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, we're talking about eating with your mouth open, Epstein fuckery, extended TV title sequences, and more.
Your letters:
Brian:
Who is the fictional character you would hate to see the most with a MAGA hat on doing MAGA things? I say it's The Dude from Big Lebowski. Plus, it seems like it could really be a possibility. Think how he would be if he got old and cranky. Just heartbreaking. Why did I think of this?
Hey man, why did you tell me that after you thought it? You could’ve kept that thought all to yourself. Instead, you decided to spread the poison!
I don’t get my dander up about MAGA heel turns anymore, because so many real life heroes of mine have already swallowed that pill. James Woods was one of my favorite actors in the world, now he’s been firmly established as one of the greatest assholes to ever live. Mel Gibson was my favorite action movie hero when I was a kid; he also joined the asshole factory. I have Dave Chappelle’s “Killin’ Them Softly” committed to memory and now he’s just an old drunken bigot. In fact, it’s just safer for me to assume that every standup comedian and heavy metal artist I once revered has been compromised. This shit is endemic now, well past my ability to feel shock.
That said … if Belle from Beauty and The Beast was ever like, “OMG Olivia Nuzzi is my personal kween!” I’d feel pretty let down.
Chris:
"Under Pressure" is a bad song. I love both David Bowie and Queen. Would you rather listen to "Under Pressure" over any song by either of those two artists individually? The song reeks of "let's just get coked up in the studio and see what happens," and not in a cool way.
Are you trying to get murdered, Chris? Do you know how insane people online get about David Bowie, let alone Freddie Mercury? Why not fire a stray at Steely Dan while you’re at it? This is the musical opinion equivalent of sharing a romantic bath with your toaster. Don’t let our commenters know where you live (to our commenters: please don’t murder Chris).
Anyway, as someone who got mildly into Queen as a teenager thanks to this scene in Wayne’s World, I can’t endorse any “Under Pressure” slander. It was my favorite track on Classic Queen (the only Queen tape I ever owned), and one of my favorite Bowie tracks as well. Pretty much every album from the 1970s was created by artists getting coked up in the studio and seeing what would happen. What happened with “Under Pressure” was Mercury and Bowie amping up the raw emotion every time they traded verses. When Mercury shouts out, “Can we give ourselves one more chance?” after the bridge, he kicks off a climax that few other rock songs have ever touched. Seventeen-year-old me sang along to the end of that song with tears brimming. Then I had some very good beer that purchased with a fake ID. My name was Bobby McGee.
That’s how I feel about that song, even if I never got as possessive about Queen as your average British person. I’m not that into Bowie either, even though I think he’s insanely cool. I’m just glad those two artists decided to collaborate, and that they wrote essentially the perfect track for it. I don’t think it deserves anyone’s ire, not while “Ice Ice Baby” still exists.
Andy:
Minnesota's Viking warrior is one the coolest logos in all of sports. Why don't they put that on their helmets? Their helmet logo hasn't changed since their first season in 1961.
Let’s all give Andy a round of applause for asking a Vikings-related question that wasn’t just “LOL J.J. McCarthy.” Someone here knows to get on my good side.
Until last season, I wanted my team to fuck with alternate uniforms and helmet designs. I really wanted them to trot out a gold helmet, with maybe a matching gold jersey to go with. Then the Vikings introduced their Winter Warrior alternates against Chicago toward the end of last season, and that’s when I realized that no, I didn’t want any alts. The all-white get-ups made my team look like a coloring book page waiting to be filled in. They didn’t look like MY team, and that was a problem. One of thrills of being a diehard fan is just seeing my team out there, even when they lose. I only get to see them play 17 times a year, so the adrenaline rush I get from seeing that classic purple helmet, with the horn decal, is substantial. Like seeing an old friend. An unreliable friend, but a good friend nonetheless. It’s also a straight up good-looking helmet, which is why the franchise hasn’t changed it since 1961. If you get it right, you keep it right.
That’s true for the other classic uniform designs, by the way. I’m not a sartorial purist; no one liked the Patriots Nor’easter alts from the other night more than I did. But when a classic uniform works for me, it always works for me. That’s why I can’t stand any of the Lions’ alternate designs, and why I spit out my tea whenever the Packers rock all whites. If you’re gonna fuck with your look, I need to know that you put some real thought into the design. If it’s just we’re gonna don all white uniforms because we’re playing at night this week! then I won’t respect you in the morning.
Speaking of which, what the fuck were the Rams doing in these threads on Sunday? That was some serious re-inventing the bus shit.
Nick:
Why are prestige TV show theme songs often so interminably long? There are exceptions, like Mad Men. But then you get shows like Boardwalk Empire, Big Little Lies, Deadwood, and Succession, which have theme songs like 1,000 hours long. Hell, The Sopranos theme has two full verses and two choruses. Hurry up and get to my stories. Am I wrong?
All you gotta do is hit the Skip Intro button and you’re free of that shit. I did that with Boardwalk, because the intro song was terrible. However, I’d much rather that every show try to cook up a solid intro sequence than not. It’s a great opportunity to let visual artists and musicians do something cool and original, and those opportunities are scant in the present economy. When these title sequences hit, they often work as standalone works of art. So I’d rather that show runners keep trying to hit on them, because I want that little bit of creative ambition preserved. If they fail to come up with something good, well that’s how art works. Some of it is good, and some of it is dogshit. I just want people to be able to make it. Better you put together some eminently skippable title sequence to a TV show than invent some new crypto coin or whatever.
Also, I like a lot of those sequences to set the mood. I know people who despise Mick Jagger’s Slow Horses theme, but I always watch that intro in full. Gets me ready for some proper British fuckery. Ditto Down Cemetery Road, which uses a downright painterly title sequence that, again, prepares me to hear a bunch of surly Brits drop the c-bomb at one another.
The Sopranos intro booted up this trend a couple of decades ago, because its title sequence worked both as its own artwork AND as a tone setter. If you think it goes on for too long, I would strongly urge you to listen to A3’s full version of “Woke Up This Morning,” because it’s fucking awful. David Chase found the only cool 60 seconds within that song, and then left the rest. You know how fired up I got to see those titles come up back when The Sopranos was new? Even now, I get all tingly when that song starts up. SOMEBODY IS GONNA GET WHACKED REAL GOOD. MAYBE CHRIS.
While I’m here, I’m gonna slip in an official Funbag endorsement for Apple Plus. When it comes to original shows, it’s the best streaming service, and by a wide margin. Like HBO 20 years ago, Apple Plus now feels like a place where some of our best creative minds are given both the money and the freedom to do their best work. And no one fucking watches it! I just started Foundation on a friend’s rec, and it’s awesome. I’d barely heard of it before this year. Most people have never heard of it at all. If I’m looking around for something to watch, I can almost always just default to an Apple Original and make out well.
Tristan:
I've started stirring my coffee with a fork. My rationale is that the spokes swish and mix the coffee and creamer together better than a spoon. Is this crazy?
Nah, I’ve used a fork as a whisk plenty of times. I beat my eggs with a fork. I’ve used a fork to break up stubborn clumps of hot chocolate powder swimming around the top of my mug. And I’ve used a fork to mix bread dough, because the tines clean off easy. I’ve never stirred my coffee with a fork. But if I ever did, I wouldn’t ruminate over it. I misuse utensils for a lot of shit. I’ve eaten salad with a spoon, I’ve used a knife as a spatula, whatever. If you think that’s crazy, I’m not terribly bothered. Crazy is good. No one else is crazy enough to use a chop stick when they’re mixing homemade egg noodles. But I am. Truly, I am HIM.
HALFTIME!
Shane:
How would you handle writing a current expose article on the Las Vegas Raiders? They’re basically losing by 30 every game. What would be your focus? How invested are you in the Raiders article? Would you fly out there and interview people who most likely won’t be there next year? Will the article just to hit the highlights (Pete Carroll, Chip Kelly, Mark Davis, Geno Smith, Tom Brady), hit send and call it a day, or would you devote serious energy and time into it?
If I was assigned that article, I wouldn’t half-ass it. I’d travel to Vegas (on Defector’s dime, obviously), interview anyone willing to talk, research the team’s roster setup and financials, canvas a home game, conduct follow-up interviews, all that shit. Then I’d compile everything I found and see if there’s a compelling story somewhere in it. Sometimes there won’t be; that’s journalism. But if you’re gonna do a job, you gotta do it right. The welfare of this site, and my career by extension, depends on it. So I’d report on the Raiders as seriously as I would a nuclear blast.
And I’d probably focus on the Brady angle. Brady hasn’t gotten a ton of blowback for this Raiders season, because A) owner’s privileges, and B) Brady himself is part of the NFL media apparatus. But we know that Brady was the point man in hiring both GM John Spytek and head coach Pete Carroll. We also know that Spytek forgot to give this team a working offensive line, and that Carroll brought in old friend Geno Smith to play QB even though Smith can’t play anymore. Therefore, this shit is all Brady’s fault. All he cared about was beating the Pats in Week 1. HE SHOULD FUCKING BURN.
Lee:
It's soup season. If you could only cook with one appliance, would you rather have a crockpot or a pressure cooker/instapot? I'm from the Midwest and my parents love a good pressure cooker. For the sake of this argument, say I'm going to cook some chicken tortilla soup and time isn't a constraint, which appliance is my soup going to taste better with? I'm thinking crockpot because it has more time to develop flavor. But maybe it doesn't matter if I could instead crush the flavor into a soup in 20 minutes? I await your verdict.
I’ve never owned either of those appliances. I’m not certain I’ve ever even used them! I only know pressure cookers from when they blow up in Bugs Bunny cartoons; I perhaps have a latent fear of them because of this. I don’t want a bomb on my stove! I want one on Stephen Miller’s stove, dammit!
The real x-factor here is the fact that I work from home, and my wife only works part time. We’re not like other working parents who are pressed for time, all of the time, and therefore need a set-it-and-forget-it countertop appliance if they want to make a presentable home cooked meal. If we’re having soup, I can just get it started in a regular pot during a midday break. Then I can go back to the pot every 15 minutes to stir the soup/admire my handiwork. I’m a tinkerer* in the kitchen. All I wanna do is fuss with whatever I’m cooking, stealing a taste of the good shit whenever no one is looking. I can’t do that with a pressure cooker, unless I want to be scalded by an explosion of chicken and dumplings. I wanna open my pot. I wanna touch the food. So if we ever owned an instapot or whatever, I can pretty much guarantee you that I’d never use it.
Force me at gunpoint to make you some bean soup with one such appliance though, gimme the crockpot. In my experience, slow cooking is always tastier cooking.
(*My tinkering habit is the reason I only learned how to cook rice properly this year. I was always opening the pot to check for doneness, and to make sure the rice on the bottom of the pot wasn’t sticking. This is all wrong. From a random Instagram Reel, my wife learned that you should NEVER uncover the rice, whether it coming to a boil or at a simmer. A pot of rice is its own little thermodynamic system. I don’t know the science of how it works, because I’m not Alton Brown. I just know that you have to trust the rice and the water to do their thing. Now I make perfect rice, every time. And without a rice cooker! We just saved $60! Wow!)
Jamie:
Remember when Howard Dean screamed weird one time and it ended his whole presidential campaign? I've thought about this a lot over the past ten years, for obvious reasons. Anyway, do you think anyone over the last two weeks is like, "OH MY GOD THESE EPSTEIN EMAILS CHANGE EVERYTHING"? Because I feel like this is all just confirming/rehashing stuff that anyone outside the GOP infotainment ecosphere already knew.
Careful with the “nawt news” takes when it comes to the Epstein shit. Information fatigue is how they get you, and you’re seeing proof of that in real time. Had the president been exposed as a close buddy of a known child predator back in Howard Dean’s time, it would have proven instantly fatal. Why? Because we Americans were less inundated with information back then. There was far less clutter to cut through, so your political ambitions could be derailed by pretty much anything that garnered lasting public scrutiny, even if it was just a dumb war cry during primary season.
Thus, everything got overblown back then, as the Dean scream proved (I also remember Chappelle’s Show doing a whole sketch on the BYAH! scream even though it was already well of out date by the time that episode aired; an ominous portent for the rest of Dave Chappelle’s career). Now, there’s so much shit floating around out there that everything ends up getting ignored instead. I can, and should, blame the tech industry for this. But users have to own some of the responsibility here, too. We when we at Defector publish some big reported piece and some asshole replies, “No duh,” they’re not only being stupid, they’re basically encouraging their online peers to look away from the substance of that report.
Donald Trump has thrived on this contagious indifference for over a decade now, to the point where otherwise smart people are asking me, “Will this Trump and Epstein story really move the needle?” The fact that anyone even is even ASKING that question is proof of how broken everything has become. This scandal deserves to end Trump. Of course, there have already been 500 other scandals that should have ended Trump: insurrections and what have you. But when you see the man get away with everything, and when you have other people around you ironically joking, “I’d like to see ol’ Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam!” it’s hard not to feel like there is no tipping point coming. No reckoning. No salvation.
The only thing that gives me hope, and this is NOT a prediction, is that the election returns from earlier this month show that everyone is starting to get fed up with all of this shit. Americans are sick of higher prices, fraudulent tech saviors, cancelled flights, wonky internet, and all of the other bad shit that Trumpism has caused. They’re also sick to death of Democrats sitting on their hands all the goddamn time. (\[Peggy Noonan voice] I can sense the vibes in the air shifting. People want change.
The problem, of course, is: Who’s gonna change it? Is change even possible anymore? I don’t know the answer to that anymore than you do. Annoying.
Brian:
Which is preferable: growing up very handsome, and then suddenly having thinning hair in your 20s and looking like Terry Bradshaw by your mid 30s? Or looking like you’re 40 years old by the time you’re 12, however not particularly aging much more after that?
The latter. I still have my hair, and I know how lucky I am to have it. I’m sure I’d survive baldness, but I have no interest in doing so if I can avoid it.
Bob:
My partner eats in a way that absolutely disgusts me. She chews with her mouth open and seems to only choose the loudest foods to eat. She loves snacks and will pick things like chips/popcorn/nuts and eat them one piece at a time. It seems like she’s actively trying to create as much sound as possible. I have had a problem with listening to people eat since I was a child. My brother chewed with his mouth open and knew it drove me crazy. I literally have to leave the room when she grabs a snack and sits next to me and starts to munch. We’ve been together about two years. I can’t say anything about this, right?
You have to. If you’re in a serious relationship, you have to be open about how you’re feeling. You don’t have to be too open, like saying, “Boy, sometimes I really wish I could fuck other people!” But when it comes to loud mastication, yeah. You gotta speak up, otherwise you’ll just seethe about it for the rest of time and your relationship will blow up because of it.
I am a loud eater. I take big bites. I never eat potato chips one at a time. I often chew with my mouth open. My wife hates it, and will always call me out at the dinner table if I’m making too much of a racket. Until recently, I always brushed off her complaints. Testily. I was like, “Let me enjoy my fucking dinner, man! STOP BEING THE ENEMY OF PLEASURE.” Then my wife sat me down a few weeks ago and was like, “This is a serious problem for me. It makes me not attracted to you.” The way to a man’s heart is through his libido, so I came correct in a hurry. I was like fuck, I better eat like a mouse from here on out. So I try. I don’t always succeed, but I try. That’s what you’re supposed to do in a healthy marriage.
Same goes for you, Bob. If something is bothering you in your relationship, don’t let it go unattended. Speak your mind firmly but politely. Present it as a problem you two need to solve together, rather than as a direct order from a controlling boyfriend. If you two respect one another, you’ll probably be able to work something out from there.
As for me, whenever my wife isn’t around now, I eat like fucking Homer Simpson.
Email of the week!
Chris:
I'm taking a sports journalism course and, early in the semester, one of our assigned readings was an article about how Sports Illustrated declined because of its failure to adapt. When our instructor asked people for their thoughts on the reading, I went on a bit of a rant about how SI's new ownership turned it into a useless content farm. Then I complained that the article (written at a prestige publication) didn't even mention any of the ways SI was systematically and intentionally turned into what it is now.
The instructor responded by asking, "Are you a Defector subscriber?"
You bet your ass he is, professor.
