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 food hangups, cockroaches in heaven, shitting your pants on the football field, and more.
Before I get started, you guys might know that I moonlight as a weekly columnist over at SFGate. I joke that I work for the only two decent news sites left in America, because it's kinda true. But SFGate, like virtually every other media company dependent on ad revenue, got hammered when Google turned its search product into an AI mill. To help counter the losses, my overlords at the gate rolled out a subscription app for the site last week. Like Defector, it’s a cheap date, it has a clean, ad-free interface, and it protects the company newsroom from being decimated by outside forces. So if you can spare five bucks a month, please consider giving it a whirl.
Now, your letters:
Daniel:
So the Caps Lock typer from last week's Funbag got me thinking to what other psycho stuff there is out there. My wife has (reasonably) said I'm a serial killer for the following habit: when I eat Oreos, I'll take an Oreo gently in my cheek and then take a swig of milk. Then, I slosh the milk around until cookie and milk form a sort of slurry in my mouth. Even typing this out, I recognize that this reads like a logline for a new season of Mindhunter. What's a gross, but acceptable eating habit that you'll defend?
Damn Daniel, I explicitly told everyone NOT to overuse the "psycho" label! People who do that are literal serial killers!
Kidding aside, your Oreo habit is fine by me. There's no wrong way to eat an Oreo, amigo. We've had some commenters here pooh-pooh Oreos in general, but those people can kiss my creamy white ass. Oreos remain an elite snack, engineered for you to enjoy in myriad ways. You can twist and lick. You can unscrew two Double Stufs to make a quadruple stuf (and beyond!). You can dunk them in milk (or coffee, as I do). Or you can do Daniel's whole "my mouth is a food processor!" routine. All of it is acceptable to me.
Now, to your question: What's a gross eating habit of mine that I'll defend? Chewing with my mouth open. That's right, I’m going there. When I eat, I take big bites. And when I take a big bite, there's not always enough room in my closed mouth to accommodate all six of those Oreos at once. So what's the solution?
Take smaller bites?
NO! No, the solution is allowing my lips to part while I masticate. I don't make a show of it. I don't smack my lips so loud that the whole world can hear. I'm just housing a slice of watermelon and enjoying it to the fullest possible extent. Is that so wrong? Does that make me a serial killer? Isn't slurping your food considered polite, if not preferred, in other countries? Who's being the real racist here? My name is Drew. I eat like Homer Simpson, and I'm damn proud of it.
Also, I wish they'd bring Mindhunter back. They cut that show off before we got to the BTK story arc! That was gonna be the best part! Work with me here, Netflix. I DEMAND MORE BRUTAL SLAYINGS AND MORE ANNA TORV.
Steve:
A friend of mine lost a nut to testicular cancer, but it was apparently a sufficiently grievous injury that his mortgage protection insurance ended up paying off his house. Anyway, this has me thinking of purchasing a lavish home, then trying to irradiate a testicle. In the housing market where I live, I would totally sacrifice one for a nice house. This led to a discussion among my co-workers about what limbs or organs you would give up, and for how much. What body part(s) would you give up for a house that's otherwise outside your price range?
Wait a second. Are you telling me that getting cancer can somehow result in loan forgiveness? Goddamn! And here I thought "I'd give my left nut" was strictly a metaphorical construct.
To free myself from any potential legal liabilities here, let me say it loud: Please do not give yourself cancer. Even if you think it's one of the harmless cancers, it's still cancer. And even if you go ahead and wear a uranium jock strap around all day, who says just one nut is gonna get got by it? It's not worth the risk. And it's not like standing in front of a microwave while you wait for your burrito to heat up will do the trick, either. Now that I'm snipped, I fear no radiation directed at my balls. I can't make babies anyway! DO YOUR WORST, QUANTUM PARTICLES.
OK, that's the end of me taking Steve's question far too literally. Would I give a nut, no questions asked, for a nice house? It's tempting, especially given how little I use my balls anymore. At 49, all your balls can do is grow a tumor, sag down to your knees, or both. Kind of annoying. Let's go with my appendix instead. That's a much easier sacrifice, as the human appendix is universally regarded as vestigial. In fact, it's the only body part I'd willingly sacrifice in exchange for material goods. I already lost my right (inner ear) and my sense of smell. That was a real pain in the ass, so I don't want to give up anything else. Not even my spleen.
Unless the house in question is on the ocean and has an infinity pool. Then go ahead and remove a lung.
Drew (not me):
How come heavy metal isn't referred to as hair metal, given that they usually all have insanely long hair and love to whip it around?
We're a couple of decades past people talking about metal of any kind, but I'll entertain your question anyway. "Hair metal" refers to pop metal. More specifically, it refers to the strain of pop metal that originated on the Sunset Strip back in the early 1980s. There was no internet back then to get word out about your band, so enterprising Hollywood transplants like Nikki Sixx and Bret Michaels decided to dress themselves up as outrageously as possible to get more attention. That meant donning all-leather stage costumes, setting themselves on fire during gigs, and teasing their hair out as far as it could possibly go. Once those bands broke, record companies signed any rock band that had big hair and could play shitty songs, a la Danger Danger.
This wasn't the kind of foofy stagecraft that a band like, say, Slayer was all that interested in. All of those guys had long hair too, but the only product they put in that hair was their own blood, sweat, and drunken vomit. So remember: If hairspray be on display, it's hair metal they play. If no product be in sight, then it's heavy metal delight.
Jonathan:
You find yourself plopped into a closed Chick-Fil-A. How close to making the real thing can you get?
Real close, amigo. You're talking to a guy who has experience working in a fast food joint. Those restaurants have laminated instruction sheets for employees posted all around the back of the house. I wouldn't have been able to make you a quality Little Caesars pizza had my 15-year-old ass not been able to consult those placards. I can guarantee you that CFA's got the same protocols firmly in place. That means that after I'm done festooning the entire restaurant in Pride flags, I could fry myself up a shitload of spicy chicken sandwiches (I can't go back to the non-spicy ones) and give myself maximum blood pressure. Then I'd make a banana pudding shake. Then I would drop dead. That would rock.
By the way, I've tried replicating the CFA sandwich at home. There are copycat recipes all over the internet, including one over at the hallowed Serious Eats. I've tried the bulk of them. I've marinated raw chicken in pickle juice, all that shit. Did the end result match the real deal? NOPE. Not only did I end up with a subpar CFA filet, but my kitchen smelled like brine and peanut oil for a week. Not worth it. To make a real-deal CFA sandwich, you gotta be in their kitchen, using their instructions and their deep fryers filled with year-old grease. It's the only way.
By the way, part 2: I snuck a CFA sandwich into The Odyssey last week. Not the first time I've done this at the movies, and won't be the last. But I had my son with me, and he got a 20-piece nuggets AND waffle fries. Ever try to sneak an open top carton of waffle fries into a theater in your pocket? Not fun.
Ryan:
Does anyone actually follow the water boiling amounts on pasta packaging? I can't eyeball four quarts of water and I refuse to measure because I’m dumping the whole box in anyway. Am I alone?
Nah. I don't know anyone who measures the pasta water. I know I don't. Sometimes I play myself by boiling too little water, and then I'm frantically adding cupfuls of hot water seven minutes into the cooking time to prevent the pot from boiling dry. Turns out pasta gets bigger as it cooks. Who knew?
But those mishaps will never drive me to measuring the water out. Just boil more water than you think you need and you should be groovy. And if you fuck up … well, dry pasta is about the only cheap thing left in this asshole country.
Derek:
The other day at work I was putting cream cheese on a bagel. When I was done smearing I licked the excess cream cheese off the knife. There was a lot left over and I love cream cheese, and our work gives us cream cheese packets in the kitchen instead of tubs so I basically would have had to throw them out. One of my coworkers saw me and reacted like it was a disgusting move to eat cream cheese straight (not disgusting to lick a knife in public, that's a different argument). What are your thoughts? Gross to eat cream cheese solo? Weird to eat cheese sans crackers off a board? This is a hill I am willing to die on.
Oh yeah, we're on a run of food habit questions today, and I'm gonna keep rolling with it. Anyway, I find it hard to believe that in today's carb-averse world, someone would heckle you for eating cheese in the raw. Cream cheese is its own beast, given that you're supposed to spread it on crackers, bagels, and your mistress's chest. I won't eat cream cheese right out of the tub. That would be stupid. But licking off a daub here and there is fine. I always do it (see my above exchange with Daniel for proper context on how I eat). And eating hard cheese by itself is accepted practice virtually everywhere. Now, if you were eating a wheel of brie with your bare hands, that would be really fucking weird. But a cube of cheddar off the conference room table? Big green light.
Joe:
The best food to satisfy the munchies after smoking a fat-as-fuck joint is a pint of ice cream (Haagen-Dazs, Ben & Jerry's, whatever your go-to brand may be). However, my wife insists on making a charcuterie board. The fuck is wrong with her?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Smoke that J and go where your food muse takes you. You think I'm turning down a fat wad of mortadella slices when I'm jolly? Hell no, I ain't. This is weed, Joe. We don't judge others when we're high. We just … mmmmmm I could go for some straight walnut-and-raisin cream cheese right now, tell you what.
HALFTIME!
Matt:
I was getting breakfast in the cafeteria of the hospital I work at. The lady in front of me ordered a croissant, egg, cheese, and bacon sandwich. When her order was ready she went to the condiment area and lathered that sandwich with honey. Is she a lunatic, or a genius? Also can you rank breakfast sandwiches?
It's not that far a journey from eating chicken and waffles with maple syrup to drizzling honey on your breakfast sandwich. BIG HOT HONEY is still ravaging the fast casual dining space right now, so I can guarantee you there's some hipster-fied airport food place that already serves a breakfast sandwich called The Bee's Knees or something that has honey all over it. Doesn't bother me. America embraced the sweet-and-salty lifestyle a while ago. Your co-worker's move is a logical extension of that.
As for ranking breakfast sandwiches, I'm not qualified because—brace yourself—I don't like cheese on my breakfast sandwiches. I'll do feta in an omelet, but never cheddar or American. Those cheeses don't gross me out with eggs, they just don't do anything for me. So I'm the guy who shows up to Mickey D's and asks for a sausage and egg biscuit with no cheese. I've also never eaten a McGriddle. You understand why I'm out of my depth here. If I wanted to try harder, I'd just tell you that the best breakfast sandwich is a breakfast taco, and then you'd shoot me in the face.
Fred:
Would you rather be real tall or real short? Say that your options were to be either 7-foot-4 or 4-foot-8.
I'm already a tall person, so I can't go back to being a little pipsqueak. My only hesitation is that, at 6-foot-3, I am on the very edge of fitting into cars and airplanes. Tack another foot and change onto my height, and suddenly life would get much more uncomfortable for me. But I could dunk a basketball, so whatever. Make me taller. I already enjoy lording over all of the little people as is.
Rich:
It seems to me that all oceanic life is dumb compared to dry land animals (not including mammals that live in the sea). Is there something about getting oxygen through water that makes fish and their pals so gosh dang stupid?
Rich, our own Sabrina Imbler is coming to your house as we speak to beat you to death with a boat anchor. Now, don't tell Sabs that, according some research I just came across by doing a basic web search, fish really are dumber than their landbound peers. They have much smaller brains relative to their physical size than land vertebrates do, and are thus less intelligent in the classical sense. If you've ever owned a goldfish, you know this to be true.
HOWEVER, check this passage out:
It has been surprisingly challenging to determine how this translates into increased cognitive performance. In particular, it is unclear whether the brain size differences translate into qualitative differences in specific cognitive abilities.
In other words, it's possible that a fish could get more juice out of a tiny brain than, say, a dog might get out of a larger one. And if you've ever read David Foster Wallace's seminal Consider the Lobster, you know that the true inner workings of the animal mind, same as the human mind, exist beyond the reaches of modern science. Furthermore, if a fish operates solely on instinct and not reason, who's to say that they're dumber for it? These guys have to spend all day trying to avoid getting eaten by a shark. You have to allow them their anatomical priorities. Ask a fisherman if fish are stupid. Ol' Pegleg Pete will treat you to a four-hour story about a red snapper that outwitted him at every turn.
More important, we already have tech bros acting like shitass ChatGPT is sentient when it's just a piece-of-shit website. So we gotta support all living brains to show those jackasses what's up. I've answered this question far too seriously, haven't I? Now I want some takeout sushi.
Randall:
Let's say there's an employee break room in heaven, where all the saints and angels drink coffee and smoke cigarettes while shit talking about management. St. Paul takes the last cup of coffee and, while he's adding cream and sugar, he sees something out of the corner of his eye on the floor ... and it's a huge disgusting cockroach. Do you think he stomps it? Or sends an email to the boss to see what he wants to do about it?
The fuck is a cockroach doing in heaven? I don't care if it has a brain or not, it dies. Roaches are scum that belong in hell, not in the VIP section of the afterlife. St. Peter would bring the hammer down on that little fucker, and he'd be right to. Fuck cockroaches, man. My tolerance only extends to so many species.
John:
I have a friend who I have been hanging out with since college. He's a great guy and I've known him for nearly thirty years. However, he has one habit which I consider insane. He puts his beer bottles in the crisper in the fridge. Does anyone else do this? Not only do I have to rummage through a bunch of stupid microbews to get my precious 312 (which is ALWAYS buried at the bottom), but I also have to open an extra door!
We're back on the food habit tip again, and I couldn't be happier. I must ask you, John … (with my nose turned way up) does your fridge NOT have a beer drawer? Because our fridge has not only two crisper drawers, but also a third drawer with its own temperature control for storing beer, fine meats and cheese, and what have you. It's quite a lovely feature. And even if we didn't have this super special beer crisper in our fridge, I'd still store our beer wherever there's room for it. It's beer. I don't give a crap.
Somewhat related: My wife and I are on our 10th straight year of wondering if we need a separate beer fridge. Neither of us drink alcohol anymore, but I drink a shitload of Athletic, and I wouldn't mind extra fridge/freezer space for other shit. If our house had a garage, this wouldn't even be an issue. We'd just buy an old school Frigidaire and go wild. Alas. Moving on…
Colin:
How many times in the history of the NFL do you think someone got hit and immediately shit their pants? It's got to be pretty high, right? We need a definitive ranking of NFL positions with the highest rate of Involuntary Spontaneous Shitting.
You can lose control of your bowels after suffering a traumatic injury, yes. Keep that in mind when consider that you and I are treated to multiple such injuries during every NFL game. We also get a few "Oh shit, I think that guy might be dead" injuries sprinkled into the festivities, which brings us to the uncomfortable question: Did Damar Hamlin shit himself when he collapsed on the field that fateful night in Cincinnati? If he did, everyone on the scene was a true professional about it. If Cam Skattebo had been around that night, he would have been like, "Ewww bro, did you just shit yourself? PARTY FOUL, BRO." But he wasn't. Skattebo himself has probably been knocked into incontinence on multiple occasions. Nothing he can't walk off.
Adam:
I live in a residential part of Los Angeles. My neighborhood is mostly single-family homes and apartment buildings, and it has relatively well maintained sidewalks. Despite said sidewalks, there is a scourge of boomer-aged adults who always walk in the damn street instead of using the sidewalk. They make no effort to get out of the way of cars or bikes that are using said street. They're just retired and walking around, IN THE STREET. A neighbor I was bitching about this with said this started during COVID because of social distancing. Is this happening elsewhere and when can we start running them over?
Please do not run over clueless old people. Don't give yourself cancer, and don't commit vehicular manslaughter. It's all I ask of you.
Personally speaking, I don't see old people eschewing the sidewalks where I live. This is because drivers in the DMV would indeed run them over if they tried that shit, even in the residential areas. Especially in those areas. If pedestrians around here just started waltzing around in the middle of Georgia Avenue, it would be a bloodbath. If that's happening elsewhere in this country, all I can do shake my head. Do Americans not already do enough harm to one another?
While we're on the subject of transit … wear a fucking bike helmet. Every major city has a bikeshare program now. Does anyone using those bikes wear a helmet? No. Not even in fucking Manhattan. And some of these bikes are e-bikes that top out at like 30 mph. It's lunacy. Drives me insane. I know that cities don't provide helmets to go with the bikes (get on that, Zohran), but that doesn't give you excuse to ride around Fifth Avenue with your melon exposed for some cab driver to splatter all over his windshield. Buy a goddamn helmet and wear it.
Email of the week!
Steve:
Let's get rid of timeouts. In basketball: Your players are gassed and gave up a 17-0 run? Tough shit. You should have seen that coming. Sub better, play defense and deal with it. You just gave up a go ahead score with only 1.5 seconds left? Fuck off and no you don't get to call a TO and magically advance the ball half way up the court. You lose. Calling a time out after a time out just because you want to see how the opponent sets up? Fuck you and all of your loved ones.
In football: You don't like what you see in your opponent's defense? Audible. Run a cruddy play. Whatever. Play clock running out before you are ready to run a play? You fucked up. That's a penalty. Down two scores in the fourth quarter? Do your no huddle offense earlier and score or you lose. Freezing the kicker? You are asshole cancer.
Well shit, he sold me.
