Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, while you’re at it. Today, we’re talking about farmers markets, vibrators, dogs in mild peril, and more.
Your letters:
Nick:
I’m terrified of the following scenario: The Trump admin, with zero due process, declares Zohran Mamdani denaturalized. Then they decide that he’s said something anti-American or whatever, and ICE agents whisk him off to the Louisiana gulag. Then they deport him, and the Supreme Court says it’s fine. I don’t think I have to explain why the Democratic Party would offer no resistance to this. They’re going to do this, right? And when they do, NYC will flip its shit and the Marines will be sent in, and we’ve got a full-blown Tiananmen Square situation. I know this isn’t a fun question! I know! Tell me I’m being dramatic and overreacting, please!
That doesn’t sound like an overreaction. In fact, that was pretty much a chalk take the moment that Mamdani trounced Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for NYC mayor a week ago. Whenever a talented minority candidate beats out some establishment prick, the establishment swears vengeance. It happened with AOC and all of her Squad colleagues, so of course Mamdani was going to get the exact same treatment, from both Republicans AND from Democrats.
One thing that this year had made crystal clear is that Democrat party leaders are willing accomplices in the undoing of this country. Calling Chuck Schumer spineless is doing him a favor. He WANTS to be a coward. He WANTS to cave on every bill, every judicial appointment, every bullshit executive order. He’s bought and paid for to be that ineffective. Politics don’t matter to the tippity top of that party as much as tenure does, which means all of those fuckers need to be defeated nearly as badly as Republicans do.
This means that when a dude like Mamdani comes along and garners a significant following, the bad guys suddenly feel threatened. They fear for their phony baloney jobs, and consequently lash out with whatever nonsense they can hurl at the new guy. So if Trump sends his goons after Mamdani, it wouldn’t be all that shocking. It also wouldn’t be shocking if Hakeem Jeffries responded with his choicest shrug. That’s not me being dramatic. That’s me knowing my homeland all too well.
While I’m on the subject of Mamdani, I got one other thing to say. The reason Mamdani won over New York voters was because he talks like a normal, caring person who espoused policies that normal, caring people like. I can’t believe how rare it is for public figures to talk normal and want normal things, but virtually none of them do. Tim Walz was normal for roughly three weeks after he was roped into the 2024 campaign, and then his superiors quickly had his tongue cut out and his idea bag snatched away. He and an uninspiring Kamala Harris then lost in a rout to the Freak Party.
This isn’t just a political problem. CEOs never talk normal. News anchors never talk normal. Athletes putting out a press release never talk normal. Shams Charania certainly never talks normal. Everyday citizens on social media never talk normal. Thanks to the internet forcing everyone to merge their private selves with their public personae, Americans have been conditioned into the lamest possible form of doublespeak. Everyone is afraid to talk normal because they fear being attacked for it, or they wanna front like they’re the smartest, bravest people the internet has ever seen. I swear sometimes I feel like the only person left who doesn’t get their PhD from Instagram Reels.
As a result of this, normal speech, and the normal ideas that accompany them, end up treated as monstrous. That’s why this scene from Severance has stuck me with me all year long. I just want people to be people again, and it pains me that the Trumps and Cuomos of this world are standing in the way of that.
Barry:
Farmers markets: scam or not, Drew!?
Scam. A farm stand, the kind you see along the side of a country highway marked only by a cardboard sign that says PEACHES, is probably legit. But farmers markets have always been a lie. Country Joe up in the sticks doesn’t save his best apples to just to sell them in a TJ Maxx parking lot the third Sunday of every month. In fact, Farmer Joe only exists in children’s books. Most “farmers” in this country are agrarian industrialists who live in a house on a hill and receive $40 million in subsidies every month from the federal government thanks to some amendment an Iowa senator tacked onto a defense bill. Politicians have made a living by loudly voicing their support for a bunch of imaginary, small town, Richard Scarry-ass farmers living in the flyover states. It’s all horseshit. This isn’t 1840. Look down on your next cross-country flight and tell me if you see a lone farmer plowing a cornfield all by himself.
That’s why every farmers market I’ve been as an adult to has been the same. There’s a row of kiosks selling average berries for $10 a pint, one kiosk that sells fancy olive oil, one that sells PTA-quality baked goods, and a crepe stand for some reason. It’s like a street fair, but shitty. Does that stop area parents from going OOH! and then pulling over to snatch up a bushel of gooseberries they’ll throw away six days later? Of course not. My wife knows these markets are a scam and yet will still ask the kids if they’d like to burn a couple of hours visiting one with her. Their answer, to paraphrase, is always “fuck and no.” They’re wiser than their years belie.
Ben:
Which is more uncomfortable, eating a family meal while you’re angry or while you’re sad?
Angry. Not even close. When I’m sad, food cheers me up. A lot. Like everyone else in my family, I never lose my appetite in the face of tragedy. I can compartmentalize, ruing the state of my country while also housing a stack of pancakes with supreme gusto. This is how I heal myself.
Meanwhile, eating at a tense dinner table blows. You know this from every movie and every Will Ferrell sketch you’ve ever seen. The silence is so profound as to be tangible, which proves distracting when I’m trying to enjoy my steak. That makes me even angrier than I already was, don’t you see? Terrible.
Mark:
Does Melania own a vibrator? If so, does her husband know?
I just assumed every wife owns a vibrator. A good husband knows it’s in the drawer and gladly welcomes it into bed when it’s time to get busy. A bad husband pretends that his mighty dick is the only means by which a woman should be allowed to get off. I think you know which kind of husband Donald Trump is.
Ryan:
I’m about to close on my first house! It is in pretty good shape, but I’m sure there will be projects ahead, and I was wondering if you had any guidance for how to decide what I can tackle myself v. when to call in the professionals. My dad is super handy, and he’d have my brothers and me help him with projects growing up, so it’s not as if I’ve never swung a hammer before. But I’ve been renting for the last decade or so, so I haven’t necessarily had a lot of reps recently. I want to do as much home maintenance as possible myself, both to save money, but also out of a sense of ownership. How do I avoid biting off more than I can chew?
First of all, congratulations on the new house! Fewer and fewer Americans get to experience that moment in the 21st century, so I’m always happy for anyone that manages to break through. Yeah, you’re now solely responsible for your house’s upkeep, but it’s still YOURS. That’s no small thing.
As for that upkeep, it’s a learning process. Before owning a home, I had zero experience installing shelves, rewiring lights, or fixing a toilet. If I could have called a handyman to do all of that shit for $10, I probably would have. But home ownership serves as a cruel lesson that such handymen no longer exist, unless you want to roll the dice with Taskrabbit or some other weird app. You come to grudgingly accept that, if you want something fixed promptly, you’ll probably have to do it yourself.
There are limits to this, and the only way you can really ascertain those limits is through a combination of trial and error and sheer instinct. For instance, I have never bothered installing drywall myself, because I know that would end me. But I have discovered that I can assemble basic furniture, change dimmer switches, and fix bikes with these city hands. It’s just like anything else in that the more you do yourself, the better you get at it. You’ll still curse real loud every time a screwdriver slips out of your hand, but that’ll only steel your resolve to secure that dryer vent good and tight. Then, once you’ve finished the job, you’re entitled to drink a thousand beers.
This is where I note that every homeowner has a valuable ally in YouTube. Thanks to YouTube, I figured out how to mount my TV, replace an e-scooter battery, and clean the filthy insides of my desktop computer. Handyman YouTube is one of our foremost examples of Good Internet. I have yet to come up snake eyes in doing a search there for walkthroughs of DIY jobs. I can also watch those walkthroughs in full prior to grabbing my toolbox so that I know what I’m in for. If I see Not Bob Vila taking a sledgehammer to his own bathroom tile, I know that this is a job for my plumber and not for me. You’ll learn along a similar trajectory. Good luck, amigo.
Brian:
In a recent Funbag, someone asked about catching flies when they inevitably wander inside. The answer to the question is shaving cream in the palm, which works extraordinarily well at catching them (although it is admittedly gross when rinsing them down the drain).
Oh wow, shaving cream! Who knew? Does Edge gel also work on flies? Because teenage me could work up a gallon of lather with a mere dollop of that shit.
Francisco:
So, no love for the new The Amazons album? “My Blood” might be their best song yet.
For the uninitiated, The Amazons are one of the UK’s finest hard rock bands, and therefore one of my favorite working bands out there right now. They just released another album this year in 21st Century Fiction, which I haven’t fully gotten on board with. That happens with me sometimes. I’ll be underwhelmed on my first spin of a song or record, leave it be, and then discover a lot to like once I give it another chance months later. That’ll probably be my process for this one. There are some definite—sigh—bangers on 21st Century Fiction, “My Blood” included. But I’m gonna need more time, and a few more gummies, to really get into it.
Because I’m now old enough to not take any of this shit personally. When I was younger, I made a point of liking bands that fit my self-image, and hating ones that didn’t. I fucking hated Oasis when they broke out on the scene. I hated Liam’s voice, I hated Noel’s personality, and I hated the NME hype machine for them that could be heard from all the way across the Atlantic. I didn’t want to be seen as someone who liked Oasis, so I was like I’ll never listen to that crap. Thirty years later and I just bought a plane ticket to see a reunited Gallagher brothers play in Rose Bowl, and I don’t give a shit if other people think less of me for it. I’d rather keep my mind open to bands than let nonsensical vanity get in the way.
At the same time, I still can’t stand REM. It happens.
HALFTIME!
Michael:
What are your favorite sounds? My cocktail ice just clinked in such a nice way, and something in my body just thrummed with joy.
Oh yeah, that sounds is catnip to any boozer. Ditto cracking open a beer, although that sound remains one of my personal favorites even though I don’t drink alcohol anymore. Open a can of anything and my brain automatically feels refreshed. I can picture the little bubbles popping at the surface of an ice cold Coke, with me taking a fat swig and going AHHHHH! afterward. Such a nice sound.
Also nice: my dog’s collar jingle-jangling whenever he’s toodling around the house. In fact, I just got a lesson in how much that sound means to me. I’ve been working from the beach for a week and change. Right when we got here, we took our dog to the ocean that night to watch him cavort and caper in the sand. But when we brought Carter home, he started itching himself like a major leaguer. By the following day, he had scratched off enough of his own flesh to make two deep red welts: one by his foreleg and one right up by his neck. Whenever we tried to physically stop the dog from scratching those wounds, he’d jump off the couch/bed so that he could keep doing it without us interfering. Real “God mom, just leave me alone!” shit.
Eventually, my wife and daughter scooped the little bastard up and drove him an hour to the nearest vet, who diagnosed a skin infection (possibly from a bug biting him on the beach) and prescribed a shitload of antibiotics to sneak into his food. He’s better, and now free to silly goose as he pleases…
But he’s had to go the full week without his collar on. No more jingle-jangling. No more “Here comes dog!” magic. I miss it terribly, to the point where I might just wear a collar myself and then go running up and down the stairs. Gotta have that sound in my life, along with these:
-Rock band or orchestra warming up. One of my favorite current bands is Kvelertak, and their song “Krøterveg Te Helvete” opens with three minutes of the band essentially getting ready to play. It’s like someone captured, on record, the moment in between the house lights going down and the stage lights going on. I live for that shit.
-The ocean
-Bonfire crackling
-Basketball swishing through the hoop
-Butter sizzling in a hot pan
-Keyboard keys clicking when I’m writing
-NFL player getting his shit ruined by another player
-Tennis ball/baseball being struck
-Muscle car engine growling (NOTE: only applies if I am the one driving it)
-All sex noises, provided they’re convincing
You get the idea. Despite my hearing loss, my taste in sound is still pretty much the same as that of any meditation app.
Greg:
At what age can I begin exposing my currently two-year-old daughter to her dad’s impeccable movie taste?
Not right now. You’re still in the shit, which means another few years of Pixar movies and horrible Nick Jr. sitcoms until your kid can watch real stuff. This is especially true with your first kid, because that’s when you’re at your most overly cautious. For some reason, my wife and I took PG-13 ratings as gospel with our daughter, not allowing her to watch any PG-13 flick until she turned that age. By the time we’d had our third kid, we stopped giving a shit. The girl still resents it. I can’t blame her; the next Marvel flick that traumatizes a child under 13 will be the first.
But once you cross that vague threshold where you can finally watch normal movies with your kid, you can’t instantly force your movie taste on them. I tried showing my sons Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels a few months ago, and got hit with the dreaded “When does this get better?” question roughly 10 minutes in. I took my L and shut the movie off before they could lodge another complaint. Sometimes I score a direct hit, like with John Wick or Dumb and Dumber. Otherwise, forcing your movie tastes on a kid is usually about as successful an endeavor as forcing your music/sports tastes on them. You can’t take it personally. You will, of course, but eventually you’ll come to realize that you don’t need your children’s validation to still adore The Big Lebowski (which I still haven’t bothered screening for mine).
Allie:
My sister and I went to see Babymetal last week in Boston (the show was great!). I insisted we not get standing tickets because I really don’t handle myself well in the pit. We were on an upper level with stadium seating. We stood up when Babymetal came on stage because we wanted to rock out, but nobody else in the section stood up. In fact, after one song the lady sitting behind us asked us to sit down because we were blocking her view! This seems like insanity to me. When you’re at a metal concert you should wanna rock out, right? Am I wrong for thinking standing up is the only way to really enjoy it (excluding for people who are disabled, of course).
My condolences for getting a seat in front of a Packers fan. ZINGGGGGGGGGG!
Anyway, yes at a rock concert you should stand up, especially if the act in question is a goddamn metal act. In fact, the band you’re seeing will WANT you to stand, with the lead singer explicitly ordering the audience to do so. Maybe you can’t stand because you’ve got a broken leg, or because you’re 75 years old. Fair play. But sitting down just because you want to? Fuck. That. Shit. GET ON YOUR FEET OR GET THE FUCK OUT, ASSHOLE.
(Also Allie, just get floor tickets next time. It’s pretty easy to avoid the mosh pit if you stand back a little. I was general seating for Babymetal in DC a few months ago and managed to leave the venue without a scratch. No one on the main floor is gonna sit down unless they want to be trampled to death.)
Drew (not me):
What happens if the NCAA just drops the eligibility requirements? Anyone can play college ball. Are bottom of the roster guys on NFL teams poached back to the SEC? Instead of signing with the Steelers, does Aaron Rodgers get paid $20 mil to play for USC? Realistically, I doubt this would ever happen but as a thought experiment it’s kind of interesting.
You’re assuming that’ll be the NCAA’s call when everything points to the SEC and Big Ten shedding the NCAA to form their own semi-pro venture. Once that happens, I’m at a loss as to how college football will operate. Right now, players already have five years of eligibility instead of four, and they can transfer to a new school every year if the NIL money is sweet enough. It’s so disorganized that even management is quietly praying for players to unionize, because collective bargaining is the only way to create a transparent, workable structure for all of that churn.
Should a CBA become reality, it might allow the big-boy conferences, with a formal salary cap in place, to drop all eligibility requirements to make the barrier between college and pro ball permeable. Like Other Drew, I doubt that happens. But he asked what it would look like if it did, so here’s my answer: It would be an even bigger clusterfuck than now. Big schools would skirt the rules to bring in anyone they can from the NFL, small schools would go fully broke, the NFL would get pissed off, and college games would start to resemble UFL games more than the college football everyone knows and enjoys. School names would finally cease to have any meaning, viewers would grow indifferent, and everyone except for Dabo Swinney would end up broke and mad. Would all of that be worth it to see Aaron Rodgers skulk back to Cal to go 4-8 for a season? Yes, but let’s not keep adding more hypotheticals to this hypothetical.
Steven:
I think I became an F1 fan purely because of the 6am start time for a lot of races on the West Coast. With kids, insanely early morning sports are the only ones I get to watch for any amount of time. Where do you stand on live early morning sports?
I don’t need them, not since I discovered the joy of watching the previous night’s games on the DVR. I used to watch those games in real time, so that I could follow along on social media (as my daughter says she must do with Love Island). But, as you know, the thrill of social media died a long time ago. Sports social media is still the best form of social media, but I can always just look at the scrollback from the previous night to get my yuks. I don’t have to frantically get my choicest “lol jets” posts out into the void the second that team does something idiotic. I can just be.
This means that live morning sports are just a nice little bonus for my sports diet. I’ll always put on an EPL game, an NFL game in Europe, or an F1 race in the morning if it’s on, but I don’t need to base my fandom on timeslots anymore. It’s very freeing.
John:
What’s your go to movie to watch, regardless of where you pick it up or what channel it’s on? This doesn’t have to be the best movie you’ve seen or your favorite movie, just the one you can start watching at any point and still be into it. For me it’s The Fugitive. Probably the best paced movie I’ve ever watched, acting is great, so many great Tommy Lee moments. I’ll watch it whenever I see it on.
This is a copout, but truthfully I’ll never finish out any movie I chance upon, even if it’s a compulsively watchable one like The Fugitive. Because I have YouTube TV, I don’t even flip around channels anymore. I just find what I want to watch and then watch it in full. Or I dial up a key scene off regular YouTube (I do this with the Ledger scenes in The Dark Knight sometimes) to get my fix. Otherwise, I don’t like watching the same shit twice. I always want to watch something new, which means I’m never gonna stick with The Fellowship of the Ring if it happens to be on TNT for the billionth time. If this betrays my dad values, so be it.
Email of the week!
Barry:
What is the best worst candy? I’m not talking black jelly beans, or anything else that is terrible by design. I mean stuff you love but can’t understand why. Mine is strawberry Twizzlers. l love those damned things! But when I think about why, I have no answer. They don’t taste much (at all?) like strawberries. They are tough by nature, and dry out even worse if you don’t put them in a Ziploc bag within eight seconds of opening. Still though, I love them so much that I will put up with things I normally wouldn’t just to get at them. I’ll even tolerate a MAGA asshole a lot more if they have Twizzlers to share.
Skittles. (ducks)