Your letters:
Dave:
My wife wants you to write something about what the world should do with all those dumb yellow bracelets now.
There's gotta be one guy still wearing them. IT'S STILL REAL TO HIM, DAMMIT. I'm sure there are any number of people out there who remain fans of Lance Armstrong because he "inspired" them or a loved one to beat cancer. I can't argue with that, really. If you think Lance's story somehow helped put your melanoma into remission, then maybe it did. Maybe it had some kind of psychosomatic effect on you that caused your immune system to kick the cancer's ass. Or maybe you met Lance while you were in the hospital and he gave you a cookie and you don't want the memory tarnished. That's all reasonable. But if you're just some random, cancer-free asshole who still likes Lance Armstrong just because, then you should be thrown down a waterfall.
Anyway, I think that anyone who bought a Livestrong bracelet should be allowed to shoot it at Lance's surviving nut, rubber band-style.
Gordon:
What would happen if a team tied every game? Say you finish 0-0-16. Are you considered the same as an 8-8 team? Would your coach get fired? I say he has to get fired because he played in 16 winnable games and didn't win a single one of them.
More realistically, say you finish 10-2-4. Would you make the playoffs over an 11-5 team? Your winning percentage would be better but you would have less wins.
I believe winning percentage trumps all. In the case of an 0-0-16 team, that means a winning percentage of .500 because you "won" half a game every week (your coach, Lovie Smith, would be sure to emphasize the half-winning part). You're essentially the same as an 8-8 team, only far more baffling. I think everyone on that team would eventually start trying to purposely lose games at around the eighth consecutive tie. That many ties in a row would just destroy your psyche. You can't spend two straight months stuck in this bizarre sports limbo where you don't get to experience the joy of winning or the sadness of losing. YOU WOULD HAVE TO CUT YOURSELF JUST TO FEEL SOMETHING.
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.
Even though losing sucks, I think plenty of athletes revel in their hatred of losing. It's cathartic, in a way, to lose a game and cry your eyes out in the locker room, kicking over the occasional trash can, getting bro-hugs from your teammates. There's an emotional release in losing just as there is in winning, which is why people keep playing sports even though they know there's a chance they won't be on the winning end of things. You can take motivation from losing. You can take memories from it. You can't really do that with a tie. The game just ends. I think that's why a lot of Americans shit on soccer for having so many ties. To me, it feels like a waste to play an entire game and not have a resolution, even if that resolution is the result of an arbitrary set of penalty kicks. I like closure, which is why every tie soccer game feels like it was written by David Chase. "Oh, did you want scoring? We're not THAT kind of show, jackoff."
In 1992, Michigan had a bizarre season in which the football team went 9-0-3. They ended up winning the Rose Bowl that season. I remember: It was a weird season. No one was impressed that Michigan went unbeaten that year. They finished the year ranked fifth because where else are you supposed to rank a team that couldn't beat Illinois?
Jim:
Took this picture while driving in the HOV3 lanes in Virginia a few weeks back. I know there used (or still may be) a law in VA where you could drive in the HOV lanes if you have a "Hybrid" vehicle regardless of how many folks you are riding. Seems like this dude meets the qualifications; gotta give credit where credits due.
He found the loophole!
/runs out and buys spray paint
By the way, Virginia just opened up a series of high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway. You can get on these express lanes in a single-occupancy car if you're willing to pay an extra toll. Needless to say, I now refer to these as the GLORY BOY lanes.
Dave:
Do you think Larry Fitzgerald watches Anquan Boldin making plays in the championship game the same way that Indian (fake Indian) looked at pollution in the 70's with a tear rolling down his cheek? I do.
Yeah, but no one made him stay in Arizona. He signed that contract of his own free will. You stick around Arizona that long, and you're bound to regret it. There's NOTHING there.
Tim:
What if everyone filled out NFL schedules and predicted the winner of each game before the season, and was rewarded points for each pick (like the NCAA tourney)? Would there be even more betting? Would anyone EVER get an entire season correct?
Listen, filling out a tourney bracket is exhaustion enough, especially when you usually fill out multiple ones like I do. Should I put Dayton in the second round twice? Maybe I should mix it up. But I don't really think Mississippi can beat them. GOD THIS IS FUCKING HARD. The idea of filling out 268 NFL games before the season and then sitting there for 21 weeks watching them go to shit is not appealing. Because you'd never win it, you know. It would be like a suicide pool, only with longer odds. Some random asscunt in the ESPN pool would get 80 percent of his picks right and you would wish horrible shit upon him. I hate people who win big contests who are not me—especially NCAA pool winners and Powerball winners.
By the way, I'm the sort of person that still enjoys filling out an NCAA bracket by hand. It's my one dipshit retro hipster weakness. I fill out the bracket, fold it up, and keep those picks in my back pocket for three weeks. By the end, the poor sheet is stained with sweat and cum and the creases are blue from blue jean lint. There are probably 800 different flu pathogens on the paper. Really looking forward to the tourney this year, guys!
Paul:
Let's say that wearing adult diapers to bed became a social norm. How long do you think it would take a normal person, aged 25 to 35, to train themselves back into a state where they are able to piss themselves every night without waking up, much like a baby would?
Well, it usually take two to three years to potty train a kid (five or six if you're a hippie parent). So I figure the reverse of that would take equally as long. That was the thing that fascinated me about toilet-training my kids: I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when the kids went from automatically pissing while sleeping to having the urge to piss awaken them. I don't know why or how that kicks in, all I know is that it never happens soon enough.
Anyway, you would not want to sleep with a diaper on. So many rashes. Your life would become one eternal bout of jock itch. Everyone who went down on you would complain about the smell of zinc oxide.
Sam:
Football—even when played within the rules, without steroids and not for bounties—is bad for you. So is smoking. And drinking. Which is why we tax the latter things, partly as a disincentive but also to add to the public coffers to offset the added cost to the public health system. It's the argument used by the soda tax folk. In this vein, is a Football Tax warranted?
YOU FUCKING COMMUNIST.
By the way, if you'd like to read something awful today, I urge you to check out Les Carpenter of Yahoo acting as Roger Goodell's PR rep in advance of the Super Bowl:
Goodell would not speak for this story. "He does not want to contribute to taking the focus off the game," said league spokesman Greg Aiello.
I know! He's too busy doing push-ups while attached to a turbine to help power homes blacked out by Katrina! YOU OWE YOUR CITY TO THIS MAN, NEW ORLEANS.
Adam:
What if you could Extra Lives in real life? What if, after you did something extremely helpful, or heroic, you earned an extra life? Say, foiling a robbery or sticking up for an underdog and winning the fight. Would the world be a better place? Would people try to do crazy shit to level up, killing themselves earlier than they would have died otherwise? I think chaos would ensue.
I assume that having an Extra Life means you automatically spring back to full health whenever you're killed by something: a car crash, AIDS, a fatal stabbing, etc. The rules would probably get muddled if you were 90 years old and dying of natural causes, but we can ignore that for now because dealing with it is too annoying.
By handing out extra lives for good deeds, you'd be incentivizing good behavior. Sounds okay. Of course, someone like me would then take that extra life and use it to experience the thrill of doing something dangerous and horrible. For example: I've always wanted to be a heroin addict. I can't do that with just one life. That would be idiotic. Ah, but if I had an EXTRA LIFE that guaranteed that I sprang back to life as a non-addict the second I OD'd? MOAR NEEDLES PLEEZ. I'd try that shit in a heartbeat. With a surplus of extra lives, I would jump off tall buildings, be shot to death by cops, and commit virtually every suicide that Bill Murray attempts in Groundhog Day. If I timed everything right, I could write LIFE OVER in my notebook just before the toaster falls in my bathtub. Life would become destabilized. Everyone would go back and forth between these insanely good deeds to get extra lives and extremely stupid ideas to exhaust them. We'd all give each other AIDS 50 times over. Babies would undo their OWN abortions. All of us would become bipolar. I'm all for it.
Especially if we include real-life video game powerups as well. Oh, to be able to double in size and start shooting fireballs like Super Mario. Or to have my own personal Temple Run coin magnet. ALL THE WORLD'S SPARE CHANGE WOULD BE MINE. I would CRUSH vending machines after that.
Matt:
Do you think there are any pro athletes who aren't playing the sport they would actually be better at than the one they currently play?
I always get upset when I find out that someone like Allen Iverson was really good at football and chose a different sport instead. I don't like it when talented people defect to a rival sport, especially any athlete that chooses baseball over football (NOTE: This does not apply to Drew Henson, who sucked at everything). I mean, I know WHY they choose it. It's a no-brainer: baseball pays better and you don't get hit every five seconds (although I find staring down fastballs far more terrifying than being hit by linebackers). But I still get pissed anyway. YOU CHOSE THE LAMER SPORT.
Anyway, I'm sure there are any number of low-rent NBA power forwards who would have been better off playing tight end, and any number of NFL scrubs that probably would have been better off playing baseball. You always hear about great athletes who decide to marginalize themselves because they chose the sport they loved over the sport they were better at. Those athletes piss me off, trying to have their cake and eat it too. You will play shooting guard and you will LIKE it.
HALFTIME!
William:
Do you think at any point in your life (even for a split second) you were the drunkest person in the world? Or is there always a former Soviet soldier there to block you?
The latter. Russia is a cold, dark, terrible place where happiness is for the weak. Those people drink 80 bottles of Stoli every night after a hard day of selling their daughters into the sex trade, so you aren't beating them. There's a line between poser alcoholics like everyone from Southie (OW-AH ALCOHAWLISM IS TOUGHAH THAN YOUR-AH ALCOHAWLISM!) and REAL alcoholics: the kind of people that wake up and drink all the Listerine. And don't forget about prison folk, and third world rebel soldiers who drink a homemade mix of ammonia and gun powder. It's hard to be drunker at any given moment than people like that.
Patrick:
Which current player's death would garner the most outpouring of grief around the country? The more I think about it, the answer is Tebow, isn't it? Dammit.
I think it would be RG3. I mean, people practically sat shiva for his knee, and that was just one knee. If ALL of him died, then they'd probably have him lying in state at the National Cathedral. Really looking forward to this happening next season, when Mike Shanahan asks RG3 to jump out of a moving team bus and RG3 agrees to it because he's a fucking WARRIOR.
The circumstances matter, of course. If RG3 were to die of, I dunno, LEUKEMIA, that would be very sad (and somewhat suspect). But if he died while stabbing a nun, and the nun turned the tables on him and speared him in the heart with a crucifix? Not quite as sad.
Oh, and smallest outpouring of grief? Ray Lewis. Only CBS producers would mourn.
David:
I was at a bar last night and this 23ish year old girl was with a like 55-year old guy. Old man goes to the bathroom and this rather drunk young dude appears. He had been playing in the band at the bar and he goes up to the girl, clearly knows her, and kisses her on the mouth.
Old guy comes back from the bathroom, stands next to them and the young guy kisses the girl on the mouth in front of the old man, says bye to the girl, then the two guys have an awkward goodbye interaction which I couldn't hear from my seat. The old man then sits down and starts making out with the girl.
Can you explain what I saw?
An ambitious hooker? Any time I saw a really old guy with a young woman, I assume it's a hooker. It's reassuring that way, frankly. I don't want to think this was some kind of voluntary love affair.
I went to dinner with my parents a few years ago and we spotted a gross old man and a hooker eating sushi just a couple of tables away. The old man wore a suit. The hooker had a black dress that barely covered her ass and clear heels. And when my parents saw this, they didn't shut the fuck up about for the whole meal. I think that's a hooker, Drew. Are they coming from the hotel or going to it? What do you think he paid for a hooker like that? And my parents talk loud as shit, so I know damn well the john heard it. I feel terrible that my parents ruined the magic.
Dan:
Are we going to reach a point in this country where pets are given more normal names than human children? Are we already there?
We're there. You wouldn't name your dog Sookie or Eithne.
Pat:
What is the appropriate amount of time to grieve the death of a family member or close friend before you can masturbate again?
Are you masturbating TO the family member? If not, the answer is half a day. If so, the answer is PRISON.
Mike:
Do you think that the existence of sex and the sexual urge have collectively generated more happiness or misery for mankind? Ignore for a moment all joy/pain related to child-raising, and the fact that sex is how we all got here and have the opportunity to experience misery and joy at all.
I'm talking about the great things about sex itself: all the good feelings we have during it; the happiness we feel when daydreaming about it, reminiscing about it, looking forward to it, etc. All of that stacked up against the sadness anyone has ever felt over sex they wished they were having, but weren't; resentment of others who are having sex when we're not; misery caused by infidelity, jealousy, sex-related acts of violence, etc.
Which pile would be bigger, if measured from the beginning of humanity? I say misery.
It's misery. Rape alone puts misery over the top. Have many people have been raped in history? A billion? More? God, it's so depressing. Your post-coital glow after fingering your classmate for the first time doesn't begin to make up for the pain and suffering caused by a billion goddamn rapes. WHAT KIND OF GOD ALLOWS FOR SOMETHING SO WONDERFUL TO BE TURNED SO UGLY?! There could have been less invasive methods of procreation. High-fiving for instance. No one would be scarred for life from an unwanted high five.
Adam:
You know when you are watching a football game on TV, and there is a flag on the play, but you don't know if it's on the offense or defense? How exciting is it to watch the officials huddling up, and you're waiting to see if a player on your team is the first to start clapping, indicating the penalty is on the other team? Such a natural high...
Yeah, but it's usually NEVER on the other team. I'm usually full of dread when that happens, especially when the announcer says, "looks to be in the area of holding." That is the WORST. You know that 57-yard bomb the wideout caught with his toes is coming all way back because Dumbfuck McAsshole got too handsy with a defensive end.
There are some rare moments when both you and the announcers are absolutely certain that the penalty is on your team, when the ref will pull a shocker and say it's on the other team. I always jump up and down and pump my fist like a jackass when that happens. ENCROACHMENT! BOOOOOOOOOOSH!
James:
Whenever I watch a movie like Bond or Bourne, there is about a 15-20 minute period where I walk with more purpose, I talk with more conviction, and I am hyper-aware of my surroundings. If I am driving a car, it's two hands on the wheel, a la Ryan Gosling in Drive.
I just saw Skyfall, and as I reached for my umbrella, I realized the guy next to me took my nice umbrella, and I was left with the shitty two-dollar black ones that fall apart in the face of 2 mph wind.
By the time I realized what had happened, he was out of sight. With my post-action movie high in full effect, it was go time. Darted to the bathroom: not there. Ran down the escalator (contemplated sliding down the greased up metal part), not in the lobby. Opened the exit doors, dramatically looked both ways, and there he was, walking smugly down the street with his new sturdy umbrella. So I ran him down, tapped him on the back, and channeled my Daniel Craig as best as I could: "Hey, I think you took the wrong umbrella."
END SCENE
That was solid reconnaissance work there, good sir.
This is why, if I'm ever dressed in a suit and I have to get somewhere quickly, I break into a run for roughly ten yards before collapsing with exhausting. Ever sprint while wearing a suit? It's AWESOME. And it's even better if you're wearing a tux. You feel like you're chasing down six Albanian sleeper agents. If there's a phone in my inside pocket, I like to reach in and pretend it's a cigarette case that shoots a high-powered laser beam. You are fucking TOAST, Boris.
It's not just action movies that can have this kind of effect. Any time I watched The Sopranos, I would always end up cursing more than I usually do. "Who the fucks put these cookies in the fuckin' trash?" I'll affect any cool character's identity because I have no decent identity of my own. I'M YO HUCKLEBERRY. CHAOS IS FAIR.
Robin:
What would it be like if there were no field goal net? What if the ball could just fly into the crowd?
Attendance at Jaguar games would at least double.
Neel:
This is the cover of a trade journal popular in the food industry. Think I have an idea what the number one "lip-smacking" product is...
Who knew trade pubs could be so racy? Remind me to pick up an issue of Toner Illustrated later today.
Tim:
Is it weird that there hasn't been an assassination of a star athlete by a fan of a rival team?
SO weird.
Seriously though, it is heartwarming that people don't try to openly cripple rival players more often. Even Alabama fans, who are all insane, don't go that far. They assassinate TREES, but not people. I think that's an impressive display of restraint. We should be lauding Harvey Updyke for having the courage to NOT murder Cam Newton. I bet it wasn't easy for him.
Email of the week!
Rex:
My office building was doing a "tenant appreciation" thing this morning, with coffee, juice and all kinds of different pastries available in the lobby for as long as it took all us to take advantage of the free food.
I got a small bear claw and put it on one of those paper plates that's about 5 inches across. I went to wait for the elevator and, since I was afraid I might starve while waiting the minute or two it would take for a car to show up and lift me to the 13th floor, I devoured the bear claw right there. The elevator then opened up.
This left me with this plate that was basically unused...I don't think the bear claw was on it for more than a minute. And now I'm wondering what to do with the plate. I'm not a recycling fiend/fanatic, but the thing was hardly used and I feel like I'd be wasting it if I just threw it away. It's not really good for much...Too small for a full meal, yet barely big enough for the bear claw. Should I keep it in case some food comes around that might fit on it, or just chuck it in the trash?
Trash. The poor plate never got to fulfill its potential.
At cocktail parties and wedding, I am where plates and napkins go to die. I know I need a small plate to accommodate the six bacon-wrapped scallops I just took. But once those are eaten? FUCK YOU, PLATE. These hands need to be free.
Image by Jim Cooke