Your letters:
Clay:
What is the worst sports team logo? I can tell you. It’s the Portland Trailblazers. Tell me a worse one. You can’t do it. Let’s say this is within the major professional American Leagues. I’m sure there are some awful logos in some European minor league or something. It’s Portland. You know it’s Portland.
You know that really IS a stupid logo. That team has arguably the coolest nickname in sports and yet their logo looks like something they cribbed from 1970s board game manufacturer. There are no trails. Nothing is blazing. WHO ARE THE AD WIZARDS WHO CAME UP WITH THIS ONE?! And the philosophy behind the logo is somehow even worse:
Since the team’s inception in 1970, the Trail Blazers logo has been the subject of both admiration and diverse interpretation. The concept is a graphic interpretation of five basketball players from one side against five players from the opposing side rotating around a center circle in a pinwheel-like motion.
What fucking basketball are these people watching? It’s a basketball game, not a May Day picnic. Somehow this is one step down from every other NBA team sticking a basketball in the logo. I showed this take to boss Megan Greenwell, our only resident Blazers fan. Here was her reply:
The Blazers have the best logo in sport. Fight me, Clay. Enter the octagon.
You’ll forgive her if she’s been brainwashed by having to watch her team be first round playoff fodder for the past three decades. Fans get attached to team designs in the same irrational way they get attached to the team itself. That’s how you end up with the Packers’ uniforms being “classics” even though they are, objectively speaking, hideous. I’ve seen better color combinations in a hospital toilet.
So the Blazers logo is outdated and weak, but is this the WORST logo? Let’s take a look at a few other contenders before we make a final decision. Please note that I’m only going by current logos, so historically reviled logos like the first L.A. Chargers logo don’t count.
The Browns. The Browns don’t really have a logo. Whenever they need an avatar, they use their busted-ass helmets instead, and they’ll tell you this is because the Browns prize simplicity and tradition and don’t need any GLORY BOY logos, but you and I both now it’s because they’re cheap, lazy, and have all the imagination of Mike Huckabee tweet. Also, the one time they did have a logo, it was a homeless version of the Celtics leprechaun:
The Blue Jackets. This team was named after union army jackets, and yet they opted for a logo where the Ohio flag is wrapped backwards around a star. It’s like they designed the logo specifically to appease MAGA puds who jeer if you kneel for the anthem while simultaneously jerking off to old centerfolds of Coors Light models in flag bikinis.
The Titans. In Greek myth, the titans are gigantic superbeings who birthed the gods and occasionally indulged in eating kids. You would think an NFL team would RUSH to embrace infanticidal cannibalism. Instead, the Titans’ commissioned a logo that looks exactly like a Nashville bachelorette’s interpretation of ancient Greek design. “Did they have stars back then, y’all?”
The Nets. I remain firm in my belief that not renaming the Nets when they moved to Brooklyn was one of the most colossal mistakes any franchise has ever made. Not only did they keep one of the dumbest names in sports, but they also took all the color out of the logo. It’s like they WANT to be the private label NBA team. The front of the jersey should just say BEANS in big block letters.
The Pistons. Remember when they tried to jazz up this logo by putting actual stuff in it and people got mad? They were right to at least give it a shot. God forbid we mess with the classic design of a team name slapped onto a ball.
The Patriots. Every dipshit Pats fan I know hates the current logo and wants Pat Patriot to return. Well, here’s a little secret: they’re both awful.
The Clippers. I know it’s blunt and clumsy to want a team logo to echo the nickname, but this team was named after cool ships and they’ve NEVER put a ship in the fucking logo. People don’t even know why they’re called the Clippers anymore. It drives me nuts. Their new logo looks like a game of Snake I played on a Nokia phone back in 1999.
The Orioles. Everyone goofed on the old Dolphins logo (which I liked) because the dolphin was wearing a helmet, but this logo isn’t much better. Birds don’t wear hats. Fucking stupid.
Of course, I’m beating around the bush all these contenders when the obvious choice has been sitting there all along. It’s the Indians. If you’d like proof that fans will glom onto any logo and defend it past the point of logic and reason, there you have it. I bet every pitcher in baseball has old tweets praising it.
Adam:
What activity/task has the biggest disparity between people who think they’re good at it and people who are actually good at it? The three I thought of off the top of my head are driving, doing movie accents (Austin Powers, Borat, Bane), and sex.
What are you talking about? My movie accents are impeccable, my driving is scalpel-sharp and wasted on all the dopes impeding my progress, and I am a LION in the sack.
Seriously though, the No. 1 answer to this in 2018 is tweeting. If everyone knew how bad they were at tweeting, they’d never do it. There are like, three good Twitter accounts, and one of them (Zodiac Motherfucker) retired. The rest don’t need to exist at all. But people think they are AMAZING at being online. I have definitely fired off a tweet and thought to myself, “Damn, that was a really good tweet, Drew.” I mentally congratulate myself for tweets, like a fucking weirdo. There’s also an imaginary Twitter coach in my head who won’t let me leave Twitter for the day unless I fire off one last quality tweet, like I’m making a free throw before I leave the gym. It’s a genuine illness. People take a dump on my Twitter and I’m like, “Excuse me? MOI?! How dare you lump me in with the rest of the Twitter peasantry!”
Honorable mention here to singing, comedy, and cooking.
Bryan:
My coworker brings scrambled eggs in a ziplock bag to work. No Tupperware. She doesn’t even put the ziplock in a lunch bag or anything. Just straight up walks in carrying a ziplock bag full of eggs. Then she heats up the ziplock and eats straight out of it. I know she’s crazy. She’s crazy, right?
She is but I’m fascinated. Why does she do this? Doesn’t the plastic bag melt in the microwave? Did she start bringing bagged scrambled eggs to work BECAUSE she ingested a lethal dose of BPS molecules, or did the eggs come first? I don’t even think it would be weird to ask her about it. I’m genuinely curious. I’d be like, “Okay. What’s with the fucking eggs?”
Because truthfully, I’d eat scrambled eggs out of a bag. It wouldn’t be my first choice of delivery vehicle, but I’m not turning down scrambled eggs in any form. I can never have enough scrambled eggs, so if there’s a bag of them lying around, I’m pouncing. I’ve eaten cold scrambled eggs. I’ve eaten gray scrambled eggs. I don’t care. Give them to me. GIVE ME ALL THE EGGS.
Speaking of scrambled eggs, I wanted to pass along this video reader Jon sent of Gordon Ramsay making them.
Every chef has their own needlessly unique way of prepping scrambled eggs, but you’ve got to see how wild this shit is. He takes the eggs on and off the heat 57 times before dumping them onto the plate when they’re clearly undercooked. He keeps telling the other chefs not to overcook the eggs but he’s not even letting these eggs FORM. They look like egg diarrhea. I mean, I’d still eat them, but fuck, man. Cook your eggs more, Gordo. You can take the cook out of England but you can’t take England out of the cook.
Mike:
How’d you get your kids to sleep? Thanks.
God, I don’t even remember. I was so tired during the sleep training process that my brain simply shut down and forbade memories from taking shape. I remember there was lots of crying. I also remember lying in bed, wide awake, hemming and hawing about whether to go into the kid’s room to get them to shut up. At one point in the sleep training process, I slept on the FLOOR of the kid’s room. I would grab a shitty swaddling blanket and sleep in fits and starts. And then, if I thought the kid was finally out, I would try to get up and tiptoe back to my bed. This required all the grace and skill of a cat burglar, and so I usually ended up stubbing my toe on a bureau, crying out in pain, and then having the kid wake up. There is NOTHING more debilitating as a parent than thinking your kid is finally asleep, only to have them cry the second you attempt to escape and get some rest of your own. It takes years off your life.
I haven’t even gotten to the part where you ditch the crib and the child is now free to get up and come INTO your room at four in the morning. One time I heard something stir in the middle of the night and I opened my eyes and my son was standing right there, staring at me, like a goddamn GHOST. I nearly punched the boy on reflex. If it had been legal to manacle the child to his bed, I probably would have.
The only advice I can give you is to set a bedtime and stick rigorously to it. People who don’t have set bedtimes for their children are morons. You adhere to the regimen, you ride it out for roughly a decade and PRESTO. You have sleeping children. I am so, so glad that part of my life is now over. Sometimes I’ll see a frazzled new mom pushing a stroller in some weird place at night just to get a child to sleep. The mom is so clearly tired, and fatigued, and just needs a break. I can see life’s burden weighing so heavily upon her in this, her most trying moment. And that’s when I think to myself, “Boy, am I glad that’s not me. SUCKER.”
Also, my 12-year-old is just on the verge of adopting teen sleeping hours, so now I’ve gone from praying my kids are asleep to yelling at them to wake the fuck up. By the time the new school year comes around, I’m gonna be marching into her bedroom banging a skillet with a wooden spoon.
HALFTIME!
Mike:
If an MLB team decided that they wanted you on their team for the year, how many hits would you get over the course of the season? In this scenario you’re a regular starter, and do everything a full time player would do (i.e. practice, watching tape, nutrition plan, etc.), and no matter how poorly you play you will not be sent down.
I think the answer is likely zero, because baseballs genuinely scare me. Like, when I go to the batting cages and fuck around? I pick the mild Juggs machine. The spicy Juggs machine that hurls balls 70 mph at you intimidates the shit out of me, so what chance do I have to stand in there against balls going much, much faster? I would probably just run right out of the batter’s box every time the ball left a pitcher’s hand.
The only way I would get a hit is Little League–style, where you close your eyes and make contact by accident, and the force of the pitch is what sends the ball flying instead of the speed of your bat. That’s what would have to happen for me to get a hit, and even that’s a dicey proposition because, again, I would not stick around the batter’s box to die. I would just flee like a complete puss. People would throw popcorn cartons and lit cigarettes at me and I still wouldn’t take a swing.
Also, I would never get an infield hit because I’m not fast enough to beat the tag. Like, even if I committing to bunting on every at-bat like a TOTAL LOSER, and I laid down a perfect bunt down the third base line, I’d still be out by miles. You don’t wanna see me run. It’s a genuinely uncomfortable sight. I look like a giraffe that got shot.
William:
I know that Dad jokes are a well-mined topic, but I don’t think people appreciate how the humor suddenly becomes insult roast-y once the kids reach the tween years. My kid is 12 and suddenly I am Don Rickles when it comes to what she wears, watches on YouTube, technology, music, whatever. Now back in the day, my dad and my friends’ dads used to bust balls when we were 12 and 13 and dumb. Are people still doing this in our snowflake era? Or am I the lone Jeff Ross of the suburban soccer fields?
No no, it’s great! I’m a big believer lovingly roasting your children. Why even HAVE children if you can’t gradually erode their self-esteem with a series of well-timed pithy comments? Here’s one I use on a near-daily basis:
DAD: Hey you.
CHILD: Me?
DAD: No the OTHER you. Yeah you, you butt.
Never gets old. You should hear the calls I get from school when they pull the same gag on their teachers. Really brings down the house.
I think any kind of long-term relationship involves some shit-giving between loved ones. And I think if you love someone enough, and know them well enough, you can sort out where the lines are quite capably. Like, I’ll never look at one of my kid’s book reports and be like, “Hey way to get a C-plus, YOU FUCKING LOSER.” But I’ll definitely throw down a “So glad you could join us!” when they’re late to the dinner table when they oughta know better. That’s just basic dadding right there.
Also, humor is a much better option for correcting a kid than yelling at them. Frankly, I should spend more time acting like Chandler Bing around my kids than shouting at them to pipe down. “Could you guys BE any more loud right now?” That’ll teach them some RESPECT.
David:
Would Steph Curry be the prolific shooter he is without that little square on the backboard? If you made the Warriors play without that square for the duration of the playoffs, would they have any chance of winning the whole thing? Could the Wizards step up and beat Toronto if Toronto didn’t have the square?
There’s a crowd of drunken loons waving inflatable dicks behind the glass at virtually every NBA arena, so I think the Warriors would be undeterred. I say that knowing that pro athletes are skilled craftsman and therefore hypersensitive to even the subtlest changes in equipment. But Steph Curry has taken so many shots in his life that, by now, he can probably see that box on the glass even when it isn’t there. He intuitively knows its exact dimensions and all that. I think most players would get along fine without it.
Except Tim Duncan. Tim Duncan would have been out of basketball within five years if he never had that goddamn box to aim at.
Tim:
Bill Belichick. Love him or hate him he’s a legend. That being said, he’s done nothing in endorsements. What do you think would be the best fit for him on a national scale? For some reason I see him as a Cheerios spokesman.
Never endorsed anything, you say?
Anyway, if Belichick ever shows up in an ad, it’ll be one of those ads where they cast him against type and he’s all friendly and gregarious. It’s like when they put Bill Parcells in a Tostitos ad and had him sing “Kumbaya,” or when Bob Knight did that ad with Metallica. The formula is always the same. “You know this guy as legendarily humorless asshole. What this product endorsement presupposes is … what if he were PLEASANT? We think you might get a hearty chuckle out of watching this man be warm and kind to people!” So yeah, whenever Belichick retires, they’ll have him singing Bon Jovi in some Dunkin’ Donuts ad. “Your crumbs are like baddddddd medicine…”
Jeremy:
I get push notifications whenever a pitcher has gone five or six innings without giving up a hit. Every time I see the notification pop up, I immediately start rooting for the pitcher to lose the no-no on a bunt or a blooper. I don’t have anything against no-hitters, but for some reason, I get a sick satisfaction out of a guy going 8 innings and losing his no-hitter on a fluke hit by a no name outfielder. Does this make me a jerk?
You heartless, trolling bastard. THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON. I don’t think I’ve ever cheered for someone to break up a no-hitter or a perfect game. Even though we now have evidence that literally every MLB pitcher is Lil John Rocker, I would still never root for them to lose the no-no. That’s the one time a regular season baseball game has real drama. I get genuinely annoyed when some dipshit breaks it up with bloop single to left in the eighth (and it’s always a bloop single, or some other similarly unimpressive feat of batting). I want that guy dead. He stole history away from my boy and I want him to PAY.
So don’t cheer against no-hitters. That’s crossing the line. One day you’re pointing and laughing at a broken-up perfect game, the next you’re going WOMP WOMP at pictures of dead babies. We have to preserve our HUMANITY, dammit.
Matt:
Please rank the best categories of action sequences:
1. Gunfight
2. Martial arts
3. Car chase (including motorcycles)
4. Air battle (including space. Ex. Millennium Falcon)
5. Sword/lightsaber
You left foot chases off of here, and a good foot chase is probably the best kind of action sequence because it gets the characters out of a car and running on top of clay rooftops in Tunisia and shit like that. So here’s how I would rank them:
- Foot chase
- Any kind of breakout
- Bank robbery
- Star Wars–style space battle
- War movie battle scene
- Swordfight
- Martial arts fight
- Car chase
- Boat chase
But these rankings are kind of beside the point because so much of this depends on who’s making the movie, and because the most important thing you need to make any action sequence work is COHERENCE. It’s incredibly difficult to stage an action sequence where the audience understands where everyone is and what the fuck is going on at all times. When the sequence goes on too long, or it doesn’t make any sense, it gets deeply annoying. So the type of sequence is less important to me than making sure the director has their shit together. Christopher McQuarrie is already getting tons of praise for the action sequences in that new Mission: Impossible movie, but also directed one of my favorite car chases of all time, and the twist is that the cars barely go 5 mph:
A lot of car chases look the same, so I appreciated McQuarrie being like, “Hey, what if we went SLOW, and everyone was very quiet but also psychotically violent?” SO BADASS.
Jim:
I saw this week that waxing your nostrils is a thing now. There’s a ball of wax on a stem, kind of like a Q-tip, that they put in there and let dry. They then yank it out and voila, no more nostril hair. The pain has got to be a 10/10, yet it looks so unbelievably satisfying that I want to try it. Am I crazy?
Let’s eat some tape and see:
Motherfucker didn’t even FLINCH. I have to try this. I’m 41, so my nostril hairs routinely escape. I have a fucking pushbroom growing out of my nose. It’s awful. So I’d be down with some nostril waxing. Secretly, I am the world’s lamest masochist. I derive a strange amount of satisfaction from ripping out nose hairs (triggers both crying AND sneezing!), so the idea of ripping them all out in one go is deeply alluring to me. I LIVE FOR THE DANGER.
By the way if I ever get my nostrils professionally waxed, I will never be as brave as the guy in that video. I will shriek like I’m in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. I have no shame.
Paul:
Could I win the Boston marathon if I got to ride my mountain bike? Clearly a competitive cyclist could win, but I’m a desk jockey who’s nearly 40 and bikes a few miles on the weekends. I think with some training I could do it.
Oh well, with some training, sure. But that’s not fair. To make it even, you’d have to go in cold, riding up and down vicious hills for hours with no preparation of any kind. The course record is just a shade over two hours. I can tell you right now that there’s no way I could ride a bike on hilly terrain for two hours straight without developing the kind of saddle sores that would be the centerpiece gag of a Farrelly Brothers movie. I think you would get off an amazing head start and then you would look behind you and, with mounting dread, see the pack come back into view and then overtake you in the second half. It would be RIVETING. In fact, I think we should include you in the next marathon. WHO THE FACK SAYS NO?!
Email of the week!
Joseph:
This happened when I was eight. I am now nearly 30. My 50-something aunt was moving from a small apartment to some condo with her 3rd husband of my memory. My mom, my Fundamentalist Christian grandmother and I were in tow to help, making about a four hour trip from Northeast Ohio to Northern KY.
For months prior to the move, family members keep asking me where my Aunt is moving and I giddily giggle and tell them “Florence, Y’all!” Why? Well, because there’s a mall in the town with a giant water tower that says “Florence, Y’all” which is literally all that I had been told about the town. To my eight year old brain this is the most hilarious thing in the world, it’s a new thing that water towers can be funny and folksy! When I finally saw it in person, I erupted with giggles.
We finish moving. In celebration, my aunt, my grandma and I pull into the Wendy’s drive thru, and asks me if I want a frosty with my meal for being ‘the best nephew ever’. I had never had a frosty. I wanted to be the best nephew ever. My aunt told me I would love it.
Turns out, I had never had a frosty because I was lactose intolerant. I didn’t know this by name, I just knew I wasn’t allowed to drink milk or eat cheese. My mom didn’t tell them this and/or they thought she was lying.
We order, and she hands me the frosty and says, “Here, eat this before we get home so your mom doesn’t know.” She then decides she needs to stop at the mall for a brief second and leave me and my grandma in the car. I scarfed down the whole frosty before we even got to the mall, which was all of five minutes away.
I, of course, am in the height of my glory. I’m in the shadow of the funniest water tower I have ever seen that had been hyped for literal MONTHS and on a sugar high, plus I’m in on a secret that I had a sweet treat without the knowledge of my mother BEFORE dinner.
Then maybe twenty minutes later while still waiting in the car, I start to feel the stomach pangs. I tell my grandmother I have to go to the bathroom. She says to hold it. I tell her it doesn’t feel like I can. We’re at a mall completely foreign to us with no car keys, in a time before ubiquitous cell phone usage, and no idea where the nearest bathroom is. So, she tells me just to go over to where there are no cars and pop a squat.
I do just that. Liquid fury that which knew no bounds began erupting. My whole body was spasming in anger at the frosty which had just mere minutes ago graced my lips. Cars drove by and honked at me. After about three minutes of concentrated hell coming out of my anus, my grandmother comes over with napkins from the Wendy’s bag. My aunt had asked for extras since she had none in the new condo. I reached out for them, she said, “These aren’t for you! They are to cover your shame that God has smote you with!” and proceeded to unfold the napkins and lay them over the area my liquid shit has reached. So, I needed to pull my pants and underwear back up and walk back to the car.
As I get back to the car, I see flashing yellow lights, I had never seen flashing yellow lights. The flashing yellow lights belonged to a mall cop. They had a report of a young boy relieving himself in the parking lot. They asked my grandma why I didn’t go inside. She told them we were from out of town and I had diarrhea because, “God had punished him for being bad when his mother wasn’t looking and God was exacting his revenge.” The guy looked at me, asked me if I was sorry, I assured him that I was with a beleaguered nod.
My aunt came back shortly after and we drove to her new condo. I was the first one to use the shower. While in the shower, my new Uncle decided it would be ‘funny’ to watch Cops on like triple the volume, so I would hear sirens while showering. I stayed in there for a very long time, long enough that my mom came to check on me, I told her I was waiting for the sirens to go away, so the cops wouldn’t be after me anymore, I was just doing what grandma told me to do and God was smiting me for eating the frosty without asking her. She told me that my grandmother is crazy and doesn’t actually talk to God, so don’t worry about that either.
Family still comes up to me and asks me about “Florence, Y’all”, more than twenty years later. I hate my family.
I don’t blame you.