Anonymous Mailbag

It’s Tuesday, time for the anonymous mailbag.

Reminder, we will be doing Lock It In live from Las Vegas at the MGM Grand on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. If you want to come watch us live, they’ll be giving out tickets at 1 pacific time.

Okay, here we go.

“Is Lori Loughlin the hottest actress that has never been photographed nude? Continuation, how much has “Lori Loughlin topless” been googled in the last week compared to the week before? Am I the only dude who sees news article including a pretty woman and immediately want to see her topless?”

I mean, there’s a reason Mr. Skin exists, right?

It’s because a huge percentage of men see an attractive woman in public life and immediately wonder what she might look like naked.

Exactly how common is this?

Well, there’s a cool part of Google where you can go to google.com/trends and put in a phrase to see how much more popular it has gotten in search history over time.

I mean, you can look back years and years into the past.

So here’s the search results for Lori Loughlin topless over the past five years.

The chart is amazing — I have no idea, by the way, what the other blips on this chart are — but look at how interest in Lori Loughlin topless has skyrocketed since the USC news broke.

This means there are tons of dudes out there who read about the USC news, saw Aunt Becky’s picture, and decided to Google whether there were topless pictures of her.

My bet is for virtually every attractive woman who makes news that the number of people who search for her nude pics also skyrocket.

This is further evidence, as if you needed it at all, that all (or at least most) men are sex-crazed maniacs who can’t be trusted.

“I run a small sports book in the southeast with college buddies. We all went to SEC or ACC schools and it’s mostly recreational betting. We make about $10-15k doing this, but we all have day jobs and real careers. What do you think happens to the local bookie in the age of sports gambling legalization? Do you think guys like us are on the chopping block with increased scrutiny from gambling agencies? We have discussed pooling all of our funds and putting together a business plan to take this thing above board if our state legalizes gambling. Do you think there is space for the little guy sports betting platform in the modern age? Keep this anonymous for obvious reasons.”

Well, let’s leave aside legality and consider what you could possibly offer that a legal sportsbook couldn’t. And the answer is — credit.

I think most legal sportsbooks will be forced to limit how much credit they can extend to a gambler due to laws that will be enacted to prevent problematic gambling. It’s similar with state lotteries, for instance. You don’t want people killing themselves because they got $100k in scratch off lottery tickets that were sold by the state.

So I think your advantage is you can extend credit in a way that your typical legal sportsbook wouldn’t and as a result I don’t think your business will completely disappear. In fact, if you want to be optimistic, there may be an overall increase in sports gambling, which could make people more aware of the fact that you exist.

Now here’s the challenge you’ll face, you siphon off tax revenue from a state once they get into taxing the sports gambling business. So you may face greater regulatory scrutiny as a result.

That’s why I’ve advised people to buy stock in MGM, Caesar’s, William Hill, Churchill Downs, and The Stars Group. You don’t know which of these companies will end up making big money as American sports gambling becomes more prominent, but you know some of them will. So I’d buy all these companies and hold them for the next five to ten years.

As to whether the little guys like you will end up able to get gambling licenses, I think that’s unlikely.

“My wife and I have 4 kids. My wife, since kids, has no sexual drive or any desire to do anything spontaneous. We have had the conversation many, many times and she doesn’t care what I think or feel, she just says this is the new me get over it. 

So the question is, should I just cheat on her? As long as she doesn’t know it won’t matter and it would allow me to leave her alone. Seems like a win win to me. I don’t think she even cares as long as she doesn’t know about it. 

I travel all the time for work so no issue with finding the “how.” 

Imagine if you just said, “You know, I’m over making money. This is the new me, get over it.”

Your wife would probably lose her mind.

And, significantly, that would probably be your motive in making a comment like that. You’d want to get a rise out of your partner.

What your wife is really saying when you talk about sex is, “I’M NOT HAPPY!”

Sex, to men, is a big part of marriage and our mood, generally speaking, doesn’t impact whether or not we’re interested in sex. (Granted sometimes male sex drive can do down with depression or unemployment, but generally speaking most men have a fairly consistent sex drive.)

What I think is happening here is your wife is unhappy with her life and she’s withholding sex to try to get you to understand that she’s unhappy and this is the only way she knows how to make it happen.

Before you decide to start cheating on her — which could have disastrous results for your family — you need to try to figure out why your wife is unhappy and if there’s anything you can do to remedy her unhappiness.

Being responsible for four kids is a ton of work and can have a dramatic impact on her level of happiness and sexual interest in you. She may be completely exhausted, she may be depressed, you’re focusing on the lack of sex — which is completely understandable, but I wonder if there’s something more substantial at play here.

If I’m wrong and she’s perfectly happy and just has no interest in sex with you any more, have an adult conversation and ask her what she’d suggest that you do.

Is your sex life supposed to end because she’s not interested in sex any longer?

I’d be interested what her response to that question would be.

But I think you need to figure out what’s going on here before you risk it all for a 51 year old hotel bar floozy with herpes.

“Hey Clay, I just got invited to join a bracket challenge by a friend of mine with a buy in. However I am a college student equipment manager for the football team and just had a meeting to remind us we can’t join bracket pools for money since we are work in NCAA athletics.  Their argument for the rule is we may have inside information however we work with football. At this same time I realized that both video staff and athletic training we’re not held to this same rule yet being in a near identical situation.

So my question for you is do I just go ahead and join my buddies pool and take the risk of not being caught. Also what is your take on the ironic situation of us being held to the rule while others are not?”

If you want to join the bracket pool, join the bracket pool.

There are 68 teams in the bracket.

I can somewhat understand the rationale that you shouldn’t bet on teams at your school if you’re a student manager because you might have inside knowledge, but even if you had inside knowledge on one basketball team there are still 67 other teams you don’t have inside knowledge on. (And, as you point out, the policy isn’t being applied evenly to everyone.)

So is there some Inspector Javert out there chasing people around at your school who have the gall to join a pay bracket challenge with buddies?

Plus, again, there’s no way you gain a substantial benefit here.

Put it this way, Coach K. knows more about Duke than, probably, anyone in the country. Let’s say he joined a bracket challenge, do you really think he’d be much better than your average 10th grader filling out his bracket online?

There is so much chance in the bracket that knowing a great deal about one team really doesn’t help you that much when it comes to winning the entire thing.

So I’d go ahead and join the bracket challenge if you really want to and not be too worried about someone catching you.

Finally, unless you’re Rick Neuheisel it’s not like the bracket challenge is really high stakes and you’ll lose your job if you get caught.

Most bracket challenges cost $25 or less, at those stakes you’ll be fine.

“Settle a discussion for me and some friends:  We are all mid-30s, married, kids, and generally happy/successful folks.  So, we have nothing better to do than sit around and discuss philosophical issues such as “do you need to know how many people your wife/husband have had sex with?” 

I’m in the camp that believes that shit should stay buried in the past and that it doesn’t matter and would only bring up more questions and possibly create trouble.  The other side believe that it’s best to be completely open about it and know all, as it solidifies trust in the marriage.  One consistent difference between us is that those who believe the bones should stay buried all met their spouses later in life (late 20s, early 30s), whereas the “open and honest” ones typically knew their spouses early (college or right after).”

I’d leave it alone.

These are the kinds of questions you can discuss early in a relationship when you first start dating — you should cut in half any man’s answer and double every woman’s as a general rule — but I’m not sure what you gain later in relationships by discussing them.

I do think if you started dating your spouse at a younger age you’re probably more likely to know information about them, but if you’re 35 do you really need to know every bit of your spouse’s sexual history? What if you’re 45 or 55? The older you get the less significant it is when you lost your virginity.

Don’t get me wrong, that matters a great deal when you’re 18 or 19, but by the time you’re an adult it matters much less.

Barring your new dating partner having been a pornstar or something of that nature I don’t think you need to know this information at all.

“How do you ask out/court a female coworker in the Me Too era?

I am not a sociopath. I of course understand that women shouldn’t be harassed especially at a place of work. I don’t think it’s my right to treat the workplace as a pickup spot, but I have a job where I have spent considerable amount of time with a female colleague. We have great report, and I spent enough time to develop feelings for this woman, but she is a liberal. And any misstep could be a fireable offense considering if she’s uncomfortable working with me, the company won’t risk a lawsuit by keeping me.

Is there a way, to be subtle enough to avoid Me-Too capture, or do I punt on this one?”

This isn’t complicated: you ask her out once and if she says no you don’t ask her out again. (If she doesn’t give you an answer it probably means she doesn’t want to go out, but you can ask her out one more time to be sure. If she doesn’t give you an answer the first or second time, she isn’t interested, but she knows you are. If she ever changes her mind she knows how to ask you out.)

Of course the easiest answer is don’t date co-workers, but the reality is a huge percentage of people meet their spouses at school or work.

I understand the nervousness from men in the #metoo era, but the reality is the laws on sexual harassment haven’t changed.

The same behavior that wasn’t allowed before #metoo still isn’t allowed and the same behavior that was allowed still is allowed.

Just be smart.

Good luck.

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