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 shitty teenagers, the end of Playboy, penis tattoos, and more.
Your letters:
Ben:
Apparently the commentariat on Defector have declared that putting ketchup on your hamburger is weird/gross/wrong. Come on now. It's ketchup, it goes well with hamburgers. It's not like putting peanut butter on your burger. This is an example of a stupid 'hot take' taken too far, right? I put A1 on my burgers.
A1 makes hamburgers tastes like STEAKburgers! Sorry, I was raised mostly by television advertisements.
Anyway, I no longer have any use for online food arguments. We’ve been doing this shit for over a decade now, and guess how many people have changed their eating preferences after someone yelled at them about it? Zero. I can’t waste my time with shit like this anymore, especially because I put more ketchup on my burger than the burger can accommodate. It’s true. I squeeze a ketchup on top of the patty until it’s leaking out of the bun, and then I squeeze a second glop of ketchup on the side of my plate so that I can dip my burger into it. God, I love ketchup so much. I wanna take a bath in it. Maybe I should attack a skunk just so that I have an excuse to do it!
If this grosses you out, please note that you do not live in my house. You never have to watch me eat a burger like this, thus you’re under no obligation to give a shit. So don’t. Don’t be a food cop. Don’t be ANY kind of cop. One reason that America is currently busted as shit is because everybody wants to be a cop, even the people who hate cops. Everyone wants to boss everyone else around about what to say, what to like, where to shop, and on and on and on it goes. The result is a society where you are inclined to either A) tune everyone else out, or B) tell everyone to go fuck themselves. Not an ideal roadmap for living together harmoniously. Besides, why would you want everyone to like all of the exact same shit that you like? That’s no fun. That kind of world would be boring as shit. We should be CELEBRATING our differences, especially the fact that I look like I just murdered someone whenever I eat a hamburger. That’s how we’ll save humanity, I tell you!
Gavin:
My daughter was the best child in the world for the first 13 years of her life. Just an absolute joy to be around that was always kind and respectful to her mother and me. Come 14, she started getting moody and distant, and has since turned into a ball of rage that is incredibly dismissive and rude to me, and a straight-up dick to her mom. Just a complete 180 from the wonderful daughter we had for a decade plus, to the point of making her mom cry multiple times with her treatment. I know you have mentioned similar experiences, and wondered what kind of advice you have. How do I frame this so that I don't end up taking this life stage too seriously, and don't end up resenting her? (And it is just a stage, right?!)
It IS just a stage, and there’s a psychological research to back it up. The deal is that teenagers must subconsciously prepare for life on their own. So they get a head start on that separation by emotionally distancing themselves from you well in advance of leaving home. They stay out later. They don’t tell you shit, and then get pissed off if you dare to pry. They’re establishing their independence while also maintaining the hormone levels of a Russian athlete. They rebel, as teenagers always have. This is both inevitable and, in its own way, healthy.
It also SUCKS. Our oldest kid turned 14 during the pandemic, which only exacerbated the tension. She was dying to get away from us, but literally couldn’t. So she lashed out by hiding in her room, charging shit to our credit card without telling us, sneaking out of the house (or sneaking friends in), vaping, and pulling other standard teen moves. My wife and I were warned well in advance about the terrible twos, and other landmines of early parenthood. But 14 … 14 is the real bear. Everyone is like, They turn into animals when they become teens! but no one tells you that 14 is the EXACT age when that lycanthropy takes place. There was more yelling in our house that year than there was in Anora. Stupid pandemic. THANKS A LOT, TRUMP. You butt.
But my wife and I made it through that emotional obstacle course by remembering all of the shit we learned from dealing with our daughter when she was a preschooler:
-Don’t take anything the kid says personally, even though it’s hard not to.
-Keep your cool. Again, hard.
-Don’t issue orders or ultimatums. Give your kid choices so that they feel like they have control over their own lives. e.g., “You have to do your laundry, but you can wait to do it until tomorrow if today doesn’t work.”
-Don’t lecture. The second you hit the second sentence in your little Oscar film monologue, they’ve already tuned you out. If you need to have a long talk with your teenager, you have to make it a two-way conversation. Identify the problem—hey girl, you’re being a real dick to your mom—and then ask how you can solve it together. If your kid believes you’re listening to them, they’ll be more inclined to listen to you.
None of these tips are foolproof, nor will they prevent you from wanting to put your fist through the drywall whenever your kid starts giving you ‘tude. That’s because you’re still learning how to raise them while they’re still learning how to be an adult. Your job as the parent of a teenager is to recede into the background of your kid’s life, which is a difficult transition for both parties when you’ve spent so long as the center of their universe. Once our daughter hit 16/17, my wife and I got the hang of it. I loved parenting her those years. I loved being her backstop. Then she got a boyfriend and we had to begin the process all over again. You’d think there was an end to all of this parenting nonsense, but no! No, turns out that you have to deal with this people your whole life! NO ONE WARNED ME ABOUT THAT WTF.
Anyway, that’s all I got. Don’t throw your daughter off a bridge. Just keep your head down and push through the shitstorm.
Doug:
Ran across a news story the other day about how Playboy named its first Playmate in several years, as a way of celebrating the return of the printed magazine. I'd not been aware that Playboy had ever stopped having Playmates or issuing printed copies, which kind of says a lot about how they've fallen off the face of the earth in terms of cultural relevance. What would it take to get you, a well-read and culturally aware adult male, to purchase, read, or otherwise consume a copy of the re-launched Playboy? Is there anything the enterprise can do to make itself matter again?
No. I grew up stealing copies of Playboy and staring longingly at the special edition issues—the ones with all pictures and no articles—at the airport newsstand. I have many of the Playmates from that era seared in my horny memory. So it was a cheap thrill for me decades later when that magazine offered some freelance work. The links to all of that work are dead now; I vaguely remember having to write something about the time Tony Kornheiser got suspended from ESPN for saying that Hannah Storm’s on-air outfits were making him too horny. If you didn’t catch that story when it first happened, peep the link. Tony’s a breathtaking shithead.
Anyway, Playboy brought renowned geniuses like myself in as part of its millionth stab at becoming relevant again. They tried blogging. They tried scrapping nude centerfolds and selling themselves as Upscale Maxim. Then they tried bringing the T&A back. Then they went quarterly, both to cut costs and to reposition themselves, again, as a place where Serious Writing happens in between all of the boobies. None of it has worked. The political rise of Donald Trump, a man who remains the ideal target reader for that magazine, hasn’t helped its prospects in the slightest. It’s a ghost brand that’ll get passed from one holding company to another until a sports betting company out of Macau scoops it up and turns it into a bot farm. With boobs.
Perhaps there’s an alternate universe where some visionary rich guy who adores journalism buys Playboy on a lark and shells out a fuckton of money to name brand writers like Michael Lewis to do longform work for them. But you know how that story ends already. There’s zero chance any of that gets attention or, more important, turns a profit. And even with Trump back in charge, we’re never going back to the era where famous actresses posed for Playboy because they wanted to feel “empowered.” That magazine is the product of a bygone era, and it should stay that way. Nothing in pop culture goes away anymore. It’s annoying. I’d rather remember the Playboy of my tweenage years than watch it become some extreme right-wing webzine that only features centerfolds who have terrible politics. I’d rather my memories of the Golden Age of Softcore Porn stay fond ones.
Also, if Cady Cantrell is reading this right now … ‘sup girl.
Chris:
I am a 39-year-old who recently changed careers to become a middle school woodshop teacher. Our school has an annual students vs teachers basketball game coming up next week. Ten years ago, at my peak, I was a good pickup player who hit open baseline jumpers, got rebounds and guarded the other team's second best player. The only things I do at or above average require effort and hustle. So my question is: what is the appropriate effort level for a teacher playing against 14- and 15-year-olds with half the school watching? I hate losing, but I also do not want to look like an absolute fool in front of my students and coworkers.
You just read up above about how mean 14-year-olds are, yeah Chris? With that in mind, SHOW NO MERCY. Those kids aren’t gonna take it easy on you, and they’re big enough now that they can do a lot of sporty things better than you. Most important, they don’t WANT you to go easy. They’re not grade schoolers anymore. They understand the idea of competition, and they welcome it. They want to kick the teachers’ asses fair and square, so give them the chance. And then, when one of them drives to the hoop, swat that ball into the next fucking county and give them the Mutombo finger wag. NOTHING EARNED IS GIVEN, NOTHING GIVEN IS EARNED.
HALFTIME!
Matt:
I have a tattoo body suit—pics attached for your reference so you get an idea of just how covered I am, feel free to publish them if you’d like if you run this question—and the head of the penis is BY FAR one of the three most painful spots I’ve had done, along with my palms and soles. The pain is next level, on an entirely different scale than other horrifically painful spots like ribs, armpits, and feet. And, also, the penis head skin is fairly spongy and harder to tattoo (no pun intended), so it also takes a relatively long time to get tattooed especially with something as intricate as a Vikings helmet. As someone with zero tattoos what, exactly, is your plan for surviving the session?
For anyone who wasn’t with us last week, another reader asked if I’d get a tattoo of the Vikings helmet on the tip of my dick if it guaranteed them a Super Bowl and I said yes. I’ll still say yes, because it’s a deal that will never be offered to me, so I never have to worry about honoring it. However, thanks to Matt, I now understand just how stinging an imaginary bullet I’ve dodged.
Should I still ever be forced to get the head of my penis inked, my plan of surviving the ordeal is actually straightforward: huffing ether, and huffing a LOT of it. I don’t know why you tattoo people stay awake for the process. Knock my ass out and then tattoo a scrotum on my forehead. I won’t complain (I will complain).
Also, let’s hear it for Matt’s body suit. Needs more Vikings helmets on it, but otherwise that’s some quality craftsmanship.
Ladanian:
I'm a teacher and the other day my assistant principal sent me an email that was obviously generated by artificial intelligence. I then used AI for my response, and with a proposal that was also AI generated. Right now it feels weird to use AI to write an email, but at some point soon I'm guessing it will be the opposite. So how do you think AI will impact sports? Is some football coach working insane hours using AI to generate red zone plays for the offense and the other team is using AI to generate counters to stop the offense?
We talked about this in an earlier Funbag, but there will never be fully automated play-calling in football, or in any other sport. If AI has any true utility, and that remains to be seen, it’ll be in the background of things, same as most other lucrative tech. You won’t have AI draw up plays for you, but you WILL have it calculate success rates for certain plays against certain defenses, certain players against certain opponents, and all of the other data mining that Pro Football Focus pioneered back in the aughties. PFF organized stats and game tape for coaches, saving them hours and hours of time and making it possible for younger coaches to move up the org chart much more quickly than they did back in the analog era. It was a godsend, the way technology promised to be.
In theory, AI would organize these resources with even greater precision, and perhaps curate suggested plays to run against the next opponent. But, as Ed Zitron warned us last month, believing that AI has ANY potential plays right into the tech industry’s hands. It helps legitimize a product that hasn’t earned its legitimacy yet. I tried talking ball with all of the big consumer AI bots out there and guess what? They know dick. The best insights they gave me into football were ones that I had already either thought of myself, or had heard from other humans. And anyone who uses AI for general purposes right now is using a shit product, and therefore producing shit work. I can’t stop people from using AI, and I can’t prevent Americans from getting used to it, because the laziness of this country knows no bounds. But us smart people will keep it at arm’s length anyway, because we have both the natural intelligence and the good taste to do so.
Also, the NFL would never allow AI playcalling because then there wouldn’t be any Arthur Smiths for fans to get pissed off at. Think about what we stand to lose there. The only reason I watch football is to yell at the coaches, really.
Ben:
For decades the Empire State Building was THE iconic building in NYC, then it was usurped for a couple of decades by the Twin Towers until 9/11. Now it seems that the Empire State Building has reclaimed its place as THE iconic skyscraper/building in NYC. Do you agree with this, or is there another building that is more iconic in NYC? And is there another example of a building reclaiming its icon status?
True New Yorkers know that the Chrysler Building is the definitive Manhattan skyscraper, and not the thirsty-ass Empire State Building. But nationally speaking, the latter is “back,” I suppose, to being the primary NYC identifier in television B-roll, on brand logos, and in full-back tattoos. It always has been, even before the World Trade Center went down.
This is because the Twin Towers only became venerated after they were destroyed. In their lifetime, they were an architectural flop: two sterile boxes that exemplified just how unimaginative just about every other skyscraper in Manhattan was. At least the Empire State Building was pointy. That’s why it’s always stood out on the city’s skyline, and that’s why true New Yorkers (there I go again) always favored it over both the Twin Towers and One World Trade Center, the latter of which is big and boring.
Pretty much every American city, outside of Chicago, has an even more pathetic collection of skyscrapers to boast, so I can’t think of another battle between city icons like the one I tepidly outlined up above. You have to leave the U.S. to find kickass skylines, like the ones in Shanghai, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur. Our commenters might know the respective histories of those cities enough to give you another example of local buildings battling it out for top Q rating. But I can’t help there, because I’m a big dumb American. DURRRR HOW COME THERE ISN’T ANY FOOTBALL ON MY TEEVEE RIGHT NOW DURRRR.
Andy:
Would NFL games be better with just one announcer? I'm tired of guys like Tom Brady and Tony Romo yammering away and filling the screen with circles and squiggles while they explain the game's "intricacies." Give me Vin Scully, Ernie Harwell and Chick Hearn any day.
Whoa hey Andy, only I get to be the boomer round here! Being able to operate a one-man booth is a rare skill. It’s why Vin Scully was such a legend. Scully was almost exclusively a one-sport announcer—I forgot that he did NFL games with John Madden at one point—and a one-team announcer at that. That narrow purview gave Scully both the knowledge and the time to capably analyze a game while calling it. The fact that he was one of the most gifted conversationalists to ever live might have also factored in. You don’t encounter people like that very often.
Most announcers today are both less talented and work multiple sports, so asking Kenny Albert to call the game AND identify blitz packages is a lot to ask of the man. Also, a lot of analysts are helpful. They’re not all Tom Brady. We’ve come to Bill Raftery’s time of year, and I very much want my dose of Raftery when the NCAA tournament goes live. Most color guys, even when they’re not as good as Raftery, can tell you why a play happened the way it did, which is a valuable service even if I like to pretend that I know everything. Hence, these games are a two-person job (never three, ever), with rare exceptions.
I’ll tell you one such potential exception: Mike Breen. I’ve dragged Breen in this space more than a few times, mostly for the crime of Not Being 1990s Marv Albert. I’ve since come correct. Mike Breen DOES have the timbre, and he knows a shitload about the game of basketball. Make him fly solo for national broadcasts and I bet he’d be pretty great at it. We’d have to seal the booth shut like an airplane cockpit to prevent Mark Jackson from storming in to seize the mic and complain about modern players being too chickenshit, but those security measures can be easily arranged.
Michael:
How do you feel about baby showers/diaper parties at the office? I've been here less than a year and this woman is not in my department. The few times I've run into her and said hi, she seemed dismissive towards me. So I didn't buy her any diapers and I think that is totally justified as I don't know her at all. Turns out apparently almost everybody else in this office of like 30 people did so now I feel like an asshole, but I know I shouldn't. Am I wrong?
You should just buy the shitty pregnant lady a gift even if you hate her. It spares you awkward looks at the office, and it’s all right to do nice things for people you don’t like. That’s part of being a courteous person. If you start means testing for who deserves good deeds and who doesn’t, you’ll end up forgetting the point of good manners entirely. You'll be a cop. Forgive them, even if they are not sorry…
Also, any party right now is a good party. Being hopeless and miserable does the bad guys more good than it does you. In fact, they despise seeing you happy. Really pisses them off. So bring a six-pack and a package of burp cloths to the office and get your shower on. Trigger the triggermen.
Email of the week!
Brian:
Your review of Primanti Bros. unlocked a sandwich memory in me (side note - perhaps a semi-regular Let's Remember Some Sandwiches feature is merited? I expect the commentariat would have reams of material). I live in SoCal around 2010 was working close enough to Manhattan Beach to quickly drive over for lunch and take in some sun and sand before heading back to an afternoon of corporate bootlicking.
I became a semi-frequent customer at Sandos Sub Shop, a local hole-in-the-wall spot with a deliciously greasy griddle and big-but-cheap sandwiches. They had a local kid or two with a bike or skateboard hanging around to deliver food onto the beach. Super chill spot. I have to imagine the guys working there were blazing 24/7.
I fell in love the $6.95 Original Breakfast Sandwich (big enough for two, though I always powered through the whole thing). Sausage, bacon, two fried eggs (over medium to over hard so it wasn't too messy for beach patrons), fries, jalapenos, cheese, mayo, all served on a big half-sub loaf that was griddled in the bacon and sausage grease. They had a much more reasonable amount of fries than your Primanti sandwich: a complementary addition providing some extra crunch but not trying to be the star of the show. I'm old enough now that just thinking about this sandwich is causing me heartburn, but at the time it was superb. Crunchy, spicy, salty… this thing would have been magic after a rough night out.
Sadly, Sandos has long since closed. My last day at that particular job I had latched onto a solid plan to return my laptop in LA, then drive down to Sandos to grab a sandwich and a beer for a long lunch at the beach. To my surprise the place was in the midst of renovation when I walked in. I held out hope a sandwich might still be possible until I noticed the griddle was gone. Still found the beer, but it was a sad capper on what had otherwise been a great day of divesting myself of responsibilities. RIP Sandos, home of one of the best sandwiches I've found in the LA area.
Aw man, I feel for you. And your sandwich.
