I Have No Pages | Defector

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 chopsticks, dated nicknames, robots, and more.

Your letters:

Joe:

This week we had an author visit our school and work with kids on writing. He’s a child’s fiction writer, and told the students he spends about eight hours a day writing. He also has three monitors in his office: one for writing, one for research, and one for notes/drafts. He said it takes about 18 months to two years to publish a book, so he’s writing three books at a time so he can publish a book a year. My first thought was hats off to him because I don’t have the stamina to write eight hours a day. Is this process pretty standard for writers or is his process unusual?

I also write eight hours a day, but that’s pretty much where the similarities between me and your author end. I have never had a work station with multiple monitors. Staring at one monitor is already plenty of strain. Also, I do most of my research before I start writing, and then stick all of my findings/and notes at the bottom of my Word doc. Then I scroll down to those notes as needed while I’m putting a blog/feature/rant together. For books, I usually put my research and notes into a separate Word doc, and then keep that doc open so that I can consult it as needed. It’s not as efficient as the three-monitor process outlined up above, and it probably forces my brain to do more heavy lifting than it should. But it’s worked for me my entire career, and no two writers have the same process.

What’s funny is that I actually changed up that process for my next novel, or what there is of it. Here is where I have to make a confession, one that I hope will serve as a bit of self-motivation:

I have no pages.

I haven’t published a book since 2021. I haven’t published a novel since 2020. I’ve usually been able to crank out books at a swifter pace than that. In fact, when I started in on a fourth novel, I tried to make the process even speedier by outlining the story, something I’ve never done with any of my other novels. Usually I just figure it out as I go. This time, I wanted to know exactly where I was headed. My final outline ran well over 40 pages and 23,000 words, with full character sketches and a lengthy explainer of the world our story is set in. My agent really liked the outline, as did I. I figured filling in the blanks from there would be a cinch.

I finished that outline in early 2024. Since then, all I’ve written is a prologue, a first chapter that I scrapped, and a revised first chapter that I also intend to scrap. As far as I’m concerned, that constitutes having no pages, and the fact continually nags at me. Whenever people—family members included—ask me if I’m working on another book, I internalize it as a taunt. I’m sigh and tell them, “Yeah, I gotta get cracking on that,” and then I don’t.

I have excuses for this negligence, all of which are perfectly valid. Life has gotten in the way of novel No. 4, I tell people. I’ve had to deal with the death of a parent, relocating another parent, helping my kids through the college application process, going to therapy, getting heart disease, and all kinds of other draining shit. I’ve also held down multiple day jobs writing for 20 years now, which has proven tiring. I’ve also reached the point in my career where I don’t have to write a new book if I don’t really want to. Every book I’ve written in the past was written out of a kind of urgency, i.e. I needed the money. Now I can put off writing this book forever if I feel like enjoying the fruits of my labor instead. I can just chill in my free time. So I have chilled … to a fault.

Because the whole point of me working two jobs all this time was so that I could retire to write nothing BUT novels. I am not a tortured artist. I love writing novels, even when they give me fits. I love discovering the story as I write it, and I love living with those characters for years at a time. I know I’m gonna love writing this next book. I’ve had it sketched out on paper, and in my mind, for many years now. Also, it has a great working title. I can’t not write it. And I’m about to hit 50, which means I only have so many stories left to tell—a different kind of urgency. So I’ve told my agent, my friends, and my wife to get on my ass about getting some pages done. And now, I suppose, I’m telling you the same thing. Telling myself the same thing, really. There’s no wrong way to write, so long as you write. With that in mind, it’s time to get after it. Wish me luck.

Michael:

Is the 70s/80s-style brown leather bomber jacket still a look that can be pulled off? I’m 5’10 and just tilting the scale on the over 200-lb. side. 

Of course it can. Vintage clothing is the hottest trend in fashion right now. My daughter is 20 years old. Whenever we travel together, the first thing she does is check out what thrift stores are nearby. She’s hardly Unique (pun intended for all the thriftheads out there) among her peers. Members of Gen Z have no money, they know that modern apparel is shoddily made, and they’re among the people who best understand that the world has already manufactured enough shit to last the rest of history. In terms of basic need, mankind never has to produce another shirt, television, computer, sofa, or basic kitchen appliance again. Everyone could have one of those items, if humans ever learned to share their collective wealth, which … ha! As such, you and I live in nation of terminal redundancy, in which industrial forces compel us to throw out possessions that already work in order to buy a slightly upgraded version of the exact same item. The world economy relies on this sales cycle so heavily that entire nations would collapse if it suddenly came to a halt.

But you can make like my kid and partially opt out of that cycle if you want, by sourcing all of your clothes from Goodwill, ReThrift, and Poshmark. I use Poshmark, but I’m otherwise much too lazy to browse through a warehouse of physical racks to find just the right pair of pants. However, pretty much everyone else in my family is willing to put in the effort. This is why my daughter owns many used leather bomber coats, all of which she bought for a grand total of like $250. They look good on her, because she is a young and good-looking person. She can pull off pretty much any fit, which is why she owns all of those leather jackets, and knit sweaters, and flowy tops, and vintage jeans. Damn near had to rent a Penske truck to move all of her shit into her dorm room.

Now, I myself am good-looking—some say I’m the handsomest man who ever lived—but I am not young. No one will mistake me for Maverick Mitchell if I don a leather coat. But if you have the look, and more important, the confidence to give it a shot, you can pull it off. Just make sure it’s a leather jacket that’s actually from the ’70s/’80s, and not a 2026 one sold at the Gap that was designed by a fucking AI bot.

Ben:

I have never figured out how to use chopsticks. This led to some unpleasantness when I was at a gathering we ordered Chinese food. I asked for a fork and you would have thought I said the ‘n word.’ Am I lazy for not taking half an hour to become dexterous with chopsticks? Sure, but I eat Chinese food MAYBE once every couple of months. Am I an asshole?

“Asshole” is too strong a word. I know other people who can’t use chopsticks, and I don’t care either way about it. HOWEVER, you yourself admit that it wouldn’t take you that long to master them. So it’s not that you can’t use chopsticks, but that you won’t. You’re cutting small corners, and needlessly.

This is a bad habit of the American population as a whole, especially its white people. Think about how many people refer to Tua Tagovailoa as “Tua,” because they find his last name too complicated to pronounce. There are people who work in the sports industry who do this, which is insane. It takes less than a minute to learn how to say that dude’s last name. Tung-oh-vie-loh-ah. There. Easy peasy. When you don’t bother to learn shit like that, you’re depriving yourself of a chance to learn something new. One overriding problem with this trainwreck of a country right now is that no one in power wants to learn anything, even if it’s something relatively easy to learn. They see nothing in it for them, so they deem it unworthy of their time. You don’t wanna be like those people. Also, you don’t wanna be the asshole who needs a fork just to eat some lo mein. So I’ll make you a deal. You learn to use chopsticks, and I’ll write that novel. Fair? OK, let’s move on.

Peter:

What’s the most satisfying food to cook? For me it’s got to be bacon.

Bacon is a pain in the ass to cook. The finished product is delicious, but frying it up gets spatter all over the range/oven/microwave. I know that everyone online has some easy bacon-cooking technique that they love to smarm other people with. But whenever I’ve used one of those methods, it was still a pain in the ass. My favorite part of cooking bacon is when it’s over and I can eat it. This is why the breakfast buffet at any mid-level chain hotel makes me happy.

I have two answers for Peter’s question. The first one is chocolate chip cookies, and the second is chili. These aren’t terribly unique answers. Everyone loves to bake up some chocolate chip cookies, and chili is chili. But for this guy right here, the satisfaction runs far deeper than just the end product. First of all, these are fungible recipes that allow for experimentation. I love tinkering with a recipe over and over again, eating my way through every iteration, until I’ve found just the right flavor profile for my big fat tummy. I threw some short ribs into my Super Bowl chili this year and it was so good, I can never make it again. Because I have heart disease.

More important, both these foods are great examples of why I love to cook, period. Cooking is fucking magical. You’re taking bunch of disparate ingredients—eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, chocolate chips—and bringing them together to create something entirely new. Why do I constantly stare into the oven while my cookies are baking, and why I do check on my beloved chili every 30 seconds over the course of many hours? It’s not just to work up my appetite, it’s because I love watching food BECOME food. There are chemical changes taking place right in front of my eyes. A lump of cookie dough transforms into a delicious, golden brown cookie in just 10 minutes. And a jumbled stew of chili ingredients starts out as loose soup before the meat goes tender and all of the ingredients on the pot coalesce. I’ve been cooking for decades now, and I never get tired of that moment where I can tell that the chili has finally become chili. It’s like watching the hand of God at work. It’s the fucking best.

The least satisfying food to cook is a salad. I love salad, just not when I’m the poor schmuck to has to prep it.

HALFTIME!

Chuck:

What is the dumbest, not harmful, thing you’ve done while stoned? I couldn’t put a shoe on a while back, but then I realized I was trying to put it on upside down, not backwards. The following day I had no idea how I could try to put a shoe on upside down.

One time I was so baked that I tried to take out a contact lens when I had already taken it out. I was standing there, poking myself in the eye repeatedly, and going, “OUCH where is this damn lens OWWW it’s gotta be here somewhere OH FUCK THAT HURT where is it?” You know the old cliché, “Someday we’ll all look back on this and laugh”? I do not laugh when I look back on that moment. It hurt like a motherfucker. Every time I go to remove my contacts now, I make dead certain beforehand that I can, like, see.

Baron:

I recently had a conversation with a friend pondering what pro sports teams had the most dated name. He went with the Toronto Raptors, since Jurassic Park had come and gone by the time they ever played a game, and now we’re three decades on. I countered by noting there are two baseball teams still all-in on what was apparently an 1800s fad of naming clubs after colored socks. We finally settled on Knickerbockers, since it conjures images of kids who sell one-cent newspapers while wearing scally hats and socks up to their knees over pegged pantaloons throwing the ball into a peach basket. 

Yeah, but that old-timey New York image is cool. Ditto the White Sox and Red Sox, because both of these teams are well over a century old. Those teams’ respective nicknames are imbued with real history. The Raptors were basically named off a fad, and a fad too recent to feel like a cutesy bit of historic arcana. Also, “Raptors” says nothing about the city the team is based in. No one has ever been like, “When I think of dinosaurs, I think of Canada.” Raptors is the name of a defunct MLS team, not a proper NBA franchise. It’s the opposite of timeless.

Now, here is where I go all Bluesky and tell you that the most dated team names in men’s pro sports are the Chiefs, Blackhawks, and Braves, because they are racist. But you already know that, and so do I. So let’s pick on a few other franchises instead:

1. Washington Wizards. A name despised by fans upon its very inception, and one that has only grown more preposterous as Ted Leonsis’s team has spent the ensuing years exclusively doing non-magical shit. It’s a miracle when the Wizards can complete a simple inbounds pass. So not only do they have a nickname that has NOTHING to do with the city of Washington, D.C., but one that inspires no fear/joy/excitement in anyone whatsoever. You have to work hard to make the name “Washington Bullets” not feel dated, but former owner Abe Pollin was more than up to the task. Fucking dolt. No sorcerer is bringing you back from the grave, buddy!
2. Los Angeles Angels. The Angels played in L.A. proper for the first five years of their existence before fucking off to Anaheim. Once there, they tried to cover up the ruse of their nickname first by rebranding as the California Angels, which is nonsensical, and later by rebranding as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which was even more nonsensical. Now they’re just the L.A. Angels. That’s easier on the brain, and lord knows plenty of teams are located a hell’s commute away from the actual city they play for. But all of the Angels’ previous, clumsy attempts to be like, “We’re still L.A.’s team!” aren’t easily forgotten by the haters of the world, namely me.
3. Anaheim Ducks. They were named after a replacement-level Disney movie, and then tried to walk it back by dropping the “Mighty” from their original nickname. But they still use an official logo cribbed from that movie’s sequel. For shame!

By the way, that last answer made me wonder what happened to Emilio Estevez, a.k.a. the good Sheen child. Turns out he just wants to chill out and direct stuff here and there. He was also in a series reboot of The Mighty Ducks before peacing out on the show because of vaccine mandates, even though he totally claimed it wasn’t about the vaccine mandates (that’s always the biggest sign it’s about vaccine mandates). So when I say that Emilio Estevez is the good Sheen child, that’s strictly in relative terms. He’s also apparently cooking up a Young Guns 3. You’re a solid 30 years late for that, Billy the Kid. Now go get a COVID shot.

Paul:

You might have seen this story and I wanted your take. This article admits the robot has a bunch of cameras, an eight jointed arm, and a slide system rather than feet. So is it really a big deal that it beat some elite players, or not at all? Isn’t this like you or me crowing because we crushed some kindergarteners at volleyball?

I’d just like to commend Sony for developing physical AI tech instead of unveiling yet another automated chat window that talks like the Wendy’s social media team. Prior to this decade, when I heard the phrase “artificial intelligence,” I thought of robots. Sometimes they were child robots orphaned by their parents and forced to hang out with gigolo robots played by Jude Law, but they were robots all the same. THAT was AI to me, and still is. So thank God some big asshole company out there is adhering to the spirit of the term. Maybe Sony can also invent a hoverboard that actually hovers, instead of a uni-scooter for morons.

As for Paul’s question, it’s a big deal that the Sony bot can perform terrific feats of dexterity. That’ll make them useful both in factories and in some gooner’s bedroom. But it means nothing in terms of sports. There’s not gonna be some massive robot table tennis league that captivates the world in the wake of this. It just means that pro table tennis players will have a better JUGS machine to practice against. It’s the human element of sports that gives sports meaning. Without that, you’re just watching assembly line machines do assembly line machine shit. Please consult the coming Jackass film, in which an AI robot sticks its finger up Steve-O’s ass, for proof of the human element’s vitalness.

Bryan:

If the Concorde 2 becomes a thing, what will be the first international team from major US sports?

For those of you unaware, NASA has been conducting test flights on a new supersonic commercial jet prototype, dubbed the “son of Concorde,” after a similar commercial jet that was retired at the beginning of the 2000s because its sonic boom was so goddamn loud. This new Concorde supposedly has a quieter sonic boom, which in theory would allow airlines to resume offering luxury flights from New York to London that take four hours instead of eight.

My folks flew on the original Concorde once. If memory serves, they said it was a tight squeeze. Going by the photos, the new Concorde looks even more cramped. So I’m not entirely certain that Dexter Lawrence would fit comfortably in one of its seats. Not that the leagues give a fuck about player comfort, of course. But even with a quicker flight time, international travel during a regular season is still far more draining than a domestic road trip. That means that the son of Concorde will almost certainly be used just for wealthy businessfolk in a hurry. I’m also certain that Emirates has already brought in Penelope Cruz to shoot a commercial for their coming launch.

Email of the week!

Jeff:

Your answer on the recent board game question made me think of days of yore when we didn’t have any decent sports sims for old consoles. Nothing on the Atari 2600, Intellivision, or even Apple IIc PCs were worth a darn. 

I was a huge fan of the old Avalon Hill games, where the developers analyzed and ranked the players based on stats, then used a Fast Action Card™ system that randomized what was happening on the football field, basketball court, boxing ring, etc. But it somehow was able to stay true to the sport. Good teams beat bad teams the majority of the time, but upsets would happen about as often as one might expect them to. 

I played and enjoyed several of these titles in the 1980s and reacquainted myself with them in the early days of Covid. I was again amazed at how fun they were and what a nice job they did simulating these sports. Did you play any of these and, if so, what was your favorite and why?

My quick list:

1. Statis Pro Basketball – 1986 edition: Bird, Magic, Young MJ, Barkley, Moses, Mailman and, umm, Danny Schayes… AND the late Roy Tarpley. Tarpley was a beast on the glass with a fucking crazy rebound rating of 42. The closest center or foward to him was in the mid to low 30s. Circa 1989 we did a draft in college for a six-team tourney and my roommate was smart enough to review all of the players ahead of time. While we were picking guys like Magic, MJ, Bird and Olajuwan, he picked Tarpley in the first round and then won the whole thing. I am not ashamed to say I did the exact thing when I put together a similar tourney in April 2020, and didn’t feel shameful about it at all.
2. Title Bout: Fun to play with another person, but it’s the perfect game to play solo since there’s not a ton of strategy to go with it. But it had a shit ton of boxers across weight classes and you would get a wild upset now and then. Jim Trunzo, one of the original game’s creators, developed a new (and better) analog version a few years ago and a PC version that became a Covid go-to. Both are great.
3. Statis Pro Baseball – One can tell right away that the stats nerds had a field day with this one. Much of the game hinges on whether the batter or pitcher has “control” and is ahead or behind in the count… like the real thing. When Steve Balboni — a Let’s Remember Some Guys candidate — had control of the at bat, watch out.
4. Statis Pro Football – Slow and tedious. The 1980s era version I played was very running-game oriented. A friend of mine would be the Lions for some odd reason and run a WR reverse almost every play for 14-20 yards, no matter what I did on defense. It seemed totally unfair! Then later, when I reviewed the rules again, I realized that you were allowed to run a reverse twice in a game. The fiend!
5. Statis Pro Tennis – I started with a handful of Borg-McEnroe and McEnroe-Connors matches, thinking this would be the perfect way to get going. And it was boring as shit. The game’s been collecting dust for 40 years. Tennis sims evidently do not translate well as an analog/board game.

I didn’t play any of these games as a kid. In fact, I’d never heard of them until just now. But fuck me, it all sounds fascinating.