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 procrastination, toilet paper art, three-point dunks, and more.
Your letters:
Stu:
Aaron Rodgers has declined to the point that he’s only a mediocre quarterback at best. Meanwhile, Russell Wilson has had a career resurgence with the Steelers. Do you think part of Wilson’s failure in Denver was a consequence of too much deference to his preferences by the team? The Jets deferred to Rodgers in so many ways, which hasn’t helped them at all. I think the quarterback, whatever his stature in the game, must be a teammate and not a quasi-member of management.
All of that is correct, and eminently provable. We already have documented evidence that the Broncos kowtowed to Wilson in ways that grated on basically everyone else in the building (while also kowtowing to Rodgers by hiring Nathaniel Hackett as their head coach before Rodgers decided he didn’t want to play for them). Remember the corner office they gave Wilson? Sean Payton wasn’t having any of that shit, and neither is Mike Tomlin. You’ve heard the phrase “team player” tossed around by every color guy that you can’t stand, but your favorite team really DOES needs its QB to be part of the roster and not above it. Quarterbacks are already special thanks to how much extra money and attention they get compared to their teammates, so it means a lot to everyone else in the locker room when their QB downplays that separation rather than leaning into it. Wilson had to be cut down to size (no pun intended) in Denver to learn that lesson.
Rodgers, meanwhile, will never have to. With the Jets eliminated from playoff contention, he has now successfully burned every trace of that organization to the ground in service of his fickle, monstrous ego. Once New York releases Rodgers, no team is gonna touch his sorry ass unless he agrees to be a bridge/backup QB, and he’ll never accede to those terms. Russell Wilson appears to have processed his failures in the correct (although belated) manner. Rodgers’s brain is so fried from artisanal drugs and Pat McAfee hangs that he is incapable of a similar feat. I hope he falls down a manhole. I bet Garrett Wilson is hoping for the same thing.
Brian:
Is there always no time like the present, or does procrastination play a helpful role in your life and in society writ large?
Well, what IS procrastination? If I don’t do something right away, does that mean I’m automatically behind? That I’m being deliberately lazy? You and I live in an on-demand society, which means that everybody wants everything NOW NOW NOW. You want your Seamless order right now. You wanna get out of this traffic jam right now. You want your 401k to triple in value right now. Anything that isn’t now-based is inherently bad. That’s how a loony toon like Trump can get elected over more sensible Democratic candidates, because he promises (in his own, gibberish-laden way) results, not process. No one wants process. They just want the good stuff, and they want it yesterday.
I was conditioned to believe this from an early age, and you likely were too. That’s how a negatively charged word like “procrastination” ends up in mass circulation. Slow rolling anything is pointless. Doing something with care and deliberation means you’re doing it late. If you didn’t do your homework until the night before it was due, you weren’t managing your time right. You slob. You slugabed. You piece of shit.
I procrastinated a lot in school. I never pulled an all-nighter like some of the other kids but, metaphorically speaking, I definitely liked eating my dessert before my vegetables. I watched TV all week and then crammed for tests. I treated any deadline two weeks out as two months out. And I dreaded Sunday nights in ways that would make Carrie Underwood very sad. I was a prototypical '80s/'90s kid who didn’t want to do anything until forced to.
But after a while, I realized that I couldn’t enjoy my downtime as much if I had busywork hanging over my head. After that, a switch in my head flipped and I became someone who needed to get things done the instant they came across my desk. That remains true to this day. Someone important sends me an email asking for something? I do it right there and then. I got a post that I know is going up Friday? I write that post as early in the week as I can. And if I know I have chores to do, I get them all squared away before chair time, so that no one makes me get up. I hate having to get up. Every dad does. Getting shit done helps me enjoy my vegging time in full.
The problem is that this kind of mentality can turn into a compulsion. “Seize the day” is such an omnipresent sentiment now that I’m likely to read it on the back of a fucking cracker box. Meditation apps designed to help you live in the now are legion. And the GPS in your car is always eager to offer you an alternate route that saves you two whole minutes on your commute. The result is everyone trying to cram as much shit into a single hour/minute/second as they can, which leaves them overstressed, cranky, and sloppy. Managing your time is a genuine life skill, and acquiring that skill is hard when THERE’S NO TIME TO WASTE! is the unofficial motto of everything. It also discounts the value of doing nothing, and doing nothing is good for the soul.
I can’t bend society to my will and magically de-stigmatize procrastination, so I can only encourage you, on a person to person level, to arrange your priorities shrewdly. My wife helps me in this regard. If I ask her a question as simple as, “Do you think the garbage needs to go out tonight or in the morning?” her answer gives me a remarkable amount of clarity. If she’s like, “Nah it can wait,” then POOF! I’m no longer sweating the stupid garbage. Sometimes I need outside permission to push shit off of my mental to-do list, and she provides it. Then I sit down and she tells me that the dog needs to go out. Then I mutter FUCK as loudly as one can mutter it.
The lesson, then, is that it’s OK to put off shit that can be put off. Don’t let some random influencer tell you otherwise.
Michael:
Why does the new Ringer website look like that? I'm asking earnestly. I can't fathom the time and resources that went into creating something so hostile to readers. I know they deprioritized the writing staff a long time ago, and the editorial direction has the bite of a saltine cracker, but this seems like an attempt to actively drive an audience away. What am I missing?
It reads like they designed their new site specifically for mobile users. Every image has rounded corners, like an app button. All of the copy on desktop is laid out like an article you’d read on your mobile browser. And there are cutesy-poo graphics that drop into the page like you’re doing some e-shopping while you’re waiting to board an airplane. Given that most people read work from The Ringer (and this site!) on their phones, I get the rationale. The Ringer is also a podcast company above all else, which means that they want their homepage to have the same feel to it as a podcast app. That specifically means Spotify, which bought The Ringer for $200-plus million few years ago. Spotify probably mandated that design change, in fact. Whether or not that re-design was good was a low priority for them. As long as it looked Spotify-ish, they were happy.
As for me, I’m so used to poor site design at other sites that I barely notice it anymore. I also use Reader Mode on my phone liberally, which renders a lot of design clutter invisible. This is good because, as much as I goof on Bill Simmons and his inner circle of dipshits, The Ringer still has a number of writers I like, Lex Pryor chief among them, posting regularly. If I have to put in a touch more effort to read these people now, because neither Simmons nor Spotify give a healthy shit about the editorial side of things, it’s nothing I haven’t endured before. I can’t be quality control manager for the world.
Sean Fennessey is still the most insufferable dipshit existing online right now.
Shane:
You’re invited as a guest to somebody’s house. You use the toilet. The toilet tissue paper has fancy folding on it (a rose, heart, etc.). It is a marvelous piece of art. How many seconds do you wait and consider before you destroy the marvelous art to wipe your ass?
One. I know this because I actually once encountered a TP bow in the wild. I was staying at some nice hotel and the turndown service wrapped the tissue up all nice and pretty on the roll. I marveled at it as I did my business and then, when it was time to wipe, spent exactly one second thinking to myself, Well gee, I’d hate to ruin this little piece of art, before doing just that. It’s toilet paper. It’s made to be used.
Adam:
The word “delectable” objectively sucks and needs to go. I was just reading the schedule of a friend’s destination wedding weekend, and every single mention of food was included that word. It disturbed me enough that now I can't help but read a sincere use of “delectable” as a total bullshit word. Eating doesn't need to sound more intriguing. It’s already awesome on its own (at least when the food is good)! When used ironically or in non-food contexts it can be played for comedy and doesn't make me gag and privately shoot mind lasers at the author. As a writer/reader/human, I can't imagine there aren't words like this for you. WHAT ARE THEY?
Oddly, I hate it when writers use “delicious” in any non-food context. I know a movie critic is just some pair of glasses when they note what a “delicious” premise Conclave is based on, or if they use some other taste signifier like it: “delectable,” “nervy,” “nothingburger.” All hacky bullshit that will instantly drain my trust in the writer’s viewpoint. I also hate “meh,” and have zero respect for anyone who uses it, but John Hodgman already outlined the reasons why that word sucks, so I’ll just use my trusty hyperlinking power to address that one.
As for food descriptors, I am a base animal. I’ll pore over some shitty chain restaurant menu, see words/phrases like, “delectable,” “small batch,” “our famous,” “buttery,” and “zesty,” and only become hungrier. My brain will be like, This copy is fucking awful, but my stomach won’t care. If the menu says that Tollhouse sundae is “outrageous,” I’m ordering it. I know the menu will be true to its word there.
James:
I went to a Celtics game the other night. The Celtics have a lot of banners but a lot of them are pre-free agency. The same with the Yankees in Baseball. Should we make a designation of pre and post free agency titles? It was so easy to have a dynasty when you had full control over the league’s best players and they couldn't leave.
It was, but once you take up an asterisk fetish you want to slap one on everything. This record shouldn’t count because it was before free agency, or before integration, or before a better league-wide steroid policy, or because Tom Brady sat on a football to give it extra pliability. Records are what they are, and they don’t need any kind of official string attached to them so that people in the future can judge them fairly. Your own opinion on the Bill Russell Celtics, who would lose every game to the present-day Celtics by 60 points, doesn’t require outside validation. Just hold your opinion and enjoy it. Drew Pearson pushed off.
HALFTIME!
Luke:
How come almost all sports highlights in articles are embedded Twitter posts? I assume it’s some sort of dissemination bullshit.
I’ve had to wean myself off of Twitter embeds in light of Elon Musk turning it into a soapbox derby for hucksters and entry-level fascists. It hasn’t been a seamless process, even with Bluesky picking up momentum. This is because Twitter made it easy find highlights and then embed the videos into your CMS. I never had to render video on my own, or go to YouTube for highlights only to discover “Chiefs Win On Last-Second DOINK!” is just a video of some asshole talking about that DOINK rather than video of the DOINK itself. I could just find a tweet to drop in, and my work was done.
Also, I’m like a lot of other people in that I’m so used to embeds in articles that they please my eye rather than irritate it. Digital publishing allowed for print and video to coexist in the same space, which was no small development in the journalism field. If I can show you a play rather than waste a paragraph on it, or if I can hyperlink to a source rather than append an end note to my post, I’ll do it. I’d rather write that way, and a lot of people would rather read that way. Not everyone feels similarly, especially more purist writers who don’t like the flow of copy interrupted with all these digital bells and whistles. There’s also the matter of Twitter being the moral hazard it is at the present moment, and all of the high-level corporate necromancy that incentivizes all content providers to tie themselves to one another in every place they can do it. When you take that into consideration, suddenly the ease of Twitter embeds feels more insidious than it does miraculous. So Defector is doing what it can to push back against that, even if I still feel the need to stick a highlight into the copy here and there.
But we’re in the minority on that end. Shit is only gonna get jankier and weirder from here. There’ll be more shitty redesigns, more suspiciously AI-like copy, and more underwhelming VR worlds. Oh, and more failed coup attempts. And just wait until outlets start letting you put fucking stickers all over articles. The revolution will be SEO-optimized.
Paul:
What pre-prepared kitchen shortcuts do you use and which ones do you refuse? For instance, I know that jarred garlic is not as good as cutting up fresh, but I lost my garlic press, and I hate peeling and chopping the little cloves. On a Tuesday night, all I want to do is get dinner on the table, not deal with washing my hands three times to get rid of the smell.
I have also stooped to using jarred garlic when I cook. I know that Anthony Bourdain is rolling in his grave at that, but prepping garlic is such a pain in the ass I can’t stand it anymore. And I’ve used every food hack to make the process easier. I’ve done the thing where you shake the skin off of loose cloves in a lidded pot. I’ve used silicon garlic peelers, where you roll each clove around in a little tube to peel it. I’ve done all of that. None of it is as easy as just opening a jar and spooning some pre-minced garlic out of it. My wife and I already make most of our food from scratch, so I’m entitled to pull a Sandra Lee when the mood strikes me. Sometimes I buy pre-cut fruit too, because I find chopping just that tedious.
As for shortcuts I refuse, they all belong in the appliance category. My wife hates clutter on the kitchen countertops, so we don’t own a breadmaker, an instapot, an air fryer, or a rice cooker. I suspect that last one is the one we’d benefit the most from. I know how to cook rice better than the average Chopped contestant, but then I get that same rice from a takeout joint and could eat 50,000 pounds of it. This is because those places use rice cookers. Good ones. Maybe when all of our kids have fucked off to college, we’ll finally have room for one of those bad boys. Until then, regular ass basmati in a pot will have to do.
I also use our microwave liberally. People who brag about not owning a microwave deserve to be locked in a coffin with a hunk of enriched uranium.
James:
What if a dunk was three points?
It would bring court spacing down to 1990s levels. I watched basketball in the 1990s and I can tell you, firsthand, that it was not better than the current NBA product. Michael Jordan was the coolest player I’ll ever watch, but he was one guy. Every non-Jordan game featured two flat-footed centers sumo-sparring their way to the hoop. Horrible shit. I want the long bomb.
Now if they made dunks worth three points in the all-star game, that’d be another matter. The dunk contest has been played out for decades, and the all-star game itself has become a waste of time. Combine the two and maybe I’ll watch for longer than 20 seconds. Possibly 40.
Matt:
Say you are looking at two houses that are basically the same in every way, but one has an additional en suite bathroom and the other has a slightly bigger yard and square footage. You are still married and have the same number of kids at home. Which house do you prefer?
The bigger one. I’m like my colleagues in that I abhor the 10,000-sq. ft. McMansions favored by our most vapid pro athletes, but I’m also not a microhome enthusiast. I am a big man with back issues, which means that I need legroom everywhere: in cars, on planes, in theaters, at restaurants, and at home. Being raised in the Midwest also means that I need an ample amount of space, both inside and out. I cherish my bathroom time, as every good adult does. But I live in a crowded area, next to many crowded roads. I would fucking kill to wake up one morning to a bigger TV room (especially with our Xmas tree now up and trimmed), and to look out the kitchen window and see nothing but rolling hills. I know that Matt used the word “slightly” in his question, but I’ll treat any bonus acreage like I just got handed the deed to Versailles.
Shane:
Cartoon simulcasts pop up for NFL, NBA and NHL. Cowboys and Bengals players will soon be yukking it up with the Simpsons characters. Knicks vs. Spurs will have Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. But I don’t recall them for MLB games. Do you know why that is? Also, are these cartoon simulcasts really effective in bringing in younger audience, or is it just desperate corporate synergy crud?
That Simpsons game was bullshit because they used 3D animation instead of 2D, so the whole game looked like “Homer3.” That’s not The Simpsons. That’s dogshit.
Most of these simulcasts are dogshit. I watched the Marvelcast of a Warriors game a few years back and it was awful. I watched the Nick simulcast of an NFL game for two minutes before flipping back to the normal presentation. And I’d rather cut off my arm than plunk down money for a Disney Plus sub just so that I can watch the Toy Story NFL game any given year. It’s all just crossover branding. The only novelty broadcast I ever liked was the Big City Greens presentation of a New York Rangers game, and that’s because I never watch hockey regularly. Fuck with hockey all you like networks, but leave my sports alone.
As for why MLB hasn’t gotten in on the action, it’s certainly not on principle. Rob Manfred wants to add a Golden Batter to this sport. He’d sell games as Bored Apes if he thought it could catch on.
Rich:
I have a friend that I've known for several years and I pretty much always enjoy hanging out with him. However, he's started saying he can't go to a lot of restaurants because of the mostly debunked fear of MSG (annoying). If we do go somewhere, he'll ask the server about MSG in the recipes (embarrassing). He has great taste in food otherwise and is generally pretty open-minded. If it wasn't for this, he'd probably be my first choice to invite out to a nice dinner in many cases, unless I have a date. Do I tell him to stop giving into unsubstantiated fears of MSG at the risk of embarrassing or offending him? I want to keep going to restaurants with him, but it's becoming a real headache.
You have to give him shit. That’s what friends are for. Tell him he’s a fucking idiot. If he asks the waiter if a dish has MSG, goof on him in front of that waiter. You’ll have to excuse my pal here, he’s been listening to Aaron Rodgers too much lately. Then order the orange chicken for yourself and groan with pleasure at all of the MSG flavor in it. Chew loudly. Go, Mmm… ohh… thank god they didn’t make this with yeast extract instead! This is what tough love looks like, plus you get to eat all of the shrimp toast that your tightassed friend won’t.
David:
You have to get a tattoo of a sports mascot. Not huge, but not that small either. Let's say palm- to hand-sized. You can get it anywhere on your body but the stipulation is that it can't be the mascot of one of the teams you actually support. Who you getting, and where on your body?
Big Red. Zero doubt. The WKU mascot remains one of our finest silly mascots. The MVP of any SportsCenter commercial it stars in. So I’d get Big Red tattooed right on my tummy. No sense in being tasteful about it.
Email of the week!
Adam:
After seeing news that another Japanese superstar, Munetaka Murakami, is coming to MLB in a couple of seasons, I decided I needed an NPB team to root for next season. While doing quick research on Wikipedia, I discovered the Hanshin Tigers' "Curse of the Coronel.” The short of it is that, just before the Japan Series in 1985, a bunch of Tigers fans dressed up like the players and jumped in a river. "Lacking a Caucasian person to imitate [their star slugger, the American Randy] Bass, the crowd seized a plastic statue of Colonel Sanders from a KFC and tossed it off the bridge as an effigy. Like Bass, the Colonel had a beard and was not Japanese."
And so, because the fans never pulled the statue out of the river, supposedly the Colonel put a curse on the team to never win again. The Wikipedia page for the curse and the Hanshin Tigers details the efforts to recover the statue and the eventual breaking of the curse, but I have to ask y'all: is this not the best curse in sports? What curse is better than this!?
None. All sports curses are dumb, but this one is SO dumb that it transcends normal, bullshit curses.
