Hello! Let me start with a confession: When I was asked to guest-host the Funbag I figured it would be pretty easy, given the fact that I’ve written an advice column of my own on and off for the past six or seven years. How different could it be? Well, it turns out that having a facility for firmly but gently telling depressed socialists to get over themselves and ask someone out doesn’t help much when it comes to answering questions about front-office management techniques or, bizarrely, deciding who in recent history had the most skin. (I’m sorry, Michael, but I do not know. Surely someone large, or with a rare medical condition.)
Anyway, I tried my best. Please forgive me for not weighing in on the Mariners’ decision to fire Scott Servais. I did manage to have a very good time with this.
Sarah:
While watching tonight’s Pats/Commanders preseason game, I saw an ad for Golden Corral in which they show a plate of food with everything on it—meaning dinner entree, sides, AND a piece of cake. My immediate thought was what animal is assembling their entire meal at one time on one plate? What if your mashed potatoes and gravy leaks into your chocolate cake’s space? Surely there cannot be people who do this.
What you must accept about the world, if you are to love it as you should, is that there will always be people who do things you cannot possibly imagine people do. This is terrifying, and also beautiful.
J.D. (not Vance):
What is the most often forgotten household chore? For me, it’s remembering to toss the cans full of grease from the freezer on trash day. I’ve had as many as five of them in there.
See, this is exactly what I mean. I had no idea people were keeping frozen cans of grease in their freezers, let alone in sufficient quantities that it becomes a physical totem of their own domestic underperformance. Terrifying! Beautiful!
For me the answer is anything that happens above my eyeline, because if I do not see it then I struggle to recognize the necessity of keeping it clean. What is happening with my ceiling fans is none of my concern.
John:
What’s the difference between someone having guts versus someone having balls?
Let’s set aside the obvious, biologically essentialist answer to this question, because it’s actually an interesting way to frame something that’s been on my mind for a few years now. Namely, that American culture has a very impoverished understanding of courage. Generally, when you see someone being hailed as courageous, it’s being done by a Bari Weiss–type and what they are describing is no such thing. Quitting a job because you can no longer tolerate having to use coworkers’ preferred pronouns isn’t heroic. Writing a self-congratulatory essay about that choice so that a bunch of hateful suckers will send you money takes no conviction. Gleefully courting opprobrium only to use its appearance as proof that you are unusually willing to speak the truth is not brave. What these things are, in my view, is ballsy. As in, it sure takes a lot of balls to think you have done anything noble here.
Real courage rarely announces itself in this way. It is often a decision guided by deep moral intuition—something we also describe as visceral. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt it personally; I sometimes fear that deep down I’m a terrible coward. But occasionally people do things so genuinely, painfully brave that the hollowness with which we tend to use the word becomes a kind of stain I start to see everywhere.
It takes guts for a Palestinian doctor to stay with their patients under the threat of bombardment. It takes balls to tell me that a college student testifying before Congress about how seeing a flag at a protest made her unsafe exists in the same universe of virtue.
Seth:
Brandy! I used to follow you on Twitter! I deleted my Twitter a couple years ago. You still on that? How are things going over there? Seems like hell!
I am! I’m constantly getting ads for dildos and these weird, drop-shipped nose hair trimmers but other than that it’s basically the same.
HALFTIME!
Gabe:
After 27 years, my freshman year college roommate remains one of my oldest and dearest friends.
This week his kid goes off to start college, so she is at the exact same age my buddy and I were when we met as starry eyed freshman, oh so long ago.
Is this unequivocal mark of the passage of time fair? I say no.
Gabe, let me thank you for submitting the only question that feels firmly in my wheelhouse as an advice columnist. Wistfulness? A vague longing for another chance at your own life? Something I can use as a springboard to talk about devotion? This shit is my bread and butter. Let’s go.
I do understand where you’re coming from here. This time of year, Instagram becomes a real minefield for those of us with old friends we were sure had babies, only to be forcefully reminded that what they have are tweens with trendy haircuts. It’s a shock to the system.
But it can also be an occasion to think about how remarkable it is that despite the various ways time changes us all, we can remain constant in our attachments. Having friends you have known and loved long enough to witness both their own groping at personhood and their achievement at having sent a person they made into the world is as close as we get to the miraculous. There is no real hope of fairness in life, just the chance to live it alongside other people for as long as we can. Congrats to both you and your friend, and may you be there for many more milestones that will hurt your feelings.
Seth:
As someone who stands 6’8” and has known for the vast majority of my life that the world is not built for people of this stature—at what height does life become significantly more unpleasant? Almost every single time I step out in public, I have at least one person who (a) comments on my height, and (b) says something to the effect of “wow, that must be nice.” The line that always gets me, however, is “if I had that height, I’d be in the NBA.” I don’t want to come off like a curmudgeon to these people, but being this tall genuinely sucks—shopping for clothes is a chore; the amount of vehicles that have adequate leg- and/or head-room is hilariously limited; and air travel is the bane of my existence. Should I tell these people being tall is an enormous pain in the ass and even if they had this height, they’re probably garbage on the court anyway?
The tallest you can be without being too tall is 6-foot-4. 6-foot-5 is probably the worst way to be tall, because you are definitely too tall to live comfortably in the world but not so noticeably tall that anyone will pity you for it. At 6-foot-8, you do have my condolences. Feel free to complain about your plight. You might enjoy this essay by occasional Defector contributor Nicholas Russell about how being tall sucks.
Alex:
Do you think you could beat PJ Fleck in a fight? My friends and I have been arguing about which college football coaches we could beat up in our college group text. I’m an average 36 year old with a career record of 2-0, one by headbutt KO at the age of 10 and the other by judge’s decision in middle school (I got detention and the other guy didn’t). Some coaches are easy. Mack Brown is old as hell and I could whoop Brian Kelly’s candy ass based on that clip of him faking a Southern accent alone. Marcus Freeman, Luke Fickell or Mario Cristobal? We’d be corpses. What about Biff Poggi? Sure he’s old but he was briefly an NFL offensive lineman. Mike Gundy isn’t that old and he seems legitimately crazy, an advantage in any fight. The argument has gone on for days.
We decided PJ Fleck is the 50th percentile based on vibes only. He’s 44, played mid-level D1 college ball but was a receiver, not a murderous lineman. We’re split 50/50 on whether we think we could take him. Break the tie for us.
I have no way of answering this question, but I’m including it because I did the Vince McMahon reaction series as I came across various names. By the time I got to “Biff Poggi,” I experienced a sort of emotional rapture. Biff Poggi will stay with me, and for that I am grateful to you.
In return, I am officially pronouncing that you, and you alone among the various members of your group text, could absolutely take PJ Fleck, whoever that is.
