New Movie Times

Tuesday, 3 September 2019

U of Illinois Student Charged With Hate Crime, Accused of Hanging a Noose in a Dorm Elevator

Photo: Champaign County Sheriff’s Office (via AP)

A University of Illinois math major may find himself adding up the years in prison if he’s found guilty of a felony hate crime charge for hanging a noose in a campus elevator.

A female friend reported Andrew Smith to police after authorities say he found a piece of rope, fashioned it into a noose, and then hung it in an elevator at a residence hall on the university’s Urbana-Champaign campus, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Smith, 19, of Normal, Ill., was arrested Monday night and arraigned Tuesday on a felony hate crime charge and a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. He pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5,000 bond. His next court date was set for Oct. 22.

The university has been embroiled in a number of racially charged incidents of late, including a lawsuit brought by black employees earlier this year who said they had been subjected to racial slurs and threats, including nooses, Ku Klux Klan garb, racist graffiti and Confederate flags, according to the Tribune.

In this latest incident, students at Allen Hall found the noose in the elevator early Sunday.

Black students at the university expressed anger and said the university needed to get tougher on those who commit hate crimes and incidents of racial bias, WILL Illinois Public Media reports.

In a statement to WILL, the student organizations Black Students for Revolution and Black United Front demanded that the university regularly publicize all reported incidents of racism.

“We don’t want it hidden from the students, hidden from the campus,” Black Students for Revolution member Kayla Stewart told WILL. “We need to know about these things, we need to know about the kind of climate that students of color, specifically black students, are dealing with while they are on campus.”

Black Students for Revolution also called for the university to impose harsher penalties for racist acts, including expulsion for a minimum of two years.

“It’s just a question of: Is the university willing to protect and make black students feel comfortable and safe on campus?” Stewart said.

In a tweet Tuesday, Illinois Gov. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said hate had no place on campus and that he was glad swift action had been taken in the latest noose incident, tweeting, per the Chicago Sun-Times:

“Hate has no place in Illinois or in its educational institutions, and I’m glad swift action was taken to address this incident.”
“I’m committed to fighting intolerance and bigotry everywhere in our state and building a culture of learning at our universities that serves all students,” Pritzker said. “Support is being offered on campus for students who may wish to participate or attend community meetings to share their voices and experiences.”

Actor Who Portrayed QB Gets Called Out, Goes To Great Lengths To Prove He Can Actually Throw A Football

The internet shared a chuckle over the weekend at the expense of actor Robbie Amell, who in a viral clip from the 2015 movie The DUFF appeared to have no actual idea how to throw a football, in a scene where he is meant to be playing a star high school quarterback. Have a look at this mess:

This sequence comes immediately after Amell’s character, named Wesley Rush, is told that he will be suspended from the football team until he can get his failing grades up. This is a problem for Wesley, because apparently his only chance at going to college is on a football scholarship, which he stands to earn by virtue of his understanding not just how to throw a football, but how to throw a football well. Which, let me just say, is not at all a skill on display in that scene!

It’s not quite Kevin Spacey tossing a baseball, but that is quite the awkward, shortened, painful-looking delivery. Several sports and movie knowers theorized that Amell was probably staring down many thousands of dollars’ worth of movie equipment during this scene, and concentrating very hard on not destroying any of it, which would account for a throwing motion that appears to propel the football with all the force of a gentle breeze. Amell seemed to confirm this theory Monday night, but it’s important to remember that a man will say anything to avoid the humiliation that is his due for throwing like a little baby:

When this explanation did not immediately end the onslaught of online ownage, Amell seemed prepared to proceed to a practical demonstration, according to his wife Italia Ricci, whose Monday was very quickly becoming very stupid:

But would our hero go through with the plan? Would he drag his poor, pregnant wife outside to film grainy cell-phone video of his true football throwing motion? It turns out a man will do desperate things to prove he is not a noodle-armed doofus:

Not so bad! Of course, tech-savvy people can do impressive things with video software in this day and age. Impossible to fully believe that this wasn’t doctored with some sort of deepfake software until every living person in North America has seen Amell throw a football with their own two eyes, in person.

Okay, Maybe That's Enough Fast And Furiouses For Now

GIF: YouTube

One of the earliest signs that the Fast and Furious film franchise has finally flown too close to the sun comes within the first 10 minutes of Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, the ninth installment in the now 18-year-old series.

Luke Hobbs, a greased bowling ball and bounty hunter (freelance) played by The Rock “Dwayne” Johnson, confronts his first victim by revealing how he learned of said victim’s illicit behavior: “I’ve been hearing a lot of dark web chatter,” he says, to the viewer’s deep humiliation. If you can imagine a gigantic steak in a too-tight denim jacket saying, “I’ve been hearing a lot of dark web chatter,” before pummeling some guy this way till Tuesday, then you know all you need to know about this already ill-conceived spinoff: It is dumb. Not the good kind of dumb, either. Just dumb. You heard it here first, in this dark web chatter.

As if to put the final nail in the coffin before we even get to the film’s exposition, Hobbs then grabs the closest tattoo gun and inks “I LOVE COPS” onto the man’s forehead. Anyone with even a modest knowledge of the Fast and Furious canon knows that Hobbs is not remotely light-handed enough for the tattooing profession and is himself a cop (freelance), so it’s not clear if this is intended to be an insult or a compliment. From then on, the contradictions grow. The mood is flat. The banter is wack. The first in what will surely be several spinoffs in the Fast and Furious universe is already, within minutes, a throwaway.

Goddammit.

I am the first person to argue for more Fast and Furious movies, and I’ve frequently put my reputation on the line to do so: at parties, during job interviews, in the waiting room of my gynecologist’s office. I’m basically always talking about Fast and Furious, even when I’m not supposed to be. What I would not give for another Fast Five, Tokyo Drift, or even 2 Fast 2 Furious; to have Brian O’Conner and Han Lue brought back to life (again); to return to L.A. once and for all; to share one more Corona around the table and raise a toast to family, like we all really mean it, just like we used to. I’d love to see Dom Toretto force some punk through a glass wall, Letty drive some punk off a cliff, Tej crack some code, Roman crack some joke, or hear Mia say something completely benign and forgettable throughout it all. But no—instead, we get the two characters least representative of the Fast and Furious ethos (which is, of course, “WE ARE FAMILY”) alternating between almost punching and almost kissing each other for two hours and sixteen minutes. Who asked for this? Hint: Their names rhyme with The Lock and Mason Nathan and they are both executive producers on the film.

So what happens in this two-hour-plus romantic romp? Here’s the rundown: Idris Elba is Brixton Lore, a superhuman robot soldier who is—what else?—trying to eradicate the planet of weak humans in order to create a superhuman race of, I dunno, superhumans. He intends to do that by spreading a virus that turns your insides to jelly in under 48 hours. But, he is foiled when—who else?—a woman, willing to be the martyr in this whole pistol measuring contest, injects herself with the deadly virus to keep it out of Lore’s hands. She prays and hopes that someone, anyone will save her from having her sexy girly parts liquified—and quick.

Lucky for Hattie Shaw (played by Vanessa Kirby), she has both a brother in Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), and a romantic interest in Luke Hobbs, and they’ll stop at nothing to protect her. She may be a skilled, intelligent, exceptionally competent MI6 agent but feminine weakness being what it is, she cannot possibly pull this off alone. She is also weirdly barefoot for much of the movie, and while Hobbs and Shaw are lit from within and full of vim and vigor throughout most of their skirmishes, Hattie’s cat-eye makeup looks like it was applied by a literal cat. As Hobbs and Shaw attempt to take down Lore’s nefarious plan and save Hattie from imminent death, the duo also manage to destroy a double-decker bus, several glass-walled rooms, a secret lair the size of the UN building, the coastline of Samoa, and an abandoned nuclear power plant that is—if we’ve learned anything about subtlety in the F&F universe—probably meant to be Chernobyl. They also make ample time for love-hate, buddy-comedy banter that never seems to end. And you want to know the worst part? There is hardly even the whiff of a car chase until roughly 45 minutes in.

The movie is full of ridiculous, random cameos. I was just as surprised to see Rob Delaney standing next to Statham as I was when I learned that Ryan Reynolds is actually kind of funny. Despite being a far more talented actor than Statham and Johnson, the beautiful Idris Elba is limited to robotic lines and stiff movement, proving that the egos of our heroic male co-stars are far more delicate than we originally thought.

But you wouldn’t need a villain sapped of charisma to figure that out: Vin Diesel, the godfather of the Fast and Furious movies, is nowhere to be found in this film. Maybe that doesn’t seem like such a surprise, but Diesel has been in all but one Fast and Furious movie so far, including right at the end of Tokyo Drift in a surprising and delightful cameo. Rumors of male fragility on set of the ninth installment are all but confirmed with the sheer existence of Hobbs & Shaw. They may as well have called it Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw & NOT Dom. The other male characters in the film are foils that reinforce Hobbs and Shaw’s toughness: Reynolds plays a bumbling idiot who is in love with Hobbs, Shaw beats up Delaney’s character and still doesn’t even remember he exists, and Kevin Hart practically begs to join in on their dynamic partnership. He is denied repeatedly. Hobbs and Shaw are the alpha males of this universe, so much so that Hattie, who is literally dying from a virus, is forced to yell at the two as they squabble like babies: “I don’t have time for your alpha male shit right now!” Vanessa Kirby is basically the only good thing about this entire mess.

I won’t give away the ending because I bet you can already guess what happens, but suffice it to say that The Rock delivers the following line as if his Oscar is depending on it: “Brother, you may believe in machines, but we believe in people.” We are all praying for release. As the sky clears, our villain now extinguished, poor Hattie ends up squashed between her brother and her lover as they almost begin fighting again. She wills them, with whatever energy is left within her after confronting death, to stop. The film ends. Someone seated in your row will turn to you and say, “I liked it!” and you will briefly wonder why you married them. There is simply no accounting for taste.

For a Fast and Furious purist, Hobbs & Shaw is just one more perversion closer to the inevitable end of the franchise’s long reign, not with a candy-ass bang but a candy-ass whimper. And just in time, as you could probably expect, for the long-awaited, first female-centric spinoff to arrive in the not-so-distant future. The biggest flaw in Hobbs & Shaw’s makeup is not its absolute lack of logic, the improbability of its stunts, the self-seriousness of its characters, the ridiculousness of its one-liners, nor the near-absence of any female agency—those are all the characteristics that make the Fast and Furious movies so beloved. It’s that someone is getting away with the lie that the Fast and Furious movies can ever be about the heroics of just two people, instead of an entire team of wily rejects, criminals, hackers, car thieves, and one loving patriarch to bind them all together. After all, there’s no “me” in Fast and Furious—but there is an “us.”

I’ll leave you with this nugget of wisdom, delivered by Luke Hobbs to his daughter Sam, in a moment of paternal bonding: “In life, things happen. You may not want them to. But they do.” If you swap out the word “life” for “Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” hand me a needle. I have a pillow I’d like to embroider.

Correction: Although 2 Fast 2 Furious used archival footage of Vin Diesel, he was not featured in the movie, making Hobbs & Shaw the second movie without him. The article has been amended.

Dayna Evans is a writer and devoted Fast and Furious scholar based in New York.

Paranormal Activity: Paul DeJong Bends Foul Ball With His Mind (REAL!)

A couple of explanations for this very strange, uh, “base hit” in the first inning of tonight’s Giants-Cardinals game. One: Paul DeJong, being a very science-minded fellow with sincere, demonstrated interest in the way external forces affect the trajectory of a baseball, figured out a split-second before everyone else that his foul ball had enough backspin to reverse direction entirely and roll fair.

Two: He is a certified freak! An associate of the devil’s! A cursed graduate of the Matilda School of Telekinesis! In this case, I’m afraid we’ve no choice but to burn him at the stake.

Just like he drew it up. Spooky stuff.

I Broke The Official Jeremy Renner App By Posting The Word "Porno" On It

Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez (Getty Images for Disney)

The Butterfly Effect is the idea that a solitary flap of a butterfly’s wings will eventually result in a hurricane halfway across the globe. In the interests of moving forward as a society, and because I don’t think I’ve seen a butterfly in, like, four years, I believe it is time to retire this term and go with something a bit different: the porno effect. It’s fairly self-explanatory, I think, but in case you’re still not following, here’s where I got the idea: merely by posting the word “porno” on the official Jeremy Renner app, I single-handedly obliterated, uh... the official Jeremy Renner app.

The first thing you will find when you install the official Jeremy Renner app is a video which I would describe as essentially the Renner-fied version of the infamous Garth Brooks “first Facebook post.” Jeremy attempts to explain exactly what his app does, and in so doing delivers an excellent impression of someone who has never heard of either Jeremy Renner or apps. Also, maybe this was just on my device, but the video seemed to cut out before he held up today’s newspaper as proof of life. A potential bugfix in version 1.9441.2? I’m sure there’s already a Jira ticket being written up.

The second thing you will find upon installing the app—if you have not already installed the official Jeremy Renner app, please feel free to take this parenthetical as an opportunity to do so—is that every push notification you receive through the app looks as though it is coming directly from Mr. Renner himself; you will also soon notice that you receive a push notification every time somebody replies to you. What this means, as you’ve probably figured out by now, is that if you post “Lookin’ good, Mr. Renner!” under a blurry video of Jeremy driving a dump truck and someone named football_jersey97 replies with “There is diarrhea shooting out of my penis,” your phone will buzz and you will receive a notification with the words “Jeremy Renner: There is diarrhea shooting out of my penis” next to a little picture of Jeremy Renner’s face.

Now, I do not develop personalized vanity apps for celebrities. However, if I did develop personalized vanity apps for celebrities, I think one of the things I would try to avoid, just right off the bat before we got to much of the complicated stuff, would be any situation wherein it is extremely easy to make it look like the celebrity in question was personally messaging you about the stream of diarrhea shooting out of their penis.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s how it all began:

On August 20, 2019, I downloaded the official Jeremy Renner app. After giving Mr. Renner and the fine folks at EscapeX my personal information and access to my phone’s camera and microphone, I saw a post in which Jeremy Renner wished me a “rockin weekend” and asked me if I had any plans. As it happens, I did have plans! I was going to watch some porno on my personal computer. I let Jeremy know this, because that’s what I assumed the app was meant for.

I put my phone down, satisfied that I had successfully claimed the mantle of “First Guy to Post the Word “Porno” on the Official Jeremy Renner App.” A few minutes later, though, I saw this:

I’m not going to lie to you: for about 12 seconds, I truly believed that actor Jeremy Renner thought porno was nasty. Then I discovered that this message had actually been sent by my friend Jesse Farrar, and that, as previously mentioned, every official Jeremy Renner app push notification was cleverly disguised to trick unassuming Marvel fans into thinking Hawkeye had actually said “wassup” to them.

I posted the screengrabs on Twitter, everyone had a good laugh, and I went through with my weekend plans—a camping trip, not the porno thing. A job well done, I thought, and that seemed to be that.

It was not. When I arrived back in civilization on Sunday afternoon, the calm, welcoming landscape of the official Jeremy Renner app that I had grown to love over the past week appeared to have been irreversibly shattered. Dozens of false Renners had sprouted up, sowing chaos and pretending to like porno. Legitimate Renner fans were rightfully confused and terrified. Someone was on there pretending to be Casey Anthony. Much like the movie that had made Jeremy Renner a star, the “locker” (app) had become “hurt” (lots of people were posting about porno on it). I have not seen the movie in question.

I soon found myself unable to post on my old account, although I was still able to listen to Jeremy Renner’s music, which is something that generally only happens if you’re intimately familiar with the phrase “Because you listened to: 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.” I was forced to register a new account to voice my displeasure. It was banned just as quickly.

I was one more Renner-banning away from changing my Twitter profile picture to an ancient Greek statue and becoming very concerned about The Decline Of The West when I decided that enough was enough. It was time to step back. There was nothing else I could do. We were stuck at an impasse: Jeremy Renner would never respect porno, and I would never be allowed to post on his official app in a misguided attempt to convince him to respect porno.

These two reviews offer a succinct summary of what exactly happened to the official Jeremy Renner app over the past couple weeks:

For some context, and so future generations understand what happened here, this was the official Jeremy Renner app in July 2019. This is how I think we should all choose to remember it: several sincere replies to a black and white photo of Jeremy Renner that looks like the cover of an Animorphs book about a Rat Pack impersonator turning into an actual rat.

Mr. Renner, I’m sorry that your official app has been overrun with hundreds of people pretending to be either you, your twin brother, failed clones of you, successful clones of you, or also various former major league baseball players, for reasons that are still unclear to me. As a form of penance, I have left you a five star review.

I’ll see you guys on the official Chris D’Elia app.

Stefan Heck is a comedy writer living in Vancouver, BC. You can listen to him on his podcast, Blocked Party, or watch him play video games on the Go Off Kings Twitch stream.

Is It Worth Being A Good Person In 2019 America?

Illustration: Jim Cooke (G/O Media)

Funbag

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? [Email the Funbag](mailto:funbag.deadspin@gmail.com).

Today, we’re talking about doctors, the Mariners, capture the flag, being followed, and more.

Your letters:

Stosh:

It could be that this has always been the case, but it definitely seems like only horrible people excel in the world today. Does it pay to be a pleasant person?

It does. I know it doesn’t feel that way at the moment, but you can take cold comfort in the fact that history has often been kind to morally repugnant shitheads. It has, indeed, always been the case. I know Trump is in charge and that Trump is the world’s most hideous man, but people older than you and me have lived through the ascent and prosperity of plenty of other god-awful humans. That doesn’t mean you should use the Sackler family as a template for your own existence. The system really is set up so that you can profit by turning heel and fucking over other people, which is an unpleasant thing to learn about the world. BUT… sometimes okay people do well, too. Look at me! I’m a good person!

(unadulterated silence)

Okay, maybe I’m not the best example. What about, like, the Jonas Brothers? They seem nice and still do well for themselves. It CAN be done, I swear. In fact, compared to, like, the days of Genghis Khan, people are arguably nicer than they’ve ever been! Crime rates are down! We haven’t nuked each other to kingdom come just yet! Call it 20 percent nicer. I can be a better person. Not in the online sense, but on the ground. I could give more money and time to worthy causes. I could do more volunteer work. I haven’t done enough, and it’s not that I feel guilty about it. It’s that I know I’m missing out on something I’d truly enjoy doing by sitting on my ass. I’m depriving myself.

Don’t make the mistake of framing the whole “Should I be a prick?” question strictly in financial terms. It’s worth considering the (ugh) intangibles. When you’re pleasant in your everyday dealings, people are pleasant to you, and then they help you when you’re in a tight spot. Or, at least, they oughtta. That’s why they teach you common decency at elementary school in between savage games of Butts Up. They want you to abide by the golden rule for a reason. Say please. Say thank you. Don’t take out your fucking phone at the dinner table. Be professional. Give a fuck. You get more Christmas gifts when you do all that. TAKE THAT, JEFF BEZOS! Some of us do things the RIGHT way, you pile of shit. I’ll cut you good!

Peter:

Which children’s playground game would make the best pro sport/league?

Capture The Flag. I say this knowing that if some fabled playground game COULD have been a billion-dollar professional sport, it already would be. But there’s a reason that the only time you see wiffle ball on TV is when it’s a celebrity game and, like, Joe Scarborough is the pitcher. No matter. I firmly believe that Capture The Flag is the be-all-end-all of kid games, particularly in the summertime. Not Hopscotch. Not Butts Up (though watching Justin Verlander compete in a game of Butts Up would be mesmerizing). Not trading Garbage Pail Kids. None of that. Capture The Flag is the GOAT.

When I went to sleepaway camp as a kid, they would stage a game of it on a massive field, with the entire camp split into two teams. We played the version of Capture The Flag where each side had a jail. So if you got tagged crossing over into enemy territory, you went to the jail and then your teammates could free you by running into the jail without getting tagged themselves. Freeing someone from a Capture the Flag gulag was nearly as thrilling as actually capturing the flag. Felt like breaking out of San Quentin.

Like the flag circle, jail was a safe space (don’t tell National Review), so if you got into it without being tagged, there was this really tense moment where you had to properly time when you and your freed hostage could dare to bust loose from the circle and make a break for the dividing line. WHAT A RUSH. IF you got tagged on the way back, you got baked into a pie.

A couple of times, I managed to make it all the way into the flag circle, mostly because the other team was busy chasing down and tagging faster kids. I don’t think I ever made it back home with that flag, not even once. If I had, that flag would be framed and hanging from a wall in our bedroom. So I would absolutely watch Alvin Kamara attempt to play this game along with 49 of his peers. This would be fascinating for a solid five minutes before I change the channel to bird-watching. Summer may be unofficially over, but Capture the Flag deserves to be enshrined by our government as the awesomest shit in history. Build a memorial to it on the Mall, to honor the tagged. Carve my name into the quartzite a thousand times over.

I would tell you that honorable mention here goes to Smear The Queer, but A) NFL football is better, and B) You really can’t/shouldn’t call that game that anymore. Someone on Reddit suggested re-branding Smear The Queer as Get Down, Mister President, but that’s almost too deferential to whoever has the ball. I’m not trying to save the ballcarrier from himself. I’m trying to beat his ass. Just call it Kill Bill, Part 3 or something.

Cameron:

When do kids learn to properly use a Kleenex? I have a sick six-year-old who has gone through a whole box and not a single one looks used.

My kids can all use Kleenex properly and the youngest one is seven. I think your six-year-old should get the hang of it sooner rather than later. Once a child understands that they can snot into a tissue with impunity, they come around quick. OH WOW I CAN PICK MY NOSE WITH THIS ANYTIME I WANT TO! Whole new avenue of opportunity opens up for them.

They will waste paper as they learn. Kids waste everything on this earth: tissues, food, water, your love, and such and such. But it’s worth harping on them when it comes to properly blowing their noses. I know this because my kids have wiped their boogers on the couch. One time I looked at the side of one of the cushions and it looked like an old man’s skin three days after he got too much sun. Horrifying shit. I would routinely catch one of the kids picking without a tissue and, in extremely overbearing fashion, I would hold up a tissue box in front of them to be a nag. Then they’d roll their eyes and insist “I wasn’t picking my nose!” Lies. All lies. I refused to give up. I didn’t wanna reach under a table again and discover an impromptu biotech lab. You don’t either. Kids grow. They eventually learn all the crap you and I now know. It’ll happen.

Jeff:

Common foods that make me gag are bananas, celery, seeded rye bread, and hard-boiled eggs, although I can’t figure out for the life of me what these have in common, and why I like other strong-flavored foods like anchovies and sauerkraut. Is there any connection to other foods you don’t like, or is it totally random?

I don’t think my least favorite foods have much in common. I don’t like mayo, olives, beets, and, like, brie cheese. That is not a food group. When the FDA issues a nutrition pyramid, you don’t see a wheel of baked brie topped with black olives at the top in the Weird Appetizers group. They have more pressing foodstuffs to categorize.

I hate these foods for varying reasons. I hate the texture and smell of mayo, along with its inexplicable, eternal omnipresence in fucking everything. I hate beets because beets taste like raw potatoes someone washed in corn syrup and then dumped into a vat of Easter egg dye. I hate olives because they’re distressingly meaty. I’ve told this story before, but one time I was at some cocktail party and ate what I thought was a fried mushroom. It was a fried olive. Terrible moment. I’ll never get over it. I wish this somehow related to my distaste for runny cheeses, but I’m at a loss. Each of my food hang-ups is unique and special, like a fingerprint.

I think that broader food quality dislikes are a childhood thing. I used to fear anchovies as a little kid. Like Jeff, I also once hated rye bread. I didn’t think bread should be tangy. I also disliked orange cheese(?), whipped cream, and pretty much any cooked fish. If I thought a food looked scary or had a strange texture, or if I thought certain foods HAD to taste a certain way and not deviate, I avoided them. I eventually grew out of those widespread aversions (except for mayo; mayo is still a fraternity prank). Your palate matures along with you, and what’s left are a handful of random foods you dislike for reasons you either cannot explain or that you just can’t overcome. You can never eat a basket of calamari again after Sheila dumped you that one time after you ordered one. Speaking of sudden nausea…

Kyle:

Have Mike Pence and Mother ever done mouth stuff?

Oh, sure. Everyone does mouth stuff, even people who need written consent from THE LORD before they get into it. Mike Pence probably begs Jesus for forgiveness every time he has to come up for air down there.

Also, since I’m a child of the 80s, I am predisposed to believe that the most demonstrably pious individuals are complete freaks behind closed doors. Mother probably slaps a gimp mask on her hubby every Saturday morning, holds him facedown in a wading pool filled with buttermilk, and then lashes him with a riding crop. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know how this type operates. Mouth stuff is the most NORMAL shit they’re into.

Evan (NOTE: this email sent in wintertime):

Today I saw two separate adult humans wearing winter gloves on the train and casually using their noses to navigate on their phones. I don’t have a question I just thought you needed to know this.

Why don’t they just buy the phone gloves? They have the special tactile winter gloves now with fingertip pads so that you can still use a touchscreen. People buy those things all the time. I would tell you that this is a depressing factoid about society as a whole, but I’m the type of person who A) Is too stupid to own a pair, B) Will shed a glove and risk frostbite at the bus stop in January just to refresh Twitter to see who fucked up, and C) Will probably do the nose thing now that I know about it. It’s resourceful. It’s how MacGyver would use an iPhone. I’m pathetic.

Carson:

Do you think you’d notice some sketchy guys in a Crown Vic tailing you all the way home? I’d like to think I would, but then again I can’t really think of a situation where I’m looking out for someone following me home.

I’d notice. Absolutely. I spend every waking minute imagining that my life is a shitty action movie, so when another car stays behind me for a noticeable amount of time, I immediately think it’s the Feds, or a serial killer following me home to cut me up and plant me in some sort of body garden. Then the van in question turns onto Burnside Drive and my little flirtation with paranoia comes to a sudden and bittersweet end. I was looking forward to tussling with that murderer, man. I would have smacked him in the nose to get him off me, like he was a shark.

So if it happened for real, you better believe I would be on HIGH ALERT. I’m the guy who, after the 2016 election, turned on TweetDelete AND enabled a passcode on my phone because I was told the Feds can force you to unlock your phone with touch ID but can’t do the same with a passcode. Did that paranoia come back to bite me in the ass when I could least afford to have it happen? My friend, you know it did.

HALFTIME!

Chad:

After honoring my seven-year-old’s request to spell “bell” out loud for him, for what felt like the 100th time, I started wondering how many different words I’ve actually spelled out loud one hundred times or more. Over-under is five—what say you?

I was gonna say zero EXCEPT I remembered as a kid that my brother, my sister, and I would spell out MISSISSIPPI as fast as we possibly could. We thought it was funny, mostly because there’s a “peepee” in there. Same goes for ICUP, which is not a real word but should be. It could even be the name of a show about drinking beer from a keg: I, Cup. But otherwise, 100 is an onerous number of times to spell out a single word. I say this even though, as I told Roth and Greenwell last week, my wife and I used to spell out certain words so that the kids wouldn’t know what we were talking about. That doesn’t work now that the kids can spell. They know we’re talking about potentially buying C-A-N-D-Y. The jig is up.

For most people, I would wager that swear words get spelled out the most. I used to do this with my kids around. “Honey, I gotta go take an S-H-I-T.” The kids could still Google my name and suddenly be inundated with a million SHITS and FUCKS and COCKBARFS. And yet, I still tried to maintain the façade that I was a discreet fellow. No point in keeping that up any longer. They know a shit is a shit. They aren’t stupid.

Andy:

When Trump tweeted from Vietnam, it made me wonder if he knows how to connect to WiFi if he’s in a country that doesn’t have the best cellular service. Like, when he steps into a hotel, does he know how to connect his phone to the WiFi or does an aide immediately take his phone and connect for him?

Not a chance he knows how to do it. He may not even know what WiFi is. He walks into a new room, can’t get his browser to load, and then screams that someone should be fired because of it. Then a bunch of terrified lackeys scramble to fix the problem so that the President can get back online and tell the world that the media is lying and that Stephanie Zimbalist very much DID want to sleep with him back in 1986. As Trump does this, 12 hurricanes strike the mainland and 800 people are gunned down at random. That’s every morning now.

Dan:

Lifelong Mariners fan here in Washington, and a friend in my group that’s a lifelong Yankees fan (also from Washington, go figure) has decided to rock the EXACT SAME M’S HAT that I have! This dude still talks shit about his beloved Yanks, but wears my Ms hat out and about. What’s the correct protocol here besides taking it off of him and throwing it into the bus-lane downtown?

You should give him shit. It won’t amount to anything. Yankees fans are too stupid and proud to EVER indulge in a moment of self-reflection. But that doesn’t mean you should accept your friend being a literal asshat. Do your bro duty and unload on his sorry ass. Call him a fuckhead. Slash his tires. Hide his asthma inhaler from him. Spend every waking second reminding him that he’s an ugly asshole. Shit on him until you get right up to that line where it stops being friendly banter and is poised to devolve into outright hostility. That’s what makes being a guy so FUN.

Why would a Yanks fan wear a Mariners hat anyway? The Yanks have a bazillion rings. The Mariners have never won fuck all. In fact, when the Mariners won 116 games one year and broke the MLB wins record (which they hold to this day), they still choked in the playoffs against … the YANKEES. Either your friend is grossly ignorant, as all Yankees fans are, or he’s trolling you on a level that MERITS outright hostility, if not open violence. I say assault him. He’s likely used to such things.

Andrew:

The other day, I looked in the mirror and realized that my hat, sweater and vest were all made by Patagonia. Even worse, the logos on all three items were visible, so I looked like the world’s least attractive and most unfit Patagonia model. What’s the most items you can wear from a single brand before you start to look like a weirdo? Two seems reasonable, although if the logos are hidden, then maybe it doesn’t matter?

If the logos aren’t visible, then you’re off the hook. If I walk out the door dressed head-to-toe in Uniqlo, and I have, I do NOT look like a hypebeast. I look like someone paid me to be a crowd extra in Mission: Impossible film. I am invisible.

It’s a different story if everyone can see the brand in question, and even then it depends on the brand. Like, if you walk around wearing all-adidas shit, it makes perfect sense. You’re wearing a t-shirt, mesh shorts, and a pair of slides. Those are articles of clothing that are meant to be part of a complete ensemble: a sloppy, boring ensemble. Whereas if it’s all Patagonia, you look like the founder of Honest Tea. Or if it’s all Polo shit, you look like a preppy asshole. Not only do you look the brand, but people will assume that you deliberately set out to do so.

That’s not a sin, necessarily. I know we at Deadspin treat saying brand names like we’re summoning fucking Voldemort, but brands are so ubiquitous now that plenty of people openly align themselves with ones that they think are interesting or cool. Kids especially. My kids were into Under Armour for a long time. I did not sit the kids down and say to them, “Well listen, boys and girls, you might think that UA is KEWL and HIP, but you know what’s not cool? CEO Kevin Plank sitting on the President’s WAY bogus business council and then resigning because he wanted to stick to sports. Tell me that’s IN with the school crowd!” I just let their little private fad run its course, and it usually does. The daughter likes Lululemon now, which is a whole OTHER problem.

Jammy:

Can Shaq use a urinal?

Yes. He’s not 30 feet tall. I saw Shaq in person this past June and his size is breathtaking to behold in person. But the man can use a pisser. I’m 6-foot-3 and even I encounter the occasional public urinal that’s awfully high, like I could rest my balls on the lip of it. Such urinals can easily accommodate a man of Shaq’s height and girth. Not the kiddie urinals, though. Some of those are stationed a foot underground. Exactly how small do they think children are?

Pete:

I just saw Nas perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. At what point is it pathetic that I attend concerts of artists from my formative years? I say this because I mercilessly heckled my parents for going to a “Beach Boys” concert in 1999 that turned out to be one of the Beach Boys and Carnie Wilson.

Never. It’s never pathetic. Did you have a good time at the show? Then who gives a shit about how it looks? I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I like rock, and rock is now for old fogies. When I gotta think up a halftime song for this column, I inevitably end up picking some track that betrays my age, even if it’s from a relatively new band. But I like what I like and there’s little sense in fighting it. I still go to every Bob Mould show when he comes into town. If you gave me tickets to the Stones, I would absolutely go and enjoy myself. If the act in question still knows how to put on a live performance, no sense in depriving myself of the pleasure. Sometimes that live show can help me remember why I liked that band to begin with.

Years ago, my parents dragged me to a Gene Pitney concert. If you’re unfamiliar with the since-deceased Gene Pitney, you’re hardly alone. Even I was too young to know who that was, but that didn’t stop my parents anyway. “He the guy who sings ‘Town Without Pity’!” they cried. I was like whuh? They took me to the show, which was located in a rural Connecticut amphitheater that was essentially a circus tent. Pitney did his set in the round, including his aforementioned, lone greatest hit. I think I had an all-right time. Gene Pitney was a professional. He was also 106 years old, but he knew how to work a stage. Never let your self-perceived reputation get in the way of heading out to go see a long-in-the-tooth artist grab one last paycheck. Besides, Nas is cooler than Gene Pitney. I doubt that’ll ever change.

Will:

Is it socially acceptable for a grown man to take a glove to a baseball game? I’m going to be catching a couple games during a business trip to Florida in a couple weeks, so I’ll be without the wife and kids. Am I going to look like a weirdo walking in solo with a glove during batting practice?

Yeah, but that’s all right. Do what you enjoy. Again, no point in letting your ego get in the way of having fun. It’s one thing if you’re Zack Hample and you’re elbowing toddlers out of the way to snatch up balls to sell on eBay like a smug prick. But if you wanna bring a glove to a game as a one-off, I won’t judge you. You’re not gonna catch jack shit, and stadium security will probably confiscate your glove and burn it right in front of you. Even if you do manage to get your glove through the gate, you’ll probably end up cursing yourself for having the bright idea to lug one around a ballpark for fours hours. But hopefully you’ll be dead drunk for all that. HOORAY BASEBALL!

I have brought a glove to an MLB game in the past, like when I was a teenager. I absolutely felt like a member of the team when I did that. LOOGIT ME! I’M AN OUTFIELDER! I caught nothing.

Nicholas:

I’m in medical school. At what point can I reply to an airline or public page for a doctor? I really want to do this though I know that it’s lame to want public praise.

In my mind, you have to graduate first. If I was having a heart attack in an airport terminal and the first guy to rush to my aide turned out to be Nick Riviera, Hollywood Upstairs Medical School freshman, I would be distraught. I want my doctor to be a doctor.

However, if it’s clear that you’re the ONLY person in the immediate vicinity who knows jack shit about medicine, and you’re know what the patient involved needs and if you can give them what they need, fine. Put on your scrubs. You’re the last resort, but that’s better than no resort. You’re the only girl left at the bar for last call.

Email of the week!

Tony:

I regularly donate noncash items worth, in my estimation, about $499 annually. On one recent Goodwill visit, the attendant pulled the cart to the back of my trunk, and we loaded the following items:
1. A giant foam hand making a shocker gesture with the caption “Shock ‘Em”
2. A Halloween decorative bouquet of fake dead flowers
3. A tape recorder that we acquired from my grandmother-in-law 10 years ago (with 1 tape included)
The attendant asked me if I wanted a receipt, and I somewhat-embarrisingly said “sure.” My wife looked at me side-eyed. I could sense the regret that she had for ever being associated with me. Later, I attempted to complete the tax form but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
What is the most worthless item you’ve ever donated?

Probably a tray of brownies to the back-to-school picnic. I use the shitty mix for those. The Ghirardelli mix I keep for myself.

A Reminder: Do Not Park Your Car At The Gas Pump, You Terrible, Debased Heathens

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty)

With a half hour left to the start of the work day, I was confident. I’d driven back from Jalopnik’s track day at Monticello Motor Club after an early start so that I’d have plenty of time to fill up the gas tank and grab breakfast at the Wawa down the street from my apartment. There was just one problem: every single goddamn fucking pump was taken.

I’m not talking about “it’s the early morning workday rush and literally everyone is out here just tryna pump some gas” taken. I mean that when I pull up, all the pumps are taken because some very terrible heathens decided to just leave their goddamn cars there while ordering their complicated breakfasts and fifteen personalized coffees for everyone in the office.

I am a very patient person until it is 7:25 a.m. on a day I woke up at 5 a.m. to drive two hours to start my work day with the start of a killer migraine—and I haven’t even had breakfast yet.

I took a deep breath. I analyzed the situation. This did not have to be a problem. It did not have to be a big deal. There are about twenty pumps, but the laws of the universe proclaim that someone should probably be pulling away from a pump at any second, leaving me available to take that spot. Right? Right?????

Much to my delight, I spotted a woman who looked like she could possibly be wrapping up soon. So I pulled in behind her, hoping that the added incentive of a car literally sitting there, waiting for you to get out of the way, would encourage her to wrap up in a prompt and thoughtful manner.

Instead, she looked me dead in the eyes as she replaced her gas cap after filling up. Then she walked right into the goddamn Wawa.

Zen, Elizabeth. Be zen. Close your eyes. Deep breaths. Relax. This is not the end of the world.

There were, at that point, three options:

I could either sit and wait for the woman to return, thus ensuring that I would have a spot in case an even larger rush started pouring in—at risk that this woman was ordering a bespoke breakfast, something that can take up to twenty minutes at Wawa on a busy morning.
I could try to scope out an entirely different spot, attempting to reverse and navigate a Cadillac XT6 in a very tight parking lot, all the while hoping that: a) that person filling up wouldn’t also go in for breakfast, and b) that someone else wouldn’t beat me to my pump of choice.
I could just park the car, get my breakfast, and try again later, hoping that I was not actually running on the fumes I thought I was and that I’d be able to actually turn the car on to get by a gas pump later.

After about thirty seconds of still-furious soul-searching, I opted for option two. A gentleman in a business suit at the pump next to me was filling up. He looked like the kind of man who had places to be. I decided to try my luck.

He was, apparently, not in the rush that I assumed he was, because this man also filled up the tank, walked right by me, and entered the godforsaken hellhole that is the local fucking Wawa. The local terrible stupid shitty motherfucking Wawa.

(Please note: I do actually love Wawa. Their breakfast sandwiches are great and, as gas stations go, it is generally, in my eyes, ranked Number Two, second only to the Texan godsend that is Bucc-ee’s (where, by the way, it can occasionally be okay to leave your car at the gas pump, as there are like two thousand pumps). I mostly just hate the fact that going there is one day going to give me a fucking stress-induced ulcer.)

At that point, I was livid. Livid! The normally-repressed part of me that wants to be the asshole who rolls down their window and tells these humans to all fuck off with their lack of common courtesy in these situations was so dangerously close to breaking through that I had to physically cover my mouth with my own hand because everyone else has their own shit going on in their life and I do not need to be a dick too!!!!

This is not the first time this has happened to me at this Wawa, either. It feels like every other time I go to get gas, I am forced to endure Baby Junior Sonofabitch over here who is ignorant of the proper gas station rules.

By the time I managed to secure a free gas pump, it was after eight o’clock. Work had already started. I pulled up, filled up, pulled out, and parked so that I could go inside and get myself a blessed egg sandwich. And it took me less than seven minutes! Yes, I counted!!!!!

I cannot believe that in this day and age—this year of our lord 2019—that there are folks out there who still have not learned proper gas station etiquette. Unless you’re going inside to pay—something that none of the folks I was stuck behind at Wawa were doing—it is not cool to just leave your car parked in everyone’s way, especially if you’re making an elongated snack run! It is bad and frustrating! You are not the only human who is forced to live daily in this godforsaken disaster of a country, so maybe let’s all do some small part to make things better for everyone in some very minor way!!!!

But apparently it must be said.

Folks, do not park your car at the goddamn gas pump if you are not inside paying for that gas. Do not fucking do it.