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 weed, dog armpits, disc jockeying, and more.
Your letters:
Andy:
As an avid user of gummies can you give me some advice on what to start using? My anxiety has been shit since the election. I asked my PCP, but she couldn't recommend using them one way or the other because there's no long-term study on the effects. I also don't wanna get on anxiety meds for fear of gaining weight. I'm on Ozempic due to diabetes and I've dropped 55 pounds since I started and want to keep the weight off. So ideally, I need sugar-free gummies that will (hopefully) not want to cry in a corner all the time. I've also smoked weed a total of five times in my life. I'm really cool.
Never talk to your doctor about weed, because then the insurance companies will find out about it. Much better to talk to me, the gentleman stoner, about this sensitive matter. And don’t worry about buying sugar-free gummies. You already feel uncool, so it won’t help matters if you walk into the dispensary and say to the clerk, “Um, are these made with monk fruit extract instead of cane sugar?” A normal gummy usually contains about 20 calories. And you’re only eating one of them, if that. Eat multiple gummies and your head will fall off of your body and drop to the ground like a fucking bowling ball. That’s not the effect you’re looking for.
If you’re just starting out, go ahead and buy one of the micro-dose gummies that contain only 1-2 milligrams of THC. That’ll get you buzzing, and then you can slowly work up your dosage from there if you want a greater effect. Don’t start out any higher than that, unless you want to go a real ride. “Weed is dangerously strong now!” has become the new “Reefer madness!” scare tactic for tightasses and soccer moms, but normal people like you and me can just regard these dosage levels the same way we regard ABV in drinks. This varies by tolerance and body type (and also if you ingest other substances, like black tar heroin), but let’s do a rough outline. Having a micro-dose gummy is like having a beer or two. Eating a 10 mg gummy is like having a six pack. Any dosage past that and you’re getting shitfaced on Tiger Eye. If you’re only beginning your cannabis journey—everything is a journey now—you have to start off light and experiment with dosage levels to see what works for you. Again it’s like booze, only without the vomiting.
And it’s worth trying, especially if the news has you in a constant state of dread. Speaking personally, cannabis has been a fucking godsend over the past year and change for me. I’ve had to deal with a lot of personal losses on top of staring down the prospect of President Dumptruck running this country into the ground. There’s zero chance I would have been able to keep my shit together through all of that without a stash of gummies on hand. I also get help from meds, therapy, my family, and the like. But the cannabis not only makes life tolerable, but fun. The world can shit on my doorstep every day, and yet I can still pop a gummy and go to bed feeling incredible. Just the other day, my wife was like, “How are you staying so calm right now?” Well dear, the weed helps. A lot. Some of us NEED to stay calm through this shit, to be the proverbial rock that others can lean on. Faded Drew is highly skilled at this.
I do still get the munchies, though, despite being on Wegovy (a weight loss drug similar to Ozempic). Go too high on your gummy dosage and you can defeat GLP-1 inhibitors, which is another reason to start off slow before deciding that you want to blow your mind out. Good luck to you, Andy. Raising a spliff to your health.
Michael:
Can you rate the different types of chairs/couches/random furniture that are best to have sex on? I would have to assume a fully functional dental chair would have to be high on the list.
That’s too clinical for my taste. I don’t want to be reminded of going to the dentist when I’m about to do the nasty. I also don’t want to be reminded of gonzo porn bros and/or El Chapo using medical equipment to do weird, gross shit. I have far more basic sexual tastes than that. Please note that the loose compendium I’m about to offer you regards HAVING sex on non-bed furniture rather than WATCHING it. Watching two people fuck on a staircase? That’s hot. Trying it yourself? That’s a pulled hamstring waiting to happen. Now (Arsenio voice) let’s get busy:
- Couch. This is a boring answer, but a standard couch offers as many positional options as one of those fuck wedges that middle-aged couples buy from Adam & Eve. You can fuck on it while lying down, while sitting upright, or while bending your partner over the back of it … from either side! Ditto the arm of the couch! If you’re buying a used couch, it’s been fucked on a million times! Why do you think your nana always uses those vinyl covers for hers?
- Pool lounge. You’re already lying by the pool, feeling hot and horny. So this is the perfect place to do something about it. I’ll freely admit that the sides of a pool lounge make straddling a bit of a challenge, but again … you’re hot and horny. You’re more than willing to sacrifice practicality to preserve that mood.
- Kitchen/bathroom counter. Preferably a high one, like a kitchen island. Christ, I’m having a hard time making it through this list without getting all worked up. Don’t mention see-through aprons to me right now. I might break.
- Barstool. My rankings here are clearly influenced by my status as a tall person. My apologies. But look at how neatly the height of that seat aligns with genital placement. Bonus points if the chair can swivel. WHEEEEE THIS IS LIKE BEING AT AN AMUSEMENT PARK!
- Desk. As with the pool lounge, this isn’t necessarily the most comfortable place to have sex, and yet it’s so hot that you’ll inevitably power through.
- Hard-back chair. Really only offers two positions to work with, but both are deeply gratifying. Also, some of you may have a wilder sexual imagination than I, turning that chair upside down and somehow getting the chair legs involved. I admire your resourcefulness.
- Washing machine. Just make sure the door is closed. Think of it the same way as leaving the toilet seat down.
- Plush chair/loveseat. You could’ve fucked on the couch!
- Kitchen table. You could’ve fucked on the island!
- Beanbag chair. I can’t even sit in a beanbag chair without finding myself unable to get up. I can’t even imagine what happens if you and another person (or multiple persons?) tried to have sex on one. I’d have an easier time fucking atop a yoga ball.
That’s my list. I wish it included more unorthodox choices, like “bed of nails,” but I lack the adventurousness.
Kevin:
How many armpits does a dog have? Zero, two, or four? Hotly debated in my household as we’ve just adopted a new puppy.
A smarmy know-it-all will tell you it’s zero, because dogs only have hind legs and forelegs. No arms. But let’s go to the photographic evidence for a more nuanced viewpoint. Here’s my dog, Carter, being a lazy sack of shit.
As you can see, Carter’s hind legs bear the greater resemblance to human legs, including his lil’ doggy dick splitting the middle. We can see here that the forelegs not only have hinge joints that bend in the opposite direction of the hind legs, but they also conceal an under-leg area not unlike the human armpit. This area also happens to be hairy and smelly, like a human armpit. And if Carter raises one of his forepaws, I give him a playful handshake. I am not THAT crazy of a crazy dog person. I don’t earnestly call Carter my fur child. I once referred to my son as “your brother” to Carter and it didn’t sit right. And I don’t carry my dog onto airplanes in a tote bag. So you’re getting this verdict from a somewhat reasonable crazy dog person. Dogs have two armpits. There you go.
Now let me use this occasion to talk more about Carter because yayyy dog. Carter has graduated to sleeping in bed with the missus and me every night. My favorite part of sleeping with the fucker is when he turns onto his back and his paws stick straight up in the air. When he does that, I like to take one of his paws in my hand. Feels all nice and homey, especially after my nighttime gummy.
Nicholas:
Would you rather have a hot dog on a hamburger bun or a hamburger on a hot dog bun?
I got this question mere days after my SF Gate boss wrote about a famous burgerdog they sell out West. Coincidence? Probably, but it warrants monitoring.
Now, the burgerdog linked above has its ground beef molded into a link shape rather than a patty, so it mildly violates the spirit of Nicholas’s question. Nicky clearly wants to know which option I’d pick if the meats involved were regulation sized: round hamburger patty and long frankfurter link. For this, we must study geometry.
To fit a hamburger onto a hot dog bun, you have to fold the bun crosswise (or just cut it in half outright). To fit a hot dog onto a hamburger bun, you have to cut the hot dog in half. I have eaten a hot dog this way. We were out of proper hot dog buns, so I split my wiener in half lengthwise, griddled it, cut it in half across, and then piled it onto the hamburger bun. The result? GREAT SUCCESS. I got a bite of bun and a bite of meat in every mouthful. I’d wager that jerry-rigging a hamburger in a similar fashion would also work in a pinch. But I’ve never eaten a hamburger that way, so my answer is the sad hot dog. Hooray for shapes!
Leo:
Walking around the tourist-heavy waterfront of Alexandria, I just recently smoked up and was listening to music… enjoying a nice, relaxed good walk. In the middle of a crosswalk, one of the people walking in the crowd all of a sudden waived on a truck making a turn. The driver had NY plates and was driving a giant truck, so you KNOW he went for it. There was a family behind me with a stroller! Everyone was ok, but NO ONE said anything to this random woman who waived the truck on. I was too stoned to do anything besides write this angry email, but what the fudge, man? How dare this person speak up for ALL of us in the middle of a crosswalk when we had the right of way? She deserved to be yelled at, at the very least, right? I'm STILL mad at her even after writing all this!
That’s so fucking weird. Why would you wave a truck on into a busy crosswalk? It’s not a Capitals parade float you’re making way for, it’s just some asshole in a truck. As a general rule, there’s never much point in any pedestrian gifting the right of way to a car if the car is already yielding. I’ve waved on cars while on foot a few times—alone, not in the middle of Times Square or anything—and always felt stupid doing it. Never again.
While we’re here, I have another DMV motorist gripe. I live off a busy thoroughfare, When I turn left into my neighborhood, sometimes the car in the nearest oncoming lane will slow down and let me turn. The problem is that this is a six-lane road we’re talking about, so that driver is assuming all the other lanes of oncoming traffic will offer me the same courtesy. No they will NOT, buddy. So before making a polite gesture on the road, take a moment to consider whether or not you’re merely inviting the other person to kill themselves.
HALFTIME!
Adrian:
It seems like all the podcasts I enjoy (except The Distraction of course) are adding a video component. There’s nothing I want less. I have a routine with my podcasts, and watching them in video form will never be part of the equation for me. Why is this scourge being foisted on us?
I noticed this a few weeks ago when I was listening to Purple Insider and Spotify automatically started playing the video feed from that episode. There’s a little button that says SWITCH TO AUDIO on the screen to turn the video off, but I was mildly irritated that the app defaulted to video without asking me first (no offense to my handsome friend Matthew Coller).
Now, why would Spotify do this? Because they suck, of course. The simplest explanation is often the correct one. But in this instance, the motive behind the sucking is clear. All of these platforms want you engaging with them for as long as possible. Twitter throttled links so that you never leave Twitter (too late, Elon). Netflix offers video games so that you never leave Netflix. And now Spotify is offering you podcasts two ways so that you never leave Spotify. I have no use for their video function, but if X percent of users like to watch two white guys recapping the latest episode of Tracker, then the app tweak will prove valuable to that company. I have kids who were raised on YouTube and podcasts. They have no problem watching vlogs, so they’re in the target demo for shit like this.
As for The Distraction, Roth and I are actually gonna pivot to the metaverse. Starting next month, you’ll be able to strap on a VR headset and enjoy our show rendered in 3D animation that’s got lower quality graphics than the “Money For Nothing” video. We’ll even have legs! Wow!
Ben:
You wake up one morning and discover you can fly! Just like Superman. Now the most important question, how will you position your body while in flight; both arms extended with palms open, one arm with palm open, both arms with a fist, one arm with a fist, arms at your sides, feet first, lying on your side like you're on the sofa? Also, cape or no cape?
Both arms extended with palms open. No cape, because why would I want a cape flap-flap-flapping behind me all flight long? Fuck that shit. If I can fly, I want to limit drag, not accrue it. Capes are pointless.
I’d also want to dress warm, because flying up there would be cold as fuck. If you’ve ever gone skydiving, you know what I’m talking about. You lose 10 degrees Celsius for every thousand meters you go up in the atmosphere. I went skydiving in Arizona once. On the ground, it was hotter than death. When I jumped out of the plane, I was fucking freezing. That’s the only reason I couldn’t wait to get back to the ground. I didn’t care about the falling part; I just wanted to feel warm and toasty again.
So I’m keeping that in mind for when (not if) I acquire the superpower of human flight. I need a flight suit, and I need it to be 100 percent wind-proofed. Goggles, too. I don’t wanna be soaring like an eagle only to run face-first into an actual eagle. That would be a huge bummer.
Greg:
I was a college internet radio DJ and it was the greatest thing I've ever done. In every job I've had since, my co workers have said, "You have a great voice, you should be a radio DJ!" Without doing a lame at home podcast, is it possible to become an FM DJ these days? Most of the current DJs are comedians, strip club DJs, Instagram people, or robots from IHeartMedia. How would one get on the dial these days?
First of all Greg, I do an at-home podcast. Show some damned respect! I have no good roadmap for you to become an FM deejay in 2025, because terrestrial radio is all but dead. You said so yourself, so if you want to put those pipes to use you almost have to start a podcast from home, and maybe DJ a few weddings. That’ll give you practice, plus it’ll get your voice out there. After all, the only way people will pay for your voice if it they hear it.
With that in mind, let me suggest an alternative career path for you: voice acting. Before the folks at Podium bought the Point B audiobook rights, I was toying around with the idea of pubbing that audiobook myself. I’d already self-published the print edition using KDP, and that Amazon service also offered an audiobook option, including a stable of amateur voice talent demos to choose from. No reason you can’t add your voice sample to that pool, and then go out on auditions for commercials, announcing, and animation. All of that ground-laying will suck, and you’ll be rejected 100 times over before someone deigns to pay you $50 for two hours of work. But if you want to make a living off your voice, that’s the shit you’re gonna have to eat.
Michael:
Is there anything more annoying than opening a .pdf that is upside down? Please contemplate this in the mindset of a guy that works an office job mostly responding to emails all day.
Anytime I have to deal with Adobe software, I’m pissed off. Like Fanatics, that company has managed to get a stranglehold on the marketplace despite being 500 different flavors of shit. When elected president, I will have our troops storm Adobe headquarters to destroy their servers and loot their vending machines. That’s a Magar-antee!
Also, I get very annoyed when I send a photo only to realize it’s sideways.
Luke:
It wasn’t until recently that I heard the term “parasocial,” I instantly knew what it meant, and I had very little opinion of it. Since then, I’ve heard it multiple times and now hate the term. I think people are looking for reasons to say it. How do you feel about this term in my parasocial relationship with you?
I touched on this last week with regard to Gene Hackman, but the best artists are ones that help the audience members forge a bond with one another, rather than establishing a one-way relationship between artist and fanboy. The latter effect is perfectly natural, but it turns sour if every single relationship you have is similarly imaginary.
The modern Internet has exacerbated this problem, to the point where the average American now has hundreds, if not thousands, of such one-way relationships … with barely any face-to-face relationships to help balance it out. That’ll destroy your psyche. It’ll destroy the country’s psyche, if it hasn’t already. Voters now base their decisions in the booth almost entirely on their love/hate for people they’ll never meet. That’s not a parasocial phenomenon, but rather an antisocial one. That’s bad, and the powers that be would like to make that antisocialism permanent. There’s only one way to fight back against this, and it’s by logging off. But then I’d be out of a job, so don’t log all the way off. We’re real friends, you and I! You know all of my filthiest secrets!
Michael:
With the firing squad execution today, my buddy and I got to talking about what the three shooters are doing in the hours leading up to it. My guess is they are in the locker room getting jacked up to music, like one would do before a boxing match or something. How would you handle it if chosen to do it?
The only way you crank up “Enter Sandman” before executing a death row prisoner is if you’re a psychopath, which … OK yeah, our law enforcement officials tend to fit that profile. But you’re asking me what I’d do if I were a member of the firing squad. I would not get hyped. I would be dead silent, alternating between huffing into a paper bag and throwing up forcefully into a nearby toilet. There’s a two-in-three chance that my rifle isn’t the one with a live bullet, but that’s not much comfort to me, given that I’ve never killed anyone and have no plans to. I mean … unless the prisoner is Aaron Rodgers. I’d ask to fire all three guns if he were the one blindfolded and tied to a post.
Dusty:
Unlike normal people, I do rewatch the injury replays. What are the worst ones you have seen? Mine:
#1: Clint Malarchuk
#2: Damar Hamlin but only the aftermath because I literally thought I was watching someone die on the field
#3: Kevin Ware
#4: Napoleon Kaufman
#5: An endzone hit on Anquan Boldin where I also thought he died
#5: Every single hit on Wayne Chrebet ever
#5: Bo Jackson when it’s played in slow motion and includes the lore
Honorary mention: Joe Theismann for getting us here.
Oh wow, you just reminded me of how many lethal shots Wayne Chrebet took throughout his career. Wayne Chrebet was the kind of little white dude who’d get annihilated over the middle, get up, and then cause Paul Maguire to be like, “You wanna talk about GUTS, this guy has ‘em!” I bet Wayne can’t eat solid food these days.
Anyway, I’m like Dusty in that I watch injury replays. I’m even old enough to remember reading issues of Maxim that featured photo galleries of historically awful soccer injuries. A lot of legs pointing in a lot of abnormal directions. But none of those photos genuinely disturbed me. You know what did, though? Watching Reds pitcher Tom Browning break his arm. No one hit Browning. No one even came into contact with him. Nope, Browning just threw the ball with enough force that the air resistance sheared his forearm clean in half. Fucking terrifying. Never throw a baseball.
Email of the week!
Same Sad Echo:
Longtime Deadspin commenter Same Sad Echo here. I read your post about Gene Hackman, and how you touched base with your mom about how you went to see it together. My mom passed away in November. The first time I thought, “I can’t wait to tell my mom about this” only to remember I can’t anymore is pretty hard.
Anyway I was scrolling Amazon and saw they had Crimson Tide so I decided to watch it tonight. Still a great movie, but I was struck by how much smoking they did on the submarine. I thought it was crazy. So I called my dad, who was in the Navy and served on a submarine in the late 50s to ask him about it. Turns out the movie was 100% accurate, people smoked all the time. Even when oxygen was running low, they still let people smoke. I also learned that older submarines, like the one he served on, had to surface regularly to exchange old air for new air. Apparently they have a massive vent/fan that opens and can swap out air pretty quickly. But nuclear powered submarines can make their own oxygen and can stay underwater indefinitely. Who knew?
Anyway I know that at some point I won’t be able to call my dad anymore to ask him about this stuff. I was extremely grateful to be able to do it. Thought you’d enjoy the story.I did. Much love to you and your family, amigo.
