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 the NBA, dogs, Los Angeles, and more.
Kurt:
Is there a song that you think would be a good basis for a movie? Mine has always been “Everything’s Ruined” by Faith No More. It’s specific enough to convey themes that could be made into a family drama but also vague enough that there’s room for interpretation. Plus it rocks.
Pretty much any Faith No More song is well-suited to a movie adaptation. That became doubly true when lead singer Mike Patton joined the band in 1988. Patton is an artistic madman who helped make FNM, already a weird band, into one of the weirdest (and best) bands of all time. They were a metal band only if you went by where their CDs were located in your local Tower Records, but they incorporated every album with elements of jazz, country, hip hop, Motown, gospel, easy listening, and anything else they could find. It was like if David Lynch had decided to become a rock star instead of the film director. Angel Dust alone contains multiple tracks that have a cinematic feel to them: “Midlife Crisis,” (which was about Madonna) “RV,” (about a redneck who hates his family and himself), “Be Aggressive” (about blowing a guy), and “Jizzlobber” (about enduring life in prison). Any band can make a video to go with a song, but FNM excelled at writing tracks that were already primo theater of the mind.
To this day, I’m disappointed they aren’t more widely venerated. Faith No More was the first “metal” band of my lifetime to put out a massive rap/rock hit (“Epic”), the first to release an earnest cover of a Commodores song (“Easy”), and definitely the first to write not one, but TWO kickass songs about how evil babies are (“Zombie Eaters,” “Everything’s Ruined”). I don’t even know if big-name acts today are allowed to be as weird as Faith No More, or even if they want to be. It sure as hell doesn’t seem like it. So, if elected President, I would create a federal holiday to celebrate Faith No More. Everyone would get the day off, and everyone would have to throw a “Crack Hitler”-themed barbecue. This is a winning campaign issue. Take note, Democrats!
Steve:
It gives me no pleasure to say that deep down inside I know there is nothing the Knicks organization could do that would prevent me from actively rooting for them. It’s just how it is. I don’t like it, but it’s the truth. I’d imagine it’s the same for you and your team?
Short of relocation, I’m never filing divorce papers from my team. Even if they had been the ones to trade for Deshaun Watson, I still would have stuck around. I stuck around after the world found out that Adrian Peterson enjoys lashing his children across the scrotum with a hickory switch, so enduring a few years of Watson pulling my franchise to the bottom of Lake Minnetonka wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker.
This is because the NFL is set up so that pretty much any organization not owned by Dan Snyder can always come out of the other side of a fallow era with the chance to rebuild and become a contender. As I explained to reader Mike two weeks ago, it’s not the same as MLB where, thanks to that league’s salary structure, a franchise can simply stop operating as a competitive baseball concern. When that happens, a team like the Rockies becomes a franchise in name only. A ghost ship. That will, or at least should, kill your love for any team you’ve given your life to.
I suppose that could happen with my team, the Vikings. Maybe there’s a future where Roger Goodell destroys the NFLPA entirely—he’s already clutching his pearls about the increase in signing bonus payouts—and gets the salary floor abolished. Should that ever happen and my team ends up punting on the whole “trying to win a Super Bowl” thing, I’d like to think I’d have the presence of mind to ditch them, if not the entire sport. But I’m a very dumb sports fan, so it’s not a lock that I’d bail. Also, the NFL knows that parity (or at least the appearance of it) is its secret sauce. Thus, it behooves them to force Mike Brown and his ilk to pony up $200-plus million in salaries every year, even if Mike Brown still cuts coupons out of grocery store circulars. One sport is set up to keep fans suckered in, the other doesn’t care if it drives them all away.
All of this makes what’s happening in the NBA right now an oddly fascinating experiment. The league’s newest CBA contains the dreaded apron system, which you’ve no doubt heard about from this very site. If a team spends over $178 million in salary (that’s the first apron), they pay a tax to the other owners and have various roster-building restrictions put on them. If that team spends over $189 million in salary (the second apron), the tax and roster restrictions—it’s almost impossible to make a beneficial trade while in the second apron—increase to such a prohibitive degree that only three teams this season (Phoenix, Minnesotay, Boston) were willing to surpass it. This second apron works as a de facto hard cap, which makes it nearly impossible for any team to keep a championship-caliber roster together for an extended period of time. This is why Jayson Tatum’s Achilles tear could potentially doom Boston just as their nascent dynasty was beginning to take shape. I don’t care for Boston sports teams, but even I find this outcome a bit cruel for the Celtics.
Meantime, the new CBA also includes a salary floor, one that mandates every team spend at least 90 percent of that year’s designated cap money. Combine that with the existence of the second apron and you can see how this deal serves as an attempted catalyst for the NFL-ization of professional basketball, with more roster churn and more equal distribution of talent across all 30 teams. Parity, in other words.
If you squint real hard, you can view this year’s Finals matchup as the ideal result of this setup: two small-market teams with payrolls in the bottom half of the league finding winning edges on the margins, and playing high-quality basketball that even big city folk like me can enjoy watching. Maybe we’ll get more Finals like this in the future, and with a new champ crowned every year. That would put an end to market size arguments every time two teams from East Bumblefuck play for a ring, and it would increase the chances of teams like the Celtics and Lakers falling into long, long stretches of futility, which is kinda cool.
In theory, this newly engineered parity would increase local interest in teams while also cultivating a growing national base of people who are fans of the NBA in general. That’s the NFL model, and it’s made that league the dominant cultural force in America this century. I have no idea if you can graft that model onto a sport where rosters are less than a quarter of the NFL’s size, and where players play five times as many games at a minimum. But I understand where Adam Silver is trying to go with this. I have no idea if I want him to succeed or not. I do know that I’ve enjoyed the shit out of these playoffs, though. I might be just the kind of mark Silver is looking for.
PM:
My wife and I have a dog. When we speak to the dog and refer to each other (i.e, ‘Go see X; she’s got the treats’), we use our Christian names. Other pet owners we know say, “Go see Mom” or “Dad.” Where do you stand on this issue? I find using Mom or Dad overly precious and performative, but I could be wrong.
I’ve tried doing that with our dog Carter, née Carterfarter. It only works when I’m like, “Hey Dog, Mom’s home!” because I often call my wife “Mom” out of habit. It’s when I say to the dog, “You shouldn’t have barked at your mom,” where I feel stupid. We love the dog as if he’s our child, but there’s no need to act as if he’s our literal child. Same deal if I tell the dog that one of our kids is his “brother” or “sister.” No he’s not. He’s the fucking dog, and that’s enough. He’s as much part of our family as anyone else, but in a different way from the human members. This is why having a dog is cool. They add their own dynamic to the family. They’re also much more reliable than their human counterparts.
In fact, Family Dog status confers privileges upon Carter that no one else in the house gets to enjoy. If Carter wants to sit on top of the couch all day (and he does), we’re not gonna tell him to go get a job. If he wants to sleep in the bed with my wife and me, he can. And if he pisses on the floor, he doesn’t get his allowance docked. That makes it good to be treated like a dog in this house instead of like a human. If any of my kids pissed on my office rug, they’d be out on the curb right now.
Aaron:
I don’t really have a question I just NEEDED to show you this. Sorry for the quality, I jumped off the couch to snap a picture as quick as I could. About five steps behind this dog in a self-driving car (!) was a lady walking two other dogs. Please get Carter a self-driving Big Wheel.
He’d jump out of that car the second we dropped him into it. Carter is the least adventurous dog you’ll ever meet, to the point where we still don’t know if he can swim or not (likely not) because he’s so terrified of going near the water. Put him down a playground slide and looks at you like he wants to file charges. So there’s no chance he’d be down with the canine Waymo on display up there.
Now a handlebar basket? Different story.
Todd:
When do you think AMC Theaters will free us from Nicole Kidman trying to convince us to see movies at a theater we were already inclined to visit? 2030? 2035? Never?
Never. People love that ad. Nicole Kidman loves that ad. And why not? It’s essentially harmless, way more harmless than the Regal movie quote ad that was so roundly despised that the chain was shamed into taking it out of the rotation. More important, Kidman’s ad lets the audience know that the 45-minute ad/trailer package is over and that the movie they paid to see is finally going to start. She shows up on the big screen and goes, “Movies are so cool,” and then I’m like, “Fuck yeah they are. It’s showtime, motherfucker!” (I say this out loud; sometimes people sitting next to me move). That makes it an effective ad. And when big companies stumble onto one of those, they continue to air them until the dissolution of the solar system.
So if you’re all like, “I can’t take that fucking ad one more time!” you better keep your AirPods in until you see a studio logo pop up on the screen.
Ben:
If you’re on a date, are you allowed to let your full, Bron “I NEED TO WIN” attitude out when you’re playing mini-golf or playing pool, or do you need to behave like a decent human being?
Assuming people still date at all, they still want to make a good impression on one another. While I’m out of step on courtship practices, I definitely know that the best way to make a LOUSY impression is to kick your date’s ass at parlor games. You can still be competitive, maybe showing off your killer forehand at the ping pong table once a game or whatever. But your disposition should match the atmosphere of the game itself: relaxed, convivial, drunk as shit.
In fact, I even have a little tip that the “millennials” don’t know about. Let’s say you and your date are playing mini-golf. Why not take this moment to teach them the finer points of the game by offering a free lesson? Stand behind your date, softly maneuver their hands into the proper grip, and then guide them through the proper swing mechanics. Get a little closer, don’t be shy. Take in the scent of their hair as you teach them. Share a playful giggle. They thought they were just getting a golf lesson. They never expected to fall in love…
HALFTIME!
Shane:
Any tips for Siege Week in Los Angeles?
Pretty sure you guys are the ones who should be giving the rest of us marching orders. Right now, California is showing the rest of the country how it’s done. Since every powerful institution—political, industrial, and journalistic—has no interest in calling these ICE attacks out for what they are, it’s up to people like you and me to hit the streets to tell the world FUCK THIS SHIT. Say it out loud all day, every day. Keep yourself hydrated so that you don’t lose your ability to shout. And whenever the first major Democrat turns against the protestors because one of them scratched the window of a fucking Crumbl shop, fire a rubber bullet directly into their eyeball. Love you, California.
David:
What’s the worst sound you come across in everyday life? Nails on a chalkboard is a stereotypical answer, but when is the last time you actually heard that? I think the answer is someone aggressively pursuing the last bit of yogurt out of a container with a spoon. The repetitive clunk clunk clunk of someone jamming that spoon into a nearly-hollow plastic cup drives me crazy.
Yeah but I have three kids and, even though they’re not babies anymore, they’re still capable of making everyday noises that cause my internal organs to eject from my body. I legit had to pull the 19-year-old aside the other night and beg her to stop making weird-ass noises at the dinner table. I’m trying to eat my chicken in peace and she just drives by with a 150-decibel “Meow!” for no reason at all. She hasn’t even seen Super Troopers. In this house, you must EARN the right to be annoying.
But I’m gonna rule kid sounds as ineligible for this question. Not all of you have kids, but all of you have very much been subjected to common noises that instantly set your brain to Kill. Here now are mine:
- Smoke alarm. No. 1, without question. The second one of those fucking alarms goes off in my house, I fly into a rage. Which detector is it? What does it want? Why couldn’t it have gone off at 3:00 p.m. instead of 3:00 a.m.? It’s beeping three times fast, what does that mean? Am I gonna have to open the battery chamber lid and read the 0.0001-point copy to divine the answer? FUCK WE’RE OUT OF NINE VOLT BATTERIES I HATE THE WORLD.
- A fork or a knife accidentally scraping against a plate. You know the sound I’m talking about. The person next to you is cutting into their food when the knife slides a bit and suddenly both of your ears are gushing blood. How the fuck can a plate and utensil make a sound that goddamn loud? It’s like accidentally splitting an atom.
- My phone ringing. Fuck you, whoever’s calling me.
- A biker coming up behind you, saying “on your left” when they’re two feet from your ear. I try to issue my warning well before I reach any pedestrian, otherwise I’ll scare them shitless. I’ve been on the other side of this equation and it’s deeply unpleasant.
- Meghan Trainor
Adam:
I just ate the remaining mango off of a mango pit and it occurred to me that it would be revolting to watch me do this. What would be your most revolting food to have a video of you eating on the internet?
In my case, it would be a lobster. No one wants to sit next to me when I’m eating a lobster, because I treat that thing the way a serial killer treats their victims before finally murdering them. I eat the tomalley. I suck on the tinyass claws. I forage through the guts for those little meat nuggets toward the back. Wait staff have to stand by with backup bibs—many of them—while I go about my dirty, sinful business.
Second place for me would be a hamburger. I always douse my burger in a shitload of ketchup, and then I house it while that ketchup breaks contain and goes running down my hand and forearm. “That boy is a P-I-G pig!”
Third place is a banana. My wife has earnestly forbade me from eating a banana anywhere hear her. The sound of it makes her want to cry. Sorry, my dear. I’m just trying to get some potassium here.
Andrew:
As an English-speaking Canadian, from the darkest depths of my very soul, I am begging you (and the question-asker in the recently released Funbag!) to go to Quebec City and tell anyone you see there that you don’t consider them “PURE French.” Also, please ensure you film that interaction and post it online because I am all-but-certain you’ll go viral.
If it means that I get to travel to French Canada on Defector’s dime and house some cassoulet north of the border, I’m all in for being assaulted. I’m not afraid to learn things the hard way. Tres bien!
John:
Do you think there will be a return to the days of underground newspapers?
I actually pitched a print edition of Defector to the rest of the staff a while ago, as a way to both get the company’s name out there and to fill the growing void in physical media. But we all agreed that would’ve taken more manpower and more overhead than we could afford. Since that time, however, The Onion has gone back into print and had enormous success with it, which is one of the better media stories you’ll hear about this decade.
I’m not so old that I yearn for the days of analog newspapers; my present career wouldn’t have been possible if they remained the dominant media form. But physically printed copy still carries an authority that words on a screen simply can’t. Also, you can’t memory-hole a printed newspaper or book. Once it’s out there, it’s free to cross the globe and pass through an infinite number of hands. That’s an important thing to remember as the Elons of the world try to snatch up every major digital outlet and force their shitty worldview onto it. You don’t have to be a boomer to appreciate the power of the printed word.
Or the reborn Onion newspaper. I subbed to the print edition a while back and it is, by far, the best thing I get in the mail every month. Feels like fucking Christmas whenever that issue lands on my doorstep. It reminded me of all the freebie papers I’ve enjoyed throughout my adult life: the Washington Post Express, the Village Voice, the original Onion (with the AV Club supplement in the back). In print, all of those publications commanded your attention in ways their digital counterparts never could. So while I can’t predict that more underground papers will spring back to life, I do know that it would be a good thing for mankind if they did.
Chris:
Last week in the car, unprompted, my three-year-old nephew told his mom that, “You have to be careful getting on a school bus because your penis might get stuck in the door and snap right off.” “Snap right off” has entered the family lexicon.
As well it should have. Good to know that getting your penis stuck in things remains as visceral a childhood fear as it was when I was in grade school.
Email of the week!
Chris:
Your mention of having bad handwriting reminded me of this story of mine: I have had horrible handwriting my entire life. I think we learned cursive in second grade where I grew up in the 80s. On the first day of school the following year, my teacher came up to me and said that there was a special note in my file that said I was a lost cause when it came to cursive and that, therefore, I was the only kid in school who was allowed to turn in assignments in block lettering. They had given up on me. Now as an adult, my signature is thus basically just the letter “C” attached to some generic squiggles.
Years later, when applying for a marriage license, my now-wife had to complete all of the paperwork on my behalf. When it came time to sign, she handed me the pen. I did my usual squiggles, and the elderly court clerk just shook her head and told me to try again. It had to be legible to be official. I told her this was as legible as it got, and after a few more tries she eventually sighed and told me to just print my name like I did on my childhood homework.
I’m still not 100% sure I’m officially married as a result, if anyone cared enough to check. My wife is aware and doesn’t seem to mind. We can file our taxes jointly so really what’s the difference anyway?
That’s the spirit.