Shots fired: #Steelers HC Mike Tomlin on Cleveland trading Joe Flacco to the Bengals:
“Andrew Berry must be a lot smarter than me or us because it doesn’t make sense to me to trade a QB you think enough of to make your opening-day starter to a division opponent that’s hurting in that area. But that’s just my personal feeling.”
In 2042, two men sit in a booth at their local sports bar, the Turing Test Tavern.
"You ever think it's weird how everyone here is wearing Apple Vision Pros and Google LucidLenses and we can't see it?" Paul looks around. "Man, where the hell is Tommy?"
"Forget Tommy. These taste like shit." Clyde bites into a Heat Death Jalapeño Popper and drops it on the Schrodinger's Sampler plate. "We shoulda went to ZoomBoom's and got the Skibidi Sliders." He plucks a Grey Goo Gyoza and plops it in his mouth. "You were shaying?"
"Oh. Like right now, you and I are wearing glasses that overlay base reality with AI augmented visuals, but we don't see the frames or headsets."
"Uh-huh."
"Just each other's face."
"I don't shee your face."
Paul blinks. "You don't?"
"Nah." Clyde chews with his mouth full. "I haven't sheen your mug in years, man."
"What do you see?"
Clyde swallows. "Norm MacDonald."
"The fuck?"
"You sound like him."
"I know I sound like him, every nurse and doctor I've ever had says I sound like him." Paul balks. "Am I old fat podcast Norm MacDonald or young skinny Weekend Update Norm MacDonald?"
"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo Norm MacDonald."
"What? Come on."
Clyde shrugs.
"With the shlubby beard? Really?"
"You're a shlubby guy."
"Man."
"Oh, speaking of nurses, I went to the dentist the other day and the hygienist had the biggest cans I've ever seen."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh yeah. Just these big black naked tits with pancake aerolas and thick cocoa bean nips, hanging fancy and free right next to my face."
"Okay, but that's what I'm talking about. Those weren't really her big, black, naked tits."
"Eh?"
"She wasn't really cleaning your teeth topless."
"Pft. Of course not."
"Okay, so it was just the AI projecting what her big, black, naked tits might look like based on stochastic Markov processes and probabilistic modeling. For all you know, she has tastefully tiny areola and bug bite nipples."
"Alright, well her boobs were probably bolt-ons anyway, so it all zeroes out, doesn't it Baudrillard?"
"All I'm saying is, you didn't actually see her tits. Also, I'm pretty sure forced nudity filters count as some kind of sexual assault."
"Hey, it's the future. Girls just have to accept that every man they meet has his universal female filter set to Garden of Eden mode.
"Do they?"
Clyde shrugs. "How would they stop it?"
"Well, there's a law going through Congress right now that would force all AR headsets to advertise and honor Preferred Perception Presets."
"Uh-huh. So every girl in the world will look like Margot Robbie or Beyoncé."
"Probably."
"Boring! God feminists ruin everything."
"To be fair, you're the alternative."
"Oh come off it," Clyde says.
Paul shifts. "What?"
"Didn't you tell me last week that every woman you meet is some gooner fuel Gacha snatch from NIKKE: Goddess of Victory?"
"Actually, I switched my universal female filter to Uma Musume Pretty Derby."
"Uh huh."
"Because I respect women."
"Okay, sure." Clyde nods his head. "At least it's not as fucked up as Tommy's filter."
Paul tilts his head. "What's Tommy's filter?"
"Universal dicks for noses."
"What?"
"Oh, there he is." Clyde waves. "Tommy! Over here!"
Tommy ambles over and sits down in the booth.
"Hey, guys. What's up?"
"We're talking filters," Clyde says. "The hoof-huffing feminist here just found out I have his set to Norm MacDonald."
"Oh. Dirty Work Norm MacDonald or 'The Thing About Hitler' Norm MacDonald?"
"Forget that." Paul brushes Clyde off. "What's this about dicks for noses?"
"Oh." Tommy slumps. "You told him about that?"
Clyde beams.
"Tommy." Paul leans in. "Do I have a dick on my face right now?"
Tommy lifts his hand, palms out. "Okay, yes, but it's not a weird sex thing."
"Me having a dick hanging off my face isn't a weird sex thing, Tommy?"
"There's an explanation."
Paul sits back. "Let's hear it."
Tommy takes a deep breath. "Okay, so, you know how AR got big while we were in high school?"
"Sure."
"And everybody was trading crazy filters around?"
"I remember that." Clyde picks another popper up and pops it in his mouth. "I loaded up a Beatles-based psilocybin filter one summer and was lost in Strawberry Fields Forever for weeks."
"So there was this filter called the Dick Face Challenge," Tommy says.
"I remember that too."
"And it replaced everyone's noses with dicks, and the challenge was you had to go a week without laughing. Which was impossible for me."
"That's why you kept getting kicked out of Mr. Bjornby's class?" Paul says.
"He had the funniest dick face. I couldn't help myself!"
"He was a somber guy," Clyde adds.
Paul shakes his head. "Jesus, Tommy. You almost got expelled."
Tommy nods. "I did. And that's when I decided to lock in."
"Lock in?"
"I decided I wasn't going to take the filter off until I could go a whole month without laughing."
"Okay..."
"And then I went for two months. Then three months. And at some point, it became normal to me and..."
"And?"
"I forgot I was wearing a filter."
Paul knits his brow. "You forget that people don't have dicks for noses?"
"Around senior year, I tried to switch back, but I couldn't do it," Tommy says. "Noses weird me out. It's the holes."
Clyde snorts.
"It's like a form of rhinic trypophobia."
"God, I don't know what to do with you people." Paul huffs. "Clyde sees me as a dead SNL actor and every time I talk to you, I know I've got a floppy shlong hanging off my face. I don't know what's worse!"
"Well, it's not always floppy..." Tommy mumbles.
Clyde snorts louder.
Paul stares at Tommy. "What?"
"So part of what made the Dick Face Challenge so hard—"
Clyde cracks up.
"—is that nasal tumescence adjusts based on the perceived person's emotional arousal."
Paul leans in again. "You said it wasn't a weird sex thing, Tommy."
"I-It's not!"
"You just said emotional arousal! What does 'arousal 'mean, Tommy??"
Tommy sinks in his seat. "You know! Emotional arousal! Anger, joy, ecstasy!"
"Ecstasy???"
"The more worked up you get, the harder the dicks gets!" Tommy stammers. "Any emotion, it doesn't matter!"
Paul rises from his seat, yelling. "YOU'RE TELLING ME I GOT A ROCK HARD DICK STICKING OUT OF MY FACE, TOMMY?!"
Clyde falls out of his seat, cackling.
Tommy yelps, "Well, 𝘯𝘰𝘸 you do!"
The Browns don’t care about giving their fans an entertaining product, let alone winning. They just care about seeming smart. The worst run franchise in all of sports.
SNL is a social experiment to find out if you can make comedy gold by subjecting a group of funny people to a pointlessly grueling production schedule and bottlenecking all their ideas through one increasingly-out-of-touch old man. The answer: very, very occasionally!