Your letters:
Phil:
I saw a proud parent post a picture of their child on Facebook the other day with no shirt on (female child). This made me wonder: What is the cut-off where it is no longer “cute” or okay to publicly distribute or display pictures of nude children?
I would never put a naked picture of a kid on Facebook, regardless of age. Unless it’s a newborn sitting in a hospital incubator, nothing good can come from disseminating naked pictures of your kid to a not-at-all-private internet portal that is, at all times, one or two degrees away from the next Jared Fogle’s computer. You can go ahead and snap pictures of the kid taking their first bath, or send a funny photo of the kid naked and pissed (all toddlers are naked and pissed) to your mom, because she’s trustworthy and doesn’t know how to use the internet anyway.
But beyond that, forget it. The other day, all my kids were taking a bath together, and I took a photo, because there are always those little moments when you’re a parent where the kids do something cute and you immediately cry out SOMEONE GRAB THE CAMERA BEFORE THEY GET PISSED AGAIN. Anyway, I take a photo of the kids in the tub (with the lip of the tub blocking out their privates, because I’m tasteful like that), and I’m looking at it thinking, “Hey! This would be a good Christmas card!” Only all three of my kids are shirtless in the photo. Is that legal? Will people think it’s weird to have three naked kids in the tub at once? Do only weird religious sects do that now? I can’t risk it. It’s not worth the reward of having someone on Facebook comment “AWWWWWWWWWWWWW!”
When I got married, my mom printed out a big old photo of me naked as a baby and put it out for everyone to laugh at, because mothers are the ultimate trolls. But it’s not the ’70s anymore. People don’t let that shit slide the way they used to. A few years ago, a couple that took naked pictures of their kid in the tub were reported to the police by Walmart (fucking Walmart) when they went to get the photos developed. My kid joked she wanted to take a photo of her butt, and I freaked the fuck out, telling her that such a picture would get Daddy sent to Poundtown. The advent of the internet means you have to be much more careful when showing people a picture of your baby’s privates. WHATEVER BECAME OF OUR INNOCENCE?!
Alistair:
Last week I was tracking my professor’s cross-country flight online (hoping for class to be cancelled), and I got to thinking: What if the flight crashed? Would the flight-tracking website just say “delayed” and make up an estimated arrival time? Would the page get “brought down for maintenance” and tell me to try back later? Would it keep on saying “on time” even as CNN rushes Don Lemon to the crash site for round-the-clock coverage?
For legal and ethical reasons, airlines usually don’t disclose crash news until they’ve confirmed a crash has occurred and checked for survivors and notified the families involved, even if Don Lemon has picked up on the story and already has analysts on the air speculating about the plane getting stuck in a wormhole to fucking Saturn. So if you’re checking the status of a crashed flight, the monitor would either be frozen with ON TIME, or it would vaguely alert you to call a special hotline so that you can give the airline information about a passenger and vice versa. The monitor isn’t just gonna say CRASH and leave you to go have a panic attack.
When I was a kid, my dad took me to a stock car race. He was working in the airline industry at the time, and there was a plane crash in Detroit while the race was going on. This was before cell phones, so track officials had to come find my dad and summon him to the airport so he could fly to Detroit to inform the family members—156 people died in the crash, but one girl survived. She was four years old. And she still flies today.
Anyway, your class probably isn’t gonna be cancelled.
Aaron:
What is appropriate whistling etiquette? I was thinking about this in the gym yesterday when some dudebro kept whistling along (impressively loudly, actually) to whatever music was in his headphones. Am I alone in thinking that whistling in public places is an obnoxious, high-pitched, space-invading noise? Outdoors is okay, but at the very least, it shouldn’t be done at the office, gym, store, or other enclosed spaces where people are trapped with you.
I think it’s fine to do it outdoors or in the shower, but honestly: Has anyone ever actually enjoyed the sound of another person whistling? I’ve never heard another person whistle and been like, “Wow, that sounds fantastic! This rendition of the Old Spice jingle is really making my day.” Whistling benefits the whistler only. Same with random singing, too! There are people at my gym who sing in the locker room. Why would you do that? Don’t you know I will murder you a THOUSAND times in my head if you start singing along with your fucking headphones? People are so oblivious sometimes.
Joshua:
What if the NFL ball was replaced by the small, NERF-size ball that we all toss around in the backyard? All else being the same (same players, field size, equipment, et cetera), what happens to the game of football as we know it? Does the strategy get flipped on its head? My office mates and I believe the game would be set back 50 years or more in terms of strategy. As someone who likes a good running game, I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
If anything, it would make the game more pass-friendly. AJ Green is never dropping a Nerf ball. So long as it’s a relatively hard Nerf ball that doesn’t lose velocity, NFL teams would throw that shit all over the place. Completion percentages would skyrocket. Your favorite DB would never drop an open pick.
In fact, this would seem to fix our current catch-rule woes. If you’re catching a Nerf ball, you’re maintaining possession through the ground, and the initial football move, and well into next Saturday. Bobbling would be a thing of the past. Peyton Manning’s career would last another nine whole days. I see nothing but positive developments, amigo.
Steve:
Would the Patriots or Packers still be good if you or I were there offensive coordinator and had play-calling responsibilities?
Yes, because both of those teams have veteran QBs who would simply audible out of whatever terrible play you called and keep the offense moving. This is what Aaron Rodgers does with his coach anyway, so not much would change. In a competent organization, there’s room for a moron to hang around and hide among his more-skilled colleagues. This is how I approach every job I’ve ever had: I simply sit there and hope that everyone else does a really good job so that I don’t have to.
The real problem would be if you called plays for the Titans or some other team with a young QB. You would get Marcus Mariota killed. You ever seen an NFL play sheet? It’s like staring at a calculus test. In order to call plays for an NFL team, I would need the full Madden interface, with the little route arrows showing where everyone is supposed to go. I can’t glean all that from just WORDS. That’s craziness.
Adam:
Rank the decades for television! In order for a show to count for a given decade, either the bulk of the prime of it must have taken place in that decade, or, at the very least, its SOUL must undeniably be a part of that decade.
Wouldn’t you just start with this current decade and then go back in chronological order? Who would take the 1980s over what we have now? I grew up in the ’80s, and television SUCKED back then. The Dukes of Hazzard was a legitimately terrible show. They would just dick around for 40 minutes before being chased by an alligator at the end. But everyone from the ’80s remembers it, because there was nothing else to fucking watch. I’ve wasted hours of my life on garbage television shows like The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes. If I could go back and implant Breaking Bad into that decade, I would do it for the sake of humanity.
There’s so much good TV on right now that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m paralyzed. I watch Fargo and then spend the rest of my time trying to figure out what else to watch, because my options are so varied and tempting. If you think the Must See TV Era beats what we have now, you deserve to go live under a highway overpass. For every Seinfeld back then, there were 5,000 Suddenly Susans. Fuck that.
Same with movies, too! I know people bitch about the quality of movies compared to the 1970s, but let me tell you a dirty little secret: Most movies from the ’70s and ’80s were fucking horrid. There’s a reason Mystery Science Theater 3000 had so many movies to pick from. For every Kubrick masterpiece, you got 50 Z-level action movies with a budget of eight dollars. Go watch a Dirty Harry movie now and see if you can tolerate it for more than 10 minutes. Action movies had NO action back then. You basically sat around for an hour and half before they finally served you a gunfight. But now, the Fast & Furious movies give you CARS FALLING OUT OF THE SKY. Even the original Mad Max pales in comparison to Fury Road, which is the baddest fucking movie ever made. I don’t wanna go back. Never ever ever. Forget it. Now beats everything. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
Tim:
So whenever I’m gonna take a dump, I always wipe the toilet seat down first, whether I’m at home or in a public space, doesn’t matter. (You just never know where the crabs might be.) I’m probably not abnormal in that sense. But, I also wipe the seat down after I’m done, as a courtesy to the next person, so that they don’t either a) sit down on my residual ass-matter, or b) touch my residual ass-matter with their hand as they lift the lid to piss (this is assuming there’s no urinal). Am I being too nice, or should I continue this habit for the betterment of all mankind?
I only wipe the seat down (before or after) if there is VISIBLE contamination of the area, i.e. piss drops or pubes. Otherwise, I just leave it. There’s only so much a wipedown will clean. If there is invisible fecal matter embedded IN the seat, my little tidying job isn’t gonna do much. And what if the invisible poop goes THROUGH the flimsy paper and gets on my hand and doesn’t wash off and follows me to the grave? Not worth the risk.
HALFTIME!
Caleb:
Would scores go up or down if golf was played without clubs, and instead players had to just throw the ball? Obviously a few strokes would be lost off the tee, but the short game would be much easier. (I assume for putting the player would just roll the ball.)
How is rolling the ball easier? You gotta get down on the ground and then roll the thing like you’re playing Golden Tee. That’s not guaranteed to be more accurate than an atomically weighted pendulum. AND PUTTING IS SUCH A MENTAL GAME.
If you subbed out clubs for throwing the ball, my guess is that amateur golf scores would improve, and professional golf scores would worsen. You could “drive” the ball by tossing it overhand down the fairway, then “chip” the ball underhanded on the approach, and then roll or flick the ball into the hole a couple times to hopefully get a par. The problem for pros is that throwing the ball doesn’t give them a chance to put the kind of insane topspin they can usually put on the ball to make it stop on a dime three feet from the flag.
Golf course managers and architects have been messing around with new ways to play golf recently, because regular golf is expensive and played by old assholes. They’re trying out bigger holes, bigger balls, and all kinds of other shit that makes Jim Nantz fan himself in despair. So, unlike some other goofy hypothetical scenarios, you may actually see a day where your local muni decides to have a ThrowGolf tournament to attract all the TEENS in your neighborhood. I would play. I’ll throw the shit out of a golf ball.
Chris:
Why are punters and backup quarterbacks the guys who get stuck being the holder for field goal kickers? Wouldn’t you trust, say Dez over Tony Romo to catch a ball snapped seven yards backward? I realize they rarely drop the snap, but in the case where it’s a bad snap, wouldn’t a more athletic guy be the better option? Screw the Cowboys.
You can’t have a wideout as your holder because their hands are precious, and you don’t want the moron kicker to kick Dez’s hand and ruin his career. And a holder is naturally vulnerable because he’s on the ground while the defense is tearing ass up the field. It’s best if you use your most disposable player for the job, i.e. the poor punter. He’s the perfect sacrificial lamb.
Frankly, I don’t know why teams use backup quarterbacks to field the long snap when backup QBs are so important now. If the punter sucks at holding, then they should get a backup defensive back to do the job. You know how every team has a ninth corner to field punts and be the special teams gunner? Make him hold. He’ll be so pissed.
Joe:
Last night I found out that I have a reasonably famous next door neighbor. He’s a professional boxer, probably the third most famous boxer currently fighting after Mayweather and Pacquiao. If you follow sports at all you will at least know his name. Obviously, I want to be friends with this guy, but I don’t want to be desperate in my attempts. Him and his wife are about the same ages as my wife and I, therefore we probably have some common ground. They have a toddler; I have no kids, though I wish I did now, because a playdate would be my obvious in. Do you have any suggestions on how I can become friends with my famous neighbor without being creepy/desperate?
PUNCH HIM! Boxers like that!
I’m kidding. Do not punch him. If you’re trying to become BFFs with Wlad Klitschko (my best guess), you’re just gonna have to wait for a natural opening, like if you’re outside one day drinking some beers and he pulls up in his very fancy car, only he has to park outside because his pet tiger is getting washed inside the garage, and then he looks your way even though he would never do that because he’s a very private man, and you raise your beer and you’re like, “’Sup, Wlad!”
And then he actually says hi back, because things have been rocky with Hayden Panettiere lately, and so he’s lonely and looking for someone to reach out to. And then you offer him a beer, and he takes it, because this is a rare stretch of no training for him, and then—through a nearby interpreter—you both discover that you enjoy old episodes of Night Court. And then the friendship builds from there.
That’s your only shot, really. I assume the average famous person regards his neighbors with a mix of fear and annoyance. You’re gonna have to have a LOT of conspicuous barbecues before Wlad decides to hang.
Aaron:
What if the Panthers or Patriots this year (or some team in the near future) went “undefeated,” but tie a game during the regular season. So they go 18-0-1. Does that still count as undefeated? In my dreams, it does, and Mercury Morris has to face up to it.
Not a chance. A perfect season is exactly that. A tie is, in essence, half a win and half a loss. NOT PERFECT. You think Mercury Morris is gonna let that slide? Please. Mercury Morris would lobby Congress to draft a Constitutional amendment DEFINING a perfect season if New England went 18-0-1.
I remember a while back when Michigan, under Gary Moeller, went 9-0-3 over the course of a single season, the weirdest unbeaten season I can ever remember. That team won the Rose Bowl but did NOT win the national title. 9-0-3 isn’t perfect. 9-0-3 is just bizarre. AP voters treated them as if they had gone 10.5-1.5.
Fernando:
Is it me, or is it strange that baseball teams celebrate so heavily after clinching for the playoffs, and then after each series victory? They win a Wild Card game, then have a rager, go home hung over at 4 a.m. or something, then have to travel and play in the next day or two. Seems a little excessive/premature. You don’t see football teams celebrating after each playoff victory.
That’s because football teams are tired. If they had the energy, they’d rage like crazy, but they just spent three hours bashing their skulls in, so they just want to rest. By contrast, a baseball team is hanging out for three hours, waiting to find out if they won or not. Once they’ve got that final out recorded, they’re free to jump and dance and sing and expend all the energy they had to hold back in order to play baseball properly.
In general, I support extended celebrations of anything, at any time. Pro athletes train year round and run hills until they throw up and get yelled at by coaches all the time. So I’m fine with a baseball team going completely apeshit for winning a Wild Card play-in game. More football teams should follow baseball’s lead and have extended on-field celebrations after clinching any division that is not the AFC South. They should bring out champagne and strippers and huge cakes and have shredded cash rain down on everyone in the stadium. Because winning a division that is not the AFC South is hard! You should be able to enjoy that.
Sean:
Let’s say you catch a mosquito biting your dick and you ignore the initial freakout response to brush it off. Could you force yourself to get an erection and force enough blood into the mosquito to make it burst?
NO. As much as you would like to think your engorgement will cause a TSUNAMI of cockblood that ends up blowing the insect to smithereens, chances are the mosquito would simply leave your dong the moment it felt fully satisfied, regardless of how much blood was rushing down. If you go to drink from a river and the current speeds up, you don’t accidentally swallow the whole river.
Ho:
I met someone from Jersey last week. As in the British island. It got me thinking: How and when did people from New Jersey start getting away with “Jersey”? Do people in any of the other “New” states do that shit?
No, but imagine if they did! You could really throw people for a loop if you were just like, “Yeah, I’m from ’Hampshire. The ol’ Hamp. That’s my turf!” I would start doing that just to see how angry people get.
Anyway, people call Jersey “Jersey” because no one gives a shit about the original Jersey (located close to the northern coast of France), so there’s no risk of confusion. So you can get away with shortening it, and it sounds more natural than if you do it with the other three New states (York, Mexico, Hampshire).
Also, New Jersey is a state filled with ENORMOUSLY dumb people who all pride themselves on being more casual about everything than other states. Hence, nicknames for all. “Yeah, we’re all from Jersey! Me, Vin, D, the Cooch … FUCKIN’ JERSEY ALL THE WAY.”
David:
Why, when you drop any item of food in the kitchen, does it roll immediately to the dirtiest, most inaccessible spot on the floor EVERY SINGLE TIME?
Because God is a hater. Wait until you have children and they, without fail, drop and/or throw objects and they manage to land somewhere in fucking Alaska. My entire life now consists of reaching under couches and jamming my hand between car seats. It’s the worst.
And I’m no better. Somehow I have grown clumsier in middle age. I’ll drop things for no reason at all. I’ll turn around, hit a wall, and my keys will go flying out of my hand and land in a sewer grate. I have no control over my faculties. It may be a neurological disorder. I’d go see a doctor about it, but I’d probably fumble the stupid insurance card.
Dan:
My friends and I left class the other day (200+ student lecture hall) and were discussing the minimum number of people in a class/room where you can cut the cheese. I said anything over 20, but my buddy threw out the idea that it depends on the percentage of women in the room. What is the “minimum room occupancy fart threshold” (MROFT)?
Twenty is still too intimate, especially if you all know each other. If you fart in a class with 20 people, your friend next to you might make a face, and then a girl will see it, and then you’ll be The Guy Who Farted, and it will be noted in the private female database of People To Not Have Sex With. Fart Occupancy is greatly dependent on familiarity. If I’m on a train platform surrounded by 20 strangers, I’m gonna fart. The fuck are they gonna say about it? TAKE MY SMELL AND LIKE IT. But if it’s at a PTA meeting, forget it.
And what is the spacing in the room like? Is it tight? Is there room for the fart to dissipate? Are you close enough to other filthy hobos that other potential suspects might get the blame? All that shit factors in. If you’re a college student, I would only fart at the back of lecture halls. And I would make sure my asshole friend isn’t sitting right next to me when I do it, because he’ll announce it. HEY GUYS! MAGARY RIPPED ONE.
Email of the week!
Justin:
Got two slices of pizza for lunch. Buffalo chicken and Hawaiian. Ate the buffalo chicken first, which was basically the most perfect slice of pizza ever. Then the Hawaiian: It was bad, and ruined both my entire afternoon and the glorious flavor the buffalo chicken injected. Should I have eaten them in reverse order? Hawaiian pizza is fine—I’m just thinking the order in which I ate screwed everything up. I just gotta go with two buff chick next time, don’t I?
Two slices of pepperoni. Don’t give Papa John any more bad ideas.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin. He’s also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter@drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com. You can also order Drew’s book, Someone Could Get Hurt, through his homepage.
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