“England is a nation of secret boozers, with more than a third of the population drinking unhealthy quantities of alcohol, new research has suggested.”

“Are our household appliances getting too complicated?”

This is the single most satisfying read of 2013.

“A picture caption on Saturday with an article about concerns over a proposed liquid petroleum tank in the Maine coastal town of Searsport described incorrectly opponents of the tank who were shown standing in a circle and holding hands. They were demonstrating the tank’s circumference, not its diameter.”

It’s the fourth anniversary of the “How I Learned” series at Happy Endings Lounge, so mazel tov — and Awl poetry editor and heartthrob Mark Bibbins is appearing at BookCourt. Also Debbie Harry and Chris Stein discuss the late 70s, and Nell Freudenberger! (Not together.) (More!)

The Problem With Men’s Socks

Like millions of other loyal Americans, I watched the Academy of Oscars® telecast on Sunday, which the ABC televisioning network tricked me into starting at 7 p.m., with the pre-game, where for 90 minutes they ask actor-people about their feelings and what clothes they are wearing by which designer of clothes, but I stuck with it, the broadcast, not only in appreciation of the forced awkwardness and yelling-at-the-teevee entertainment, but to also maybe gain a bit of valuable practical Fashion information I need. Clothing!

If I were a he-actor attending one of these high-profile affairs, I would totally wear a nice dress normally associated with female clothing, especially Adapted for Television, and not some sloppy drag like the “South Park” guys did once, so I could get more camera time, since the she-actors are the ones who get all the questioning and approval (never disapproval until later, by the backbiting cowards on the post-poop shows) about their fancy ball gown and their shoes and jewelries, and the man-actors almost never get questioned about their getup unless they have gone way off the usual path of a conforming tuxedo-looking garment. When gentlemen do this and stay with male-pattern badness, they either look like they are from The Future, or else they just look like Normal People, which is to say: Slobs. Even then, if a male actor shows up in some sort of attempt to challenge Fashion, they never get asked any good details beyond like, “Did your cousin make this, Mr. Robin Williams?” or “And what charity are you wearing this attention-getting garment in support of, Mr. Robin Williams?”

I have never heard any of these Red Carpet “reporters” ask what kinda socks anybody are wearing, is wearing, or am wearing, singular, plural, and right now I am on a high-level need-to-know basis with this sock(s) topic, because the socks thing (not talking about the puppet-show segment they did on the Oscars, Jesus Christ, but almost, kinda, wait) is making me uncomfortable, I mean, I fit a size 12 man-shoe, and so when you go to an average-sized man-clothes store for men’s hosiery, the socking on offer for the average-size humale-foot in my shoe size equals a sock size of 10–12, in sock measurement, and either this size is too tight around my pinkie toe and my ankle, or it’s too tight across the top part of my foot and it makes me feel like I’m choking, or it’s too loose in the heel and the sock is baggy, or maybe it looks like the right size and shape for my feet — which, not to brag on myself, but I have good-looking feet for an amateur — then the sock is not stretchy enough to get situated properly over my foot without a lotta work, and so then I know if I buy this particular/these particular sock(s), very soon some morning I will rip it open at the ankle-part because I’m in a goddamn fucking hurry to put my socks on and it’s morning which is not a good time to be bending at the waist, and so I end up jamming my toe right through it, especially if it’s been a while since I clipped my toe-talons, which are my only line of Natural Defense, and I refuse to get myself declawed.

I tried that whole “no socks” no-socks-guy look for awhile, but then I realized my shoes were starting to do the work of my socks, which is to say I couldn’t keep my shoes in the house anymore, or in the office, because they kept reminding me they had feet in them. And look, I take care of myself, I have hot water and a shower, so it’s not like that, and I don’t eat any kinda special diet or anything, I just think people who go no-socks probably have a lotta shoes, or they can afford to buy shoes all the time, or they can’t smell their damn feet are destroying their shoes, you know? It’s like, OK, maybe your dogs don’t bark after a hard day of whatever the fuck it is you do, but there’s still like minerals and stuff coming off your feet that will attack the leather or plastic or cotton or whatever, even Crocs, man, which I was contemplating, if I couldn’t get no satisfaction, sockwise, but I realized there is already a crude but effective solution to this sock issue, and that is the Sock Garter, a perfectly respectable and conforming approach to not having to wear athletic Tube Socks to achieve comfort and stability in the lower extremities. Sock garter! They are like the lady-garter for stockings and fine hosiery, except the sock-garter goes where your ankle is covered by a men’s sock and is completely not sexy in any way, unless it is, in which case that’s fine, it’s just not on my radar, it’s all good, a beautiful spectrum of appreciations, Fashionwise and otherwise. I would like to invite members of the Sock Garter industry to send me samples and I will Field Test them and post my unbiased evaluations in this space. I live in hope Sock Garter will allow me to buy socks that are roomier at the ankles and are less aggressively elastic holding-uppy, and then I can strap on the garter and feel secure, unless this means one more thing to have to take off when I hit security at the airport, in which case I am going full Crocs.

Previously: Here’s Who Will Win The Oscars (And Why)

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias. Photo from the Everett Collection, via Shutterstock.

★★★ The decorative box on a water tank was briefly a beacon of flame, then subsided once again into anonymizing skim-milk-blue glass on the uptown skyline. Was the urge to step lively a response to abundant light, or to the still-pressing cold? Men had ventured canvas sneakers, one pair of checkered slip-ons, even; outside the bodega were bunches of cut daffodils. Maybe they’d been out there for weeks, from some industrial hothouse. The temperature would never climb the last few degrees beyond the seasonable. The averaged-out late light was gray, but there was color in the clouds if you looked up for it. Rosy beams carved out Stanford White’s cornice and brickwork at the top of the Cable Building, while the ground-floor Crate & Barrel lay in shadow.

“Newspaper headlines have reflected the desperation of many depressed German residents, lamenting ‘Where Is Spring?’ and ‘When Will Winter Finally End?’”

The Future Looks Back On ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story’

It is December 20, 2007, the day before the release of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Jake Kasdan, Judd Apatow, and John C. Reilly are sharing a beer, excited, expectant. There is a puff of smoke. A young woman appears in their midst. She is nondescript, but their attention is drawn to her dress. Peplum silhouettes aren’t in. Not… yet. Apatow immediately senses she is from the future.

The Woman: I am from 2013.

The Three Men: Let’s just totally accept that without asking a bunch of questions, and assume you’re here to tell us about “Walk Hard.” It’s a hit, right?

The Woman: It is not. You are going to lose money.

The Three Men: Even after the foreign totals?

The Woman: No one outside the United States will watch a movie about the nature of the American music biopic. It will make $2,258,092 extra after the foreign totals.

The Three Men: But… it’s so funny.

The next in a short series about our strongest movie opinions,
past and present.

The Woman (looks warm and empathetic): It’s maybe the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. I watched it at least once a month for three years. Even now, I watch it again whenever someone comes to the house who hasn’t seen it. I have it on my laptop. I have bought it for countless friends. I think it should have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I think Margo Martindale should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. I think Raymond J. Barry should have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It’s okay, though, because someone who really loves Walk Hard is going to make a show with Timothy Olyphant to give work to Martindale and Barry. They get theirs.

The Three Men: What… what does win all the Oscars, by the way?

Woman (waves dismissively): It’s a blowout for No Country for Old Men. That’s not important. I mean, if I wanted to get into minutiae, I’d be talking about the upcoming global economic collapse, right? Lance admitting to doping? There’s going to be a black president? None of this matters. I think there’s still time for Walk Hard.

The Three Men: Can you tell us how to make it a hit?

The Woman: That I cannot do. I cannot do that. People are idiots. People don’t understand. This movie will not succeed.

The Three Men: But, it’ll be a cult hit on DVD? Will it be like Wet Hot American Summer, or more like Clerks?

The Woman: No. No one will think better of a person because they speak in its favor. It will be lost to history. There will be no moment that enters the public consciousness.

The Three Men: Not even… ?

The Woman: Committed stoners will speak of the first scene with Dewey in the closet with Tim Meadows. “It’s the cheapest drug there is.” That’s going to get some traction. But, I mean, you already had the stoners. That was never in question.

The Three Men: Yes, there are always the stoners. Apatow has a yacht named “Thanks, Stoners.”

The Woman: You’re welcome.

The Three Men: So, why are you here?

The Woman: To make it better, for posterity. It could be even better. You need to make some cuts.

The Three Men: It’s only 96 minutes long. We’re making the director’s cut 120 minutes.

The Woman: That is some self-indulgent nonsense.

The Three Men: Okay, what do we cut?

The Woman: Yeah, you know when someone tells Dewey to beware of temptations, and then he walks by the actual Temptations singing in close harmony? And then he says, “Oh no, the Temptations!”?

The Three Men: Hahaha, yeah.

The Woman: Don’t fucking have him say, “oh no, the Temptations.” Give the moment a chance to land! People are stupid, but they’re not that stupid. Also, his line reading there was terrible.

The Three Men: What else?

The Woman: I was traditionally on the fence about him losing his sense of smell, because the scene where he gets it back is stupid, but then you’d miss Margo Martindale, his mom, being amazed he’s accomplished so much as a musician “without even having a sense of smell.” That can stay. But you need to lose Jonah Hill as his grown-up dead brother. No one likes that. It is for shit.

The Three Men: What about the ghosts at the end, in general?

The Woman: All the ghosts need to go. It’s cutesy. And the Lil’ Nutzzak dick jokes. Dumb. Let him have his triumphant concert, his flashbacks, the final shot. You can keep the rap video.

The Three Men: Well, these were all very helpful notes.

The Woman: SO, are you going to change it?

The Three Men: No, it’s already been sent to theaters, are you nuts? Do you think we have a big reel of film and a pair of scissors? It’s been out of our hands for six months.

The Woman: I guess I really should have gone back and killed Hitler instead, huh?

The Three Men: Probably. Thanks, though? Can you tell us more about the global economic collapse?

But she was already gone. Poof.

Previously in series: How ‘Minority Report’ Trapped Us In A World Of Bad Interfaces

Nicole Cliffe is the books editor of The Hairpin and the proprietress of Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews.

Silicon Valley people and home-office employees everywhere are very worked up about the new Yahoo policy, which says people can no longer screw around at home instead of going to their perfectly good corporate headquarters. What about the ladies, who have the babies the world so desperately doesn’t need? Well, they will have to do what non-Silicon Valley $100K salaried ladies do, which is “try to find a spot in a day care where the TV isn’t on all the time.”

There are legitimate reasons for working at home, of course. You may be in an Iron Lung or full body cast, which would frighten the editorial assistants. You may live outside the metropolitan area where your colleagues live and work, which is the case for me: My editors are always in New York, and I am usually 3,000 miles west of New York. Still, working at home is only a luxury for those who have never worked at home. Next time you’re home, take a look around. Do you want to work there, with all those dishes in the kitchen and dog hair on the sofa and undone chores calling your name while you’re trying to make a joke about something in the New York Times nobody even cares about, including the New York Times reporter on the byline?

Working at home is bad for society. Look around, if you happen to leave your house today, and you’ll see Americans don’t exactly need encouragement to relax their personal appearance standards. Going to the office is the final fraying thread between occasional showers and becoming a dumpster monster. Have you ever been to West L.A.? Just try to get a coffee, just try, and you cannot, because every Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is packed solid with unemployed screenwriters typing on their MacBooks. They don’t want to be home! It’s depressing.

Here is what you should do: You should live close to your office, close to your kids’ schools, close to All The Things, and then you should go to work where people go to work. Need to take Lil’ Poopy to the pediatrician? It happens! Children are dangerous disease vectors, indiscernible from other vermin. But when you live in a compact urban environment, you tell your boss you’ll be out to take your sick kid to the doctor, and you’ll see your boss in court if that’s a problem, and also you will return to work in 90 minutes to do your job. Sorry about how you can’t get a 3,000-square-foot stucco monstrosity in the city, but you don’t need that anyway. Millions of Knowledge Economy Workers who were better and smarter than anyone alive today existed happily in small city apartments during the 20th Century. When they wanted fresh air, they went to their country house, hours outside of town, and it was affordable because it was just some house in the woods where there was no economy beyond the weekenders.

The workplace is part of civilization. Yes, it is true, that back in the Middle Ages or Colonial Williamsburg or the HBO series “Rome,” tradespeople often worked on the lower or street-facing portion of their home, but that’s because they lived in the town, in the marketplace. They were engaged with the populace. Even acclaimed fiction writers of the 1960s — those awful East Coast men writing about masturbation and suburbs and hating their adult children over some kind of tortured inadequacy — had offices, sometimes in their own ridiculously inexpensive Manhattan apartment buildings.

Working at home is crap. Chat rooms will never compare to being able to tell people to get bent in person. Emails are ignored, while following someone into the elevator or bathroom is very difficult to brush off. There is nothing like being in the same building with people, letting them know you are there, watching them, always. Traditionally, management has exploited this role, but in our terrible modern society, it’s the employee who should be in the workplace, conspicuously watching the bastards. You know who never learns they were laid off by reading Romenesko? People who are in the office, engaged, alert, watching for signs the way a storefront psychic watches for tan lines on ring fingers. And when you need to concentrate, go have a coffee for 20 minutes, or take a smoke break. That is so much better than whatever people do when working at home and need a break, which is mostly “eat stuff out of the pantry” and “think about moving.”

And if someone does wrong you in the workplace, you’re right there to follow them to the subway station, not too close now, through the bustle of busy streets, waiting outside the corner market as they pick up a six-pack and some milk, and finally to that one place where they cannot enact the company crisis plan: their own home.

Also there should be onsite quality daycare at every business with more than a dozen employees, come on.

Photo by Wallenrock, via Shutterstock