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 loaded fries, USC football sucking shit, toothpaste, Lamar Jackson, and more.
Hey now, let’s all give a big round of applesauce to Albert Burneko for presiding over this column a week ago. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Albert is our greatest living American, now and forever.
Speaking of greatest Americans, we'll have another surprise guest hosting the Funbag next week, so get your queries in on the double. That’s an order, buddy!
Now, let’s get to your letters:
David:
When did people stop buying tools? I am referring specifically to the suburban homeowner whose only tools are a handful of Allen wrenches that will still be in the junk drawer long after the assemble-it-yourself furniture they came with is gone. What have dads and grandfathers been doing these last several decades where people need to call a professional or a friend (me) for rudimentary tasks and repairs around the house?
Actually, tool sales in this country have been on the rise in recent years, although at a slower rate of increase from years prior. So don’t let Tim Allen and his ilk trick you into believing that Americans don’t like their power drills anymore. We still buy them. Even I have a toolbox, featuring a shitty cordless Ryobi drill that I use to drill pilot holes, mount TVs, and perform all sorts of other masculine tasks. I think we also still have some toy tools around from when our kids were babies: plastic hammers and what not. My wife and I will ask our kids to help us with house projects, too … until we have to chase them away because they’ve gotten too annoying to deal with. And we ain’t shit compared to some of our neighbors. I think one of my neighbors owns his own table saw. He might be Richard Karn.
Of course, a sizable share of tools in this country are purchased by professionals, i.e. the people that people like me call when we can’t fix a leaky sink. So while David here is a little bit off in asserting that no suburbanite knows how to fix anything anymore, he’s touching on a larger point that is very much true, which is that Americans like me have been conditioned to want other people to do shit for them. You go to high school and your teacher warns you to study if you don’t wanna dig ditches for the rest of your life. So you go to college to get a desk job where you can order other people around. Then you have Seamless deliver a pizza to your dorm every other night because you don’t wanna make the walk all the way to the dining hall.
Then you become a adult working in the white collar sector and oh wow, look at all the shit you can have other people do for you. You can subscribe to a meal kit service, because you have no time to cook. If you’re looking for new music, you can just ask Siri to queue something up rather than schlep to a record store that no longer exists. If you need help raising your kid (we all do), you can hire a nanny or three. You don't even have to talk to your kids if you don't want to!
And I haven’t even gotten to AI yet. The whole elevator pitch for AI is that’ll take even more tedious busywork off of your plate, like writing your mother’s obituary. Soon, you won’t have to do anything at all. You can just lie in bed and hook yourself up to a feeding tube. Now THAT’S what I call freedom! You know that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer runs for sanitation commissioner under the campaign slogan of “Can’t someone else do it?” I think about that a lot.
On a related note…
Alex:
My dad recently downsized to a condo and ordered a bunch of furniture from online retailers purveying cheaply made, unassembled crap delivered straight to your door. Three days of assembly have led me to the belief that we need federal legislation preventing the sale of home assembly furniture that requires you to use an Allen wrench in an area in which you cannot completely turn the Allen wrench. I would also support a ban on the Allen wrench completely.
That toolbox I mentioned up above? It also contains roughly two dozen Allen wrenches I’ve collected from various IKEA purchases over the years. Allen wrenches are cheap to produce and easy to include in the packaging, so manufacturers have defaulted to them as the all-purpose tool of choice for any DIY assembly product. Most of them work perfectly fine but, as Alex noted, there’s not always enough room to turn the fucking Allen wrench when you need to get that bolt flush. This is why it pays to own a ratchet set. If the government gave every American a free ratchet set and Phillips head screwdriver, Home Depot would be out of business within seconds. True story.
Matt:
Visited some friends this weekend and we got to talking about shoes, specifically which shoes racists do or don't wear. It began with the observation that the Crocs I was wearing could never be worn by a racist, something me and the other two friends very much did not believe was the case. We then had a few ideas of what shoes are the most or least racist adjacent. Can you offer your rankings, or is this an impossible thing to categorize?
The only time I remember shoes being explicitly racist was back in the late 20th century, when skinheads would wear Doc Martens with white laces. I don’t think skinheads do that anymore, not when they’re currently busy running the federal government. You don’t have to signal your racist bonafides to others via apparel in 2025. You can just dress normal, even in Crocs, and then type “Great job, ICE!” into your phone. Racists are no longer a monolith, which I guess is kind of heartwarming.
Jonathan:
I’ve been training for a marathon (typical Colorado midlife crisis), so my clothes are baggy now. Should I buy new clothes, or just wait for the eventual post-race weight gain/return to normalcy?
Tight clothing has been out of fashion since the pandemic, so I don’t see why you need to change out your present wardrobe at all. You’ll fit right in with the rest of us Americans who spend every day in mom jeans, oversized jackets, and all manner of athleisure wear. “Wear something you don’t care about” is now the guiding fashion ethos in this country, and I'd kinda like it if everyone decided to look hot again.
John:
Do you think all the aliens that visit earth are just some other planet’s asshole billionaires?
No, because no billionaire wants to actually accomplish anything. That would require both hard work and an innate curiosity. Does David Tepper look like a curious fella to you?
Michael:
Is it okay to judge someone based solely on their choice of toothpaste? I say yes.
What’s there to judge? It’s toothpaste. It’s all the same shit. I used to think highly of Aquafresh when I was a kid, because the colored stripes made Aquafresh look like candy. It was not candy. It was just toothpaste. Oh, and I remember TV ads for Mentadent where a paid actor was like, “My dentist wanted me to brush my teeth with baking soda, and it was so gross. But then I tried Mentadent and it was delicious!” That was also a lie. Mentadent was just toothpaste, same as the rest of them. Maybe you like an organic toothpaste that tastes like bird shit, but that’s of no consequence to me. Use what you use. I ain’t gonna judge you by what’s in your medicine cabinet. I’m just here to use your shitter and then get out.
Tim:
Lamar Jackson is always on the shortlist for MVP despite never winning a conference championship, let alone a Super Bowl. To wit, I’d like to propose the “Lamar Jackson Rule”: if you have won more MVPs than championships, you are not eligible for the MVP. So Josh Allen’s MVP from last season would stand. But in order for him to win another MVP, he would have to win a championship. I realize that MVP is a regular season award, but how valuable can LJ be when he keeps coming up short in the playoffs?
I can’t ride with this, and I’m someone who firmly believes that wins ARE a QB-viable stat. Lamar has already won two MVPs and should have won it over Allen a year ago. I know he’s biffed a handful of playoff games, but we already have a Super Bowl MVP award to recognize postseason excellence. So we don’t need to have this argument for the 1,000th time. After all, there’s already an entire cottage industry in place to canonize QBs with rings and to slander QBs without them. It’s called daytime ESPN, and you can watch it between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. every week. Otherwise, if you start tacking prerequisites onto a regular season award, then shit’ll turn boring real quick. Let the regular season MVP be the regular season MVP. It ain’t gonna ruin your life.
Also, I would really like Lamar to win a title. He’s too fun of a player to have empty rings discourse be the sum of his legacy.
Shane:
What are/were your main late night TV show host(s)? Mine were Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson and Stephen Colbert. I dropped out during the Biden years. I always skipped interviews with guests, usually just staying for the monologue.
Oh wow, you lasted way longer than I did. I stopped watching late-night shows sometime right after Colbert moved over to The Late Show. I watched him on CBS for a little bit (and always on DVR) before I got bored with it, and that was that. I don’t need late night TV anymore, and neither does anyone else. That doesn’t justify CBS firing Colbert just because Bari Weiss asked them to or whatever, but the entire format has been on cultural life support for the bulk of this century. The end was coming at some point. I’d have prefer it to have been more dignified, but that was clearly asking too much.
I grew up watching Letterman and Arsenio, mind you. I lionized the big late-night hosts the same as every other suburban wiseass did. I wanted to be Letterman. I memorized every Triumph segment that Conan ran. I wanted to have my own late-night show and tell America my own jokes about those clowns in Congress. But that daydream is in anachronism in 2025. And even back in the day, late-night shows were really just for old people anyway. There’s a reason Jay Leno is a centimillionaire, and it’s not because he was a comedic visionary.
HALFTIME!
Matt:
There is a restaurant in my city that has 16 different varieties of loaded fries. Are restaurants just giving up and trying to openly murder us at this point?
They’re just giving people what they want, so you can’t fault them there. As for me, I see nothing in loaded fries. I’ve enjoyed chili fries on occasion, but otherwise I prefer those fuckers to be bare and crispy. I’m not here to sift around for fries buried in a pile of jack cheese and buffalo sauce. But every chain restaurant now is now out of ideas and just being like We grabbed a bunch of random shit and melted it on top of your side salad for you! Save that for nacho night, and leave my fries alone.
Chris:
What’s your opinion on the “no dog pee” signs in front yards? I try to avoid these yards, but sometimes my dog has to piss and I’m not going to yank her out of someone’s yard because of their precious fucking grass. If you don’t want dogs in your yard, put up a goddamn fence, ya yard fascists (I can understand this sign for sensitive plants).
Neighbors put those signs up because a dog’s piss can leave a burn in the grass that sticks around for a while. And some people are extremely fastidious about their lawns, so a blemish of that sort won’t be forgiven. They'll call ICE on you and your little dog, too.
These people are tightasses, and I generally ignore those signs. This is because, where I live, the property lines end a few feet from the curb anyway, which means that the edge of everyone’s lawn is, technically, public property. That means my dog has the right to piss there, so I usually let him. I don’t let Carter piss on flowers if I can help it, and I don’t let him walk deep into someone’s lawn to piss. There are a lot of owners who have no issue letting their dogs piss ANYWHERE on a neighbor’s lawn, and those people deserve a Frisbee to the dome. I respect the boundaries that I find reasonable. And I pick up my dog’s shit.
John:
Is USC the biggest disappointment since the creation of the college football playoff? They haven’t done shit.
Save for the Pete Carroll era, USC football has sucked my entire life. The Trojans sucked under Larry Smith, John Robinson, and Paul Hackett. Then came Carroll. Then the Trojans sucked again under Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Clay Helton, and now Lincoln Riley. So I’m not even sure I can call USC a “disappointment” given the school’s modern track record. It’s not that different from Notre Dame, where a program’s reputation far exceeds its recent accomplishments. Everyone, especially USC boosters, thinks that USC should always be a national title contender. So when Carroll came along and turned them into a powerhouse, those same people were like, “See? This is what USC football is supposed to be!”
But Carroll left USC over 15 years ago, and think of all the dumb shit that school has done since then. Pat Haden taking over as athletic director. Hiring Kiffin and then ditching him at the airport. Reggie Bush getting his Heisman yoinked. Sark showing up drunk off his ass at a team event. Haden getting replaced with Lynn Swann, who was just as unqualified. Riley getting poached from Oklahoma and then nearly getting Caleb Williams murdered behind a shit offensive line. Carroll wasn’t the norm in LA. He was lifting up an otherwise mediocre program.
So now that he’s long gone, why expect USC to get anything right, especially now that it’s in the same conference as Ohio State, which has nearly perfected its machinery? As far as I’m concerned, USC is just another name brand school that can never get its shit together. If NIL was gonna change that, it would’ve done so already.
John:
I always believed the protocol for men's rooms is that you leave the seat UP when done. It's likely the next dickhead that comes in just pisses all over it instead of lifting it. It seems more thoughtful to leave it up to minimize that. Can we all agree to this as a society?
We cannot. Guys sit on toilets too, you know. And honestly, how fucking hard is it to lift up a toilet seat and/or put it back down? You don’t even need your toolbox to do it.
Christina:
I am finally going to the Olympics for the first time this winter. I’m really excited to bring my husband, two kids, and two close friends along with me. We’re huge hockey fans, of both men’s and women’s. No one has any issues with the US women’s team, and I’m already planning out what jerseys to bring along to those games. But the men’s team is rather problematic. One child is firmly in Team Canada’s camp, so he’ll wear his McDavid jersey. But for those of us kind of-sort of rooting for Team USA in these times, what do we do? Pick a player and wear their NHL jersey? Get the Team USA jersey and just own it, hoping that sports competition overshadows politics for two weeks in Italy? Go full contrarian and get a Marchand jersey if he’s on Team Canada?
Personally speaking, I’m still more than happy to root for America’s Olympic teams even as our country is making a real ass of itself. I don’t even care if some Team USA members are big on Trump, because I never expect athletes to have good taste in politics. So I’d probably just buy a Team USA jersey and rock it out once I get to Milan. The problem is that those jerseys are made by Fanatics, which means they’re dogshit. Same goes for NHL jerseys, which is even more annoying. I wish someone would duct tape Michael Rubin to a goalpost and fire 100 slap shots at him.
The good news is that indie joints like '47 sell their own Team USA shit. You may not be able to get a real deal jersey, but you’ll at least have a nice piece of clothing that still establishes your American bonafides. Fans from other countries will shit all over you, but take it with good cheer and maybe those same people will be like, “OK, America blows, but at least that lady is all right.” Or they’ll shoot you with a flare gun. I can’t make any promises here.
Pete:
Have you ever wondered about your dad, not as your dad, but as a guy? Do you think you'd have been friends with your dad, if you know, he wasn't your dad, and the same age?
Yeah! Ever since he died, I feel like I’ve been walking around in his footprints. I can relate to the old man more than I ever have in matters of parenting, work, dealing with house shit, and just living in the world. It’s been quite lovely, actually. So yes, Dad and I would have been able to hang as strangers. He wouldn’t have been able to talk Vikings football, but my wife can’t either.
Todd:
This week, I was in New York City for the first time since before 9/11. I wanted to go see the 9/11 Memorial, but I didn't need to go to the museum. I had a really hard time crossing the street into the area with the infinity pools, because the whole thing hit me really a lot harder than I thought it would. I got really emotional, with my teenage daughter actually having to comfort me. Yet all around us, were people taking selfies with the pool in the background, and vendors were selling generic crap, and the like. I'm not saying it has to be completely solemn around there, but, are we far enough past the occurrence that people just don't understand?
We are, and that’s all right. That memorial was designed to have everyday life going on all around it, as a signal of rebirth in the wake of tragedy. That rebirth was always going to include a lot of annoying shit like tourists and hucksters, because that’s part of the world doing what it does. 9/11 was recent enough for a lot of us to remember it firsthand (myself included; I was living in midtown when the planes hit). But there’s an entire generation that wasn’t around that day and can never truly understand its impact the way that older generations can.
My kids are part of that blissfully ignorant bunch. So when I took them to the memorial and they frolicked around the park where the Twin Towers once fell, I didn’t feel offended. I felt like things were happening the way they more or less should as the years pass by.
If you’re not ready to feel similarly, that’s also fine. We’re all allowed our own paths of grief. But as you get further away from any tragedy, it eventually leaves immediate public imagination and becomes set as a piece of history to objectively study, observe, and (naturally) exploit. I accept the low end of that exploitation (T-shirt vendors). But of course, I very much AM offended by the large-scale exploitation of 9/11, which remains ongoing: two shit wars, the advent of the surveillance state, the canonization of police departments, Rudy Giuliani. That’s the bad shit, and it’ll always be too soon to ever justify it.
Email of the week!
Greg:
So my wife attended (worked) a fundraiser where Kevin Costner was the keynote speaker. He apparently was very nice and gave a decent speech. The woman who was working the table next to my wife was in her 50s, well dressed, but absolutely ghosted her responsibilities about midway through the night. We subsequently learned that Costner's security team had selected her (and other women) to come "hang out with him" in a private setting. This woman of course took that opportunity and immediately bailed the first chance she got. No word if she made Kevin's final selection, but the idea of that is just fucking hilarious to me. My wife was a little surprised she didn't make the cut, ha.
I never really thought about Kevin Costner having his own groupie scout team, but I guess it makes sense.
