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, guest host Dave McKenna is talking about cowboy hats, music, high-risk eating, and catch phrases.
What an honor this is! Other than initials I have nothing in common with Drew, the legendary Funbag founder and a real man of letters. But now somebody messed up and let me have the keys to his column. I’m reminded of the time the Exxon Valdez was commandeered by Captain Hazelwood. Let’s commence this voyage.
Your letters:
Jon:
What’s your luckiest food bullet dodge? If you had to guess, what's the luckiest you've ever been when eating something "risky"? For example, you ate something (Street taco with undercooked chicken) that statistically would have made you ill like 80% of the time. For me, probably eating chips after cleaning ferret poop and forgetting to wash my hands. I feel like I was asking for absolute gut detonation, but I was fine.
The food bullet dodge that leapt to mind reading your letter is actually something I didn’t eat, but my brother did. See, my sister-in-law is a food scientist. For years after she came into the family, I’d ask, “Is it OK if I eat [such and such bacteria-friendly food that was left out or prepared or cooked dubiously]," and she said yes so often that I stopped asking and just assumed I could shovel anything down my pie hole and survive.
Then she and my brother moved for a time to Ecuador on a Fulbright Scholarship to counsel commercial fishermen there how to properly prepare their catch for sale in the U.S. And I went to visit. The trip was amazing: big mountains and sweet people and lots of iguanas. The street markets alone are worth the trip. But it was at one of those very markets in Guayaquil where my brother made a food choice that went bad. See, my brother has always been really smart in lots of ways; he graduated high school at 15 and is still real good at chess (a top 100 50-plus player in the country according to USCF rankings, proud to say!). But he’s always been Evel Knievel at the dinner table, and growing up I was right there with him. As young dumbasses, we had a pre-meal weigh-in one Thanksgiving to see who could gain the most weight; we both added 13 pounds in that one feeding. We had nothing to compare that number to, because we didn’t know anybody dumb enough to ever do what we’d done, but 13 pounds sounded and felt like too much. We never did that again. But we did go mano-a-mano at an all-you-can-eat prime rib meal deal at the dearly departed Beefsteak Charlie’s, and though neither of us remember exactly how many helpings we’d had before he threw in the napkin, we agree we hit double figures, and that it hurt so bad we never did that again either.
But, my competitive juices were not flowing when he ordered cuy al palo from a street vendor. That’s a barbecued guinea pig. I fancy myself a when-in-Rome guy whenever I leave town, and, yes, I know that dish has fans throughout South America. But on that day, something told me to let my brother go it alone. He did, and pretty soon he was letting loose from both ends and I was feeling as superior as he was lousy for having just said no. Just because a food scientist says you can eat anything doesn’t mean you should. I recently brought up the Great Guayaquil Guinea Pig Massacre and its botulistic aftermath to my brother. He claimed the altitude, not ingesting his first street pig, that caused his system to violently purge all contents. Nice try.
Mark:
I started to take up horseback riding last year, and am gradually acquiring the items one might associate with this hobby, culminating in the recent purchase (egged on by horse-riding friends) of a big ol' cowboy hat. I am an urban liberal professional (ok, lawyer!) who is unlikely to scan as "cowboy" or "rural person" to anyone, no matter what I am wearing. Under what circumstances, if any, may I wear my new hat?
I’ll get around to your query, I promise.
Back to me: I went to college in West Texas not long after Urban Cowboy hit theaters. Every dance hall suddenly had a mechanical bull and dang near every dude in the time zone bought very pointy boots, big shiny belt buckles, and an 11-gallon Stetson. I probably would have followed suit and acquired cosplay cowboy couture were it not for my first-year roommate, an ungodly tough and sweet kid named Rafe. He was a real-deal horseman, having grown up working on a famous ranch in Fort Stockton. Rafe kept an actual bale of hay and a plastic steer head in our dorm and would go out between classes and practice calf roping, which is a super cool thing to behold up close. But real-deal Rafe only wore rounded boots, called Ropers, unironed denims, and baseball caps; I never saw him in a cowboy hat and I don’t recall him even owning one. So I never got one, either.
I only rode a horse once in my life, when Rafe took me to his hometown for a massive party at the big ranch he used to work. One sign of the bigness of this bash: water troughs for the horses served as beer coolers. After it got late, and while Rafe wasn’t around to look out for me, a couple of his roping buddies coaxed my drunk Yankee ass up onto one of their stout horses, and as soon as my ass hit the saddle the damn thing took off. I had a beer can and one rein in one hand and the other rein in my other hand. Turns out that’s not proper horseback technique. Even through the fog of booze, I remember being terrified as the horse bolted through a patch of thorny mesquite trees. A less-drunk ranch hand chased after me on his horse and yelled to pull back the reins, which I somehow did and by god my well-trained mount stopped long enough for me to dive off. In the moment that ride from hell seemed to last an eternity, but I’m sure I wasn’t even on the damn thing for, well, eight seconds. But I’m never getting back on a horse again. What I’m getting at, Mark: Your new hobby concerns me more than your fashion. Horses are scary. Ditch the riding. See, another thing I learned in my days on the South Plains in the wake of that Travolta movie: Dancing to Western swing is fun as hell, and your new lid will help you blend in just fine at the dance hall. Stay off the mechanical bull.
Neil:
I've been doing the "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" project, which has a website that randomizes one of the albums for you each day to listen and rate. I'm about 400 albums in, so I've spent the better part of a year and a half listening to music from the past, and consequently I have been listening to new music a lot less. I've always been a person who loves to seek out new music. I've made a mix tape/CD/playlist of my favorites at least once a year since 1997. But since I've just ticked over into my late 40s, I wonder if this new trend to finish the project is a product of getting older... perhaps a subconscious decision to make sure I've experienced the best, instead of clamoring for what's next? If you had to choose between listening to older stuff you've already heard or chase the thrill of finding something new, what would be your jam these days?
I’m all old stuff, all the time. I’m not proud of how little my rock and roll vocabulary has expanded this century. But my musical inertia is real. Among the reasons I know this: I took up hitting a heavy bag for exercise not long ago, and realized I was soundtracking my bag workouts exclusively with bands I’d been listening to for several decades. Husker Du, Uncle Tupelo and Guided by Voices were the youngest of the acts on my pugilistic playlist; Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were more representative of the oldies I was sweating to in my garage. All great stuff that still thrills me, for sure. But old as hell! And my nostalgia bent transcends these cardio sessions. I’m a guitar and tube amp obsessive, and I play as much as anybody who doesn’t do it for a living. But I’d never actively tried learning other people’s songs. Until recently, when watching YouTube how-to videos on rock tunes became my new brain exercise; rock riffs are my crossword puzzles. But I’m not seeking out obscure tunes from the newest kids on the rock block. Nah, I’m just copping riffs to the same songs I’ve listened to forever. I kill hours at a time doing the openings of, say, “Stranglehold,” “Communication Breakdown,” “There She Goes,” and “Rebel Rebel,” and I’m never not smiling. Thanks for asking, Neil. And while I got you: Have you heard of this new band, Geese?
HALFTIME!
Ben:
Hello Drew and others, As a lifelong casual sportsfan, I have you all (defector.com staff) to thank for turning me into a sports sicko over the past two years. Seeing the all-time boner of a coaching move by Nebraska this week reminded me of a thought I had last year while paying attention, for the first time, to the concurrent NBA and NHL finals. I was struck by the similarities of the two games, and wondered what it would be like if they traded rules, especially penalty adjudication. What if basketball had power plays? What if hockey had free shots? What rules would YOU swap or trade between the two?
I’m still stunned by Nebraska’s four-man-out boner. Iowa’s subsequent full-court bomb really showed what a massive boner it would be to have a power play in basketball. Hell, I’ve become a rugby watcher lately after a lifetime of knowing nothing about the game, other than rugby players have the best parties, and I’m shocked at how being a man down cripples a side and changes everything on the playing field even in a game with 15-on-15 setting. If anything, I’m not in favor of power plays in any sport. Not even hockey, where power plays sure seem to decide more playoff games than ever these days. Power plays just change the game too much, to the point it’s not even the same game. Man advantages should be a sort of last-resort punishment.
So since you asked about sports swapping rules, I wish all sports would take up some version of soccer’s yellow card, where you get a warning before your team gets hit with a death blow. Especially for infractions that happen away from the action—excessive celebration fouls come immediately to mind. Seems like I’ve seen lots of NFL and college football games decided by excessive celebration penalties in recent years, and I’ve never felt good about any of them. The Duke radio announcer was all but begging the refs to call a technical foul on UConn for excessive celebration after Braylon Mullins earned March Madness immortality with his glorious game-winning bucket. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils’ wannabe snitch, the alleged offender, UConn’s Malachi Smith, was properly on the court when Mullins made the shot. But even if he wasn’t, wiping out such a glorious come-from-behind win on a technicality would have been criminal. If excessive celebration were a yellow-card offense in basketball, and not a straight technical foul, that would all but eliminate such an awful possibility. But any referee who’d make such a call in that situation should get red-carded out of the profession.
Scott:
Is the NCAA Championship trophy the worst?
I got no real problem with the NCAA basketball trophy, which somebody will take home Monday night. It’s big and boring, but looks like a championship trophy. But if you’re asking about the NCAA football trophy, then: Yes. The NCAA football trophy is the absolute worst. Who thought making an unwieldy two-piece trophy was a good idea? Then again, without such a crap design we never would have witnessed JD Vance’s glorious championship trophy moment. What a douche. Great video.
Michael:
Do you remember when you made the decision to go from a Large shirt to an X-Large? That day is today for me. Originally I thought it was just because the company I ordered from ran a bit small, but after another order with a different company I understand that I was the reason. It's a little sad but at the same time oh well and now I can order the right size.
I do remember when size first mattered in my life! I’m still scarred by the annual shopping trips with my mother for clothes, just before the first day of elementary school, when I’d have to peruse the “Husky” racks at all the department stores to find shirts and dungarees that fit. A 2018 Wall Street Journal article said “Husky” sizing dates back to Sears catalogs of the mid-20th century. And amazingly, "Husky" is still alive. If the retail world ever had a descriptor that’s hurt more feelings than “Husky,” I’m not aware of it. But welcome to Generation XL, Michael!
Jeff:
What do you think your catch phrase is?
Can a signoff be a catch phrase? Because I obsessively say “Be well!” to end phone conversations, texts, and emails. I guess “Goodbye!” never floated my boat, and at some point I decided to come up with my own signoff. I remember as a younger man, I would say “Don’t go changin’!” which I’m sure started as some attempt at an ironic use of a Billy Joel lyric. But probably back in the 1980s somebody said “Be well” instead of goodbye to me, and there was no irony implied, and I thought that was serene and made me feel good and think nice thoughts about the person who wanted me to be well. And so I stole it and now utter, “Be well,” at the end of pretty much every conversation I have. By now I’m superstitious that I won’t be well if I don’t say, “Be well.” Bottom line: Put “Be well!” on my headstone, where one’s catchphrase belongs.
Thanks for asking, Jeff! And be well!
