Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we’re talking about Costco, Oasis, the VMAs, biscuits, and more.
Your letters:
Justin:
How different would the movie industry look if Siskel & Ebert had lived longer? I’ve been watching a lot of their old episodes on YouTube and those guys had a shocking amount of pull, propping up small movies and going after dumb Hollywood trends. Could they have spared us from every other movie being a superhero mega-sequel?
No. The coming of the internet would have swallowed those two up just as it has every other critic who has outlived them. Also, Siskel & Ebert was a great TV show because studios would provide extended clips from each movie for them to break down. No studio will do that in 2025. They have IP to jealously guard, and they don’t need film critics when they can game every Rotten Tomatoes score and populate every screening with influencers instead of people who might tell the public that their movie blows. What upside is there in allowing two haughty dudes from Chicago to potentially trash your movie on national television? Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert may have been masters of their chosen form, but it’s an art form that show business no longer values in any meaningful way. Studios in 2025 can just take blurbs from randos on Twitter and put those in a TV ad instead (I’ve seen them do this plenty of times; they make sure to cut away from each blurb so fast that you can’t read the attribution). They make more money that way.
The result is that art ends up suffering. I once resented movie critics just as fanboys always have. I hated that they got to see movies before I did. I hated when they spoiled plot points before the film had even been released. I hated when they killed the buzz for any movie I was hyped to go see. And, of course, I hated their taste in film. Oh, you weren’t a fan of the latest Batman, Mister Important? You’d rather milk yourself to some arty, Merchant Ivory snoozefest instead? Fuck off. You don’t even like movies, you asshole. You don’t deserve your job! Movie reviews should be left to the people!
Thus, my cursed wish was granted. Virtually every critic of import has been made redundant in the digital age. Richard Brody, a film critic I’ve never agreed with, wrote a brilliant piece recently on this very topic. Critics aren’t just random fartsniffers paid handsomely to shit on things you enjoy. The best critics have a deep knowledge of whatever art form they cover. That knowledge, paired with skilled writing, grants those critics an authority that @MisterMarvel609 can never attain. A good review also expands the conversation on a work of art rather than just evaluating it. That’s why I’ll read some reviews after I’ve just watched a flick. A seasoned critic will give me background on that movie’s production, cite its influences, and point out other things I wouldn’t have noticed and/or known without their help.
So it’s not just an “I agree with you/I don’t agree with you” thing. It’s a live dynamic. It’s a conversation about art, which only serves to inspire more good art. “Gatekeeper” is a dirty word for a lot of valid reasons, but it’s important to have cultural arbiters of some prominence. People need intellectual authority to refer to, and the U.S. is steadily crushing that authority everywhere it’s desperately needed: in education, medicine, academia, and yes, in movies and TV. Critics shouldn’t all be cranky white guys, but having an established community of them around acts as a useful defense barrier between craven studios and the customers those studios are looking to exploit. Otherwise, you’re on your own, or you’re getting recommendations from idiots. In that context, critics very much do count. They’re necessary for art to work the way it does.
Except for Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. She’s still fucking terrible.
Peter:
Would you display an MTV Video Music Award on your mantel?
Of course I would. MTV has no cultural relevance anymore, which is part of the reason why this year’s ceremony was simulcast on CBS. Yes, CBS: the trendsetting network that all of young America looks to for learning about what’s hip and cool. I couldn’t tell you who won this year’s Best Video award (it was Ariana Grande, for a song I’ve never heard). In fact, I’m not certain I could name more than like two Best Video winners from this century, and those two would still be guesses.
But I grew up on Dial MTV, and I value those memories more than is healthy. I was alive when the VMAs were rigged to give Neil Young a Best Video award when no one my age gave a rat’s ass about Neil Young. I remember Howard Stern appearing on stage as Fartman. And I remember Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo consecrating The Cars’ sweep of the inaugural ceremony back in 1984. So while the Moonman statue is now, in 2025, just another award in a fog of them, I’d still enjoy owning one. It looks cool, and it reminds me of Adam Curry getting me hyped for the world premiere of Def Leppard’s newest video. I bet I could buy one off eBay, and maybe I will.
An MTV Movie Award, though? I throw that shit right in the trash. I know a glorified People’s Choice Award when I see it.
Michael:
After watching the SNF game, it appears that players wearing the guardian caps are much slower and way worse than they used to be. Is that just me imagining things?
That’s just you. Guardian caps weigh a healthy seven ounces, so I’m not seeing how wearing one would increase weight load or air drag to the point where you lose a second off your 40 time. Let’s use some common sense here.
By the way, I figured more players would use those caps as the seasons went on. I was wrong. The caps look too silly, and they don’t really do anything. So if Roger Goodell wants every player to rock a guardian cap so that Mike Tirico can wax unpoetic about how much safer the NFL is these days, he’s gonna have to lay down another one of his pointless mandates.
Dr. Cox:
Inspired by an ad for the SEC Network, can you please rank the following bread-related items as companions to lunch/dinner: cornbread, dinner roll, biscuit. Please explain your reasoning. For me, cornbread is ALWAYS gonna be last with a fight between biscuit and dinner roll for the throne. Whatta ya think?
OK, so I’m not allowed to put regular, good bread at number one here, because Dr. Cox has already instituted strict parameters. I’m also assuming that hush puppies don’t count as cornbread, otherwise cornbread would blow the field away. So lemme rank these three firm choices as best I can.
1. The roll. Fuck I’m so boring. I’d love to put one of the other options on top here, but a good roll not only kicks ass on its own, it can also double as sandwich bread if I want to make a little slider with my pulled pork. Biscuits fall apart too easily for that kinda shit.
2. Biscuit. This is subject to the quality of the biscuit, and if honey butter is included with it. A lousy biscuit adds nothing to the proceedings. But a Popeye’s biscuit is a whole other matter. Don’t tell anyone but I like to eat my side biscuits Yankee breakfast-style, with a fuckload of jam on them. Makes me the happy kind of fat.
3. Cornbread. Again this is subject to the quality of the dish, but most of the cornbread I’ve been served has never been as good as it looked. Also, that shit crumbles if you so much as look at it wrong. Good cornbread does it for me, but I rarely ever get it.
Here is where I remind you that I’m a white guy who grew up in the Midwest, so my opinions on the above matter will not be accepted in a Southern food court of law. I won’t fight back.
John:
I’m not sure how prevalent Costco is where you live, but if you even mention to someone around the Seattle area that you don’t have a Costco membership, you get a military-style interrogation from your friends as to why, and they will shame you. They think you’re a lunatic for not shopping there. I’m a single guy, no kids, no pets, and live in a small condo with almost zero storage space. I have a perfectly good grocery store two blocks away that serves all my needs. But my friends think I’m paying way too much for toilet paper. One even told me, “You could buy a 48-pack to last you a few years.” I know Costco is a great company that treats their employees well, so it’s not like I hate the place. But it’s just not the ideal shopping situation for me. Yet people look at me like I’m nuts. What gives?
Costco fans mean well. They just want you to save money, which is understandable. Costco also has everything. Why, they even sell engagement rings! I bet no Costco member has ever told you that piece of information!
But enterprising minds have crunched the numbers and—GASP!—Costco doesn’t really save its members that much money. In fact, you’re probably gonna overshop at Costco to mentally justify your annual membership dues. And if you’re a bachelor like John, you have neither the space nor the bowel load to need a 48-pack of Cottonelle. You can afford the markup on a 12-pack and not feel destitute. Costco wasn’t made for you.
My wife and I, on the other hand, are a different story. We live near a Costco. We have kids, plus a fairly spacious house. Virtually everyone we know in town has a membership and shops at that Costco, which means that we probably should, too. We’re the exact right demographic for it. In fact, my wife and I have talked many times about whether or not to join, especially since grocery store around here are a fucking ripoff.
But every time I go to that Costco (you don’t have to be a member to use their pharmacy, and the pharmacy at ours never has a line), it’s fucking bedlam. You got hundreds of people wheeling around utility carts to load up on pallets of nutmeg. The warehouse appeals to the most nakedly greedy part of my mind; I love looking at all the big TVs, all the fresh meat packaged in the back, and all of the mega-boxes of chocolate covered pretzels. Everything at Costco looks soooo good, and I want it.
Unfortunately, you need to erect a separate garage to accommodate whatever you bring home from Costco. Even if you have a spacious house, everything at Costco still feels like it won’t fit. As a professional glutton, this is not a dealbreaker for me. But my wife is the kind of person who gives me the stinkeye if I buy a bottle of ketchup because that’ll occupy too much space in the fridge. I’m talking about a small big bottle here. I have no idea what oil barrel-sized bottles of ketchup our Costco sells, but I know that she wouldn’t want one. So we’ll remain holdouts, likely forever.
I’d still like to try one of those Costco hot dogs, though. Someone lend me their membership card so that I can go nuts on one of those bad boys.
HALFTIME!
Rick:
I’m desperate to hear your take on the Oasis reunion tour. Spoiler alert: they are my all time favorite band and I saw them at MetLife August 31. Greatest concert of my life. You are a Professional Deliverer of Takes. The Gallagher Bros are impossible not to feel strongly about one way or the other. So I gotta know… will you and I still be bros after you share your Oasis take? You and I are gonna live forever!
Of course we’ll be lads. Luis Paez-Pumar is the Oasis hater on the Defector staff, not me. I love Oasis down to my bones. I’m not gonna write a whole travelogue on seeing them play on this tour. Our old friend Lindsey Adler already beat me to the punch on that, AND she saw them in the band’s native Manchester. My crowd at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night was as locked in as a stadium crowd can get, but we still weren’t in England. Americans have no hope of competing with a British crowd when it comes to that band, but I think you already knew that.
As for me, seeing Oasis in Pasadena represented a piece of unfinished business. The last time I saw them live was in the summer of 2005, as chronicled in the world famous memoir Someone Could Get Hurt. My wife was pregnant with our first kid that summer, but she agreed to come with me to see Oasis play at Merriweather Post Pavilion—a wine-and-picnic blankets amphitheater outside of Baltimore. It was an outdoor venue, so Mrs. Drew figured that she wasn’t in danger of having her brains rocked out.
As soon as the Gallagher brothers took the stage and cranked their amps to 11, she found herself grossly mistaken. The music was so loud, the riffs so powerful, that my wife grew deeply afraid that the music would forcefully eject the fetus from her body on site. So she asked us to leave early. I had no choice but to acquiesce (pun intended), because the wife and baby were my priority. Also, it’s hard to enjoy a rock concert when your plus-one is having a shit time. I could hear them playing “Champagne Supernova” from the parking lot, but I wasn’t that broken up over it. I figured I could always see them the next time they came stateside.
The band would break up four years later.
So I needed to finish off that concert that I’d prematurely vacated. After a taxing summer 2025, I also desperately needed an excuse to fly west to get my RDA of weed and sunsheeee-yine. So me and my best mate Howard went to LA. We did not leave disappointed.
Oasis was magnificent on Saturday night. Far better than they’d been in 2005, in fact. The 15-year cold war between Noel Gallagher (the rich one) and Liam Gallagher (the less rich one) seems to have made each man understand, acutely, how valuable they are to one another as artists. Of course the money from this tour helped the reconciliation process, but nothing about the show itself felt cynical. The entire band was as locked the fuck in as the crowd was. Oasis played every song the crowd wanted them to play. Liam’s stage banter was so good that he could open for John Mulaney and kill.
As for Noel Gallagher: There was a moment, mid-show, when Liam had fucked off backstage to rest his voice and make himself a cuppa. So his big brother stayed on stage to play a short acoustic set. The crowd gave Noel a big ovation, but he wasn’t happy with it. He shook his head ever so slightly, and made a “gimme more” gesture without taking his hand all the way off the guitar neck. Everyone got louder. He did it again, and they got even louder. Once the old man was satisfied with the decibel level, he proceeded. Absolute fucking confidence, and from a bastard who never moves while he’s playing! I was blown away.
And that was before the encore, when I finally got to hear the songs I’d missed all those years ago. Our daughter is now 19 and just went off to college for her sophomore year. My wife delivered her, and her two brothers, without any loud guitars inducing premature labor. We’re a family now, and a happy one. This called for celebration. “Champagne Supernova” delivered it, and with this as a coda:
I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. It was worth the wait, and worth the money. I even got to see a woman on the front row go the full teenybopper and sob uncontrollably when Noel addressed her from the stage. Rock’s not quite dead yet.
Michael:
I just found out that a childhood friend of mine passed away… two years ago. We didn’t stay in touch after I moved away 30-plus years ago. I’d like to offer my condolences to his family, but I’ve never met his wife or kids. The sticking point, of course, is the timing. Would a condolence be a nice gesture at this point, or do I risk re-opening a wound just beginning to heal over?
Send your condolences. They’re always welcomed by the bereaved. It’s a pleasant reminder that they’re not alone in their grief. More important, it fills in a blank space. Your friend’s wife doesn’t know who you are, or what your friendship with her late husband was like. So here’s your chance to tell her all about it. After my old man died, we held a memorial. Some of Dad’s old friends told stories about him that I’d never heard before. Someone close to you dies and you think you know all there is to know about them. Then you find out that no, actually you’ve barely scratched the surface. In the wake of their passing, you hear new stories. Those stories are worth their weight in gold. They give you a fuller picture of the person you lost, which helps keeps them alive in your soul. I’ve found that to be a remarkable blessing.
Also, it’s 2025 and everything is shitty. We need all of the friendly gestures we can get. Speaking of which…
AB:
Do you think that ICE agents, those who are actively conducting raids in particular, feel any shame? How can we, collectively as a country, do more to ensure that folks on the ground who are actively ruining the lives of immigrants, their families, and their wider communities, feel shame?
Shame walked out the door well over a decade ago. You’re not gonna guilt-trip ICE members into not kidnapping your friends and family. Those goons eat guilt for breakfast. Also, Trump is offering each of them a $50,000 signing bonus (in nationally televised ads!) to join the dork SS, and dignity has always had a price tag on it. Thus, the only way to turn ICE back is to organize, fight back, and make their jobs harder. That’s how Los Angeles got ICE to fuck off, and that’s how it’ll have to do it once more now that SCOTUS has given Trump the green light to conduct another blitzkrieg. This is exhausting work, but it’s also the only way to win. Fuck ICE with a tear gas canister.
Adam:
I have lived outside of the US (Taiwan and Japan) and am getting ready to head back home for the first time in four years. I have loved and hated parts of living outside the US, but I don’t know how to react to dealing with the unique bullshit of being in America. My biggest issue is my wife, who is not American, is super excited for her first real non-COVID trip there, but I’m just dreading it. How can I be a non shitty husband/travel partner when there?
By being a good ambassador. You know this country better than your wife, so you know what’s good about America, and you know where to find it. So show her. Find good places to eat. Take a nice walk. Go to a baseball game. This place isn’t North Korea (yet). It’s still the America you remember from living here during the first Trump administration: beautiful but fucked up all at the same time. You can help make this a better country simply by being a good representative of it to your loved ones. Also, making yourself the travel guide will serve as a handy distraction from all of that dread building up inside of you. If you act like the whole trip is gonna suck, it will. Also, your wife will be pissed at you.
Do your homework beforehand, too. You know about the ICE raids. You know that federal law enforcement officials have been re-programmed to ziptie and detain anyone who doesn’t have a Real ID. So make sure that you and your wife can get in and out of here cleanly. Talk to other non-citizens who have traveled here recently. Get whatever info you can on security protocols at your destination airport. Oh, and get your shots. You don’t wanna get dengue fever while you’re over here.
Shane:
RBs and WRs like Derrick Henry and Justin Jefferson wear expensive necklaces you can see from a mile away. Do you think we will ever see something like a punter or defensive tackle wearing 75k on their neck?
I’m sure some there’s some stud DT who rocks some gold under his pads every game. But generally speaking, linemen are engaged in hand-to-hand combat all game long, which puts any loose jewelry in danger. And punters don’t make enough money for that shit. It shall always be thus. Now let’s use this question as an excuse to watch Aqib Talib snatch Michael Crabtree’s chain one more time. There’s nothing that great corners loved more than humiliating Michael Crabtree.
Jonathan:
With all the speculation and excitement this weekend over for a bit, I wanted to take stock: if Trump dies in office, this is gonna be the biggest party right? Like every college campus just won a national championship, every city got a title in its preferred sport, couch fires and what not. I know a lot would be spontaneous, but in the hypothetical, how would you celebrate the one shining moment?
First of all, I’ll believe Trump is dying when he’s dead. A bullet couldn’t kill him. COVID-19 couldn’t kill him. A diet of nothing but Diet Coke and expired hamburger meat hasn’t killed him. So I’m not gonna sport a woody if I hear some big TikTok rumor that the man has congestive heart failure. Big fucking deal; Trump has had congestive heart failure for 20 years now and keeps on truckin’. You could cut this fucker’s head off and it would just grow back. No sense in getting ahead of yourself in the dead pool. You’d be better off laying money on the Browns winning the Super Bowl. When Trump DOES finally eat it, I’ll run naked as a jaybird through the streets with glee. But until then, I’ll keep my excitement tempered.
Email of the week!
Mark:
In 2013 I had a consulting gig at Martin’s Potato Rolls. Their corporate headquarters building is a former elementary school (no joke) in the middle of Alabama, PA. Right after I walked in, I couldn’t help snapping this picture looking back out towards the front door. The table on the right is a shrine to Mama and Papa Martin. Junior was running the company and, of course, had his own parking space right next to the door, opposite the handicapped parking. It was usually empty, but one day when I went out to lunch there was a Porsche 911 Turbo parked with a Jesus fish front license plate. Because Jesus would want the CEO’s kid to drive a Porsche, no doubt.
Give a man a Porsche, and he joyrides for a day…