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 whisks, comedy karaoke, the Chicago Bulls, and more.
Your letters:
JC:
What are the categories outside of sports that best lend themselves to Remembering Guys? Politics? Remember John Boehner, who dominated my news feed and then dropped off the face of the earth? Actors? Criminals? Guys you kinda remember from high school?
I don’t like remembering politics Guys because I hate most of them, John Boehner included. Fucking John Boehner. Spends eight years thwarting President Obama at every turn and then retires to become a weed magnate, and also the first on-the-record source that Politico writers turn to for their millionth piece about How Republicans Lost Their Way. I hope he gets a broken bong shard stuck in his cock.
So you understand why remembering Guys from Boehner’s vocation is less enjoyable for me than thinking about Errict Rhett for no good reason. But I do indeed enjoy other genres of remembering, many of which JC already listed above: character actors, bands, stupid media stories of yore. But I’m gonna take this moment to focus exclusively on my current Remembering muse: toys that my kids used to play with. Come April, all three of my kids will be teenagers. They don’t really give a shit about their toys anymore. Long ago, my wife went the full Marie Kondo and cleaned the majority of them of the basement. She did this under cover of darkness, so that the kids wouldn’t see her chucking a 15-year-old Beanie Boo and be like, “Awwww, but I loved that!” Tough shit, kids. If you still loved these toys, you’d still be playing with them.
Despite my wife’s efforts these toys remain legion outside of our house. I can go to any young parent’s house right now, walk down into their basement, and enjoy an instant rush of nostalgia. Indulge me as I remember some right now …
-Activity tables. First steps are a myth. No baby suddenly just gets up and starts cock-strutting around the house. First she wiggles, then she crawls, and then she cruises (walking while holding onto something), and then she finally tries walking without any help. For the cruising period, which can last anywhere from two months to 30 years, you buy an activity table. This is a toy about the size of a footstool, and it’s topped with a bunch of knobs and buttons and other doodads that baby (and you!) can fuck around with. These tables also play music, which is fun for two minutes before becoming torturous. The volume for this music has two settings: Loud and Air Raid Siren. To this day, I still get our activity table’s song stuck in my head. "Stir stir stir the soup, stir along with me/We can sing the alphabet right from A to Z!" Horrible song to listen to 50,000 times in a row. A decade later, it pops up in my head and I’m like awwwww.
-Thomas the Tank Engine trains. I spent more hours on the floor building tracks with my kids than I’ve spent being awake. We made some truly bitchin’ tracks, and then we’d crash the SHIT out of our trains. Much confusion and delay ensued.
-Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. Even if you don’t have kids, you know what a Cozy Coupe looks like. Supposedly this is the most purchased car in American history, which is a cute little factoid until you realize that there are probably 60 million of these plastic fuckers now sitting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
We live on a hill. When my kids were very young, they liked riding in the Coupe down the street, reaching speeds in excess of three miles an hour. A true adrenaline rush. But guess who had to carry that Coupe back up the street afterward? THIS GUY. There are bricklayers who have less weight to carry. Also, every Cozy Coupe gets a bum wheel, same as every shopping cart does. So when I see one of those cars out in the wild now, I smile real wide, knowing that I no longer have to deal with it.
(NOTE TO MY KIDS: If you have kids one day and expect me to help take care of them, I ain’t carrying any of their shit. That’s for you rookies.)
-BundleMe car seat sack. If you’ve ever wondered why I’m so horny for shearling blankets, and you haven’t, it’s because I spent my early parenthood swaddling our babies in butter-soft onesies and sleep sacks. A BundleMe is a shearling version of the latter; you run your kid’s car seat straps through it and then they get to ride around ensconced in fleecy goodness. I became so jealous of these kids living like Roman gods that I now swaddle myself in fleece blankets anytime I’m in my chair or taking a nap. Sometimes I even travel with one. Apparently, I am six years old. Anyway, if I ever see a BundleMe in a passing stroller, I know that kid has it good.
-Little Tikes basketball hoop. I was on a Zoom call with Defector colleague and newish dad Justin Ellis a while back when I spotted one of these hoops behind him. I had forgotten about that hoop completely until that moment, which for me is the apex of Remembering Stuff. I was like "OMG JUSTIN WE HAD THAT HOOP!" Because Justin is currently in the shit as a newish dad, and because he still sees that toy every day, he wasn’t quite as fired up as I was. But trust me, I was fired the fuck up. You know how many sick dunks I did on that hoop? All of them. I think I dunked Optimus Prime through it once. Baby tried to stop me but had zero skills on D. I posterized the shit out of him with that Transformer. Felt amazing.
-Exersaucer. The vast majority of baby/toddler toys are designed to occupy your child so that you, the parent, can get 10 blissful minutes free to yourself. The exersaucer is perhaps the defining product of this genre. It’s basically an activity table, but you can drop your baby into the center of it. It’s beautiful because they’re too weak and helpless to get out of the seat, plus they get a 360-degree console of buttons to mash and rattles to shake. I liked seeing if I could get down a full beer before baby started crying for me to pick her back up. You’d be surprised how often I succeeded! Sometimes I could even get a swig of whiskey in there to go with!
-Board books. Sandra Boynton remains a cherished name in this household. Love a book that I can read to a child in five minutes or less. Why I bother to write full, adult books now when I could make millions writing a 10-page board book called PARROTS is beyond me.
Matt:
Would you consider the post-Jordan Bulls a good comp with the post-Super Bowl XXX Cowboys?
No because the Bulls hadn’t already been forced down America’s throat before Jordan arrived, nor have they been since he left. Jordan was the Bulls, and vice versa. That’s different from the Cowboys, who have been an oppressive global brand ever since my childhood. They’re not defined by any one player or era, but by the star on their helmets (and, to a certain degree, the desiccated corpse presiding over them). The Cowboys have won exactly jack and shit this century, and yet I still have to watch at least four primetime games featuring them every season. They’re a public nuisance in ways that the current Bulls are not. The NBA doesn’t have to force the Bulls on you and me because they already have the Lakers for that sort of thing.
I apologize for making this assessment almost entirely on branding terms, but the Bulls have made the playoffs once in the past seven years. They can’t even fail loudly, as the Cowboys now often do. And secretly, I miss the Bulls. I was never an explicit fan of that team, but I loved Jordan just like everyone else did. Apart from Derrick Rose reigning as league MVP for 10 minutes, the Bulls have never mattered since then. For the sake of my own nostalgia, I wish they did. I remember when Kobe Bryant demanded to be traded to Chicago, part of me was dying for it to happen. I hated the fucker, but I wanted the Roundball Rock-scored thrill of seeing the Bulls play important games again.
That’s still true. The Bulls aren’t an ongoing national disgrace like the Cowboys are. However, like Dallas, they do have an obstinate owner who refuses to die and they’re now permanently allergic to reaching the conference finals. I don’t revel in their obscurity, nor am I out here demanding that First Take devote at least two segments to the Bulls on a daily basis. I just want them to be cool again. I guess I’ll just have to deal with Jordan 2.0 landing in Minnesota instead.
Justin:
Can we please change federal holiday observances to Fridays instead of Mondays? Sunday scaries on the Monday of a long weekend are the absolute worst.
I’ve been humping this take basically ever since I started blogging. I have a personal bias here, because this column runs every Tuesday. I have to write it every Monday, even if that Monday falls on a holiday. For over 15 years, I’ve had to work every Labor Day, Memorial Day, King Day, and so on. It’s fucking annoying.
But Drew, why not just pre-write it the Friday before so you can take Monday off with everyone else?
BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK IS THERE TO DO ON A MONDAY? Shop for a new mattress? A Monday off is just a Sunday with no football on. If you switch every Monday holiday to a Friday, then that Friday becomes like a bonus Saturday instead. It also frees you to get SUPER fucked up on Thursday night, which is always the best night to get fucked up. A three-day weekend that starts on a Thursday feels a true long weekend, rather than a regular weekend with a boring-ass Monday tacked onto it.
This opinion is exclusively—god, I hate this expression—vibes-based. But I’ve been conditioned my entire life to treat all Mondays with disdain. I can’t just switch that disdain off after absorbing the entire Garfield canon at an early age. It’s not possible. Holidays are a day to party. Which day of the week would you rather party on: Monday or Friday? When you take your own day off for a personal long weekend, which day do you choose: Monday or Friday? I rest my case! This needs to be law, and it needs to be law right now. MAKE IT HAPPEN TRUMP, YOU LAZY SACK OF SHIT.
Greg:
Why are there not comedy cover bands? I think I would go see a young energetic up-and-comer do Chris Farley bits at the Chuckle Hut. How else could I catch up on the best of Richard Pryor unless some young kid gives it a shot?
There is a comedy cover band, and his name is Carlos Mencia. HEY-OOOOOOOOO!!!
For real though, comics are extremely protective of their bits (and of other comics’ bits). So if you started playing clubs as a tribute act, the other comics in attendance would tie you to a chair and torture you to death with their worst pronoun jokes. You’re much better off watching all of the real-deal Richard Pryor sets on streaming rather than paying money to watch some biter try to replicate a legend. You need the real person doing the jokes, because the best comics source their material directly from within. There’s no real way to copy that without looking like a hack. Without being a hack.
I had a stoner thought once that karaoke bars should offer comedy karaoke in addition to their usual song list. I think you already know that this is a terrible idea, least of which is because it’s already been done. Check this video of Nate Bargatze, one of the best comics in the world, going to a comedy karaoke bar and doing an old Jerry Seinfeld bit about Halloween. Seinfeld objectively blows now, but Bartgatze can’t do Seinfeld’s jokes anywhere near as well as Seinfeld can. So if comedy karaoke ever became a bigger thing, it would just end up being used by area white guys who want to recycle old Eddie Murphy bits specifically so that they can say the n-word 500 times.
HALFTIME!
Zlatan:
As a father of a two small kids and two dogs, my time for anything outside of family/house obligations is pretty much non-existent at this point. This is fine; I know what I signed up for. Some evenings though, I just want to play Call of Duty, and I catch myself going “This chore can wait until tomorrow morning." Inevitably, tomorrow morning comes around and I immediately regret my decision. So, what are the worst chores or tasks to leave until the morning or next day? For me, it's either taking the garbage cans out to the curb or emptying the dishwasher.
We run our dishwasher overnight, so I can’t empty it before going up to bed. Also, emptying that fucker is now the responsibility of our two sons. They have to clear out the dishwasher before fucking off to school every morning. They’re also in charge of putting the garbage cans out on the curb and back. It’s quite a lovely arrangement, and I don’t even have to tip them for it. Ha!
But this doesn’t get me out of having to do chores of my own. Here are two that I make certain to finish prior to going night-night: folding my laundry and doing the dirty dishes. The boys are also responsible for cleaning up the dishes after dinner (and doing their own laundry), but some of the job falls on me. No chance I save my share of dirty dishes for the next day. I lived that way when I was a bachelor and paid the price for it. Come morning, those dishes were either coated in dried-out tomato sauce or sitting in a tepid bath of greasy water. I’m already annoyed I have to be awake, and now I have to deal with THIS shit? Why don’t you just read the latest WaPo headlines to me while slicing my palms open with a boxcutter? Awful. I don’t like leaving any loose ends. I wish I meant in the same way a mafia boss does, but alas.
I have one more outdated example to provide. The 16-year-old likes grilled chicken for lunch. Every day. This has been the case for years now, so my wife and I always buy a pack of raw tenders to grill (either outside or on a grill pan) on Sunday, so that he has a full supply of it ready to go for the rest of the week. The boy can now grill this meat himself, but that’s a recent development. Before he attained mastery of the flame, either my wife or I had to do the job. Sometimes I left it for Monday morning. And lemme tell you: handling raw chicken before dawn might be the unpleasant experience in the human condition. Let’s Remember Some Chores? I think not.
Jeff:
My wife and I somewhat recently found out we're having a second baby (yay!) and, against our retrospective better judgment, decided to find out the sex. Our first is a very happy and curious two-year-old boy. We were both absolutely crushed to find out we were having another boy: especially my wife, who comes from a family of mostly women and always dreamed about having a girl of her own, as silly as it may sound. I know it's somewhat of a faux pas to lean into child-sex disappointment here, but do you have any advice for us? I know we should count our blessings that otherwise everything seems happy and healthy, but I cannot stop myself from dwelling on how hard it seems to raise [and become] a good boy/man in THIS shitty ass world.
You’re suffering from a fairly common form of suburban parent angst. Plenty of newbies to the game want a boy and a girl for the sake of balance. Then they have two of one kind and are quietly disappointed. Then they try for a third and THAT one turns out to be the same sex. And the fourth. And the fifth. And then they say FUCK IT and adopt a girl hamster in surrender. This is superficial longing, and it almost always goes away your new child arrives home. Within five seconds, you’ll be like, “I can’t imagine having any other second child but you, Justin Jefferson Magary!” No one needs to hector you about having the proper perspective on things. It comes right away (unless you have postpartum depression, which is not the baby’s fault).
Now, let me get to the last part of your question. We almost made it through today’s column without me vaguely alluding to What’s Going On Out There. But this is a painfully insistent news cycle, so here I am alluding to it once again. Don’t let the world dictate your personal choices. Yes, there are some horrible men running things right now. But this has been true for the entirety of human history, and it hasn’t stopped your ancestors or mine from fucking each other’s brains out and popping out new men who’ll set things on fire. People have kids because they want/need them, and it doesn’t have to be any more complex than that.
So if you want a family, start one. Raise those boys with your own values and there’s a good chance they’ll adopt those values as their own. They might even become part of the solution to the problem rather than the cause of it. More important, you’ll have children who will give your life purpose and make you happy even when they’re annoying the shit out of you. I know this intimately. If you let Donald Trump prevent you from having kids, you’re tacitly surrendering a big part of your life that you never had to give up, and you’re letting the monsters build the next generation instead of making your own contribution to it. You also won’t have any extra family members around to distract you from all of the bad shit. Trump will be YOUR daddy, which really isn’t how you want to spend the rest of your days. Don’t give up any more of your life to the world than you have to.
Jack:
If it would guarantee the Vikings would win at least one of the next five Super Bowls would you get the head of your penis tattoo'd to look like a Vikings helmet? Accurate helmet coloring all around, including a player's face on it.
Yes. Next question.
Kevin:
Should the NBA give up on the All Star format and make the final four of the in-season tournament its midseason showcase? They can still have the obligatory three-point contest, dunk contest, and rookie game. But hosting the three final games of the tournament in one place would feel more interesting and probably do better from a ratings standpoint.
Yep, I’m down with that idea. The dunk contest is somehow cool again, provided Kevin Hart is locked away in some sort of isolation booth for the duration of it. The three-point contest is an evergreen format. But the All-Star Game itself is flawed because no one playing in it gives a shit, and they never will. That leaves me with nothing to watch on TV after I get off work. This is not a intolerable situation.
So yes, the NBA should make like NHL—the latter of which hasn’t yet made the 4 Nations tournament a permanent All Star weekend replacement, by the way—and replace it with games that count in some way or another. Given that the novelty of the NBA Cup started to wane in only its second year of existence, shifting its final rounds to February counts enough for me to tune in. League owners will never approve of this, because they invented the NBA Cup specifically to take place before Christmas, when casual fans never bother to watch regular season games. But fuck that. Make it work, Adam Silver.
Chris:
I have started using forks instead of whisks because I hate cleaning whisks. I don't really have a question here, I'm just looking for some confirmation of my hatred of using whisks.
I also use a fork for basic whisking needs, like scrambling eggs before they go into the skillet. But I still use a whisk for bigger jobs. Whisks are cumbersome, they always drip, and it’s harder to lick brownie batter off of them than off a spoon. But when I need my ingredients FLUFFY, then I have to bust one out, tennis elbow be damned. A fork can’t get lumps out, but a whisk can. Make that my epitaph.
Dusty:
Why doesn't anyone put a tomato slice on a ribeye? I just thought of this. I also have not tried it, but now I am going to (DISCLAIMER: I am literally eating a ribeye at this very moment but I have no tomatoes).
Plenty of people eat tomatoes with steak. That’s how the beefsteak tomato got its name. I assume most people serve those tomatoes beside the steak rather than on top of it, but really there’s not much of a difference. So long as you get a bite of steak and fresh tomato together, you’re good. Has to be a quality tomato, though. Don’t come at me with some mealy-ass nightshades.
One other Steak Night tip for you. All my life, my mom has always served steak with a side of French’s onion rings that she heats up in the oven. Those onions absorb all of the beefy juices on the plate and folks, it tastes like magic. Best goddamn side dish in the world. Don’t restrict your fried onion usage to Thanksgiving casseroles. Blow that fucker out.
Steven:
As I've gotten older, I noticed that movies make me cry when they never did before. Not just the usual tear-jerkers like Schindler's List or the opening scene of Up, I find myself crying during Lord of the Rings or even scenes in Marvel movies. Are you a more emotional viewer as you've aged?
I was a few years back. I got choked up at trailers, I was so in touch with my emotions. I figured I would remain that way forever, but no! No, a combination of Zoloft and Midwestern DNA has rendered me much more of a stoic as I approach 50. It also helps that I haven’t had to watch a Pixar movie in a decade, so I’m not exposing myself to some of the more cunning, emotionally manipulative content creators out there. But in general, I don’t give out my tears as freely as I once did. And do you know why? Because I’m TOUGH. Some are even calling me the toughest person who ever lived. Now excuse me while I continue to hide from the news cycle.
Email of the week!
Jenny:
So I'm high and watching Thursday Night Football. Weed makes trying to figure out if the Broncos or Chargers are actually any good much more enjoyable. As a fellow cannabis enthusiast and sports watcher, I imagine you've seen your fair share of sporting events from up in the clouds. How would you rank sports based on how entertaining they are while stoned out of your mind? Baseball has always been my top choice, especially with a good broadcast crew. P.S. Please excuse any typos. This wasn't written on an iPhone, but I am pretty fucking stoned right now.
Please send me more emails while stoned, kids. That’s not sarcasm; I love this shit. Also my answer is college football.
