cleveland Browns
-1994 Nebraska Cornhuskers (CFB)
-1993 Philadelphia Philles
-2004 Boston Red Sox (true story! I really was cheering for them!)
-2026 US Women’s Olympic Figure Skating Team
As you’ll notice, the majority of those teams played in the 20th century. It’s easier to fall in love when you’re young and stupid.
Dan:
About nine years ago we lost a friend to cancer. It was jarring both in how quickly it happened and the fact that it was the first death of someone in our social circle. She has a son, who was a little over three at the time. Not long after, her husband, who we are all friends with to this day, asked us to write up our favorite memories of her. He wanted to compile them all into a book for their son, so he could have a better sense of who his mother was once he was older. I wrote my piece and gave it to him by his deadline, but I was never really happy with it. I thought about rewriting it often. So a little over two years ago, I started to. I was able to pin down what I wanted to say better and organize my thoughts in a way I just wasn’t able to back then. Should I share this with my friend and his son (now nearly a decade removed from her passing)? It feels very selfish.
Share it! I bet they’d be thrilled to read it. I know I would be. If someone came to me 10 years from now and said to me, “Hey Drew, I said some kind words about your dad right after he died but since then I’ve had time to articulate my thoughts a little clearer,” I wouldn’t be like “YOU’RE TOO LATE NOW, YOU SELF-CENTERED PRICK!” I’d wanna hear whatever new thing they had to say, because it would revive my father’s spirit inside of me, and I’d be grateful for that.
Because the grieving process takes time. Forever, even. If you have a loved one die suddenly, of course you may not be able to find the right words for them within days of it happening. So you sit with your memories throughout the days and years afterward, and eventually your fond remembrances get a little bit sharper. That’s completely natural. On the other side of the equation, it’s never too late to receive condolences. There’s no hard statute of limitations on any of this shit. All my best to you and your friends and family.
Dane:
What’s the most bulletproof order configuration for “eggs your way, bacon or sausage, choice of breakfast potato, and toast”? Assume we are at a standard greasy spoon, where the food is quality but unpretentious.
Sunny-side-up eggs, side of bacon, hash browns with ketchup. If they only have home fries, I might switch over to toast and dunk that shit into the egg yolk.
Erik:
After seeing Jerry Jones in obvious agony yesterday as he watched his Cowboys shit the bed against the mighty Arizona Cardinals, my buddy turned to me and asked, "Do you ever just feel bad for Jerry Jones a little bit"? My answer was a swift fuck no, but this got me thinking: Are there any repulsive sports (or otherwise public) figures out there that you find yourself feeling a reflexive bit of sympathy for when they flash across your TV screen, even though you know they're utterly undeserving of it? I can't say Jerry Jones has ever triggered this particular impulse in me.
Are we discounting people who just got horribly injured, or are suffering from some terminal disease? Because Bobby Kraft is clearly a stone’s throw away from the grave, and seeing him all old and fucked up makes me automatically sympathetic, because I’ve had loved ones suffer a similar fate. I’ll still piss on Kraft’s grave after the fact, but for now I can hold him in utter contempt while also feeling a modicum of sympathy for him and his awful family.
But if you’re just talking about, Hey, do you ever secretly feel bad if Harrison Butker misses a critical 53-yarder in a driving rainstorm? then my answer is the loudest FUCK NO you’ve ever heard.
John:
You're an international traveler, I am not. Curious if this is normal or if I'm being a whiny 50-year-old. Flying back from the UK to Charlotte after a cruise. Standard eight/nine hour flight, but gaining hours over the Atlantic. Took off at 3:00 PM London time which puts us in Charlotte at about 7:00 PM. We were leaving in daylight and landing in daylight. As soon as the flight takes off, they feed us and then turn off the lights like it's a redeye. If I'm on UK time, it's the equivalent of mid-afternoon. If I'm on East Coast time, same thing. I just wanted to read a book or play a game on my phone. Why would this be a time to turn off all the lights? It's not sleep time for anyone normal on either end of the flight. Is this common to just pretend everyone sleeps on long flights no matter what time of day it is?
I believe so, yes. Even if you’re flying through daylight from wheels up to wheels down, plenty of passengers will want to nap, sometimes to stave off jet lag once they arrive. So the cabin crew accommodates for that by turning the lights off. That doesn’t mean that you, John, aren’t allowed to be awake. You can turn on your overhead light and entertain yourself if you want. That’s your right and, anecdotally speaking, most sleepers on the flight will be wearing an eye mask anyway. You might even crack your windowshade, although that’s its own separate argument.
If you do stay awake the whole flight, just beware of boredom and/or envy. I swear that every time I fly long distances, everyone else on the plane has the ability to sleep and I don’t. Doesn’t matter if the sun is out or not. I alone am the only fucker enduring the full nine-hour flight by attempting to watch three average movies back-to-back-to-back. Not fair.
Pete:
When I was in college, I worked at a hospital, as a janitor. It was a union job, so it paid well and had good benefits. Stayed for almost five years and had friends I worked with every day. It’s been over 20 years, and a few of us have kept in touch, via Facebook, but no real effort other than that. I hung out with a few of them last weekend, and I felt uncomfortable and guilty the whole time. That was their livelihood, but my pit stop. We just have nothing in common, except our shared work experience. What’s the strategy for continuing this?
Do you like hanging out with them? That’s really all that matters, isn’t it? America has a somewhat looser caste system than older countries, but the class divisions are still glaring enough for you to be uncomfortable hanging out with people who are far down the socioeconomic ladder from you. This, of course, is bad for the social compact. All of the rich fuckers take pains to cloister themselves off from everyone else, and that makes it nearly impossible for Americans to relate to one another. Hence… President Donald Trump. So get out of your comfort zone. [serious voice] The fate of the world depends on it.
Email of the week!
Drew (not me):
This Juneteenth, I drove my daughter to Vermont for a college visit. She’s an animal lover and budding hiker, so on the way we stop at a nature preserve to walk some trails. The second I exit the car, that familiar “road trip fast food” clench hits. No problem… the visitor center’s right over there! Problem — it’s closed, either for the holiday or because we’re in Bumfuck, VT and the one person who works there didn’t show. Either way, I’m halfway up a mountain with my teenage daughter, a locked restroom, and a bubble gut emergency. Confiding my plight would mean NEVER hearing the end of it from her, her sister, or my wife. Unacceptable.
Thinking quickly, I tell the girl to snap some nature pictures nearby while I run our food trash back to the car, since there’s no garbage can. Sprinting back, I hurl the bag inside, grab a fistful of napkins, and haul ass a couple dozen yards up the nearest trail. Frantically scanning for other hikers, I find a convenient log, squat, and turn the Green Mountain State slightly less so. After finishing, I clean myself up and briefly consider taking the napkins back with me, but where am I going to put them? There’s no trash can and I’m sure as hell not driving the rest of the way with shit napkins in the car, so under the log they go.
Evidence stashed, I rejoin my daughter and we hike two OTHER, very pleasant trails. As soon as we arrive at our hotel, I guiltily Google “Are fast food napkins biodegradable?” (They are. Phew!)
Nice!
