I'm going to a wedding this weekend and I noticed that, as you grow older, you come full circle on weddings. The first time you go to a wedding in your 20s, you're like, "Oh cool, a wedding! FREE BOOZE AND SHIT!" But then everyone has that one summer where they have to go to eight weddings and by the end you're dead broke and like, "God, I never want to go to a goddamn wedding ever again."
But once you have kids and your social prospects are all but extinguished, weddings suddenly become awesome again. I've been looking forward to this wedding for WEEKS. The second cocktail hours begins, I'm gonna have six mixed drinks in the span of two minutes. I'm drunk just thinking about it. I want all my friends to have vow-renewal ceremonies so that I have another convenient excuse to leave the house.
Your letters:
Josh:
Are Sippy Cups the worst things ever created? How can a product that is "leak proof", leak all over within 5 seconds of handing it to my kids? That is THE ONE THING YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO DO. Deliver the juice to my trio of messy kids, without leaving an apple juice trail across my living room floor. I may as well just give them a solo cup and a straw, and not have to pay the $9 for this piece of a plastic.
Even worse, ever get tricked into paying for a Stainless Steel version? They are $530 and spill more juice than the crappy plastic ones. Don't you know they are BPA free? Well isn't that superb!
They're awful. And the worst part about it that, once the child stops taking milk out of a baby bottle, you assume that your worries are behind you. You assume it's all easy-to-clean shit from now on but it's NOT. If anything, sippy cups are harder to clean. I have one sippy cup that has a straw that comes in TWO parts. I swear to God. It's like the designer looked at it and was like, "Whoa hey, this straw comes in one part! THAT'S FAR TOO EASY." You have to insert the first straw part through the top, then you have to add the straw EXTENSION to the second part of it. Why? BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY.
And my kids change their taste in cups every five seconds. "Wahhhhh wahhhh I don't like the unicorn sippy cup anymore!" YOU SHUT YOUR DIRTY MOUTH. When I was a kid, we drank out of old Tropicana frozen juice cans and we liked it.
Once a week, I will give my son a cup of milk, only I'll forget to put the little valve into the top of the sippy cup. And when that happens, it's a fucking disaster zone. It's like the milk truck scene in Three Kings. It just gets everywhere. I hate sippy cups.
One more thing about the whole BPA issue: I'd like to issue a big FUCK YOU to whoever found out BPAs in plastic are possibly harmful. I bet this was Kelly Preston's doing. Now I can't put the sippy cup in the dishwasher because the heat will cause the BPAs to leak out and give my kid triple AIDS or something. Any item that can't go into a dishwasher should be destroyed.
Brad:
Why is no one talking about the fact that after making the NORMAL Olympics, [Oscar] Pistorius still gets to compete in the Paralympics? Why isn't the cripple community completely up in arms about this?
Well, I guess that Pistorius, as a disabled person, still technically qualifies for the Paralympics. But it's kind of a dick move, isn't it? If you make the regular Olympics, it should be common courtesy to bow out of the Paralympics. When Bryce Harper gets called up to the majors, he doesn't play the occasional minor league game on days off to pad his stat total. That would make him a cock. Or more of a cock, at least. By particiating in both Olympics, Oscar Pistorius is proving that he's nothing more than a ME-FIRST GLOREE BOY trying to have it both ways. Don't be surprised if he asks to compete in the Special Olympics, the Drake Relays, and the South Dakota 4H Rodeo as well.
Chris:
I have a mate who used to work as a graphic designer at a gymnastics association. Essentially this was producing marketing literature, brochures etc. Obviously this would include pictures of lady gymnasts in various poses.
These photos were picked by his superiors and part of his job was to Photoshop out spider veins and camel toes so as to maintain the gymnast's purity. Wardrobe malfunctions in photos were the rule, not an exception. He hated his job and did not last long. I'd hate to meet someone who enjoyed that role.
Now that would be a brutal job to come home from. "Honey, if you saw as many labia flaps as I saw today..."
Norm:
Drew, we have a keeper league that's been going for 4 years with a group of friends and one player has passed away unexpectedly. In this situation what do you do? I think we should pay our respect to the dead and honor his team this year by not having anyone take it. We've put this up for a vote in the league but no one really has a strong opinion.
I tried to recruit a friend, told him the team has Cam Newton and Arian Foster as keepers. But then I told him he's taking a dead guy's spot, and it freaked him away. Should I just not mention this moving forward?
The team has Cam AND Arian and someone passed? You could tell me it was Jerry Sandusky's old league spot and I'd still take if I were guaranteed those two. It's a fantasy football team this guy occupied, not the Overlook Hotel. I find it hard to believe that you could be haunted in a virtual space like tha... OMG CAM JUST BLEW OUT HIS KNEE! THE CURSE OF BOB HAS COME TO PASS!
Anyway, I wouldn't leave his team untouched during the season because online shrines to people always seem like such a cheap gesture. I'm not saying you don't have the best of intentions here—Lord knows that many fantasy teams mean a great deal to the men running them—but it's still just a fantasy team. It's still just one entry out of a trillion in NFL.com's database. It doesn't mean as much as sending the guy's family a floral arrangement or a nice ham.
Also, being considerate and nice really isn't in the spirit of fantasy football. In the fantasy world, it's much more appropriate to devise Machiavellian ways of poaching the dead guy's players, and then taunting his grave once you manage to loot his virtual estate. That's what Bob would have wanted. I GOT ARIAN AND THERE AIN'T SHIT YOU CAN DO IT ABOUT IT, FUCKO.
Bob:
Would you rather be hunted by a great white shark or a grizzly bear? My friend says great white, but I say grizzly bear. The hunt would take place in the animal's natural habitat (i.e. ocean for the shark, forest for the bear) and you are the only one being hunted.
We agreed that either way you'd be fucked, but think you'd have a much better chance escaping a grizzly bear just by running around in zig-zags and possibly finding some crevices to hide in, whereas you have no agility in the ocean and no chance of outswimming the shark. His main argument was that grizzly bears are fucking huge, but I think that's irrelevant because either animal would kill you with ease if it caught you.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.
I just finished Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken (highly recommended if you're one of the three people left who hasn't read it), in which Louis Zamperini has to fight off shark attacks while living in a tiny liferaft for 47 straight days at sea (At one point, he has to fight off sharks WHILE dodging Japanese aircraft fire, because fighting sharks alone is just too easy). Anyway, Zamperini and his fellow castaways were able to keep the sharks at bay with a handful of strategic nose punches and solid oar shots. But that's with a boat and oars at your disposal. Exposed in the water, you wouldn't last a fraction of that time. And you'd expend so much energy fighting off the shark that you would likely drown at some point anyway. I think I'd rather stay on land.
This site says that should you confront a grizzly bear, you must stand your ground, avoid eye contact, and "back away slowly, speaking in a calming, monotone voice." I would very much like to hear my "calming" voice in the face of being eaten alive. URRR UHHHH I AM CALM. LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW FLUFFY PILLOWS ARE. But yeah, I guess I have no choice but to take the bear.
By the way, trying to figure out the answer to this question led me to Speedofanimals.com, which delivers exactly what you think it will deliver. I've never wanted to be a mouse so badly.
Nick:
This is at the Square 1 mall in Saugus, MA. I don't think the guy who coordinates the signs thought this one out.
"We got EVERY pump for your pumping needs!"
Andy:
Why are office chairs so inexplicably heavy? What are they hiding?
The CEO purposely ordered a $500,000 Aeron chair that weighs six megatons specifically so you won't steal it from his office. All office furniture is designed to stay in place forever and ever and ever, even in the event of a worldwide cataclysm. Also, the controls on all conference room chairs are designed to break after just two days of use. Every time I sit down in an unfamiliar office chair, I sink down to three inches above the ground and then discover that the control to bring me back up is no longer in use. Then I have to get down on my knees and inspect the underside of the chair thoroughly, to make sure I haven't made a mistake.
I don't know why it's so hard to label office chair levers so that I know what they're gonna do. You would think a sensible designer would write, "THIS MAKES THE CHAIR LEAN BACK" on one lever and "THIS MAKES THE CHAIR GO UP AN DOWN" on the other. But nooooo, that shit is strictly trial by error. Half the time, I pull a lever and the chair deposits me forward, like it wants me to fall down into a shark pit. Why would I want a chair to do that?
I worked in an office once and one day, we stole a couch from an empty office upstairs and put it in our office. It wasn't a great couch, but having a couch in your office is a big deal. You can nap on it. You can fart into it. Your office turns into a hangout for the all the cool people at work. A couch matters. Well, just a few days after we got our couch, two of our co-workers stole the thing and put it in their office. "As a joke." So we stole it back. And then they stole it again. And it became this running joke, like, "Haha we stole your couch," only deep down I was fucking LIVID. I wanted my office couch and I wanted those cunts to stop stealing it. I wanted my couch and I wanted to stop having to pick it up because it was crazy heavy. Secretly, I've never forgiven those two for starting CouchGate. Don't fuck with a friend's office furniture.
HALFTIME!
Bram:
When looking for a parking spot in a busy parking lot, is there anything worse than driving by a motorcycle parked in one of "the good spots", as you drive farther and farther towards the back? FUCKING BIKERS, THIS IS UNFAIR. Motorcycles ought to be locked up with the normal bikes. Fuck motorcycles.
I also dislike regular spots that are split in two and reserved for motorcycles only. These are usually located at the front of the lot, which is crap. You're riding a motorcycle. You're not crippled. Why do you get pole position it the parking lot? I hope you get sideswiped by a log truck.
Andrew:
Do you ever find yourself, during takeoff or landing for your flight, estimating the odds of your survival during a crash at any given altitude? Coming in for a landing, I find myself wondering "I think NOW we're low enough where I could survive a crash." I'm not afraid of flying, but I just realized I do this calculation every time. We're only 200 feet off the ground, some of us would survive right? 1 in 5 odds?
I have the same mindset as my plane is approaching land, even though the odds of surviving a crash from 200 feet are likely no better than surviving a crash from 20,000 feet. You're still going hundreds of miles an hour. You're still stationed many feet up inside the interior of the plane, surrounded by fuel and potential flying debris. I have a daydream where I run to the emergency door, throw it open (not easy given that air pressure would likely hold it shut), and then jump comfortably to safety. But that's idiotic. Even if the plane were an inch off the ground, that's still a long fall. One of the worst things in movies is when the hero goes bailing out of a speeding car, rolls around on the asphalt, and then gets up and dusts himself off. WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT. Get out of any moving transport going that fast and you aren't getting up anytime soon.
Justin:
How is it that grocery stores haven't installed a play area for kids, so you don't have to grocery shop with the little fuckers? I'd easily pay 20 bucks for some pimple faced, minimum wage douchebag to half stare at his phone with my kids in his general vicinity, just so I don't have to hear how fucking boring buying bananas are.
I agree. If a grocery store had some type of massive ball pit to house my kids, it would benefit them economically because I would actually have time to LOOK at things on the shelf and purchase more of them, instead of blindly grabbing at cereal boxes and hoping for the best.
Jeremy:
What is Batman's shelf life? In other words, how long could he effectively be Batman? Is he like an athlete, peaking around 28 and then sinking into decline until it's time to call it quits in his late 30s? The Michael Keaton Batman would be beyond Jamie Moyer at this point.
Let's answer this question without any regard as to how The Dark Knight Rises ends (I've seen it but won't spoil anything here). I think Bruce Wayne would keep trying to be Batman way past his prime. He'd easily keep going into his 40s despite slowing reflexes and crippling back pain because he'd still want to be Mr. Big Shot. And who's gonna convince him to retire? Alfred? No way. Poor Alfred has spent his whole life dispensing useful advice that Bruce Wayne fucking ignores because he's a dick. I wish Alfred had quit to become a boarding school teacher. That was his true calling.
Anyway, Batman could conceivably continue to be effective fighting crime until his 40s. But once 50 hits, I think he'd be thoroughly outclassed. He'd be out on a routine mission foiling two thugs smuggling cigarettes into Gotham, and they'd give him a surprise assbeating. And by the eighth broken rib, it would maybe dawn on him that he's not cut out for it anymore. Then he'd announce his retirement, then unretire, then retire again, then unretire, and then retire again after everyone has had just about enough and bloggers like me have written numerous columns with headlines like "CAN BATMAN JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY ALREADY"?
Then he'd work the memorabilia circuit.
Joel:
It's 2014. The Chicago Cubs are in the World Series against, say... the Yankees. It's Game 7. The Cubs are down by 3 in the bottom of the 9th. Bases loaded. Two outs. Starlin Castro hits a long fly into the corner. Nick Swisher sprints and dives for it, crashes into the wall... and misses it! The ball rolls around in the corner, Castro scores an inside-the-park homer, and the Cubs win the World Series!
But wait — there's one complication: Nick Swisher is dead. He hit the wall and broke his neck. What happens? Does baseball let the runs count? Do they send Castro to 2nd with some sort of death-induced ground-rule double? Do they just say, "Oh well, bummer, Cubs win?"
Well, first of all, you'd get the sad Fox music. There's no doubt about that. You'd get Joe Buck speaking in hushed tones while the slow Fox music ushered you out to a Papa John's commercial.
If Swisher died right there on the field, the game would be over. The umps would let the result stand, and why wouldn't they? There's nothing in the rules that says a dead outfielder signifies an instant ground rule double, unless that's one of the 90,000 "unwritten" rules of baseball, all of which are stupid and annoying. The Cubs would be winners and rightfully so.
As for Swisher, viewers at home wouldn't know he was dead until much later in the evening. It's not as if they would put "OH HEY, HE DIED" up on the Jumbotron. They would load Swisher onto a stretcher, take him to an ambulance, try to resuscitate him, fail, and THEN pronounce him dead. By that time, you've already turned the TV off and are happily heading to bed or partying with your friends. It wouldn't be until SportsCenter the next morning when you'd be like, "Holy shit, he DIED? Man, that sucks." And then your day would progress normally. You'd never see Swisher's death declared on the spot, in the middle of the field. That would cause all sorts of logistical problems, and it would be a distasteful way of informing his next of kin. Personally, I'm very excited to see the "30 for 30" of this event: THE WALL, DIRECTED BY MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM.
Greg:
We've all seen the vans with the covered back windows but I saw this beauty across the street from the house I just moved into. Looks like the rapists of today's day and age are serious about their miles per gallon. I'm looking forward to the day the cops raid this dude's house.
What I want to know is what the guy at the customs shop is thinking when he gets that order.
MOLESTER: I don't want any windows in the back.
CUSTOMS GUY: Why not?
MOLESTER: Uhhhh errrrr BACK WINDOWS AREN'T SWAGGY.
Kyle:
Wouldn't it make more sense if we crapped out the bottom of our feet? It would make life much easier.
It would, but imagine any accident you had. You'd ruin an entire shoe, which is much worse than soiling an easily laundered pair of undies or pants. I'm the sort of person who throws a 15-minute hissy fit when I step in dogshit. WHO PUT THIS HERE?! So imagine the anger you'd feel knowing there was poop in your shoe. And skidmarks in your socks! Listen, the feet of an average man smell like grim death after spending eight hours suffocated by a pair of Wigwam socks. Now imagine how badly that smell would be exacerbated if you had an asshole on the bottom of your heel. I'd be scared to ever take off my shoes.
And think about anal sex if people had footholes. There's not gonna be much room for your penis with all those pesky footbones blocking the entrance. The gay population would be forced to resort to dry humping, which is patently unfair. Only Quentin Tarantino would be jazzed by footholes.
Hamilton Nolan:
Say you are in a three story apartment building, that is going to collapse in on itself suddenly, WTC-style. What floor would you want to be on? The top, to fall down? Or the bottom, with the top two floors coming down on you? Or the middle, with a little bit of both?
It has to be the top. I can't imagine that being on the top would be any safer than being at the bottom, but at least nothing is buried on top of you. That's the nightmare, to be buried alive under 50,000 pounds of rubble. At least standing on the roof allows you to die out in the fresh air.
Clemmy:
Every single time you get the chips and guac from Chipotle, ½ the chips are perfectly (over)salted and crispy, and the other ½ are rock hard and stale. ITS MADDENING! I wish it weren't like that.
If I ran a chip factory (and Lord know I will one day), every chip would be coated in luscious salt and all non-transparent chips would be discarded. Every get a fresh basket of chips at a Mexican joint and there's that one that's crystal clear and practically dripping with fresh boiling oil? Those are the only chips I'd package. Every bag would cost $160 and it would be worth it.
Derby:
So clearly the USA is the best team in the world at basketball. But let's say we could enter as many teams as we like (like how we have more than one runner going after the 100m). How many teams could we enter before one of them would lose to Spain or Argentina?
I'll do some work for you and give you the 2nd and 3rd best 12-man rosters if you like, even ignoring injuries. You can't tell me that a starting 5 of Lowry, Joe Johnson, Granger, Noah, and Millsap wouldn't get a bronze medal.
2nd team
Kyrie Irving
Taj Gibson
Rajon Rondo
Eric Gordon
Steve NashNOT ELIGIBLE DUE TO CANADIANNESS
Stephen Curry
Josh Smith
Zach Randolph
Derrick Williams
Andrew Bynum
Tim Duncan
Al Horford3rd team
Paul Pierce
John Wall
Jeremy Lin
Joe Johnson
Kyle Lowry
Monta Ellis
Rudy Gay
Danny Granger
Joahkim Noah
Carlos Boozer
Paul Millsap
Paul George
Well now, why CAN'T we enter multiple teams? I'd give anything to see a gold medal game between USA1 and USA2. So many hurt feelings.
Email of the week time.
Reed:
I walk my dog every day through the park across the street. It's a decent size with baseball diamonds, a community center, and an Olympic sized pool. The community center runs a summer camp, and offers swim lessons, so the pool is frequently filled with small children and parents and summer camp swim teachers and camp counselors and life guards.
The pool was built into the bottom of a hill, such that the parking lot sidewalk overlooks the whole pool area, running lengthwise about 12 feet up. Today, while walking my dog, I spotted an old man sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, staring at the pool area through the chain length-fence. He was wearing baggy boxers, a loose shirt that showed off some gray chest hair, old man glasses, and a big floppy hat that kept a chunk of his face hidden.
Again, this is a parking lot sidewalk. I've lived here for three years, walked my dog there nearly every day, and this is the absolute first time anyone's ever been stationary in this area.
It seemed very odd, and he was obviously staring at something. Could have been the (hot) mom in a bathing suit right in front of him. Could have been the (teenage, female) lifeguard about twenty feet away. Could have been the 3-10 year olds filling the pool. No matter what, it was creepy.
I slowed down my dog to check the guy out. (Incidentally, my Schnauzer had just had a bout of explosive diarrhea, which is horrifying.) I spent a good three minutes watching this dude (which made me feel kinda creepy) while I decided A) was he actually perving on someone at the pool, and B) was it worth my time to double back the hundred yards to go tell the staff in the community center lobby?
A was obvious-he was definitely perving. B was a much harder decision.
But I figured I didn't want to see him on the news tomorrow having raped a schoolkid and have that on my conscience, so I reluctantly doubled back, went into the lobby and found the chick running the front desk.
I told her what I saw, and she thought maybe he was a grandfather watching his grandkid's lesson. But she said she'd talk to the pool staff.
When I go back outside, dude is packing his chair into his car. Shoots me some looks as he does. He sat there for a minute before driving away (I stayed to make sure he wasn't jacking it in the car. It's possible he did, but that'd mean it was an sub-minute session.) He was definitely perving, right?
Sure was. YOU SIR ARE AN AMERICAN HERO.