
Your letters:
Sean:
When are they going to invent a garbage disposal type system on a toilet so my shits stop clogging my toilet 45% of the time?
As someone who has clogged many a toilet, I sympathize with the idea of a toilet disposal system for big turds, wads of TP, Kleenex, tampons, evidence that be used in a court of law, and such and such. But I donât think you want to sit down, bare-assed, and have your dick and balls hover over a set of rotating blades. I get nervous enough about snakes and spiders crawling up the toilet and barging into my asshole. No need to introduce sharp objects to the proceedings.
I know you wouldnât flick the switch until after youâve finished taking a shit, but still. Iâm scared to put my hand in the sink when the sink disposal is off. One accidental bump of the switch and suddenly itâs Final Destination 2. You think I want to experience that same terror, only now genital-related? I think if your toilet gets clogged that often, itâs likely broken. I donât think itâs because youâre so manly that you shit out pure quartzite. You just need a better toilet. A wide-mouth toilet. A Julia Roberts toilet.
In fact, a toilet disposal system might actually make the whole situation worse for your pipes. We had a clogged sink a while back and the plumber told us, point blank, to never use the garbage disposal. Like, at all. When people have a garbage disposal, they tend to go full Fargo and cram anything in there they see fit. And why wouldnât you? Itâs immensely satisfying to stick a whole lemon down the drain, flick the switch, and watch it get pulverized. SO AWESOME. Smells nice and fresh! But it turns out that, even reduced to a slurry, your food waste can get trapped in pipes and fuck everything up. A toilet disposal would be even worse because, unlike a sink disposal, you couldnât just open a cabinet underneath to fix it. Youâd have to tear your toilet out to get at the poop Vitamix.
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I asked the plumber, âSo why do garbage disposals even exist?â And he was like, âTo make guys like me money.â So there you go. Beware of your garbage disposal. If it doesnât rob you of vital appendages, itâll rob you of actual money.
Zack:
My two sons have solved the annual suckfest of the MLB All Star game. The problem is that no one tunes in to watch good pitchers craftily work long counts and saw off Mike Trout. So, the solution is to make pitchers announce the pitch they are throwing before each at bat, then throw only that pitch the whole at bat. Kershaw has to tip his curve, or let them know the heats cominâ. Kluber announces it will be a slider at bat, etc. Location is the only element of surprise. I figure you get some serious swagger from pitchers owning guys with a nasty breaking pitch they know is coming. And you also get a lot more offense. But at the end of the day, do you get a nice increase in offense or just a basketball score?
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Do you really want the MLB All-Star game to last six hours? Because thatâs what would happen under your rules. I appreciate the effort, but thereâs no fixing any All-Star game. Theyâre all lousy in terms of quality of play, and any attempt to make them more competitiveâextra money, home field advantage at stake, drafted teams, etc.ânever helps. The best youâre gonna get is something like Sundayâs NBA All-Star Game, where they dick around for two hours before deciding to get competitive at the stroke of midnight, just for kicks. There is no way to make a game that is inherently a novelty into something more than that. And given how much people complained about the old MLB home-field advantage stipulation, trying to do so ends up harming the impact of REAL games anyway.
All-Star games are for kids and All-Star weekends are for grownups. You take your kids, and they wig out at the sight of Bryce Harper on the same team with Madison Bumgarner, and thatâs basically it. Itâs like Media Day at the Super Bowl, only with a couple of practice drills thrown in. Meanwhile, the players and media get a little junket in the middle of the season to hang out in one city and party and get laid. I watched 10 minutes of the NBA All-Star Game with my kid and even he was like, âTheyâre not trying very hard,â but he still enjoyed seeing LeBron James and Russell Westbrook playing on one team. And Iâm sure all those guys enjoyed a weekend off in L.A. to hit clubs, eat out, and meet with showbiz execs so they could all share HORRIBLE ideas with one another. Everyone wins!
The value is IN the meaninglessness of the event. Trying to make it into anything more is just a waste of time. I know Pete Rose got his knob polished for sliding into home during that one All-Star game, but I guarantee you every other player there was silently like, âWhat is that stupid asshole doing?â
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Brendan:
What if each NFL team is only allowed to punt five times a game?
Well, letâs take a look at the numbers. The average NFL team punts less than five times a game, so in theory they wouldnât have much to worry about when it comes to your punt cap. The team that punted the most last season was the Giants (in a massive upset, the Browns were 13th in total punts⌠they were probably busy turning the ball over instead). Your rule would deprive the Giants of roughly one punt per game, which isnât much but would maybe compel whatever milquetoast science teacher they have coaching them at the moment to occasionally go for it when itâs statistically correct to go for it. Would that have made the 2017 New York Giants any better? LOL no of course not. That team was an oil spill.
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To make a tangible impact, youâd have to cut the number of punts down to something like three or four. One other reader suggested a cap on all kicks, so you only get X number of total punts and FG attempts per game, and then youâre out. The problem with this is that the more you limit those kicks, the more you end up favoring offensive teams. The Pats would end up blowing teams out by 50 and 60 points if no one could punt. It is never fun to hear an announcer declare the game youâre watching to be âa field position battle.â Itâs like a kiddie birthday party that has no pizza. But sometimes that is whatâs required for a dirtbag defensive team to steal a win from some asshole GLORY BOY team. As always, I prefer rules that make coaches less important to the outcome of a football game and not more important. Letâs have them fix the catch rule this offseason and see if that gets us closer to where we need to be.
Frank:
When you have a really good pee, do you also shudder? Because I do that.
Yeah but itâs kinda staged. Like, I can MAKE myself shudder because I just want the world to know how relieved I am to piss out a quart of used beer. Ever piss in the woods and say, out loud, âUnnnghhhhh that feels goodâ? It feels good to say it feels good! I have no shame. Iâll shudder and stick my hips out and moan with pleasure to give that big pee the acclaim it deserves.
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Ryan:
If you slap a human across the face as hard as you can, that would hurt them. Why is it that if you slap a fly in the air as hard as you can nothing happens? Itâs clap-kill or bust.
My man, that is because of physics. Now, Iâm no physicist. In fact, physics was my least favorite science discipline because I sucked at it and the teacher was real potato, but allow me to school you in a little thing I call (REMEMBER: not a scientist!) FORCE DISPERSAL. When you slap a person, youâre stinging them on a relatively small bit of surface area. The force of the slap is concentrated. Ah, but what if you slapped someone with a king-sized mattress? Yeah, youâd knock them over, but the hit would be spread out across their entire body, leaving them frustratingly alive after impact. I have never been smacked with an entire Sealy Posturepedic, but I assume that would be the endgame. Itâs like lying down on a single nail versus a bed of nails.
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A fly is small but itâs made of strong stuff. Itâs got armor, basically. Slap at it in midair and youâll knock it around, but you wonât make the sort of concentrated impact required to kill that fucker dead. For that, you obviously need an RPG launcher. Again, thatâs physics.
Josh:
How would the Olympics be different if they only awarded gold medals and got rid of the other two? Clearly all athletes want to win the precious gold, but the other medals allow for more âwinnersâ and storylines. And hey, just think the Vikings won the NFL Bronze medal!!
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It would be much worse if they got rid of silver and bronze. Given that the Olympics are once every four years, and given that athletes dedicate their entire lives to a sportâoften sacrificing their youth in the processâit would shitty for every sport to have just one âwinnerâ for each event. They all want gold, obviously. But itâs nice to have silver and bronze around. They make great consolation prizes for unheralded overachievers, AND for countries that donât medal very often because they arenât Norway. Fucking Norway. They designed a whole goddamn quadrennial event around Norwegian sports. You assholes still donât get sunlight for a third of the year, so take THAT.
Also, I like the dark storylines to silver and bronze, too. When a favored athlete stumbles and ends up with just a bronze medal, they gotta accept it bitterly and then spend the rest of eternity staring at that thing with an equal combination of pride and loathing. That big medal will forever be an unbearably heavy yoke upon their psyche, and thatâs fun!
By the way, I absolutely would watch an NFL Bronze Medal Game before the Super Bowl. Think how many more banners the Colts could hang if they had one!
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Scott:
Do you think athletes are frowned upon if they do hook up with a spectator or media member, like a college kid hooking up with a townie?
Yeah, if you hook up with a spectator, you are only awarded a bronze in Gettinâ Some. Iâm sure Olympians can get catty about whoâs fucking who (âCan you believe she went home with that dude working the carving station?â), and who strove for greatness by trying to get Tessa Virtueâs number. But on the whole, theyâre all probably too busy being drunk and horny to really care. Adam Rippon ditched a TV gig because he didnât want to stop getting laid in the village, and I canât blame him. He probably didnât even realize what he was sacrificing when he made the original deal. âWait, I canât bone anymore? Iâm gonna need a day to think this over.â
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By the way, I donât know why Rippon couldnât hang out in the village as part of the NBC crew. They must have instituted that as a new rule to keep Mike Tirico away from the athletes.
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HALFTIME!
Daniel:
Would you prefer to be a horse-talking person, or a person-talking horse? The horse-talking person has all the mental faculties of a horse in a personâs body (and vice versa).
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Oh, the horse. The average lifespan of a horse is 20-30 years, but Iâd rather spend that time as Mr. Ed than spend an entire lifetime as Horse Boy. Thatâs just common sense. If I were a talking horse, Iâd be a SENSATION. Theyâd fly me around to exhibitions and put velvet hay in my stall and put me out to stud with Gold Medal mares. Itâd be a pretty sweet deal right up until the moment Iâm seized by crooked horse breeders and they dissect me while Iâm still awake. What am I gonna do with the brain of a horse? Iâd just suck on sugarcubes and spend all day stepping in my own poop.
Jack:
Not only is this a $1000 (!!!) yoga mat made out of football leather, but they donât even recommend you buy it by their own admission!
â* Important Note: We highly recommend the Natural Sand/Silver yoga mats over the Official Red/Black.â
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Thatâs amazing. They even warn you that using the football yoga mat as a yoga mat will turn your skin red! Dan Snyder approves. Letâs learn more about BallerYoga:
BallerYoga mats integrate the genuine grip and release that football players have known for decades to the yoga community.
âGenuine grip,â eh? I bet Jameis Winston would slip 18 times on one of your mats. This company is run by âFounder/Guruâ Cedric Yau, who invented the unusable football yoga mat after staying at a â5-star Yoga Retreat,â where, âthe cheap, slippery, low-quality yoga mats provided were an obvious weak link in the practice and experience.â I guarantee this man left a 19,000-word TripAdvisor review detailing said grievance. Nothing on this website is under $495.
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I actually do yoga to help my back, and most yoga mats are fine. The only reason I slip is because my feet get all clammy and sweaty. Thatâs not a problem a $1,000 pigskin rug can fix. This guy deserves to be homeless.
Jordan:
Iâm watching the Knicks and Lakers play at MSG and Mike Breen makes a comment about the number of Lakers fans in the building saying, âLakers fans always travel well!â This is insane, right? Just once I want to hear an announcer say, âWow, a bunch of bandwagoning Lakers fans and a smattering of people from southern California in attendance!â
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Itâs horseshit, yes. If there are a bunch of Lakers fans in your local arena, itâs because they actually live in your town. You canât get people in L.A. to fucking drive across town. You think youâre getting them on an airplane? Donât be ridiculous. Those are either transplants or bandwagoning assholes. âI grew up loving Kobe!â Yeah, I bet you did.
Iâll be honest: I think less of fanbases that actually do âtravel well.â Like, if a bunch of die-hard Tennessee fans who are NOT students pony up to take a chartered trip to Detroit for the Fuddruckerâs Seger Bowl presented by Culverâs? Save your money, rednecks. Find a more rewarding hobby.
Ian:
As far as cooking masters go, are Italian mothers overrated? Yes, Italian food is incredibly delicious. Nobody denies this. However, itâs all easy as balls to reproduce. Iâm Irish. My mother is one of the worst cooks on earth, and my wife is literally afraid of the stove and oven, so Iâve turned to YouTube, and I can produce a pretty slamming Chicken Parm, Meatballs, and Lasagna. And I have found that these dishes are not particularly hard to make. Is some Italian mother going to be 10-20% better?
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Oh sure. If sheâs been doing it longer, sheâs probably doing it better than you, a relative neophyte.
That said, everyoneâs mother is overrated as a chef. Thereâs a reason everyone thinks their mom or their grandma or [insert family member here] is the best cook in the world. If you grew up eating that food, it has an evocative value for you that it cannot have for anyone else. You go home, your mom or dad cooks for you, and you feel loved. That doesnât mean youâre eating better food than what they serve at, like, Eleven Madison Park. But youâre eating something thatâs exactly as you remember it, and only you have that memory. I cook for my kids, and if they donât spread the gospel that I am the greatest cook in the world to everyone they know (I am not), Iâll disown them.
Home chefs are flawed chefs. Theyâre stubborn and annoying. Commandeer some grannyâs kitchen space and sheâll silently want you shot dead on that spot (Iâm no different). âOh⌠oh YOU want to make eggs? No no no, thatâs fine. Thatâs fine. Iâll just stand here and quietly dismantle your shoddy techniques in my head.â If theyâve been making marinara sauce the same way for two decades, youâre NEVER getting them to try it another way. My mom outright refuses to buy any new kitchen equipment. She doesnât want to use any pot that was made after the year 1956. Sheâs also the bestest cook in the world and if you sully her cooking Iâll run you down in my Kia.
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Sean:
What is the most popular fallback career? Anecdotally Iâd say nurse because Iâve had an unusual amount of acquaintances who have gone from start-up/flight attendant/aimless drifter to realizing that nursing school is their âcalling.â Yoga teacher seems to be an odd, but distant, second.
Isnât it Uber driver now? A good fallback career is one where you need no further certified education and one that always has freelance work available. Thatâs Uber. Theyâve built a whole campaign around it, with that ad where the one dude, who looks like a reject from auditions for the New Most Interesting Man In The World, drives a college brochureâs worth of people around in an Uber and then meets his lady at a boutique restaurant afterward.
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That could be you! Just swap out the passengers in the ad for a parade of drunken wife beaters, and swap out the nice restaurant for a Burger King. REAL MONEY! Uber driver has usurped Real Estate Agent and Insurance Salesman as the default career for anyone who has flunked out of ballet school and what not. Iâm sure Silicon Valley has even more ideas for cool gig economy half-jobs ready in the pipeline! What if there was an app that âindenturedâ you to âserveâ a billionaire by cleaning his toilets on a five-year contract? He has a toilet disposal so you really gotta get in there when you scrub!
Jack:
My wife and I were at a hipster concert (Bon Iver) at an arena (Bradley Center, Milwaukee) and in between opening acts I wondered if there was more beard hair or pubic hair in the vicinity. My wife says pubic hair easily because only maybe half of the concert goers are male, but Iâm pretty sure sheâs wrong. Consider the length of some of those beards, and the demographic that goes to a show like this typically keep themselves well groomed. Which is there more of, assuming weâre shaving off all pubic & beard hair and weighing them?
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Pubic hair! While one full beard can accommodate as much hair as six full pubic bushes (again, that is physics), I have scanned crowd shots of Bon Iver concerts and found them relatively lacking in full Grizzly Adams facial hair. Too many hipsters mix it up by going with tasteful stubble or a handlebar âstache. Youâre not getting the requisite number of Spencer Halls to override all the ungroomed pubes in attendance.
By the way, for this question, I wanted to double check to make sure that beard hair didnât technically count as pubic hair (I believe it does). And I would have had an answer for you, except that the Wikipedia entry for âpubic hairâ has a whole bunch of raw crotch shots. They greet you with a big olâ hairy dick right off the bat. Thereâs even a crabs section. I would have liked a warning, Wikipedia. That shit ainât right. I was not ready for that. I was trying to enjoy my morning tea.
Patrick:
What do you think the last movie the Donald actually saw in a theater, it has to be some kind of action âblockbusterâ right? I think we have some idea of this as Bloodsport I believe is reported as one of his favorite films.
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Well hereâs a photo of him at the premiere of Tower Heist, which is such a perfectly forgettable movie for him to attend. In a million years I could not have sorted out a better match of movie and attendee. I bet he loved the first ten minutes of it before ducking out of the theater to go home and highlight his name in old back issues of Fortune magazine. Heâs also been to premieres for Sex & The City (again, perfect), Nine, and The Dark Knight Rises (maybe this made him want to be President). There is no way he stuck around to watch these movies in full. He probably just showed up uninvited to all of those premieres to get photographed and hog the tray of sliders.
Also, I bet all of Trumpâs movie recommendations sound exactly like a Pete Hammond movie blurb. âJust terrific action! A really good time!â
Matthew:
Worst People to Discuss Weather With (Least Worst to Worst)
Any and all people from California, Colorado, and other places with epic climates who never discuss the weather because where they live the weather is perfect almost every day of the year (well, except forest fire season).
Stoic mainline protestants from the rural parts of the Midwest and Great Plains who purse their lips and mumble under their breath whenever somebody goes out into a blizzard in a vehicle that lacks four wheel drive. If you slide off the road theyâll dig you out and give you a lift and they probably have a blanket or extra fleece you can wear but theyâre gonna judge you the entire time.
Anybody and everybody who chooses to live in Phoenix, Arizona. Not because their city is a testament to manâs hubris but because the heat has fused their synapses and rendered their skin into a leathery substance that is too inflexible for human speech.
S.E.C. and Big XII frat daddies who clearly like the swampy heat because it gives them an excuse to drink watery beer and dress in short suits while getting handsy with your sister and trying to fuck your girlfriend.
Pretentious Northwesterners who smugly explain that they can identify outsiders by their umbrellas.
Southerners who cheerfully listen while you complain that âman was not meant to live in this filthy humidityâ and then offer you a cold beverage but donât invite you into their air conditioned house because âyou know, sweat and b.o. just do so much damage to the furniture.â
Alcoholic Catholic urban Midwesterners who will laugh when you slip and break your coccyx on some ice and then tell you to âSuck it up! In Michigan if you wait five minutes the weather will change!
Full disclosure: my family is from the South, I grew up in DC, and have lived most of my adult life in Ohio and Michigan. Few things bring me as much joy as I get from telling my Southern family that they donât know what real winter is and telling my neighbors that they donât know real humidity.
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And so I think we have your answer: Americans.
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