🎵 2022-08-23 19:38:00 – Paris/France.
It's time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Something worrying you? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew's book, The night the lights went out, while you are there. Today we're talking about dancing for apples, shifting gears, hot dogs, and more.
Every year I write Why Your Team Sucks, I usually still have room on my plate to handle Funbag tasks at the same time. Due to some remarkably bad planning on my part, that is NOT the case this time around. As such, I have to hand over hosting duties for Funbag next week. You will have a special guest host and you can email your questions to them the same way you email them to me. So don't be shy. Enjoy your guest host now before I come back and gossip endlessly about how I don't like reading the news anymore.
Your letters:
Jack:
What is the worst entrance/entrance music a player has ever had? I would like to submit Wilmer Flores of the Giants using the Friends theme song. As a Giants fan, I basically have to hear it four times a night. He drives me crazy! I basically want to rip my ears off every time he comes on the plate.
It's a hilarious choice, isn't it? Always better to err on the side of comedy with something like background music, which guys like me are always prone to take WAY too seriously at first. But shout out to Jack for noticing Flores' pick every time he watches the Giants play. As far as I'm concerned, the dirty little secret of baseball backing music is that hardly anyone hears it. Everyone at the stadium is busy pissing or finding the right moment to pee. Everyone at home listens to the play-by-play guy who introduces the batter. And the rapper only gets a 10-second clip of the song he chose anyway. If I've ever noticed background music while watching a baseball game, I've never noticed it so much. I have too many other bullshit, even if I don't do anything at all.
Besides, I like the Friends theme song. I actually remember slipping into it when the show first aired because it was performed by The Rembrandts, and I REALLY loved that band's first hit single. This was back when I occasionally popped into MTV's VH1 (usually because MTV was, for some reason, playing Lou Gramm's "Midnight Blue" for the 50th time), and I sometimes found myself surprised to appreciate what I found. So when I found out the Rembrandts were the ones behind the Friends song, I was like "OK, that's cool". Did it hurt me to love the show itself, Peak Jennifer Aniston in particular? Not the least. After the show exploded, VH1 would play the theme song in full, as a standard spin video. I have watched this video, in its entirety, more than once. So if I ever caught a baseball player using it for his walk music, I wouldn't hold it against him. However, you are more than welcome to hold this fact against soft.
As for the dumbest possible song selection a near-hitter could make, well, MLB has no shortage of country music fans among its players already. But I'm going to ignore that and choose "White Christmas" instead. You would have to be a true Flandrian to be excited about the “White Christmas” in August.
Jim:
How many pillows are there in Manhattan?
Let's see this for all of New York City. According to LendingTree, NYC has nearly 3,5 million homes. LendingTree also breaks this number down by how many bedrooms each of these homes has (for this exercise, I'll count a studio as having one bedroom). This represents, at a minimum, 7 rooms. Let's say each of these rooms has a double bed and assume four pillows per double bed. That, my friends, adds up to 117 pillows. It's a lot of sweetness.
But I didn't factor in the trundle beds, inflatable beds, and dog beds…not to mention the copious number of throw pillows that form the basis of all 90s jokes. consider pillows in hospitals, hotels and hookah lounges. Remember when hookah lounges were all a thing? Probably not, but in 1999 I'd wander into a shitty hookah lounge in Midtown, smoke apple tobacco, and think of myself as the classiest asshole that ever lived. An incredible time to live, but I digress. Let's abandon proper analyzes and Jack who estimate up to 50 million. This is my answer. And don't you feel so educated now?
Andrew:
I am in my mid thirties. No children, a cat, a wife. Can you explain to me why so many new parents immediately buy a dog? I feel like the last thing I want with a newborn is another expensive, needy, shit-filled mammal in my house.
That's why I waited to get a dog until our youngest child ran out of diapers. I didn't want another fucking thing to be cleaned up afterwards. Parent long enough and you realize that 80% of your life is spent cleaning up and/or picking up poop. Do you know how many times I find a wrapper of chewing gum in the dryer? EVERYTIME. It's as reliable as the sun that rises every morning.
But when you have a child (and only one), you quickly notice how isolated they are at home with two naughty adults as their only company. They tire of mom and dad's bullshit very quickly, and it's not healthy for a child to run out of peers anyway. The solution is therefore either to have another child or to have a pet. That's the only reason I can imagine welcoming a new dog into the fold when you're still dealing with a child who hasn't learned to use the toilet yet. You get the dog, the baby claps with joy when the dog comes, then the dog eats the baby. Everyone wins.
Greg:
At a recent party, a friend of a friend told me he thought I was in my 35s. I'm not. I'm only 20 with a baby face. I can't even grow facial hair yet because of my indigenous background. Full head of luscious brown (not gray) hair. Even my father, who is in his XNUMXs, still looks like he is in his XNUMXs. I know I've put on a few pounds and walked miles since I was XNUMX, but still: are we all older than we think?
Yes. I, too, had a baby face well into my twenties and early thirties, so I could experience the thrill of being carded well past the legal drinking age. It's impossible not to shyly rejoice when this happens. “They asked me for my identity card! THEY DID NOT KNOW MWAHAHAHAHA.
But there comes a point—and it's not easy to define—when it stops and everyone knows you're middle-aged. No one criticizes me anymore, and yet I remain under the illusion that I look like a 14-year-old cherub. I see other parents my age and I'm like, “Wow, they look old! Not like me, baby! I HAVE ALL MY HAIR! But I really look as old as all those people. My graying temples, hearing aids and cracked skin on my legs are a dead giveaway. If I went to a frat party right now, there would be an audible scratch and the room would fall into absolute silence. Every child was looking for me a thread.
I don't know when it happened. I can theorize it was just around 35 or so, but that's just a guess. What I do know is that I went through a form of delayed puberty where my hair started coming out of my nostrils and my nipples dropped three inches down. I also started porter myself as someone my own age, and that betrayed me as surely as my appearance. I did the dad pose. I looked lost even when I knew exactly where I was. I drove a minibus. I wore Asics. Every time food arrived at a restaurant, I would say, “Yours is superb! to someone else at the table. Young people don't do any of that. There comes a time in life when you can no longer hide who you are. Unless you have Tom Brady's plastic surgeon.
Evening:
What common athlete gesture on the field would you eliminate if you could? The worst has to be raising four fingers after the third quarter in football, right? Yeah, we know it's the fourth quarter and you're going to push harder now, even though you're the Lions and you're 3-9. Everyone's been doing this forever, and it's stupid.
When I played football and the third quarter ended, oh you better believe I put those four fingers up. I did it as a FAN too. Yes it's stupid, but who says all stupid things are bad? The 4Q move is a cheap and easy way to get kicked out for the endgame, and it's important when you've already played three quarters and are exhausted. Until then, you'll hang on to any way to increase your reserves, and if that means joining your teammates when they cast the 4Q sign, then so be it. If that sounds silly to viewers, that's okay. All that matters is how you feel about this stupid gesture in the moment.
Think how stupid you look watching games. You scream at the TV and pump your fist and jump up and down like an asshole. But you're not doing this because you're afraid you'll look like a fool. You do it because it's fun. Same thing with a wide signaling the first down after a strike, or a golfer clumsily tapping his caddy after a successful putt, or an NBA player hitting all of his teammates after making a free throw. Thanks to the advent of the internet, everyone is more conscious about their looks than before, and that's not necessarily a good thing. It makes you more inhibited. You catch up. You are more afraid of embarrassment. Your actions become more repetitive than spontaneous. You feel like the worst thing that can happen is to look like an idiot. But sometimes it feels good to look like an idiot. Ask anyone to dance at a wedding reception. Self-awareness has its limits.
Evan:
Do you think you could convincingly fake your own death and start over somewhere else?
No because I would tweet about it. "LOL I'm dead. No one will know my new name is Bill Schmettly.
David:
In your lifetime, have you eaten more slices of pizza or more hot dogs? Yeah, I'm stoned right now, but I don't see how that's relevant.
It's not relevant. This is THE place where smokers can ask questions they would otherwise hesitate to ask as long as they are lucid. You're in good company, Dave.
Also my answer is pizza in a landslide. I eat four slices of pizza in one sitting, minimum. This is not the case with hot dogs. Did you know I haven't eaten a single hot dog all summer? Not one. Since my wife and kids don't eat a lot of red meat, that means I don't eat a lot of red meat anymore either. I don't blame them. It's better for my heart and rectum to avoid any foods with a gut. That said, I would fucking KILL for a hot dog right now. I don't care how it's cooked. Steam it, grill it, make a ceviche out of it. I am not difficult. For a long time in my teenage years, my favorite food in the world was a chili dog. And you know what? It may still be my favorite dish. Someone looked at a hot dog and thought, “You know what this sausage made of lips and assholes needs? A sauce made with MORE lips and assholes,” and they were RIGHT. A chili dog is mankind's greatest achievement, and I don't expect it to be topped anytime soon, except maybe with a squiggle of mustard.
HALF TIME!
Jack:
I remember you admitted you couldn't drive a car with a manual transmission. When I went to high school in the early 80's almost everyone knew how to drive a manual because a ton of cars still used them...
SOURCE: Reviews News
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