Whose Name Is Said out Loud the Most?

I'll get into the 'bag in just a second, but before I do, we should really talk about the matter at hand. Here is a link to the ACLU, where you can donate (I did), and where you can read up on the many, many ongoing attempts to fuck people out of their rights. And, then, over at The Cut, you can find links for donating to bail funds (I did), resources and tips for aiding protestors with food and supplies, and links to cleanup efforts. If you aren't protesting, you can be at least be a part of the protests' underlying infrastructure.

Just saying nice shit clearly isn't enough. This is especially true if you're some Mayor Pete talking in vague OH GEE WE'RE BETTER THAN THIS AS A SOCIETY platitudes that don't call out the root of the problem: policemen openly attacking and killing the people they're tasked with serving, and politicians who are supposed to control those policemen but have either no interest in doing it, or WANT the police to open fire on Americans to keep them terrorized. They're all scum, and they all deserve to be hounded to the fucking grave.

Now then … your letters:

Michael:

Jesus Christ takes first place easily. As an Area Dad, I alone account for nearly five million instances of his name said aloud PER DAY. I take the Lord's name in vain so often that my kids put money on it. No lie. The other day my son challenged me to break down a soccer net without cursing. He promised me a dollar if I pulled it off. I won that fucking dollar.

I wanna commend you for factoring Marco Polo into the mix, but no one ever says his full name out loud during a game of Marco Polo. You either say his first name, or his last. If you count two people saying in the name out loud in a tandem effort, then I guess he's up there. But I'd prefer the whole name out of a single person. To that end, Trump comes in at #2 because of his media omnipresence, even if most people off air just say his last name when they're referencing him. The only people who say his full name are fuckhead cop wannabes who say grace before dinner like DEAR LORD WE GIVE THANKS FOR THIS TUNA CASSEROLE AND FOR THE STRENGTH AND COURAGE OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.

Here are my rankings. I'm gonna include fictional characters here to make it easy on myself.

• Jesus Christ
• Donald Trump
• Santa Claus
• Barack Obama
• Kylo Ren
• Hillary Clinton
• LeBron James
• Tom Brady
• Jon Snow
• Kathy Griffin
• John Cena (but not Leeroy Jenkins)
• Justin Bieber
• Bruce Wayne
• Some idiot on The Bachelor

There you go. That's the list. It's probably all wrong.

Peter:

There are. Again, companies wouldn't do this kinda shit if they didn't have reams of data proving that it works. My last back surgery, in 2010, was performed by a doctor who also did a lot of surgeries on guys who play for the Skins. Did this help sell me on the doctor? FUCK AND YES, it did. Did I actually brag to people, "My guy may or may not be official back surgeon of your Washington Redskins!" even though I fucking HATE the Skins and even though the Skins have a terrifying knack for misdiagnosing and mistreating their own players' maladies? Again, FUCK AND YES I did. Cannot recommend my guy enough.

I've bought the official beer of the NFL. I've eaten the official chips of the NFL. I can front like I'm above cheap branding efforts, but that shit bypasses my free will and burrows directly into my little sheep brain. Why would I not strap on the official noise reduction headphones of the NFL on gameday to give myself the full NFL experience, I ask you? I want all of that tacky shit. I don't wanna watch football indie-style. I wanna be part of the borg. I wanna be assimilated into the crowd. Even though I'm at home. Even though the 2020 NFL season will be played in an abandoned Home Depot. Official team sponsorships work their magic on any mild to diehard fan that requires maximum gear-age to prove their loyalty. Also, I like the majority of those products.

Except Pepsi. Fire cans of Pepsi directly at the NYPD.

Matt:

Do I really need to explain this to you? And here I'm supposed to be the fucking boomer 'round these parts. Can't I just be happy that this current version of the 60s has better music than the last time around? Anyway, if you want a hater's guide to The Grateful Dead, then a hater's guide to The Grateful Dead is what you'll get.

First of all, I'm only 43, which means I shouldn't have EVER been exposed to The Dead in the first place. And yet when I was growing up a handful of suburban white kids around me got into them and into Phish (both bands being a gateway drug to Dave Matthews Band). This was because they liked weed. Which, okay … fair enough. But they also droned on ENDLESSLY about how deep and nuanced the music was. You know how weed makes stoners into insufferable weed evangelists? Same thing with The Grateful Dead. Deadheads push The Dead on people like mayonnaise. And so I was subjected to The Dead's music against my will even though Jerry Garcia was already dead by the time I was a sophomore in college.

I hated it. I don't hate The Dead as a front. I'm not trying to look cool by hating on a band that people in 2020 either hate or ignore as a default setting. No no, I truly hate jam band music. I hate The Dead's more economical studio tracks as well, but a fucking 20-minute version of "Ripple?" No. I can't abide that. I need music with STRUCTURE. I need verse-chorus-verse-chorus, etc. I want to know your song is going somewhere. Only special artists get to trash that formula, and The Grateful Dead was not one of them. I don't want a new version of "Scarlet Begonias" every time I hear it live. I am the Donald Trump of music. I demand reliability from the product. If I order a cheeseburger, I don't want the chef to go on a fucking freelance jazz odyssey and put a live goldfish on top of it. And I don't want him to take 25 minutes to serve it to me.

If you like the Tevas of music, fine. Do what you have to do. But don't profess shock and anger that someone else would find The Grateful Dead to be folkboy water torture. You will age two decades the second you are forced to listen to some Dick's Picks soundboard recording from the Pre-Cambrian Era. I'd rather be fucked with a COVID-tipped arrow.

Deadheads are fucking cops. Tucker Carlson is a Deadhead. The only time someone got mad at me for smoking too much of their weed? That was a Deadhead. I literally took two hits from his bowl. Fuck that guy. Fuck The Dead. And fuck any stegosaurus still trying to keep them a thing.

John:

No. But listen man, I don't know how to play craps. All I know is that you stand at the table, bet on PASS because betting DON'T PASS is bad form, and then you lose money. It's not like blackjack, where the dealer will TELL you what to do if you're fucking clueless. You ask questions at a craps table and everyone else there will run your kneecaps through a bandsaw. I have a doughy white face that invites seething hostility anywhere I go, but I've felt more welcome at fucking jury duty selection than at a craps table.

So no, despite his stake in casinos, I don't think Trump knows the ins and outs of craps. He's too busy indulging his true passion: being a racist piece of shit.

Jono:

This is a dress shirt, right? I button the second from the top button first, and then go down. This is because I never button the top, because I never wear a tie. And even on the biannual occasions I do have to put a tie on, I still wait until the very end of the process to do the top button. My neck needs all the oxygen it can get.

Starting at the almost top has become a reflex for me. When you throw on an unbuttoned dress shirt, the bottom button and the bottom hole are farther apart than their respective counterparts at the top. I don't have the energy to go hunting around down there for the bottom button and finding its match. Plus, if I have the bottom button and only the bottom button secured, the shirt is obscenely still wide open, like I'm in a Will Ferrell comedy. Like I said, I need structure. Once I get the top-ish button done, the rest of the process falls into place in an orderly fashion. Of course, given that I won't need to wear a dress shirt again until 2022, nothing I just said matters.

By the way, if we're talking polo shirts? Bottom button first. Starting at the top there should earn you a trip to the loony bin.

Anthony:

I think it's normal to be hesitant about having ANY kids at all, given how daunting the task is. So yeah, I get your reluctance. But your wife already wants the second one, so you may as well accept right now that you're gonna have it. And once you have the second kid, you will look back on that hesitancy and feel like an idiot. You will DEFINITELY be able to love the next kid as much as the current one, and you'll marvel at how different they are, even if they share the same bloodline. Also, loving your second kid doesn't diminish your love for the first one in any way. You got room to love 'em both. It's automatic.

If you're worried about a lack of alone time and no sexy time for daddy… my friend that ship sailed when you pulled the goalie the first time around. You can't have one kid, let alone many, without those sacrifices. I mean, you CAN preserve your time and your boner if you make it your sole priority, but that would make you a dipshit. You get that time back on the back end anyway. My kids are all over eight and I already have no fucking idea what I'll do with myself when they're gone. I guess I'll learn to play craps.

Ken:

More! According to this site, between one and five percent of the world's population has polymastia, or "accessory nipples." What a turn of phrase. That's over 70 million people. That easily cancels out anyone who was born with a uni-nipple or had their nipples blown off in a tragic gardening accident. And you don't lose your nipple in a mastectomy, amigo. They remove the tissue inside the breast but leave the superficial part of it intact (unless the nipple/skin itself is cancerous), and then they often reconstruct the breast using an implant. They don't just slice off your boob with a cleaver. I know Republicans would PREFER that to be the case, but no. In general, your nipples are yours to keep.

I thought I had an accessory nipple for a while. Under my left breast is a tiny patch of hair, with a barely discernible mark at the center of it. I was like this might qualify me as a carnival attraction. I even asked my wife about it. I pulled up my shirt and was like, "Hey, is this a third nipple?" And she was like, "Uh, no. Don't ask me that again."

Jeremiah:

The latter. Not close. Even if I have to wipe my ass with paper towel, I'd rather do that than spend the rest of my life cleaning up spills with tissues that are deliberately engineered to break apart the second they encounter moisture. I have three kids. More shit gets spilled in this house than out of the Deepwater Horizon rig. A box of aloe-scented Puffs won't do the job.

Paper towels are a vital good. I know this to be true because it's quarantine season and I have walked through barren paper towel aisles at Giant. No trouble social distancing in that part of the store. Tumbleweeds go to that aisle to play hands of poker. As with toilet paper, my family has had to be extremely vigilant of our paper towel supply, tracking places where they might be available and hitting up nearby relatives for extra rolls if they have a surplus. I don't wanna live without paper towels.

I've blown my nose with a paper towel (and once with plain white paper, which was worse). I've wiped my ass with a paper towel. This was back in my bachelor days, when the idea of buying TP would come to me only AFTER I had run out. Bounty is rough on the starfish, but it still does the job. I can deal with that. Quarantine has forced me back into bachelor habits anyway. I eat a shitload of frozen pizza. I play videogames all weekend. Took very little to nudge me back into Dirtbag Mode. I've lived like this for three months now. Strip me of TP and I'll adjust. You watch. I dare you.

Jimmy:

No. Make that no even more emphatic if the sock in question went through the laundry before your lady put it on. I know your personal nutrag will never be "clean," but if it's had a round in the washer already, then it's not an active piece of biohazard. I don't think she'll leave you if you spill the beans, but there's no real upside to it. She's not gonna THANK you for your honesty. She'll be grossed out and she'll tell you, as I'm about to tell you, to just buy a box of tissues instead.

There comes a point where you grow past nutrags. I went from skeeting all over my sheets as a teen to using socks in college, and then finally graduated to proper tissues sometime after that. I know tissues are in demand during quarantine but they ain't THAT hard to find now that the initial, nuclear fallout rush for groceries has subsided. Get a box of Kleenex, put it by your bed, and then you never have to suffer from nutrag angst again. You just flush the evidence down the toilet and no one is ever the wiser. It's a more elegant form of cleaning up after yanking the lever.

I feel like a tightass telling you this shit. Every goddamn Apatow movie that has ever existed has been a two-and-a-hour dirge where a manchild reluctantly has to grow up. I don't like being grown up. It fucking BLOWS. I'd much rather be an idiot teen right now, even in lockdown. But really, nutted tissues are a matter of convenience, not maturity. Would've spared me, and my poor mom, a lot of unspoken grief back in the day if I had made the switch early on.

Mike:

No.

Garrett:

As a rule, I am against people blaring their shit out in public. But I'll make an exception for you, so long as everyone in your group is fine with the music. You'll risk Buckley or some other playing partner of yours commandeering the Spotify or requesting more Grateful Dead songs. But otherwise, you're 300 yards away from the next group finishing up on the green. They can't hear it. Play that shit loud and clear. Just don't FaceTime anyone from the tee box or I'll beat you to death with a five-iron.

As for the PGA Tour, they would never allow Patrick Reed to blast Lady Antebellum from a Beats pill while he's teeing off at the Cracker Barrel Knoxville Open. It's against the rules for players to wear headphones or use other devices to drown out crowd noise (amusing given that crowds already have to pipe down whenever they're attempting a shot). More important, golf would simply never allow such frivolities out in the open. As Garrett says, it would disrespect the game in their eyes. Jim Nantz would shit an Enya record if a player ever tried it. Golf culture is as miserable and intransigent as the country clubs that birthed it. It'll never get better, no matter how much Brooks Koepka (who is decidedly cool) and other tour pros try to change it. If golf were cooler, it would be basketball. It is not basketball.

Barry:

I never alternate meats when I'm making a sandwich because I don't have the patience. I want my sandwich NOW. I'm not gonna and delicately layer the capicola and ham and pepperoni like I'm a stonemason working outside Kensington Palace. I just want the meat and I don't care how it gets in me, baby. Also, the meat is chewed up and commingled within half a second of me biting into it, so I dunno if I'm losing many flavors in the transaction.

But I do respect your commitment to even sandwich distribution. Very democratic of you.

James:

I usually flush after an aborted dump on the offhand chance that some INIVISIBLE fecal matter has wafted down out of my asshole and into the bowl, thereby contaminating the water. Also, it makes me feel like I at least did SOMETHING productive in my time in there. Some things don't show up on the plumbing stat sheet.

Chris:

That's a perfect question for quarantine and I appreciate that you included so many AUTHENTICALLY Italian products on the list. Now I could put on my little foodie toque and tell you about the stunning diversity of canned Italian fish and other goodies, but fuck that. My answer is Chef Boyardee Roller Coasters. They don't make these anymore. It's arguably our greatest tragedy.

Hamilton:

I was stoned and having a beer on my deck and spotted this squirrel cruising down the sidewalk with a huge piece of food in its mouth. I couldn't tell what it was but the squirrel was clearly pumped about whatever it had, it bolted real fast up a tree about 30 feet from my deck, went deep into the branches and furiously mowed whatever it was for like five straight minutes. I was trying to figure out what it was the squirrel was eating. It could have been maybe a big scrap of people food like a hunk of pastry, but that didn't seem quite right. My very first thought had been that it looked like an animal but I thought no way that could be true. But I double checked and according to Wikipedia squirrels occasionally can be carnivorous! In retrospect it could have been a baby bird or something for sure. Did I just watch a squirrel eat flesh? I'm not sure how I feel about this.

You'll be OK.