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 reunions, the extinction of the hard T, dinosaurs, and more.

Your letters:

Dusty:

I was watching

Home Improvementthe other day and realized that the Taylor house is underrated. I like the layout out of it! That got me thinking about the best TV houses of all time. Obviously theBrady Bunchhouse is No. 1, but what is the rest of the top 10? And what's the dark horse?

Whoa whoa whoa, why is the Brady Brunch house "obviously" the top dog? I'm not seeing an open kitchen in that joint. And where's the pool? And the walk-in pantry? Now Ed O'Neill's crib on Modern Family? That's a fat-ass house. In fact, the homes on that show were so luxe that I always got distracted by it. Oh, the Dunphy house has a busted stair? I guess it'll only list for $5.5 million instead of $5.6 million. WHAT A DUMP.

By the way, you might notice that a lot of TV houses have the same floor plan. The front door is always stage left of the main sitting area, the stairs leading up to the second floor are always directly behind couch, the kitchen is a separate room stage right, the bedrooms are unfussy and all located upstairs, and there's never a finished basement. This design works well for filming a multi-camera sitcom, but that doesn't mean I wanna live in that shit. I want a baller house, like the one Tony Soprano and his family live in. I wish that house was located somewhere other than New Jersey, but at least it's in nice Jersey, and at least it's set off of the road so that I'd never have to interact with my neighbors.

Honorable mention to the Huxtable family brownstone on The Cosby Show. The layout is weak but the location can't be topped.

Leo:

Started working in a museum and although I've only been here a little over a month, I've noticed an odd trend: Guests come in to join a guided tour, but request to leave early because they have a flight to catch. This happens multiple times a week! I don't travel much, but when I do, I sure as shit don't risk missing my flight by visiting a museum or anything else that could impact my travel plans. Is this fairly common? I know my museum is only a few stops away from National Airport, but STILL. Unless my flight leaves at night, I'm not risking visiting a museum or even going to a movie the same day.

I have never heard of that being a thing. I can kind of understand it here in D.C., because tourists wanna hit all of the Smithsonian museums (before Trump replaces all of them with statues of all his mistresses), and because, as Leo noted, you can Metro to National Airport relatively quickly* from the Mall. But I'd still never attempt it, not here in D.C. or anywhere else.

A museum requires a full day's worth of energy. I walk around on that hard gallery floor for more than five minutes and suddenly I'm just as tired as if I'd just played a tennis match. Plus I wouldn't be able to enjoy staring at all the pretty paintings while I've got a shitload of travel angst swimming around in my cranium. I'm old enough to know that it's not worth maximizing all of my vacation time if I'm not gonna enjoy myself. So I can't ride with these multitasking tourists. All I wanna do before a flight is dick around on my phone and eat something bad for me.

*If you've never been to D.C., please note that virtually everything on the Mall is a lonnnnng walk from the nearest Metro stop. The Lincoln Memorial might as well be located in fucking North Carolina, it's such a haul. Don't expect any good restaurants near that shit either.

Sean:

On a flight from Philly to Nashville last week a woman had a puppy in a carrier. She took it out for everyone to see. It looked like a Bernese Mountain Dog, only fuzzier. She told us it was a Bernedoodle. Are there too many [dog breed]-doodles in our world? Labradoodles, Goldendoodles, Aussiedoodles, Bernedoodles (apparently), Schnooldes (wtf). Should I breed my Shetland Sheepdog with a Poodle? A Shetland Sheepdoodle?? Where does it end?

It will never end. Everyone wants a perfectly behaved dog (no such dog exists) who never sheds a single hair. That's why BIG BREEDER has decided to integrate poodle genes into every other breed and then charge customers $4,000 for their handiwork.

I don't judge people who get their dogs from a breeder. Our dog is a rescue, but I'm not gonna tut-tut other people who opted to shell out for a labradoodle or whatever. But I do feel shrewder than many of those people. Our dog is relatively hypoallergenic, and we didn't have to pay some crazy markup for the privilege. Did Carter need years of living with us, plus a handful of costly sessions with a trainer, to become the good doggie he is today? Yes. But guess what? A lot of those master-race dogs are just as annoying! I WIN!

Eks:

Imagine you time travel to, I dunno, 1987, knowing what you know about how the NFL wrecks players' brains and bodies. Are you able to enjoy the product with all its targeting, headshots and receivers destroyed going over the middle, or does future woke Dad Drew cringe at the destruction of these poor fools?

Please. I'd watch the SHIT out of old football if that happened. You'd have wipe my memory of the final scores, of course. And of modern players and coaching schemes being superior in every way. Otherwise, I'd have zero compunction tuning in. First of all, modern football still kills people. Secondly, I've already watched other deadly sports my whole life—boxing, pro wrestling, downhill skiing, MXC—knowing well in advance that they were bad for their participants. There's no redeeming me at this point, so I may as well enjoy watching Joey Browner legally put his helmet through a quarterback's sternum on time-travel Sundays. Fuck, now I really can't wait for the NFL season to begin. Look what you did.

Chris:

I've been noticing more and more sports people pronouncing Baltimore like "Baldamore." Is this a thing now? It drives me crazy. There's a T right in the middle!

There is? Well, I'll be. And here I've been jokingly/not jokingly calling it "Ballmer" ever since I moved to Maryland.

In all seriousness, I do still pronounce the hard T in Baltimore when I bring it up in conversation. Strange that I'd be so disciplined about it when I've lapsed on so many other hard Ts in the English language. I always say "winner" instead of "winter," "prinner" instead of "printer," "painer" instead of "painter." You get the idea. I used to think this was some sort of regional affect, but it's probably just how I talk. I've had loved ones accuse me of speaking lazy English, which always grinds my burrs. How dare you accuse me of not being able to speak my own native language? I'LL SAY WORDS HOW I WANNA, FUCKFACE! I'm not a newscaster, for shit's sake. Go be a diction cop somewhere else! Like Atlanna!

Abbey:

Those of us who were born in the late 1970s grew up in an era where a reunion concert of a famous band was treated with great interest and fanfare (Simon and Garfunkel, the Eagles, Plant/Page), whereas in recent years, it's more of a curiosity or a one-off (Guns N' Roses, Pixies, Oasis). Are there any legacy acts that, if they were to announce a tour or a new record, would actually garner significant attention? As an old, I can only think of acts like REM, Public Enemy, the Smiths, and maybe Destiny's Child? Who else could actually make waves by performing a reunion show/tour/album?

Hey man, Sugar reunited this year! That was a big-ass deal for yours truly, so much so that I'll be writing up a longread about it for this site in the coming months.

But I digress. I know that Sugar wasn't as big an act as, say, Nirvana back in its heyday. And Abbey here is asking about a reunion that would be akin to a mythical Beatles reunion (which of course is no longer possible due to the death of two of the band's members), one that would make national news. Of the options she listed, REM is probably the best candidate. I'm on the record as not liking REM, but God knows a bazillion other people do. The members of REM went out in the best possible way: on their terms, and while still alive and kicking. But they are still alive, and all of them have enough creative juice left to record another seminal album and hit the stadium circuit. That shit would be huge, even in a world where popular music has been reduced to wallpaper.

Aside from perhaps Destiny's Child (Beyonce’s solo career has been bigger than that group ever was, but a new Destiny's Child album would still make everyone go batshit), I'd say an REM reunion beats any of the other three choices. A Smiths reunion would feel hollow now that Morrissey is an open Nazi, and I didn't even realize Public Enemy had broken up. Now lemme throw out a few other ideas:

  • The Police. They hate each so much, I'd pay $500 to watch Stewart Copeland throw a drumstick at Sting every time Sting wanted do to a reggae version of "Every Breath You Take."

  • NSYNC. Shocked the K-pop boom hasn't helped make this a reality already.

  • Fleetwood Mac. You have to account for Christine McVie's death here, but people would still turn out in droves to see Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks openly despise having to work with one another again.

  • GNR, but withIzzy Stradlin back full time. The current reunited group isn't quite the same without him, and all of its newly recorded material has been forgettable.

  • Radiohead. I know they tour together on occasion these days, but I still won't consider them a going artistic concern until they drop a new album, which is never happening.

While we're talking about old acts, did you know that the Stones released another new album this year? And it's good! And so was the album they released three years ago! That band is 64 years old, and Charlie Watts died five years ago! It's a goddamn miracle that the Stones are still artistically viable. It's like if Michael Jordan was not only still playing basketball, but still winning titles. I'll never get over it.

HALFTIME!

Brandon:

Through whatever magical process you prefer, you are granted elite ability at the sport of your choosing. But only for 12 months. What do you do with these powers? (Assume your middle-aged body is magically able to hold up as you consider your career options). You want to get to the pros asap, but how do you go about convincing someone to let you play in any high-level games? You would end up Sidney Crosby crushing beer league while suffering from clinical depression.

Yeah I wouldn't even bother trying to get a pro contract with my special genie wish. Even if I dazzled everyone at some open tryout, no team is gonna sign a 49-year-old chinless dipshit. Urban Meyer signing Tim Tebow to play tight end was less embarrassing. No, what I'd do is wish for downhill skiing superpowers, and then fuck up the slopes all year long. I'd take a year off from work and then ski all of the top mountains on every continent. I'd also hire a film crew to shoot me heli-skiing down the Matterhorn so that, once the spell wore off, I could spend the rest of my days watching the footage of me shredding that pow like an Olympian. Then Lindsey Vonn and I could get it on.

Greg:

Unlike in the movies, I'm pretty sure if the dinosaurs were still around they wouldn't be manically chasing and eating humans. Like the birds and gators of today, they would mostly chill in whatever ecosystems we haven't totally destroyed. Dinos walking around in today’s times, your thoughts? For or against?

Against, because we'd just end up penning them in and slaughtering them for food. You've met the human race. We can't coexist with any other species, no matter how physically imposing. So I don't wanna be part of making the T. Rex—so valuable as a mythical creature of yore—into McDonald's burger filler. That would suck.

Also, aesthetically speaking, real dinosaurs would be complete letdown. We've been on this issue at Defector from Day One. Paleontologists now say that the actual T. Rex wasn't like the Jurassic Park T. Rex at all, but more like some glorified emu. Fucking weak. It's like finding out the megalodon was actually a very large algae bloom. Dinos are best left in the past, where my imagination is free to do as it pleases with them.

Alex:

My fiance's grandmother passed away a few weeks ago, and her aunt (one of the grandmother's daughters) insisted she'd write and read the eulogy for the funeral. After a few days, she sent over her "work" to my soon to be mother-in-law, and it was clearly written completely by ChatGPT (the aunt confirmed that she used AI to "help"). My mother-in-law had to make edits last minute (really basic information, like that Grandma liked to golf and enjoyed time with family) but 95 percent of the end product was produced by AI and read out loud to grieving friends and family. My question (besides what the fuck?) is, is there any way to fully shame this behavior in society, or are we officially too far gone?

I've already tried shaming people who read acceptance speeches off of their phones, or watch YouTube videos in public without headphones on. Those efforts were in vain. We're deep into Trump 2.0 now; shame went out the door YEARS ago. There's only one way to prevent people from lazily consulting AI to handle the most important moments in life, and that's to burn every last data center to the ground. In an environmentally friendly way. People will use the bad thing as long as they have access to the bad thing.

For the rest of you: Please don't write a fucking eulogy using ChatGPT. Just ask another person for help. Shit, ask me. I'll do it. My rate starts at $2,000/hr.

Ben:

Watching a baseball game right now and the inning started off with a pitch-clock violation on the batter, granting him an automatic strike. This had me wondering: If a pitcher starts the inning with a gifted strike on a pitch-clock violation, and then proceeds to strike out the side on eight pitches, would that count as an Immaculate Inning? It's not his fault that he wasn't allowed to throw the ninth strike, but also he didn't throw nine strikes! Would we need to create a separate title for this? And if so, what should it be called?

Nope, it's an immaculate inning. The scorebook logs that first strike as a strike, so that's that. Doesn't matter how the pitcher got that strike, they still get credit for it. Anyone who wants to put an asterisk on it should go apply to be a member of the BBWAA and leave the rest of us alone.

Todd:

My audiologist is suggesting a cochlear implant after a couple of years of me complaining that my hearing aid just isn't good enough (I only wear/need it in my left ear). She says everyone in her industry hates what

The Sound of Metaldid to cochlear implants and swears it's not accurate. But for me, I think it's more the stigma of wearing that contraption on my head. I'm a travel agent, and I do a lot of Zooms and Hawaii travel videos with and for strangers. Am I just being a wuss? Did you feel self-conscious? How long did it take you to not give a damn?

For people who don't know, a cochlear implant is a surgically implanted device that circumvents the outer ear and relays sounds from the outside world directly to your optic nerve. You have to wear a processor on your head for the implant to work. Mine looks like a car key fob. I have never been self-conscious about wearing my processor, and I never will be. I went deaf suddenly in 2018, and all I wanted was to get my hearing back. Once I was approved for an implant procedure (and once my insurance company agreed to pay for it), I didn't hesitate for a second. When the doctors activated it post-surgery, it was a goddamn miracle. If the processor had borne a Packers logo on it, I still wouldn't have cared. I could hear out of my right ear again, and I remain forever grateful for it.

That was seven years ago. Over the ensuing timespan, I haven't gotten a single mean comment about my implant. One time a random kid asked me what was on my head and I was overjoyed to take the processor off and be like, "This is my robot ear! Isn't it cool?" (The kid indeed thought it was cool.) Other times, I've gotten dapped up by strangers who had cochlear implants of their own. Maybe some people make snide comments behind my back, but I don't give a crap about them. You shouldn't either. One of the biggest reasons that Americans don't get/wear hearing aids—even though tens of millions of them desperately need them—is because of vanity. They're afraid they'll look weird and all that shit. It'll take decades to wean people off of that self-stigma; the best way to do so is to rock your hearing aids and/or implant processors proudly.

As for The Sound of Metal, I saw that flick after I got my implant. Riz Ahmed plays a drummer who goes deaf, scrimps and saves for cochlear implants, and then rejects them at movie's end to embrace his disability. I had no problem with that storyline. Sometimes cochlear implants don't work for people, either emotionally or physiologically. But you shouldn't let one case study—let alone a fictional one—drive your own medical decisions.

Anthony:

Was watching some baseball the other night and seeing the players' treatment of the dugout floor got me to thinking, what's the absolute grossest surface in sports? Is it, in fact, the dugout floor? Maybe the MMA cage floor after a full night of fights? I've heard rumors of fighters intentionally soiling themselves prior to a fight in order to dissuade an opponent from grappling.

Ooh, I'd do that. No chance I'd actually win an MMA fight, so I'd definitely shit my britches before entering the octogan. You know, as a strategy. Certainly not out of fear.

Anyway, I agree with you that any combat sport surface is probably as gross as it gets. I've played hockey and those locker rooms smell like the end of your life. But I've also wrestled, and every wrestling room in this world is about as hygienic as diving headfirst into a sewage vat. The mere air in a wrestling room is more toxic than the air around 1988 Chernobyl. The poor mat in that room is infused with a heady mixture of long-aged sweat, blood, urea, and God knows what else. It's safer to give Bill Parcells a barehanded prostate exam than to touch one of those things.

Patrick:

At what age does it become weird to loudly listen to music in your car with the windows open?

Weird as in socially unacceptable? Never. I might get a little testy when someone drives by me with the bass turned up to so high it shows up on far-away seismographs. But I'll always respect that driver's love of the game. Too many people live inside their headphones now; I prefer the world be a more openly musical place.

Does that mean that I still crank up the stereo with my windows open? No, but not because I'm trying to be polite. I just never drive with my windows open, unless it's a perfect 70 degrees outside and I'm not going too fast. Otherwise, I don't like all of the extra noise, or the wind mussing my hair. I'm a spoiled American baby who needs his car interior to have the exact same climate every time I drive it.

But I'll still crank up the jams as I see fit. Our new car has a sound system that could bring down buildings. May as well use it to put on some Metal Church while I'm doing 85 on the highway.

Email of the week!

TJ:

While reading your WYTS entries, I notice certain positions are abbreviated with only a single letter (safety, kicker, punter, center). When that abbreviation directly precedes the player, my brain can't help but scan these like a stand-in for a first name, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or L. Ron Hubbard or T. Boone Pickens. And so: Who is the current NFL player that, when appending his position in front of his name, most sounds like a famous/pretentious person? And what does that person do? For me it's K. Brandon Aubrey, who sounds like he writes rippin' Western novels.

Everyone please say hello to P. Logan Cooke, my personal injury lawyer.