type click mailbag: welcome to the deathcathlon
i love you bozos
Welcome to the type click type mailbag, a thing we will probably do one or two Sundays every month, where I answer emails you maniacs send in. I say maniacs with love, of course, and also with good reason. I sent out a call for emails early last week and you guys sent me so, so many emails. Way more than I expected. So many that I couldn’t even respond to all of them personally, which I kind of hoped to do because the whole point of doing this is to try to create a fun little community to replace and/or improve upon what I had elsewhere. If I didn’t respond to your email or answer it below, please at least know that I did read it and that I pasted it into a Google Doc so I can maybe circle back and answer it in a future mailbag. You guys are cool.
A few other notes before we dive in:
Going forward, please send future mailbag submissions as either comments under the most recent mailbag column or as emailed replies to the mailbags that show up in your inbox
This will help me very much because I could not be less organized if I tried
This first edition will be a little super-sized because, again, so many emails, but future editions will shoot for like 3-5 emails, just so it doesn’t become a timesuck I learn to dread instead of the fun diversion it is now
Okay, here we go. As always, the STUFF I TYPED and STUFF I CLICKED ON sections are down below.
FROM JUDSON!
I think my new goal in life is to amass enough money that when I die I can lure my surviving friends into a multi-discipline competition for a share of my estate. I'm thinking 10 events ranging from intellectual, athletic, culinary, artistic, daring, whatever.
A few obvious issues:
1) Coming up with the events. I think one needs to be a Jeopardy!-style general knowledge competition. Another some sort of Amazing Race-style thing. Third, I want my estate to pay for flying lessons for people for 6 months and then they have a landing competition. Nothing that can be subjective, I don't think, because that's difficult for my Game Master (Executor/Executrix is too boring for this) to fairly adjudicate.
2) Pitting the survivors against themselves could backfire in a big way. Do I care? I don't know, but something worth thinking of.
3) How much money is enough to get people interested in this? Thinking PGA-style purse where everyone goes home with something, but top performers get an out-sized portion.
Not an issue: the number of events. Why am I locked in on 10, you ask? Because I've already got a name: the Deathcathlon.
I giggled through this whole email and then full-on cackled at the end. I would watch this reality show tomorrow. You’re right, it could get dicey if these are like actual family and friends who are already grieving. Maybe the key is to limit it to greedy failsons and hangers-on who just looked at you like a checkbook. Or make it opt-in for a portion of the estate, just for the people who are up for it. Or just make it a biting/dark comedy television series where a fictional character does this to his crappy family. Knives Out crossed with Holey Moley. I can’t believe I just got to type that sentence.
Thank you, Judson.
FROM DAVID!
My son, who is now 14, decided his favorite football team is the Philadelphia Eagles when he was 4 because he liked the color green. Do we live near Philly? No. Do we have family from there? No. Did we live in freaking Texas at the time? Yes.
Coming from a staunchly anti-Cowboys family, his choice wasn't so much controversial as it was vexing for me, his father, who didn't particularly root for the Eagles. Since then, the kid got to see a Super Bowl championship he still rubs in my face.
So, with all that said, what is your advice for him dealing with the crushing hope and despair of being an Eagles fan?
Oh, this poor young man. He has stumbled into the hornet’s nest. The thing about being an Eagles fan is that you need to somehow love the team so much that you stand ready to get into a physical altercation with anyone who opposes you WHILE ALSO hating the team with the blazing fury of 1000 suns. We’re all very unwell. It’s great. You’ll know he’s truly achieved this when you see him shout “GO BIRDS” with haunting black eyes that suggest his entire soul has been sucked out of his body or fled it in fear.
Anyway, yes I am very excited for the playoff game tomorrow night that I know/feel in my bones we are going to lose by three touchdowns.
FROM NINA!
I thought you needed to know that there is a professional bull rider named Chase Outlaw.
A cowboy named Chase Outlaw is so on the nose that it might even be too much for a character in Fargo. It’s like having a surgeon named Blade Cutskin or a personal injury lawyer named Sue Defendants. That said…
I love him.
FROM SALLY!
If you could “Pimp My Ride” your wheelchair, what would you add? Can be feasible or completely unrealistic (ie. one of those mirror thingys they use on jets so they’re undetectable so you can pull off some heists). (I have no real clue if that is an actual thing on jets or just a thing that happens in movies.)
Okay, so two things here…
ONE: The real answer here is a climate-controlled clear little plastic bubble I could have pop out and surround everything but the wheels at the push of a button, just because I hate being cold and because driving a wheelchair powered by electricity out in a driving rainstorm is not fun. But I also know myself well enough to know I might get too excited if this offer comes up and shout “FLAMETHROWERS” before I stop to let the logical part of my brain catch up and get to the bubble thing. So either of those is a possibility.
TWO: I actually just got a new wheelchair a few months ago. It’s the same make and model I’ve always used but, for reasons I don’t fully understand, this one came equipped with headlights and turn signals. Which is hilarious. I’m gonna go to the park some night and turn the headlights on and buzz around doing loops and spins at top speed — this sucker gets up to 6mph, which isn’t like Highway Fast but is definitely Freak Out People Walking Around The Mall Fast — just to see if someone calls the cops to report suspicious (potential alien???) activity.
FROM TJ!
What is your favorite novel/book series that you want to see adapted into a movie or TV series?
And who would be your ideal cast for the main characters?
This one is easy. I pick the Dortmunder books by Donald E. Westlake, a fun series about a crew of star-crossed thieves whose well-laid plans always spin out of control in increasingly outlandish and silly ways. I love these books so much. They’re excellent beach reads and my go-to audiobooks to listen to at bedtime. The series runs like 15 books that Westlake wrote over 40 years, so a Slow Horses-style “one book per season” approach would give everyone plenty to play with.
The question of who should play the main characters is a fun one, too, because the books have been adapted into movies a few times, with the main character, John Dortmunder (sometimes with the name changed for Hollywood), being played by everyone from Robert Redford (The Hot Rock, very good) to Martin Lawrence (What The Worst That Could Happen?, less so), neither of whom were at all right for the role for various reasons.
Here’s how Dortmunder is explained on Wikipedia…
He is tall, with stooped shoulders and "lifeless thinning hair-colored hair" and has a disreputable "hangdog" face; he rarely smiles. He shares an apartment in Manhattan on East 19th Street with longtime girlfriend May Bellamy, a supermarket cashier.
… and here’s a little more to fill in the blank spots.
The fact that something almost always goes wrong with Dortmunder's jobs, in spite of careful planning, has given him the reputation of being jinxed. Although he claims not to be superstitious, Dortmunder has believed so, too. In fact, Dortmunder gets worried when things go smoothly and seems relieved when something does go wrong. In most novels, Dortmunder's team earn only small amounts of money; the resulting heists, therefore, are only Pyrrhic victories, and the moral for the reader is that Crime Does Not Pay—at least not very well. However, Dortmunder is not always unlucky, and in some novels and stories he and his crew make out quite well.
These descriptions, coupled with the fact that he has a buddy named Andy Kelp who is much shorter and is described as “cheerful and optimistic where Dortmunder is dour and relentlessly pessimistic” and “boundlessly enthusiastic and full of sometimes questionable ideas,” brings me to my suggestions for the characters in this show I suddenly want so much that I’m mad I don’t already have it…
Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day.
Thank you.
FROM KW!
First off, do you ever wonder what path your life might have taken if you didn’t suffer your injury? Do you think you’d still be a writer or would you have ended up a lawyer/doctor/one of those fat cats in city hall?
Secondly, have you ever been to the Liberty Bell and thought about what it would take to steal it?
Hmm. Let’s address these questions in order…
FIRST ONE: I mean, yeah. Not necessarily in a dark way, or at least not in the way I did right after my injury. More in the way I think everyone does, where you do a little Sliding Doors of your own life at 3 am when you’re supposed to be sleeping. What if I married my high school sweetheart? What if I took that job offer in Colorado? What if I bought a cool leather jacket when I was 22? Your mileage may vary but I think we all do it to some degree.
The other thing I should stress here is that I was… not on a path to success when I was injured. I was a 23-year-old college junior (lol) who spent most nights shoveling and/or beer-bonging substances into his body and most days floating around aimlessly like a scrap of loose confetti. A lot of very frustrated people told me I “had potential” during conversations about why I needed to pay attention in class instead of like flinging pencils into the ceiling tile above my desk. Could I have righted the ship on my own and gotten things straightened out eventually? Sure. I’ve seen some of my fellow idiot friends do it over the years. (One of them is a surgeon now!) But there’s an equally good chance I would have ended up as the “that funny guy on the sales team who just got another DUI.” Not to go all “my injury made me a better person” on you guys but it definitely was a wake-up call that I had probably needed for most of a decade.
SECOND ONE: I have been watching Reacher lately and I just got this image in my head of Reacher deciding to steal the Liberty Bell for justifiable reasons and then ripping it out of its foundation with his bare hands, crushing the skulls of 4-5 goons with it, and then walking off into the night with it slung over his shoulder like a knapsack.
FROM NICK!
Are you, like me, concerned about the marriage between the girl in the ESPN Bet commercial and her husband Tim (aka Shiver-Me-Timbo)? Now maybe she is just annoyed that she got dragged to a Dudes weekend where it is nothing but inside jokes and drunk Tim. But there really seems to be a disconnect there. Tim is off doing his own thing at the bar and his buddies didn't even know he was married. And she did her research, but she seems to be mainly betting against Tim's team out of spite. I just worry about them. Does Tim turn to drinking with his buddies to ignore facing a marriage that never should have happened? Has his wife turned to gambling in order to chase that excitement of when they first fell in love?
I said it way up in the subheading but I’ll say it again now because it’s true and worth repeating: I really do love you bozos.
STUFF I TYPED
— it is my position that Andy Reid is the best working commercial actor in America and should maybe have a role on Mike Schur’s next show
— my weekly Rundown column, which opens with a section about Paul Giamatti’s very good start to 2024 and closes with a story about a 41-year-old man (not me) spending counterfeit movie money at a Wawa in New Jersey (AGAIN, NOT ME)
STUFF I CLICKED ON
— my colleague Mike Ryan saw an advance screening of The Beekeeper — I’m going today! — and sent me a message in the Uproxx Slack that read “You need to see The Beekeeper” before he wrote his lovely review
— this New Yorker blog about the internet’s thirst for Jeremy Allen White is a delightful read
— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar thinks Bottoms should get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture so LISTEN TO ME AND KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
— feral peacocks are terrorizing a neighborhood in Houston
— a few people sent me this screencap from an Instagram story by Mad Men star January Jones and I genuinely do not think I could love it or her a single iota more
— the actual Pentagon has denied reports that Taylor Swift is a diabolical psy-op perpetrated by the government, which is a pretty wild thing to type
— somebody found some old Friends scripts in a bin and sold them for enough money to buy a pretty nice new car
— Julia Roberts seems like a cool and fun lady
— I have no interest in wading into the feud between Stephen A. Smith and Jason Whitlock but I will say that a) this two-minute teaser he posted before his 40-minute rant is honestly just incredibly compelling television, and b) calling your pastor for preemptive forgiveness for calling your sworn enemy a piece of shit on a podcast is maybe the funniest thing anyone has ever done
Okay, that’s it. This was fun. We’ll do it again.