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 naps, Saturday morning cartoons of yore, John Madden, and more.
Your letters:
Michael:
What percentage of the day does the average cubicle/office working man waste during their workday doing non work-related things?
That’s the big question, innit? Every boss in white-collar America has been preprogrammed to abhor the idea of employees wasting company time by dicking around. Darren Rovell says that distracted workers cost the US economy over $500 billion last year alone. (Dramatization! May not have happened!) If you’re reading this post right now, there’s a very good chance you’re at work and supposed to be doing something else. In fact, Defector Media wouldn’t exist at all if our readers did their actual jobs all day long. Should every Fortune 500 company suddenly go bankrupt this year, this blog will be the chief reason why.
Of course, this kind of thinking elides the value of wasting time. I may be biased here because I work in a creative field, and my dicking around has a purpose that is obvious but not quantifiable. There’s a famous line from Mad Men about this, when Don Draper defends his employees by saying, “We do this better than you and part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive until they are.” That's me. Inspiration doesn’t work on a set schedule. Sometimes you have to wait for ideas to shake loose. Until then, you bounce a tennis ball against your office wall and think about getting laid. Once the idea comes, you write it down. That part takes mere minutes, but the process that goes into those minutes requires some unknown amount of letting your mind wander and seeing what it finds.
This isn’t an option (or shouldn’t be) if your job is, say, working on the Boeing assembly line. But up on the corporate floor, your work is often rooted in finding good ideas and then whipping up plans to execute them. That’s a creative endeavor, even if the resulting product is a PowerPoint deck for an offsite. So to say that any time you spend away from your keyboard is goofing around on the job is tinpot dictator shit. It’s micromanaging people just to say you micromanaged them, and it’s an endemic mentality among some of our worst bosses. If your boss’s boss understood that micromanagement is the real waste of time, the jig would be up in an instant. It’s impostor syndrome in a suit and tie.
This is why you should read the rest of this post without a shred of guilt. Tell your boss that you ARE working when you’re reading me contemplate Leo DiCaprio’s household appliance usage. You won’t be wrong.
Corbin:
A lot of concerts I go to run pretty late, and I’m unable to run on 4-5 hours sleep anymore. Either work or the cat prevents me from sleeping in very much, so my only option is to grab an extra hour or so of sleep on the front end and nap before heading out. Here lies the problem: I can almost never take naps. I generally don’t try unless I’m sick. I need to know the dad-related secrets of being able to nap easily.
Corbin, you’ve come to the right man. In this house, we believe in the healing power of a solid nap. I’m not all Arianna Huffington with my sleep evangelism. I’m just a dad who would prefer to not be upright in the middle of the day. How do I nap with fearsome dexterity? Let’s investigate!
1. Nap on schedule. All animals instinctively crave routine, and I’m no different. This is why I always have naptime in the early afternoon (if you don’t work from home, this part is obviously more of a challenge), right after I’ve eaten lunch. That’s prime siesta time. If you get your body and mind used to lying down at X:00p.m. every day, you’ll soon become conditioned to fall asleep in that window.
2. Have a designated nap spot. It can be a couch. It can be a recliner (my choice). It can be a Pause Pod. Remember Pause Pods? Those really shook up the nap paradigm. Anyway, having a consistent place to nap will, again, condition you to sleep in that place. Sometimes I’ll nap in a bed, but that’s advanced tactics. You’re not there yet. All I’ll say is that if you pick a bed for your nap zone, don’t lie under the covers. Instead…
3. Buy a shitty fleece blanket. You know how every TJ Maxx has a random stack of like SMU fleece blankets for $30 sitting in a bin at checkout? Buy one. Yes, these products introduce chlorofluorocarbons directly into the bloodstream upon contact with human skin, but that’s a problem for down the road. In the now, they’re indispensable to you, the consumer. That triple-processed nylon fluff signals to your body that it’s time to be warm and snuggly. Throw one over yourself while lying atop your bedspread, and you’ll be tucked in without being all the way tucked in.
4. Forgive yourself if you don’t fall asleep. There’s nothing more frustrating than being exhausted and yet unable to drift off. You put mental pressure on yourself to fall asleep, and then you grow more anxious as that sleep fails to arrive. This is a serious issue for people who suffer from chronic nighttime insomnia. But napping is lower stakes, so you’re not gonna lose years off your life expectancy if you lie down for 30 minutes without passing out. Awake rest still counts as rest, and it’ll help you save energy for later in the day. And you WILL fall asleep from time to time as a bonus. Nice!
5. Buy an eye mask. Everyone else in my family swears by them.
Can I guarantee that all of these tips will work? I cannot. Only by downing a fifth of whiskey can I ensure you a bit of daytime slumber, but you won’t wake up feeling all that refreshed. You might have to throw up into a mop bucket.
Nick:
Which quarterback lives and works with the most pressure: the one in Chicago or the one in Dallas? I don’t mean Caleb Williams and Dak specifically; just in general.
Unless you mean defensive pressure (and you don’t), it’s Dallas. The Bears have had shit QBs for so long that expectations for any QB in Chicago will be low. That even goes for Caleb Williams, whose current struggles can easily be pinned on the Bears just being the Bears. But if you play quarterback for the Cowboys, you have to deal with an inordinate amount of national attention, visiting fan hatred, and a fanbase that has yet to adjust its expectations from 1997. To be the QB is Dallas is to instantly be notorious. To be the QB in Chicago is to be easily ignored.
And Lord knows the 2024 Bears are doing everything in their power to consign poor Williams to permanent obscurity. Their coaching is dogshit and their O-line is even worse. That’s not good for a QB who just spent his final college season running for his life. Caleb Williams has more than a few flaws in his current game, particularly with regards to accuracy. But he’s a rookie, which means you have to set things up so that he can fine-tune his game accordingly. You need decent pass protection, good coaching, and solid receiving options. The Bears have given Williams only one of those things. I will be so, so mad at them if he ends up sucking because of it. I know I cheer for a division rival, but I need more fun QBs in my life. Caleb Williams can be a legitimately fun player, maybe one of the funnest players ever. But watching the Bears right now is like watching a car on fire.
Alex:
Have you tried drinkable THC yet? It’s a revelation! They hit a little quicker and are out of your system fast. 10/10 recommend. Yes, I’m writing this while drinking one during college football Saturday.
I tried a weed soda on my tour of San Francisco hash bar lounges earlier this spring, and it was a fucking disaster. I couldn’t open the can. And once I finally managed to pop the tab off, the hole to drink out of was the size of a pinprick. It was like trying to drink water that’s falling off a roof. I have no idea if every weed drink is similarly packaged, but I’ll never buy that shit again unless it comes in a widemouth can. Gummies work just fine. I don’t need weed in every form.
Michael:
Has Leonardo DiCaprio ever run a dishwasher?
Most def. He’s got parents, doesn’t he? If you have parents, they’re gonna order you to run and empty the dishwasher at some point.
Matt:
If John Madden was around and working in today's age, who would be the player(s) that would get him all excited and worked up, like Brett Favre did back in the day? Excluding Mahomes; that's Collinsworth's guy.
Hey now, you don’t get to reserve Mahomes exclusively for Collinsworth. Collinsworth wouldn’t even have that job if Madden were still around! And yes, Madden would adopt Mahomes as his own son and regale him with all of the turducken legs, regardless of time of year.
This is where I confess, with great remorse, that I often disliked Madden in the booth because he was so infatuated with certain players, many of whom I despised. Favre is top of mind, of course. But the old man would happily confer All-Madden status on pretty much any player who had grass stuck in his face mask. He loved Packers and Niners DE Tim Harris, who was a raging asshole. He loved Packers C Frank “Bag O’ Donuts” Winter, mostly because he liked saying “Bag O’ Donuts” over and over again. And I’m pretty sure he asked that Tom Rathman be buried alive with him.
I just remember being angry that Madden always seemed to pick dudes who didn’t play for MY team to be his class favorite. Was this true in practice? No. Madden loved plenty of my favorite players, John Randle and Randy Moss among them. But I’m a sports fan. Facts anger me. So a miniscule portion of my psyche still holds a grudge.
Now, to Matt’s question. Madden had number of types, but you can break them down into a few loose groups:
-LBs who lead their team in tackling (Robert Spillane)
-Fat, sloppy linemen who are really good despite being fat and sloppy (Vita Vea)
-Dallas Goederts
-Players with fun childhood nicknames like “Pirate” or “Bearfart”
-Gunslingers (Taylor Heinicke)
-Pro Bowlers who also moonlight on special teams (Josh Metellus)
-Anyone who has a good game despite being badly, badly hurt (dealer’s choice)
If Madden ever came back to life—actual reanimation, not AI Madden, thank you—I’d be a lot more welcoming of his crushes, mostly because he’d go batshit for Justin Jefferson. And if any current player is missing a finger, he’d be the first to note it.
HALFTIME!
Sonny:
We are in the same age range, and therefore grew up on network TV Saturday morning cartoons. What were your favorites? Mine were D&D, GI Joe, Muppet Babies, Snorks, Ghostbusters, and Care Bears.
Smurfs and Garfield were the centerpiece of my Saturday mornings as a child. Everything else was vying for second place, especially given that Transformers ran in the afternoon where I lived. I enjoyed Muppet Babies in the timeslot preceding Smurfs (I think that’s when it aired, my memories of being a grade schooler are obviously hazy), but really I was just burning clock until it was la-LA-lala-la-la! time. How many plush Smurfs and Garfields did I own? Trick question. I owned all of them. I actually made my parents buy the factory that produced them. That’s how deep I was down the Smurffield lasagna hole.
Otherwise, I tuned in for Mighty Orbots, D&D, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Hulk Hogan’s Rock N’ Wrestling, and Superfriends. I also watched more than a few Deputy Dog cartoons, but I have no idea what day or time those were on. I never watched GI Joe, due to some imaginary rivalry in my head between GI Joe fans and Transformers fans. To this day, I still think GI Joe is dumb. Donald Trump will imprison me for this if reelected.
Joe:
If he were alive today, what type of shit do you think Michael Jackson would be on about? Would he be a crypto commercial guy? Would he have strong opinions about politics? Which iterant of Twitter (Threads? Bluesky?) would he use, and what kind of poster do you think he'd be? Would he be a sportsbook spokesperson?
No on all of that. Michael Jackson was extremely private late in his life, to the point where it made headlines if a bandage fell off his face. Also, he was controlled by an impossible number of managers, agents, lawyers, record label execs, family members, and doctors willing to write him a scrip. So if he were alive today, he’d remain just as aloof. Every public appearance he made, even online, would be meticulously stage managed. His whole life was like this, from birth to death. To look back on his Wacko Jacko days is to see a guy who never learned how to become a self-reliant, functional adult. That’s why he retreated into childhood, why he became addicted to prescription meds, and why he was a credibly accused child abuser. Maybe 2024 Jackson would have his own Instagram, but it would be just as alarming as Britney Spears’s knife dance post.
And all of his political endorsements would be written by Toto.
Chris:
Are the players on Sunday Night Football who give their high school/grade school/pre-school as their college alma mater in the player introductions: a) trying to be unique; b) giving an aw-shucks shout-out to their hometown; or c) still nursing a petty grudge against their college coach? And shouldn't Tirico or Collinsworth have to clarify this for us? It would tell us a lot about these guys.
It’s likely a combination of A and B. That said, whenever some random wideout is like, “East Goldby High School,” I reflexively assume that he fucking hated whatever college he went to. After all, college coaches are all scum. Why wouldn’t a newly minted professional player go out of his way to shade Dabo Swinney, hmm? They can’t actually LIKE that guy. I know I don’t!
But, on a case-by-case basis, I’ll never know the truth. But I don’t want the booth to clarify why one player introduces himself this way and another player that way. I’d prefer the mystery to remain intact. Do you know how much explaining I’m already subjected to in my life? Every tentpole movie now is a background explainer for some dipshit comic book character. Every Vox post I don’t bother to read is an explainer. Every time I lecture one of my kids, it’s to explain why they shouldn’t put Saran Wrap on the toilets. Nothing is allowed to remain a mystery anymore, and it’s annoying. I don’t wanna know everything about everything. I just want some blister peanuts. Is that so hard?
Matt:
What kind of porn does Donald Trump utilize?
“Utilize” is such a good word to use there. Yes, porn is exploitative on 500 different levels, but it’s also a tool one can use in the event of a horny emergency. Perhaps we should nationalize it.
Anyway, living with the MAGA movement over the past decade has meant living under the rule of people who have AWFUL taste in porn. Guys who search BIG TITS and then just click on the first thumbnail of a blonde they see. They have zero working knowledge of high production adult content providers, nor can they name any porn star beyond 1990s Jenna Jameson. If you want to run this country, I think it’s fair to demand you be more discerning in your choices for self-gratification. I bet Rudy Giuliani hasn’t even heard of Bellesa Films. Pathetic!
As for Trump, his only saving grace might be that he saves back issues of Playboy and cranks one out to them. But I’m not gonna explore his preferences any deeper than that. If he and I turned out to have a mutual affinity for Kerri Kendall, that would ruin my tweenhood.
Josh:
I have three twitchy kids and a house full of Fire Sticks. And after a couple years, none of the battery covers on the remote stay latched. Sure, the remotes themselves are perfectly functional, but it if I drop one, I might as well just go find new batteries. It would probably cost Bezos an hour's worth of income to resolve the cheap-ass back cover. Do you have this problem with any household accessories?
I wanna talk about remote covers before I take Josh’s question and run with it. I have four different remotes sitting in front of our family room TV. At least two of them have back covers that fall off if I so much as look at them weird. I have a Google TV remote and the cover may as well be made of rice crackers. And do you know how many times I’ve had to duct tape batteries into a remote because the cover broke or got lost? A million times. Literally. One. Million. Wow.
This shouldn’t be attributed to user error. BIG TV knows how badly we Americans treat our remote controls, and yet they never bother to account for that when designing them. It’s a racket! I demand every remote have a battery cover be made of hinged stainless steel. Or just make the make the fucking thing rechargeable already. I never wanna buy a pack of Duracells for $26 ever again.
Jamie:
I worked in a 26-story building for a Midwestern city newspaper from '08 to '13. Every once in a while, when we had a fire drill, on my way down the stairs I'd see guys in high school letter jackets. These were not current high school athletes, mind you. These were middle-aged dudes who, presumably, were super into their high school football days. The schools on the jackets were specific to the west side of the city, but is this a normal thing anywhere else? Am I missing out by leaving my letter jacket in the back of my closet wrapped in the same dry cleaning bag it's been in for the last 28 years?
Letterman jackets are actually back in style right now, as opposed to when you saw your coworkers wearing them over a decade ago. The twist is that the current varsity jacket trend is strictly rooted in the style of those jackets, and not in the BMOC feeling they once provided former bros. So if you, an older fellow, decided to break out your old jacket to fit in with the thrift store crowd, you’d still fail in that task. You’re too old to pull it off. You’d have to wear that old jacket for your own pleasure and yours alone.
And honestly, I think that’s enough. I played varsity football in prep school, but we didn’t have official letterman jackets. Phillips Exeter Academy was too fancy for that sort of thing, and it killed me. My old high school in Minnesota had the real deal, and I wanted one so, so badly. To have a letterman jacket at the turn of the 1990s was to have instant swagger hanging in your closet. Some kids had letterman jackets for Band, and that was lame as shit. But that same jacket with a little football patch on the sleeve? As far as I was concerned, that was a Get Laid Free card. We left Minnesota before I had a chance to earn one, and part of me still yearns for it. If I’d ever gotten one, I’d wear it naked around the house every time I was alone. It’s a free country, I’m not ashamed.
Jeff:
At your other gig at SFGate, your cursing is censored, turning “Trump is such a fucking loser” into “Trump is such a f—ing loser,” for example. When you submit copy to them, do you censor yourself knowing that it’s bound to happen? Or do you let the editors make the decision? I think I’d choose the former on the (perhaps deluded) idea I could influence marginal calls by making the first proposal.
I’ve been doing this for so long that I just reflexively go lighter on the fucks when writing for an outlet that dashes them out. Back when I started blogging in the late aughts, I was way more strident. Profanity was my stock in trade, and I chafed at the idea of someone above me daring to censor my work. But then one of my bosses somewhere was like, “Well Drew, we have to avoid too many fucks in the copy, otherwise advertisers won’t buy space with us,” and I capitulated without much fuss. Money is money, and I still have lots of places where I’m allowed to drop f-bombs with impunity. Like here! FUCKING DEFECTOR RULES, YOU PIECES OF SHIT!
Dave:
My job mostly eats farts but we do receive one nice benefit: free snacks, and not wimpy generic stuff but a decent selection of candy, chips, nuts, drinks, etc. Recently I headed into the breakroom for my afternoon beverage and saw a variety of Ollipops. Low sugar Root Beer? Grape Soda? Cream Soda? Holy shit! As someone who used to love a Double Big Gulp of Dr Pepper after school I thought, "Count me in!"
The cherry cola sounded tasty so I grabbed a can and took a sip. Pretty good. As soon as I polished off the can at my desk I felt a queasy sensation from my innards. Not good. I just made it to the throne and painted the town brown. After catching my breath and washing my hands I thought, "That was weird" which was immediately followed by more queasiness. This started a routine of explosive liquid shits followed by me taking deep breaths, washing my hands and thinking, "Okay, it's over" before yet another kickstart to my bowels. I would've gone home, but I didn't want to be more than 15 feet from a halfway decent toilet. So I spent most of the afternoon destroying that poor, innocent bathroom.
After a couple of hours, my stomach finally settled and I was able to make it straight to bed without further incident. When I recovered in the morning, I read up on Olipop and saw many stories similar to mine. There are nine grams of fiber per can, which is more than most of us take in a single serving, hence the violent barrage of loose stool.
Now I just stick to wimpy iced tea or water. It sucks too, because I really wanted to try that Grape Soda.
OK well that’s a pretty solid PSA against Olipop. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle!
