Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. And buy Drew’s new book, “The Night The Lights Went Out,” through here.
I’ve spent so much time with my head up my ass that it was inevitable I would one day invite a camera crew up there to join it. That day, fair reader, was today. I got a colonoscopy this morning, which I highly recommend to those of you eligible for such things. They shot me full of propofol, I dozed off for a catnap, and then I woke up to the news that my insides were immaculate. I can go about my day normally AND my ass feels terrific. Four stars. Would go again (actually, doctor’s orders mandate I do so at regular intervals).
But if you’re a veteran of being scoped, you know that while the procedure itself is a breeze, the prep work for it is not. Prior to a colonoscopy, you have to undergo a 24-hour cleanse. Such cleanses may be familiar to the Orange County residents who buy "detox teas" through Instagram, but I was new to the cleanse game. My normal SOP is to keep my body very unclean. But, for the sake of visibility during the procedure, a total system flush was mandatory. No one likes driving in nasty weather.
So I cleansed, and went 24 hours without solid food. Let’s find out what I learned while starving to death.
The pre-op instructions from my doctor were very direct. Vital steps were bolded, underlined, or both. The day before my procedure, I could eat a light breakfast. After that, nothing but clear liquids: water, tea, apple juice, etc. No egg nog. I could have my beloved coffee, but without my beloved oat milk creamer. I could eat Jell-O for sustenance, but not if it was orange, red, or purple (draw your own conclusions as to why). I could also have clear broth for meals. This must be what it’s like to have the flu in prison.
I walked downstairs first thing yesterday morning and discovered a joker card that my son had left on the floor. Sick boy. I made some eggs and coffee and savored every bite and sip of each. This was my feast for the day: the most sustenance I’d have inside me until the following morning. By the afternoon, I was fucking starving. I barely had enough energy to stand. If I had been in the Donner Party, I would have been the first to claim dibs on a meaty cadaver. Deprivation does not suit me well.
But my cleansing odyssey had only just begun. I had cut off my intake, but now I had to accelerate my … output. At 4:00 p.m., I had to take two laxatives. At 6:00 p.m., I had to consume an entire bottle of Miralax: a tasteless, white, powdered laxative that my wife and I used to spoon feed to our children when they were babies to help them with constipation. Now I was being asked to throw down ALL of that powder in one sitting. To assist me, the doctor told me to mix that powder with 64 ounces of Gatorade. Again, it couldn’t be red, orange, or purple Gatorade. So I picked blue. I spent dinner alternating between chugging electrolyte-soluble laxatives and eating spoonfuls of miso broth. It was so, so much fluid. I can’t believe I used to drink that much fluid in the form of beer as many times as I did. There should be exploded pieces of me lying around six neighboring states.
The good news, if it could be considered as such, was that I would soon expel the bulk of that excess fluid. After dinner, I sat around thinking to myself hey man, something awful should be happening right now. When the clock struck 9:30 p.m., it did. They want you clear for this test. My clearing had begun.
But all those laxatives still weren’t enough. Exactly five hours before my procedure, I was to drink an entire bottle magnesium citrate: a saline laxative. So at 3:30 a.m. last night, my alarm went off and I trudged upstairs (I slept in the basement to spare my wife from the fireworks) to throw down the citrate. It was slightly more viscous than water. A touch disturbing, but I’ve ingested worse. I went back to bed and then back to the toilet four more times. By morning, my bowel movements were clearer than a glass of Austin tap water.
I was not allowed to eat or drink anything this morning. If I had any water, I risked having my procedure forcibly cancelled. I briefly toyed with the idea of eating an entire Chipotle burrito right before checking in. Just for kicks. But I demurred. Instead, I got up, made my daughter lunch for school, and then stayed as far away from the kitchen, and its temptations, as possible. By the time my wife drove me to the outpatient center, I could have drank a pond.
My life has been a 45-year lesson in the price of excess: excessive food, excessive drinking, excessive horniness. I moderate poorly, even though I’ve learned that moderation has its upsides not only in terms of basic health, but quality of living. If I eat sugar less often, and God knows I’m trying, it tastes that much sweeter when I do indulge.
But for me, the indulging is the point. It’s in my blood, and it’s part of my national heritage. You live in a nation of excess. Every holiday on the American calendar has some religious or historic background to it, but really those holidays exist so you can fucking destroy yourself. The Super Bowl is considered an unofficial holiday here for that very reason: it’s a vital link in the chain of overindulgence. And it’s fucking great. I try my best to live responsibly—my procedure results show that I’ve succeeded in that to a certain degree—but you don’t need me to tell you that responsibility sucks. I prefer doing the things I want to do more than doing the things I have to do.
Thankfully, both the NFL and this occasionally great country of ours are more than happy to let me go buck wild as a matter of routine. So let’s do that this weekend. Let’s make too much chili. Let’s put out too many appetizers. Let’s drink too much if we drink. Let’s keep one hand in a basket of wings and the other deep in a pile of nachos. Let’s bet WAY too much money. Let’s put on the pregame show at noon and then turn it right back off. Let’s watch these two teams—so shiny and new!—put up an obscene number of points on one another. And then let’s sleep too late the next morning. Because excess is fun, and it is right, and if you drink enough Miralax when told to, you might just get away with it. This is your Super Bowl Jamboroo. The music:
I’m all systems go. Let’s get after it.
The Game
All Super Bowls in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms. And for the playoffs, I also pick the games because I am never wrong about anything.
Five Throwgasms
Bengals (+4.5) 29, Rams 28. I said I’d keep picking the Bengals until they lost, and I meant it. Can’t say I’m terribly confident, given that the Bengals’ O-line is made of crepe paper and Aaron Donald is made of Aaron Donald. Cincy’s O-line coach isn’t helping matters by pretending his players aren’t a bag full of ass:
Frank Pollack thinks it’s funny, actually, that all the sensitive Sallys out there think his men can’t pass block after they’ve given the world a mountain of evidence that they can’t. STOP EMBARRASSING YOURSELVES, MEDIA AND FANS!
So you understand my insecurity riding with this outfit. But if you came to this column assuming you’d get killer gambling picks, well then you’re probably related to me or something.
Four Throwgasms
None. Onto the random crap:
-Sean McVay has sausage fingers. It’s the first thing I notice anytime they cut to him looking all grim and determined on the sideline. He’s always got his nubby sausage fingers gripping the playsheet so hard, you’d think fresh orange juice was gonna come spurting out of it. McVay will forever be the hot young coach all other hot young coaches aspire to be, but those sausage fingers can’t be denied. I can’t look away from them.
-In addition to doling out Dad Facts on a routine basis, I have started to flex my muscles by routinely diagnosing obvious problems around the house. An example: the other day my wife was walking around with a stray battery cover, the toy it worked with unknown. So I look at her and I go, “Hey, that looks like a battery cover.” No shit. Of course it was a battery cover. Did that stop me from putting on Columbo’s trench coat and astutely noting that fact to all surrounding parties? No. I’ll happily point out anything that everyone has already noticed. If there’s a fire truck parked on our street? Oh you better fucking believe I am ON THE CASE. I’ll walk over to the window, put my hands on my hips, and tell my family, “See now what we’ve got out there is a fire truck!” No one in this house would survive without my keen eye.
-Entertainment Weekly died this week, and while I’m on the record as hating Jess Cagle, the Editor-In-Chief who turned that joint into a studio PR release with saddle stitching, I was a loyal reader of that magazine for years and years. I subscribed. I read every Fall Movie Preview and Oscar Preview cover to cover. I know the writers there by name: Chris Nashawaty, Whitney Pastorek, Dalton Ross, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Owen Gleiberman, etc. When an issue came in the mail, I was overjoyed. I treated their reviews as gospel. I read their TV listings every week even though I had a GUIDE button on my cable remote. When I found out Pastorek, who now works at World Central Kitchen, was a Deadspin commenter back in 2007, I was overjoyed. Anytime a new issue came in the mail, I couldn’t wait to crack it open while running on a treadmill at the gym.
The modern Internet has an appalling surfeit of pop culture news and analysis. I can’t fall the fuck down without stumbling on some article listing the 50 greatest HBO shows of 1996. But before the internet became a hive of Hives, EW and Roger Ebert were basically all I had. Every other entertainment news product—Access Hollywood, People magazine, The Barbara Walters Special—was targeted to bored suburbanites. The actual movies and TV shows were never of primary interest, which made those products a waste of my time. I wanted to talk MOVIES, goddammit. EW gave me precisely what I wanted. Not as wonky—relatively speaking—as Premiere magazine, not as stupid as all that other shit. It was right in my sweet spot, and now it’s gone.
I’m not telling you all this to mourn. Cagle was and is a shameless sycophant who happily drove EW into irrelevance, and I stopped missing the magazine many years ago (stopped reading it, too). But on the eve of its demise, I just wanted to look back fondly on it for a moment. I had a good time with that magazine. It was pretty solid when it was solid. Always fun to Remember Some Magazines.
-On Sunday you’re gonna watch two teams who made it to the Super Bowl in large part because of their star wideouts. Cooper Kupp just led the entire league in catches, receiving yards, and touchdowns. Meanwhile, Ja’Marr Chase is one best wideouts I’ve ever seen, and he’s barely even started. Both of these men are wildly underpaid. Chase is stuck on his rookie contract, while Kupp signed a $47 million deal in 2020 that’s big money to you and me but a relative pittance compared to both his production and to some of his contemporaries. My friend Matthew Coller at Purple Insider noted recently that wideout contracts could one day rival quarterback contracts, and though wideouts will never be as important to a team as quarterbacks, I would like Kupp and Chase and Davante Adams (a UFA mere weeks from now) to get that Fuck You money.
Because wideouts are important. We’re well past the era of running backs mattering, and of every wideout accused of being a diva for making a first down signal after a catch and/or being photographed hanging out at The Delano. The current NFL is a contact-free loony bin where passing is everything. The vast majority of Super Bowl champions over the past decade have had a stud wideout on the roster, and that’s not a coincidence. Shit, Deebo Samuel and Cord Patterson just spent all season proving that they’re better running backs than most actual running backs. These guys matter. Without one, you’re fucked. Ask any Jets fan.
Three Throwgasms
None.
Two Throwgasms
None.
One Throwgasm
None.
Two weeks ago: 2-0
Overall: 7-5
Drew’s Chili Recipe
I post this every year, partly as a matter of routine but also to get myself fired up to make some goddamn chili. This year I have to use chicken for ours because no one else in my family will eat beef. But that’s no deterrent for me. I’ll use any meat in chili and be happy: beef, pork, chicken, haddock … you name it. I love everything about every meat, except having to handle it. There’s nothing colder in the fucking world than a piece of meat outta the fridge. Makes my hands shatter.
Gentlemen, start your aprons …
FOR THE CHILI:
2 pounds ground beef or chicken, at least 20% fat
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 shallot, chopped (ANNUAL NOTE: Shallots are the things that make restaurant food taste like restaurant food.)
1 jalapeno, chopped
1 large can crushed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1 can tall red kidney beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 can beer
1 can chicken broth
1 tsp liquid smoke
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp fennel seed
2 tbsp cumin (add more at end if necessary)
2 tbsp chili powder (add more at end if necessary)
1/4 cup white vinegar
Salt & Pepper to taste
Ashes from a joint (optional)
Lotta Frank’s Hot Sauce
2 glugs olive oil
FOR THE SIDES:
Shredded cheese
Tortilla chips
Sour cream
Frank’s hot sauce
1 bunch scallions, chopped
Beer
Put a big pot on the stove on medium. Pour in the oil. When it’s hot, toss in the onions, garlic, jalapeno, and shallots and stir them around until soft. Toss in the ground meat. Salt and pepper the ground meat in the pot. Sautee the meat until it’s good and brown. Add the tomatoes, beans, corn, beer, broth, liquid smoke, sugar, cumin, chili powder, fennel seed, joint ashes, vinegar, and Frank’s. Bring it to a simmer. Half cover the pot and leave it on low medium heat for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally and always tasting. The liquid in the pot should reduce into a nice, thick stew. Dip in a chip to see if the chili sticks to it. If it does, it’s ready to serve.
Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
“Time of Extinction” by Jambinai! Hey, that almost sounds like Jamboroo! I’m already rapt. From Josh:
I'd like to humbly submit South Korean band Jambinai for consideration. If you like heavy riffs from both guitars and traditional Korean folk instruments, oh boy could they be for you. Most of their songs are more than five minutes of going wild, but TIME OF EXTINCTION is a crisp three- minute introduction to the band.
It sure is. I wanna write, produce, and direct a heist movie just so I can use this song for the final bank job in it.
Worst Quarterback In The League Of The Week
Jimmy Garoppolo. This offseason promises to be a potential flea market of desperate teams all unloading their mediocre quarterbacks on one another: Garoppolo, Kirk Cousins, Baker Mayfield, Derek Carr, Carson Wentz, etc. With the possible exception of Wentz, I would GLADLY take any of the aforementioned quarterbacks on my team instead of Cousins. I’d shower Garoppolo in fucking rose petals the second he stepped off the airplane. You Niners fans are welcome to taunt me all you like for my enthusiasm, because Garoppolo isn’t very good. But he IS different. That’s all I want. Us loser teams are just looking for someone, anyone, new. New is victory.
Bad Local Commercial Of The Week!
KC Slices! Because when you think Kansas City, you think pizza. From Matthew:
This beauty aired like 10 times total. Pretty sure it was done by the son or daughter of the owner.
As am I. However, I have to note that the kids in this ad are a delight. Plus there’s a pizza dog involved in the proceedings. A pizza rat is concerning. A pizza dog? ADORABLE. After eating that slice I bet his poop will look like a murdered clown.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your potential 2021 chopping block:
Jon Gruden – FIRED!
Urban Meyer – FIRED!
Sean Payton – RESIGNED!
Vic Fangio – FIRED!
Ron Rivera
Mike McCarthy
Kevin Stefanski
Mike Zimmer – FIRED!
Robert Saleh
Brian Flores – FIRED!
Matt Nagy – FIRED!
Joe Judge – FIRED!
David Culley – FIRED!
Matt Rhule
Pete Carroll
Dan Campbell
I’ll be sure to note this again in August, but when you lose both Drew Brees AND Sean Payton within a year of one another, it’s probably unwise to have LET’S RUN IT BACK!!! as your strategy going forward. When Bill Walsh retired, internal successor George Seifert still had Joe Montana AND Steve Young sitting in his QB room. That’s when continuity is a good idea. Doesn’t quite work as well with an Al Davis fling and TaysomBraydynJaxxyn Hill as your replacements.
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Kyle sends in this story I call TURDAGE UNDER FIRE:
I was in my final months of my time in the Marine Corps and had been placed in a training platoon to train and certify marines on various weapons and tactics before their next deployment to Iraq. The upside was this got me out of a lot of the everyday fuckery of marine infantry life, the downside was I would have to spend an extended period of time in the field training each company and living on MREs.
Now anyone who has survived off MREs knows they have two side effects 1) they stop you up and 2) when you do shit, it is roughly the same size and density of a medicine ball. This wasn't my first bout of living of them but it was to be my last and my stomach and/or the MREs knew it as during the six weeks I spent in the California desert I shit only a few times. I felt like I was eight months pregnant the entire last week.
The morning after we returned to our base ,I ate both breakfast and lunch at the chow hall, which usually did the trick to knock my clogged-up guts loose. But I still didn't shit. So I concocted a plan I would regret.
A few minutes off base was a super cheap Chinese buffet with a name that let you know the hell it would unleash upon your toilet, something like Super China Happy Star buffet. I went there that evening and forced myself to eat as much of the greasiest Chinese food on the west coast as I could before going back to my barracks. On the ride home, I felt that distinct gurgle that lets you know a countdown has begun, and when it hits zero, you will shit. Proximity to a toilet will not be a factor. I raced back and ran to my room and bolted for the head to unleash something... Unholy.
I immediately unloaded a super dense turd of country captain chicken and chili Mac MREs, followed by liquid hot grease from the Kung Pao and egg rolls. As my rectum alternated between 18th century naval cannon and fire hose, the noises and smell I created must've been alarming as the Duty NCO entered the head and asked, "Um... Corporal... Are you... Do I need to get a corpsman?" The kicker was he added that he had to report the incident on the duty log, so my 1st Sgt had a big laugh about my bowel escapade the next morning.
I really gotta stop pulling entries for this that inexplicably make me hungry.
Gametime Snack Of The Week
Shin Zzang snacks. My son picked these bad boys out on a trip to H Mart last weekend. They’re incredible, but it goes a little bit deeper for me than that. When I got hurt a few years ago, I lost the sensory ability to taste certain things: smoked foods, ice cream, and even breakfast cereal. I needed a lot of time, and eating, to recover some of that ability—I can eat ice cream again, so long as there’s a pool of hot fudge sitting around it—but breakfast cereal remained lost to me.
I’m an American, so loving cereal is my birthright. But I couldn’t taste any of it. I could recognize some of the flavor, but I didn’t get that instant joy you feel when you bite down on a fat handful of Crunch Berries. Shin Zzang isn’t a breakfast cereal, but it is an airy, sweet, crunchy snack—the kind of food that is almost exclusively packaged as cereal here in the States. When we got home from the H Mart I popped a few of them into my mouth and the flavor was all there. Every bit of it. I got the sweet honey lacquer. I got the nuttiness of the black sesame. I got everything. I’ve been disabled for long enough now that I don’t think about it much, and I don’t get terribly emotional when I get a random whiff of something (in general, I can no longer smell) or I taste something I haven’t tasted in a long time. So I didn’t burst into tears when I ate my Shin Zzang. I was just like, “FUCK this tastes good.” I was deeply satisfied. Good thing my son threw two bags of them into our cart and not just one.
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
Bar Beer! From Nick!
This beer is not particularly awful. Quite refreshing when watching football at 4:00 a.m. due to the time difference here in Taiwan. Ironically, Bar Beer is never sold in bars, but frequently enjoyed outside of 7/11 stores by Taiwanese hobos and cheap hippie English teachers trying to save up for their next 'shoom-eating backpacking trip to Laos.
I loved Kirin back when I drank, so I have little doubt that if you served me a Bar Beer back then, I would have sucked it down like mother’s milk. I like it when a beer makes me feel like a real dirtbag for drinking it.
Dan Campbell’s Clump Dog Of The Week: Cooper Kupp
“That guy gets me so fired up. I just love his NAME, you know what I mean? It’s so forceful. Cooper. Kupp. BOOM. You know exactly what you’re getting from that dude. I land on that hard C and I know I’m dealing with a guy who runs routes so sharp they could slice your nuts off.”
Sunday Afternoon Movie Of The Week For Jaguars Fans
The Card Counter, which received zero Oscar nominations this week because it made 62 loonies at the box office and because its writer and director, Paul Schrader, has a chip in every box on his Cancellation Bingo card. He openly groused when production on this movie was shut down after a cast member got COVID-19. He blamed Kevin Spacey’s demise on the dreaded cancel culture. He pitched Lindsay Lohan on starring in The Canyons by promising not to try (emphasis mine) to sleep with her, and mandating one four-way sex scene between her and her costars (she took the role).
That said, this movie is fucking GREAT. I may goof on people for still talking about Rounders 20-plus years after its expiration date, but the truth is that I’ll watch pretty much any gambling movie and be rapt. Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver and co-wrote Raging Bull, is still extremely good at drawing portraits of quiet, lonely men whose fury is always on the verge of spilling out of them. And I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “This sounds like the kind of movie where Willem Dafoe shows up to give me the heebie-jeebies.” Your instincts serve you well, amigo.
Also, Oscar Isaac’s character in this movie takes up cards after serving time in prison for torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib. It’s rare when pop culture references something that topical with a deft hand. I’ve watched so many Aaron Sorkin vehicles that I forgot such a thing was possible.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
“Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get.”
Enjoy the Super Bowl, everyone.
