Your letters:
Kyle:
What five things take the biggest dive from awesome in your teens/early 20s to terrible in your late 20s/30s? Here is my list. Note: I'm not yet a father, so I'm not including the parent angle here.
5. Road trips
4. Dick Vitale
3. Snow days
2. Kamchatka (or whichever brand of terrible Vodka you consumed while young/poor)
1. Hand jobs
Summer probably tops my list. When I was young, summer was incredible. Now, summer is one endless parenting death march. And the worst part is watching people who are younger enjoy summer around you, while you spend three hours in 90-degree heat trying to set up a wind screen that your kids keep kicking over. I used to be fun and carefree like those teenagers dancing around a nearby bonfire. What HAPPENED?
Here are five other things I can no longer stand as an older person that I used to enjoy:
• Pardon the Interruption. I used to rush home from work to watch PTI on time. I can't believe I did that.
• Staying up very late. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me on a guy's weekend. I asked him what we were gonna do and he was like: "It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna go out hunting, then get loaded, then have a bigass dinner, then go to bed early." And I know I'm old because the "we're gonna go to bed early" part got me way too fired up. EARLY BEDTIME? FUCK AND YES. Due to other obligations, I could not go on this trip. I was heartbroken.
• Nightclubs. I fucking hate nightclubs. I would burn down every last one of them if possible.
• Shopping.
• Belgian waffles. They're so delicious when you're young. When you're old, all you see is death on a plate.
Ted:
I saw a clip of Floyd Mayweather on TV the other day and it got me thinking: As an average built male (5'11, 200 lbs), how much would Floyd have to shrink before I felt comfortable getting in the ring with him? I imagine if I came up against a 6-inch tall Money Mayweather I could just flick him in the forehead and he'd be dead, but any taller than 4' and I'm probably in trouble. This is assuming that we keep it above the waist and mini-Floyd can't just pepper me with dick shots.
In theory, mini-Floyd wouldn't be able to pepper you with dick shots. But in reality, all it takes is one little slip, now doesn't it? All he has to do is let one slip too low and suddenly your balls are dead. Ask Riddick Bowe if nut shots in boxing are preventable. They happen. I don't know if I could risk that against mini-Floyd. That's why I'm not stepping in the ring with him unless he is a maximum of two feet tall. A two-foot tall Floyd would weigh about 50 pounds, roughly the weight of my 6-year-old, and I could beat a 6-year-old senseless. Like I said before, there's nothing more fun than watching your child try to harm you only to laugh in the face of his pathetic blows. MWAHAHAHAHA YOU THINK YOU CAN HURT ME?! I AM A GIANT (flicks child away). There's too much risk in a Floyd of any larger size. I would want to go into that ring against mini-Floyd with no doubts as to my triumph.
Jim:
Would it be better to watch the World Series if instead of playing 7 games they just played 63 innings straight?
Managers have to make a decision whether to leave their pitchers in to continue getting roasted or pull them and risk running out of fresh arms. Players could be pulled and re-substituted (Verlander struggles through the first 7 innings then gets icing his arm because he's coming back in for innings 55-63). Players that are hot (Pablo Sandoval) can stay hot and have a chance to make a much bigger impact over the course of a 63-inning continuous game. Clubhouse guys that supply coffee and food become borderline MVP candidates. One longer game and players in near zombie like states towards the end might make it more interesting.
I can't go along with it. I mean, baseball games are already interminable. You want a 21-hour game? No, you don't. That may be Leitch's wet dream, but the quality of play would deteriorate so swiftly that, by the end, you'd feel as if you were watching a Marlins split-squad game. Any time I see a baseball game go into extra innings I immediately let out an audible groan. Much better to go the other way and split the World Series up into a best-of-15 series with four inning games. AND THEN SHRINK THE PLAYERS DOWN TO FOUR FEET TALL.
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.
That said, there's something alluring about any sporting contest that goes on well past regulation. I still obsess over long things: basketball games that go seven overtimes, movies that last nine hours (I once read a review of the documentary Shoah, which lasts that long. It fascinated me, even though I didn't have any desire to actually see the movie), long songs, etc. I can recite from memory the lengths of certain long tracks, like Metallica's "And Justice for All" (9:44) and GNR's "Coma" (10:16). Any time I see a long track, I do a double take. Wow, that's a long song. I wonder if someone dies while it's playing.
I used to daydream all the time about playing in some kind of endless sporting event, like the legendary Isner-Mahut set at Wimbledon that went on for 138 games. I used to imagine myself playing in a Super Bowl that lasted 15 overtimes and bled into the following day, with me finally breaking off an 80-yard run (with a torn ACL) and falling to my knees as I reach the end zone, and then DYING. I die right in the fucking end zone, and then everyone bursts into rapturous applause. I could still totally die that way. It's in my will. It has to happen.
Brian:
What kind of social ramifications would happen if all of a sudden, you could distinctly see exactly what a person was looking at (a la the mass-despised QB-Vision Cone in from Madden 06)? Say for instance, a cone of light, of sorts, that would widen and narrow based on a person's focus? This would be a global change - everyone emits this light and everyone can see it. Would men be shamed away from staring at cleavage? Would cheating on tests cease to exist? I imagine everyone straightens up for the first couple of months until gradually everyone just stops giving a fuck and society collapses into a shameless, morality-free Sodom-and-Gomorrah type of existence.
Eventually, people would stop giving a shit. People always stop giving a shit. You could stage a perpetual orgy in the middle of Central Park—an orgy that cannot be broken up by law enforcement—and after a couple of days people would just accept it and move on with their lives. "I know a great picnic spot just a few yards away from the orgy." So with exposed sightlines, you would have people freaking out for a bit over ass glances and what not, but then people would just accept wayward looks as a fact of life. The only time it would cause real trouble is at a public urinal. If we assume that your cone of light shines a spotlight on whatever object you're staring at—kind of like a laser site on a hitman's rifle—and you accidentally see another man's dick at the urinal and he knows you've targeted it, you might have words.
One thing that might be possible in the future is that you could make your line of sight digital. In other words, your eyes would act as a live camera feed that other people could access. So if you're having really hot sex and you decide that you'd like all your Facebook friends to see it, all you have to do is blink twice and it's on your Ustream. Your vessel would be ripe at all times. "Everyone, watch as I eat this AMAZING meal at Odd Duck Farm to Trailer!" The future will be so, so weird.
Steven:
I got out of my car this morning, and thought I saw a weird leaf stuck to my grill. Upon closer inspection, it was the gooey, furry remains of a dead bat, with one disgusting wing flapping in the breeze.
I grabbed some dishwashing gloves and a broom stick, poked it about 50 times to ensure it was dead, and then poked it a bit harder knock it off the grill. Of course, this just made things worse, as it fell further into the grill with no possible way of falling out. So I apprehensively reached in, grabbed the bastard and tossed him aside, where he was devoured by birds shortly afterwards. Awful way to start the day. I do not want to get back into my car.
What if it made babies in your grill and those babies are waiting to come flying out of your air-conditioning vent and kill you while you're driving? It can happen.
Anonymous:
One time I thought I had paused a game while playing a video game and switched back to find out I didn't. Three seconds of terror right there. In my dream world you have a safe word with your TV and it automatically blacks out and mutes everything. Then some really calming music plays while you get a snack and drink and when you return the TV automatically comes back on to where you were at 5 seconds prior. We have the technology, someone just needs to put it together.
My safe word would be "varnish."
Sometimes I have to watch football games on tape delay because my children get in the way of everything. And the most anxious moments of my life come when I turn on the TV and attempt to begin watching my game without seeing the live game footage that's currently going on. I hit MUTE and LIST immediately while the screen is warming up, and then put a hand out to block out the quadrant of the screen where the live action is playing while I have to find my game in the list. SO VERY TREACHEROUS. Whenever I fuck this up and accidentally see the live score of the game, I want to kill myself. Life these days is just so HARD, you know?
Ryan:
In attempting to consume the maximum amount of food while trying to minimize the judgmental stares, is it better to load up a plate of food and make one trip, or go light on the plate and make two trips? Does it matter if you go back for thirds?
If I'm at a breakfast buffet—one of those kickass ones with an omelet bar and all that shit—what I like to do is give my omelet order, and then go around with a SMALL plate to give people the illusion that I'm eating a socially acceptable first course. You can refill that plate with bacon again and again because it's a SMALL plate. It looks dainty, even though you are CRUSHMURDERING breakfast meats left and right. Then the omelet is ready (Note: Omelet guy will always, by law, take 45 minutes longer to make an omelet than any other human being on Earth), and THEN you load up. So technically, you had only one large plate of food. Look at you, Mister Sensible. You've earned your trip to the chocolate fountain.
Also, I always put fruit salad on my plate and then never eat it. Look at me being healthy! Best to pair this with a lard waffle.
(By the way, here is a proper ranking of fruits in the fruit salad: 1. Pineapple, 2. Everything else.)
HALFTIME!
Tom:
What if a football team replaced their primary play caller with an algorithm that selects a play at random based on the circumstance? (For example, it could be weighted by probability of conversion so you wouldn't run a QB dive on 3rd and 17).
Defenses would have a difficult time adjusting because play selection would be random (and therefore independent of the prior play) or maybe then defensive coordinators would think that they're spotting patterns that don't actually exist. It would also prevent teams from sticking to a gameplan that doesn't work ("We need to establish the running game!) and would lead to more points scored because the program would make better decisions about going for it on 4th down and such.
See, this is what the Ravens should have replaced Cam Cameron with. Instead, they picked Jim Caldwell. Now instead of dumpoff passes on third-and-long, they're gonna run DRAW PLAYS on third-and-long. SO EXCITING.
I'm sure there will come a time when robot coaches replace offensive coordinators (and honestly, you might as well replace the head man with one while you're at it), but that will be a sad day. It's no fun rooting for a COMPUTER to be fired. And I'll have a hard time convincing myself I could run a better offense than the SpreadBot5000. It can process four trillion game scenarios in half a nanosecond. I get a panic attack whenever the Madden play clock gets below 10 seconds. The computer has it on me. I can't even imagine the outrage when a computer gets its first coaching job. Herm Edwards will collapse and die on the air. And then Aaron Sorkin will write a smug movie about how the computer engineered a five-game winning streak during the Jaguars 2034 season. It will win two Oscars in minor categories.
Mike:
I was looking at some old division records and noticed that in 1994, the NFC East had teams coached by Rich Kotite, Barry Switzer, Norv Turner, Buddy Ryan, and Dan Reeves. Basically, the best coach in the division was a guy who made the playoffs 3 times in 11 seasons after Elway (with a 70-92 record). The 2nd-best coach was an overrated buffoon who didn't understand (and often had disdain for) his offense everywhere he coached. The other three don't need any introduction.
Is this the worst group of coaches in a division in the last 20 years?
I thought the NFC West would be able to match it at some point, but Mike Holmgren ruins the Singletary and Linehan years in San Francisco and St. Louis. Then I thought that maybe the AFC East would have a good year for terrible coaching—what with the likes of Dave Wannstedt, Bruce Coslet, and Kottie passing through—but Belichick, Marv Levy, and Don Shula ruin that as well. Holmgren also ruins the leaner years of NFC North coaching, when Denny Green and Dave Wannstedt were around. Here's a fun fact: For an entire decade, the Bears were coached by either Dave Wannstedt or Dick Jauron. That's horrific. A full 10 years of that shit. I can't even imagine.
Kevin:
Doesn't it piss you off when you step in a wet spot on the bathroom floor after you've put your socks on?
It's even worse in the kitchen, because you never see it coming. Why is there water on the floor? WHO DID THIS?! So much anger.
Jake:
What percent confident are you that the world isn't going to end on December 21? I consider myself a fairly rational person, and I don't logically believe that the Mayans accurately predicted the end of the world in 2012. I think they probably just got to 2012 in their calendar they were making and then ran out of tablet or died or something. Still, we've been hearing about the world ending in 2012 for so long that I can't honestly put myself at 100% confidence. I'd say I'm in the 95-98% confidence range that the world won't end.
Here's a fun fact for you: According to this book, if an asteroid were to come straight at us and destroy us, you'd probably have only about one second of warning before it happened. You wouldn't get a day, or an hour. You wouldn't get to have one of those precious indie-film moments in which you and your family have one last awkward barbecue before everything goes to shit. You would have one second, enough time to go "What the?" and then it's all over.
It makes sense when you think about it. You would think our space cameras would be able to spot an asteroid coming with a bit more lag time. But it turns out that space—even the immediate space around the Earth—is quite big. Imagine trying to find a rock in the Pacific Ocean, only instead of the Pacific Ocean, it's OUTER FUCKING SPACE WHICH IS SO BOUNDLESS AS TO DEFY COMPREHENSION. Terrifying. Anyway, this asteroid could destroy us at ANY time, and it may as well be this year as any other. I always believe at least 1 percent of crackpot theories.
Also, the entirety of Yellowstone National Park is actually a supervolcano, and it's 30,000 years overdue for an eruption that would destroy all life on Earth. Sleep well!
Craig:
One of these is not like the other...
Yeah, but he's only got two bars. The pussy will be stopping every three seconds or so.
Alex:
My buddy was walking down a sketchy alley in DC late Saturday night when he stumbled upon a bag on the sidewalk with a couple good looking steaks sitting on top. The meat was still in its packaging and didn't look like it had been tampered with. He loves a good steak as much as the next guy, but his first reaction was to bolt, and so he did. Was this a classic case of meat trap?
Undoubtedly. That meat was laid out there by a cracky who knows you can't resist a free ribeye, especially with beef prices going through the roof. You'd do best to avoid it.
Royal Anteater:
Do you think James Bond masturbates?
Yes. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of self-pleasuring devices Q has engineered strictly so that Bond doesn't get too mixed up with femme fatales out in the field. Because when you think about it, Bond is a horrible employee. He destroys everything in his path. He fucks everyone. He places an unnecessary number of people in harm's way. He needs government-issued hologram porn just to be held in check.
By the way, if they can make a hologram Tupac, they can make hologram porn. This needs to be made a reality sooner rather than later.
Chris:
What would happen if the President became a spokesperson for various products? Like, if he just started filming commercials for Pepsi. Outside of the usual backlash from people who like the other party, would it be a big deal?
I'm not even sure it's legal. Obviously, it presents a massive conflict of interest because it would tell the general public that the president was more beholden to corporate interests than that of the American people. That's true already, of course. The presidents takes all of his orders from Big Soda: who to nuke, which laws to pass, which school districts get to be the first to sample delicious Pepsi Echinacea, etc. But best to leave all that implied, rather than out in the open. The people at Big Soda aren't dumb. They know it's better to leave the president with an illusion of legitimacy. It's far more effective than sticking Obama in an ad with whatever idiot wins The X Factor.
Dar:
What if a real Terminator was sent back to our time from the future? How long would it take for a.) the pundits to actually put together and admit it is a Terminator, and b.) actually have the cops / army to take him/her out? Are we looking at damage and costs worse then Sandy? I feel like if there was a T1000 roaming streets of Manhattan, shit would get wild.
Well, remember that a Terminator has only one kill objective and will resort to stealth if the situation requires it, like when it has to morph into Eddie Furlong's foster mom and then hand-knife his foster dad. Fucking awesome. Also, it depends on what kind of Terminator would arrive. If you're talking about the traditional Arnold model, that's easier to contain than a T-1000. I think the threat would be neutralized much faster than you might expect. This is America. We don't let people go around indiscriminately killing other people for long, unless it happens in downtown Baltimore.
As for the pundits, they'd get everything wrong. Including me. I would get irrational and blame it on Roger Goodell. Dick Morris would predict the Terminator winning the governorship of New Jersey. Andrew Sullivan would declare the Terminator a consequence of climate change. We'd fuck it all up.
Email of the week time!
Ryan:
A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I bought tickets to see the Colts play the Jets at the Meadowlands. I am head over heels in love with Andrew Luck and a huge Colts fan so I was very excited to see him play in person. Much to my relief, a guy sitting behind me was wearing a Dwight Freeney jersey. In a stadium full of 70,000 variations of The Situation, this was a huge relief to me. Turned out that he was the single worst fan in the world.
When I first sat down, I gave him a nod and showed off my Colts shirt. He instantly says, "Oh, I ain't a fan of these losers. I just like my boy Freeney. I'm a Broncos fan."
He then explains to me that he is going to be a Broncos fan for the next five years and then jump back to the Colts after Peyton Manning retires. Hmm, by my calculations, that puts him right on track for Andrew Luck superstardom and (hopefully) championship levels. THAT'S NOT ALLOWED.
He then proceeded to say over and over, "Oh, Peyton makes that throw." or "That ain't my QB." anytime Luck threw an incompletion. Of course, the Colts lost. As this guy is leaving, he says, "Peyton would never lose a game like that." Oh yeah, because Peyton never lost playoff games by 41 points, or threw crippling interceptions to lose the Super Bowl. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
Permission to anoint Indianapolis Colts fans as the worst fanbase in football based on this one man.
Permission granted. I know most Colts fans are not like this, but fuck that guy. He's the worst.