Greg:
What are the worst snobs? We have wine snobs, beers snobs, food snobs, car snobs, etc. I think far and away wine snob is #1 on any list. Those people are pricks. However, an underrated snob is the steak snob. Never cook a steak past medium rare. Steak sauce is a sin. Ugh, shut up STEAK SNOB!
But you really shouldn't cook a steak past medium rare!
Anyway, the answer is coffee snobs. While beer snobs and music snobs are annoying and punchable, coffee snobs are apt to impede your progress on a daily basis. All you wanted was a hot chocolate for your kid. But to get it, you have to wait for fucking Peter King ahead of you to order his Triple Neapolitan latte with two shots of espresso. But that harsh blend that's imported from Jamaica! Only the French roast, please. And a packet and HALF of sugar. Oh, and extra foam! Get some extra frothy santorum on top of that drink please!
Starbucks has institutionalized and normalized coffee snobbery, so that EVERY customer who walks in has to have the most specific order humanly possible. God forbid they just order whatever everyone else orders. No, no, they have to have their own signature way of drinking their stupid fucking coffee. Hence, you wait nine hours in line.
Food snobs come in second because they will force you to eat dinner at some asshole place in Williamsburg that doesn't take credit cards (if your restaurant doesn't take credit cards, you can go fucking die), forces you to sit at a communal picnic table with 12 other horrible people, and has a 36-hour wait because they don't take reservations. None of that is worth experiencing their signature octopus ramen.
Brandon:
Yesterday, I opened my car door and bicycle guy ran right into it. Don't worry HE'S FINE. My question is where does Guy-on-bike belong?
In HELL, that's where. I wish death upon all bikers whenever I'm in my car, but I know that's unreasonable. I know that, if there's no designated bike lane or bike path parallel to the road, a biker has little choice but to hug the shoulder of the road and hope against hope that there's enough room for a cement truck to pass by without squashing them like a fucking grape. I can't even imagine how nerve-wracking that must be. Sometimes, when I'm walking down the sidewalk of a busy street, a bus will come roaring by and I become CONVINCED that the driver will decide, on the spot, to swerve to the right and obliterate me. I don't trust bus drivers because they're horrible people who think they can cut in anywhere because they have a bus and you don't.
Anyway, anytime I park along a busy street and open my door into the street, I immediately picture a) a biker doing a face plant into it, or b) some asshole in an IRoc blowing the door off its hinges. There's usually plenty of room for you to crack open your door when you're parked along the side of a street, but that doesn't stop me from making sure the coast is absolutely clear so that Maniac Cabbie doesn't come and ruin my shit, or some fuckheaded bike messenger doesn't bash into me and mutilate my legs in his stupid bike wheels. Bike messengers are the worst.
Anon:
My old boss just did the Ironman. He wanted to commemorate that achievement by getting a tattoo. He had the graphic designer in the office make a sketch of what the tattoo would look like. His intention was to use the letters "Fe" — the symbol for the element "Iron"—inside the male symbol.
Should somebody tell him he got a tattoo everyone's going to read as "female" and not "Ironman," or should they all just keep quiet about it?
Why wouldn't he just put the word IRON in the center of it? Putting the periodic table symbol inside of it (not to mention, along with tin, one of the most misleading periodic table symbols out there) is too clever by half. Your boss is a dipshit. By all means, say nothing and let him etch a talisman of his own pretension on his skin.
Also, I always get the symbols for male and female confused, and I don't think I'm alone there. I blame Prince for conflating both symbols for his old Artist persona. It really muddled things. Even when I try to remember that the arrow sticking out symbolizes an erect penis, I forget. God forbid your boss remain quietly satisfied with his achievement without making his own body into a trophy. ACT LIKE YOU'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE, GLORY BOY.
Christian:
Would you rather be married to Kim Kardashian for the rest of your life or be her and Kanye's demon spawn child?
You don't wanna be the kid, because that kid is screwed. His mom and dad will almost certainly break up, and will only hang out with him when there's a camera around. And he'll grow up to be a spoiled, stupid little shit who earns the collective resentment of the entire world when he stars in a re-remake of The Karate Kid. Then he'll get hooked on coke and die. That's North West's future. (CORRECTION: North is a girl. I stand by my predictions.)
If you're married to Kim forever, you can just bleed her bank account dry and cheat on her all the time. You could even find a mistress, start a family with HER, and settle into a life of domestic bliss without bothering to initiate a divorce. That's far preferable to growing up in a lavishly broken home.
Drew:
If you could use the Force, how long would it take to make a billion dollars? I think I could do it in 3 months.
Three months? No way. We're talking about EARNING a billion dollars off of your superpower, not stealing it. Obviously, you could use the Dark Side of the Force to choke a security guard at Fort Knoz and make off with ALL OF TEH GOLDZ. But that's different from taking your power and making a career out of it. You need a business plan. Are you gonna make your money through advertising (every time you use the Force, you make sure to wear a branded Snapple t-shirt)? Are you gonna make your money strictly through doing a Vegas act? That kind of thing takes time to get up and running. Will you make your money through military contracts, flying off to Afghanistan and erecting bridges with a wave of your hand? Again, that requires time for you to navigate the legislative process and have your lawyer make sure you get what's coming to you.
And don't forget, George Lucas will SUE YOU for having the Force. Or, at the very least, he'll sue you for referring to it as the Force. You'll have to slap some generic name on it, like THE BIG SUPERPOWER, or something equally lame. How badly will that hurt your brand appeal? Remember: lawyers ruin everything, so don't expect your get-rich-quick schemes with The Force to come to fruition right away. I say you could make your billion with two years, which is just enough time for the government to arrest you, take you to their secret naval base, and dissect you.
Bert:
Why don't burrito places have bacon as an option on their menu? What could possibly be wrong with putting the greatest food on earth on your burrito?
As someone who has railed against In-N-Out for not offering baconburgers, I see your point. But come on, do you really NEED bacon in your burrito? YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR IN YOUR BACON LUST. You've already got carnitas, sour cream, cheese, and guacamole in there. It's not as if you need one more obscenely rich ingredient. You'll overpower the flavor profiles, you will! Aaron Sanchez says that betrays the heritage of the dish!
Then again, offering the choice to consumers seems like the American thing to do. If someone offered to sprinkle bacon bits on my nachos, I would kiss them on the mouth.
Josh:
Today I had to give a dull technical presentation at a lunch meeting for lawyers. I brought my PowerPoint presentation with me on a flash drive to load on their computer. Is there anything better than driving around with a flash drive in your pocket? It's so easy to pretend that you are carrying the launch codes with you, and the KGB and Taliban are battling each other to try to be the first to kill me before I can deliver the coded message to Central Command. Which of course is much more fun than giving a talk on salinity issues in a river system to some bored lawyers who are just there for the free pizza.
I think that the entire flash drive industry stays afloat thanks to that very idea. It's just sexier than using Dropbox for everything.
I also think briefcase manufacturers stay in business for this reason. There's no logical reason to ever carry a briefcase. They're expensive, heavy, and you can't sling them over your shoulder. But you CAN treat a briefcase like an attaché case that contains folders marked CONFIDENTIAL that disclose the location and alias of every single American double agent on the NOC list. THE WHILE MISSION COULD BE COMPROMISED IF YOU LET THIS BRIEFCASE FALL INTO THE WRONG HANDS. Feels good to wrap your hand around the handle of it, doesn't it? Feels like power!
Paul:
What would be a harder fight to the death with no weapons: ten 10-year-olds or a hundred 100-year-olds? It's gotta be the 10-year-olds, right? More of a will to live? But what about grandpa strength? Does it count at that age?
So the 100-year-olds can't use their canes? I dunno man, taking on a hundred of anything is pretty rough. Ever go to a party that had 100 people? It's a LOT of people. You would have to stand your ground and fight off wave after wave of geezers to make sure they didn't bring you down. Because if they can bring you down, they can pile on and essentially suffocate you. That seems like a terrible fate: to be suffocated in nothing but old man smell. What if their feet touched you? OH GOD SO GROSS.
Ten-year-olds are relatively strong, but still weak enough where you can be like, "Okay, you can wrestle me to the gr... JUST KIDDING DAD STRENGTH BITCH." But 10 of them makes it a bit dicey because you'd have to fend off some of the kids jumping on you from behind and biting—yes BITING—you. Kids know how to bite and pull leg hair, AND they don't tire easily.
I'll probably regret this, but I say the 10-year-olds would be the harder fight. I say this because fighting with my seven-year-old is downright exhausting, and I don't even get the satisfaction of finishing her off for good.
Kevin:
As a 24-year-old is it acceptable for me to sit around at home on my day off and drink? I'm not talking about getting completely hammered to the point that I can barely walk, but at least having a few drinks during the day. Is this bad? Should I feel like an alcoholic for wanting to have a drink at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon? Is there an acceptable time to start drinking on a weekday?
If it's a day off from work, you should treat it as any standard weekend day. That also means that you get to treat the night before like any standard Friday or Saturday night, and the you get to treat the night before THAT like any standard Thursday night.
So for example, let's say you have next Wednesday off from work, because your boss has to grade standardized tests or something. That Tuesday night, you get to binge drink like an old British actor. And the Monday night before that, you ALSO get to drink like an old British actor because the next day is Fridayish, and NO ONE should expect you to be productive on a TuesFriday, right? That would be crazy.
That was always my mentality as a single person. Also, the fact that you got a hypothetical Wednesday off means that it's a special occasion, which means you should engage in HOLIDAY DRINKING RULES. That means drinking even more than if it was a standard weekend day. I say you should wake up, begin drinking, put on old Thanksgiving NFL games, and eat a turkey by yourself.
But don't drink at work the next morning. That would TOTALLY make you a weirdo alkie.
By the way, there are few things better than perfectly executed bout of daytime drinking. You know the kind I'm talking about. You go out to lunch, or to the beach, and you have a few beers and it makes you all warm and goofy-feeling, and you just carry it all the way through to cocktail hour with NO break. Not even a nap. Sometimes you pull that off and it's magical. Other times, you go out drinking at a bar on an NFL Sunday and contemplate suicide during the 4:00 Chargers-Raiders game.
HALFTIME!
Kyle:
I was very pleased upon leaving the coffee shop today when a girl I'd had a small conversation with while waiting for my drink handed me a piece of paper and told me to call her sometime.
I took the paper, thanked her and walked out of the coffee shop like I just slayed a dragon and was ready to bed every virgin in barbarianville. It wasn't until I got to my car that I noticed she forgot to write her number on the paper—it just said to call or text her some time for a drink.
I didn't want to go back in for fear of seeming desperate or embarrassing her, but now all I've got is this fucking useless piece of paper with only her common-ass first name on it. I'm planning on frequenting the coffee shop in hopes that I can see her again and play it off rather smoothly, but I fear my terrible decision making at the point of realizing there was no number doomed me.
Oh God, that's devastating. And the terrible thing about it is that you'll almost certainly never see her again. That's how it works. It's like a really bad perfume ad where two hot people see each other on subways cars going in different directions. Between now and the next time you go to that coffee shop, she'll have taken a job in Seattle, packed her things, and vanished into thin air. You NEVER get a chance to make up for it, which is complete bullshit.
Of course, maybe she didn't "forget" her number at all. Maybe she purposely omitted it so that she would have time to flee town before you put all the pieces together, which is even more devastating. I don't think women understand just how much it haunts men when they blow it with a woman. If you're a woman and you do something equally stupid when flirting with a boy barista, you get ENDLESS CHANCES to make up for it. Just show up to the coffee shop the next day, bat your eyelashes, ask his bosses for his number, and he'll happily dial you back. Men aren't like, "Well, she had that one chance but she handled it so poorly I definitely don't want to see her naked now!" That's never happened.
But if you fumble once... just once... in front of a girl you like, it's over. They won't even explain to you what you did wrong. They just disappear. One time, I met this girl and I really liked her. She said she'd go on a date with me, so I packed a picnic (I thought this was romantic) and bought her a single red rose (OH GOD SO CREEPY) and showed up at her door. And the second she saw all that shit, she grabbed a friend to come with and that was it. No going back. No RESET button on that particular video game. It's just you and a lifetime of regret after that. IF ONLY I HAD LEFT OUT THE ROSE. FUCK.
Jack:
I just watched a Biggie video and it occurred to me: Is Biggie the coolest fat person in history? Who else was both fat and cool? Chris Farley? Babe Ruth?
I think Ruth is probably #1, unless you count John Belushi as fat. I don't think he was fat enough to be considered obese the way Chris Farley was. To be a cool fat person, you usually have to be funny or rich, preferably the latter. Because funny fat people often make fun of their own obesity, which makes them sadder than some very serious, confident fat person. You also have to be male, because Americans never let women get away with being porky. I think the list of coolest American fat people would go:
- Babe Ruth
- Charles Barkley
- Notorious B.I.G.
- James Gandolfini
- John Goodman
- Sam Kinison
- Rick Ross
- John Candy
- Orson Welles
Those are all cool people. But as rich and as cool as Rick Ross is, and as much as women love a man who's rich and powerful, I promise you that every groupie he's bedded has had that moment where she's lifting up his FUPA to find his dick and is thinking to herself, "Ugh, this guy's fucking fat and gross. I should have just stayed home and ordered takeout."
Anon:
A friend of mine got engaged recently. He asked the girl, gave the ring, all that.
A few weeks later, she gave HIM a ring. He posted said engagement ring on Facebook and everything. It's just a plain wedding band, essentially. He said it would probably just become his wedding band once they got married (ie, he's not going to wear TWO rings like a woman traditionally would).
I guess the question is... what the fuck?
I have no idea. Apparently, there are other examples of this. I look forward to the inevitable New York Times style section piece declaring this a full blown trend because someone at the Times knows a guy who pulled this shit.
Needless to say, this is idiotic. Never do this. We're supposed to be moving away from this kind of materialistic love declaration, not closer to it. The last thing I want is to give the people at Jared the satisfaction of establishing a new mandatory jewelry purchase. FUCK THEM. Besides, an engagement ring on a man* looks stupid. It's all right for the genders to occasionally adhere to their traditional roles.
(*This question made me wonder if gay men rock engagement rings, and the answer seems to be up in the air. Some gay couples both wear them. Some wear nothing. Being the caveman that I am, I assume there are some gay couples where the "bride" wears one but the power top doesn't. Do not tell the powers at BIG GAY that I have this stereotype in my head.)
Netti:
How many times in your life do you think you have walked past a car with a dead person in it?
Do hearses and ambulances count, or are we strictly talking about windowless vans that clearly have a corpse stashed in the back?
A lot of it depends on where you live. If you live on the mean streets of Montgomery County, as I do, you're probably not passing by a corpse van very often, if ever. But if you live in West Palm Beach? DAILY.
By the way, any time I pass by an ambulance that has its sirens flashing but not making any noise, I immediately point it out. OMG DEAD BODY DEAD BODY NO AUDIBLE SIREN MEANS THE GUY IS DEAD, RIGHT? I don't have a very firm handle on ambulance siren protocol. That ambulance was probably just rushing to get some Arby's.
Steve:
Let's say that, for an entire season, a player somehow faced the exact same pitcher for every at bat. Like 600 at bats, same pitcher. Let's say it's a league-average batter and a league-average starter. Would that hitter get a huge advantage as the season went on? Would the pitcher? Would neither get an advantage, and things would pretty much work out normally?
You would have to space out the at-bats, otherwise the pitcher is pitching every day, breaking down, and eventually getting destroyed. Let's simply assume that this pitcher still gets five days rest, or that he's magically impervious to wear and tear, so that he's on equal footing with the batter for all 600 at-bats. My guess is that, after about 200 at-bats, you would have a large enough sample size where the batting average would remain stable for the remaining 400 at bats. Some days, the pitcher will have a leg up. Some days, the batter will have the pitcher's number. They would ebb and flow just as they would against standard competition. The only wrinkle is that, at the end of the season, THEY WILL FALL IN LOVE.
Danny:
What's the largest amount of money someone's been paid for sex? Some Saudi prince's salaried girlfriend doesn't count. This is just one lump sum for one round of penising.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, some escorts at the Cannes Film Festival made over $40,000 a night. But that figure would pale in comparison to a rumored escort service called Agente Provocateur, which allegedly charges upwards of $1.5 million a night. That sounds insane to me. I can't imagine there's a justifiable difference between a $40,000 hooker or a $1.5 million hooker. Either way, you're gonna be taken care of. Agente Provocateur probably lets you MURDER your escort as part of the fee or something. I don't know why anyone would pay that huge of a markup otherwise. Once you go past five figures, I feel like it's diminishing returns. You gotta be REALLY horny to part with that much cash for a single lay.
I'm sure there is probably an actress or a model or a singer who has taken millions in exchange for spending a night in bed with some prince or sultan. Remember, these are the kind of people who take appearance fees from fucking dictators. They're much less dignified than they pretend to be. Hilary Swank probably let Qaddafi feel her up for a few grand.
Email of the week time!
Jeff:
A guy I went to high school with, who was a pretty talented baseball player and even went on to play D-3 ball in college, likes to post "game summaries" (his words) on Facebook detailing his stats from his most recent church league softball game. He'll say something like, "Hit another bomb tonight! Went 3-4 and got the W!" Literally after every game. The worst part is, he's being completely serious and actually thinks people care. Granted, I don't care about 99% of the things people have to say on my Facebook news feed, but I can't help but cringe whenever I see this former star athlete trying to relive his glory days by bragging about hitting bombs in slow pitch, probably off of a 58-year-old pastor from a rival church (are rival churches a thing?). Anyway, am I right to think that he's crossing the line of things you should broadcast to your "friends" (who the hell has 1300 friends?), or am I just jealous that he's making a name for himself in the Christian softball community while I'm stuck in law school?
No, fuck him.
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. You can also buy Drew's book, Someone Could Get Hurt, through his homepage.