A remarkably precise summer fling fantasy from Japan: “We’re at a fireworks festival when he bumps into me and my yukata gets dirty. He’s so nice, and our love progresses very sweetly; but when the summer ends he’s killed in a motor-bike accident.” [Via]

by Natasha Vargas-Cooper

You know what hitting an emotional bottom sounds like? It’s the open palm of a hooker’s hand making contact with stubbly face in a darkened room on Thanksgiving as she joylessly rides you! That’s what it sounds like: slap, slap, slap, welcome to the fall of 1964! This is the moment for which three seasons have prepared us: the cool and muted extended twilight of the Eisenhower patriarchy has at last gone pitch-black.

Decency is being traded in for freedom, divorce, bikinis and soulless PR campaigns used to drum up consumer excitement over something as mundane as congealed canned ham-remember the gals are paid to fight, then they actually do fight, but every one buys more ham. The good news is that with the burgeoning state of kooky consumerism, we have more access to the market and other store-bought (or by-the-hour) indulgences, so it becomes easier to simulate pleasure. The things we buy, the story we tell ourselves and others, is more in our control as the caste system dissolves in a deluge of consumer goods.

Our stories even become commodities. Or to put it more politely, as hero Bert Cooper said, we are “turning creative success into business.”

• Selling your self-mythology is a craft. All the ad-men of the golden era (Ogilvy, Lois, Burnett, Daniels) wrote autobiographies. Not only are they all quippy and dishy (they are, after all, creative folks) but the self-made machismo makes them disarmingly charming. You root for each one of these businessmen as if they were saving a village of orphans when really they are selling cigarettes and canned corn. They are always the visionary, always the underdog, always the one with the balls to grab the advertising world by, well, the balls! Here’s my favorite, as told by Draper Daniels about Leo Burnett:

By now everyone in advertising must have heard the story of the friends who sneered and told Leo [when he gave the news he was starting his own company] he’d be selling on apples on the street corner in six months. Undaunted, Burnett replied, ‘the hell I will. I’ll give them away.’ If you haven’t heard it before, you have now, and you know why there’s a bowl of apples in every Burnett reception room.

Who knows if this story is even true? To date, the firm has spent zillions of dollars to have fresh apples in each of their offices.

• Stan Freberg, another ad man/personality (question: where is our favorite rebel with Wellesian scowl and beard, Paul Kinsey?) popped up on the show. The “John! Marshaaaa?” bit that Peggy and her new dreamy art boy keep doing is from a soap opera satire that Freberg released on a comedy album-first as a single, later in compilation.

Freberg also popularized the “abnormal” and “absurd” radio commercial. Ad Age named Freberg one of top 100 most influential men of all time. You can trace the Bud Lite Real Men of Genius commercials and the Old Spice commercials to this one quirky Jew and his microphone! (Update: Or so you might think! “Freberg” is Swedish, and his father was a minister.)

• Don’s Glo-Coat commercial comes from a real life campaign.

You can see the difference in tone between the pre-revolutionary style of the light-hearted, virtue-heavy spot that aired in the late 1950s, featuring housewives and families gliding across a slick floor to the homespun, narrative simulated by Loretta Lynn. This comes from the notion that a compelling story behind the product will make people will want in, even if it’s utterly phony.

The thinking goes, if you put a sign up that says FREE KITTENS, maybe a person or two will pick up a pussycat. Put up a sign that says FREE AMISH KITTENS and they’ll all have homes before sunset.

• Bikinis: score one for freedom over decency! Here’s an example of the chaste image the family men of Jantzen were looking for from 1964. Here’s Sears for Jantzen.

Don’s implied topless ad-which featured photography instead of illustration (miss you, big gay Sal)-could have come from a fashion world scandal that rocked 1964: THE TOPLESS BIKINI.

On the runways of Paris, designer (and Mattachine Society co-founder!) Rudi Gernreich and his model Peggy Moffitt debuted a bathing suit with a bikini bottom and straps that went up over your shoulders and that’s all, folks! Breasts, fully exposed. “Once you get over the shock,” a writer for Life magazine said of the suit in July, 1964, “which takes about ten minutes, the new suit begins to strike you as the most absurd garment since those two rascally weavers manufactured the emperor’s new clothes.” It’s no good for swimming, or sunbathing because of “disastrous straps.” The bare-breasted suit was only good for “connoisseurs of pop art, for aficionados of the absurd, and especially for a high fashioned laugh. (One funny thing about toplessness is that it doesn’t really have to do with breasts. Breasts of course are not absurd; topless swimsuits are. Lately people keep getting the two things mixed up.)”

The difference between the image and the authentic are going to remain mixed up for a very long time. Though we all know now that the real difference between a bikini and underwear is just what we call it.

Previously: The Footnotes of ‘Mad Men’

Natasha Vargas-Cooper is the author of Mad Men Unbuttoned

. You can always find more footnotes here.

Bear jacks car, sets car rolling, gets trapped in car in thicket, tears car up until local police finally release him. These things happen. I am actually more curious about why this local news report chose to pixelate the bear doody that the bear left behind. Did it not sign a release or something? Anyway. Bears!

If you’re going to spend the day digging in on the just-released 75,000+ reports from the U.S. military provided by Wikileaks, and why shouldn’t you, you should start with their mirror site, as their main site has gone down due to massive, crushing fascination. But first! It’s time to learn the Afghan base acronym list and figure out who’s all fighting whom. Here are a few other ways to dip your toe in: what the data reveals about reconnaissance drones; how they show that “the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy”; and, that old chestnut, where in the world is Osama bin Laden. Here’s some unhelpful response-talk from the White House! “Wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan.” Oh, well then, let’s ignore… the data from the U.S. military? (An organization that, by the way, works for us. This is our information.) The White House also said: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information.” Sure! That’s why Wikileaks withheld more than 15,000 of the reports, which will be released when “the security situation in Afghanistan permits.” Let’s not forget, as Guardian editor David Leigh points out: “All this information is historical, ending at 31 December 2009. Nothing in it can endanger current military operations.”

by Sarah Amandolare

Beeswax Richards, 34, the former assistant editor of a flailing environmental website, used to go for long bike rides on Sundays with her husband. But now, she feels too guilty to indulge in “leisure time,” and instead devotes free hours to her ongoing job search, and to her pets: a German Shepard named Delia, aged 9, and a yet-unnamed kitten who turned up on the doorstep of her home in Saugerties, NY. Ms. Richards and her husband, Paul, met on a Metro North train to Manhattan twelve years ago. After they married, the couple endured a brief stint in Queens before relocating to Saugerties, where Delia has room to run.

CORNFLAKE WAKE-UP CALL Paul is a great cook-he used to pack these fantastic turkey sandwiches for us to bring to work in the city-but we’ve cut back. We used to eat pancakes on Sunday mornings, but Bisquick goes too quick (ha ha!) and the homemade version takes up too much time (time is money, Paul says) so we’ve settled on Cornflakes. Stop n’ Shop brand is quite similar to the real thing, and with bananas you really can’t tell the difference. When I hear the crackling of the box and subsequent clatter of cornflakes tumbling into bowls, well, I know it’s time to get up and face the day.

THE COMPUTER It would be grand to spend a day away from my dented Dell laptop, but time is money! Paul still commutes into Manhattan for work, doing some sort of administrative thing that pays all right, but laments every night that his boss ignores him and that layoffs must be imminent. He gives me “the look” when I say he shouldn’t worry about it; it’s the same look he gives me when I discuss wanting children! Well… I’m only 34! Anyway, I settle into my home office, a corner of the room I’d hoped would be a playroom for the kids. Delia likes to curl up at my feet. God knows where the kitten is. Paul wanted to keep her.

ANTIQUING Saugerties is known for its antiques shops, but clearly we’re in no position to purchase anything old. Nonetheless, after a few hours on Craigslist and Mediabistro, and after perusing the want-ads in the Poughkeepsie Journal (nary a thing worth responding to, usually, as even the waitress positions have dried up), I change into an old sundress and flip-flops, put Delia on the leash and shove off for a blissful half-hour of window-shopping. I walk alongside the weekending Manhattan residents sometimes, just to feel like I’m part of their world. They seem so relaxed!

THE DELI Paul usually meets up with us halfway into the walk. He’ll be holding two cups of coffee from the deli and a danish that we split. It’s things like this that convince me our marriage can survive my “temporary work hiatus”-that’s what we call it after a few glasses of Carlo Rossi Sangria. You know, I’d been skeptical of the Rossi-it reminded me of high school-but with some apples and club soda it’s really not bad!

GIRL TALK WITH ABBY My little sister Abby lives in Brooklyn and is sort of my hero. She bartends and does indoor composting, which I’ve tried and failed at, mostly because Paul couldn’t stand the sight of the worms. A similar thing happened when I tried harvesting honey, which obviously required beekeeping (I didn’t get this nickname for nothing!). He just doesn’t understand the concept of DIY and it drives me bonkers! I mean, really, we can’t afford not to take control of our nutritional needs and destinies at this point! Anyway, on Sundays Abby and I talk about the guys she’s sleeping with and how her artwork is going (she went to Pratt), and I tell her about my job prospects or lack thereof, and about my ongoing flirtation with the owner of one of the antiques shops in town-he’s sort of a silver fox, but I’d never go there (I think?!).

FILING TIME Sunday is my designated day to file unemployment claims, so I get that out of the way in the late afternoon. Then I start on a round of emails. I try to keep in touch with old colleagues, professors and well-connected former lovers. Whatever works!

LAWN MOWING To avoid melting, Paul waits until early evening to mow the lawn. He’s usually very careful about avoiding my vegetable garden (mostly cucumbers) and my patch of Astilbes and Bleeding Hearts-our yard has a great little shaded area-but last week he recklessly took out two plants and let the kitten roll around in the plot. We got into a small spat. He doesn’t always understand how seriously I take the garden; I was editor of an environmental website for goodness sake. Grist almost fucking hired me last month, but then the job went to some hot hipster with a CSA membership.

NIGHTLY READING Sue, the next-door neighbor, comes by around 8 p.m. to loan us her Sunday Times– God knows we can’t afford to buy our own copy. I retreat to bed and read for a few hours-Paul joins me and complains about Maureen Dowd’s predictable punch lines. Before turning out the light I always realize that I’ve been biting my nails all week, and that if I’m called in for an interview someday, the sight of my hands could keep me from getting the job. The kitten curls up between us, and Paul snores while I lay awake, contemplating moving in with Abby.

Sarah Amandolare is a writer from New York living in Prague. The ‘Sunday Routine’ column gave her a new reason to dread Sundays.

Flickr photos (in order) by daniela.magallon, Dano Izumi and Qfamily.

13. “The sun is shining everyday, but it’s far away / Over the world is [unintelligible syllable that sounds like ‘blehhh’]” (“The sun is shining everyday, but it’s far away / Over the world is death,” from OneRepublic’s “All The Right Moves”)

12. “I’m still alive but I’m barely breathin’ / Just prayin’ to a thing that I don’t believe in” (“I’m still alive but I’m barely breathin’ / Just prayed to a God that I don’t believe in,” from The Script’s “Breakeven”)

11. “Oh, oh, I’m infected by the sound / Oh, oh, stop, this beat is moving me” (“Oh, oh, I’m infected by the sound / Oh, oh, stop, this beat is killing me,” from Cascada’s “Evacuate The Dancefloor”)

10. “She’s not broken, she’s just a baby / But her boyfriend’s like a friend, just like a friend” (“She’s not broken, she’s just a baby / But her boyfriend’s like a dad, just like a dad”)

9. “Wrap it up / Can’t stop ’cause it feels like it’s really close” (Wrap it up / Can’t stop ’cause it feels like a overdose,” from Cascada’s “Evacuate The Dancefloor”)

8. “Tryin’ to act a little crazy (at us)” (“Try’na creep a little sneak peek (at us),” from Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”)

7. “Out in the club and I’m eating that grub / And you’re not gonna reach my telephone” (“Out in the club and I’m sippin that bubb / And you’re not gonna reach my telephone,” from Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone”)

6. “Don’t want to miss / Don’t want too much / Just walk away from me and hush” (“Don’t wanna kiss / Don’t wanna touch / Just smoke my cigarette and hush,” from Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”)

5. “I’m into him, he’s into me / Don’t pay him any attention … Don’t be mad once you see that he’s into it” (“I’m up on him, he up on me / Don’t pay him any attention … Don’t be mad once you see that he want it,” from Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”)

4. “Like a popstar, you’re Madonna / And I’m always gonna wanna blow your mind” (“Like a Virgin, you’re Madonna / And I’m always gonna wanna blow your mind,” from Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister”)

3. “And I cannot text you when I’m going to dance, ay” (“And I cannot text you with my drink in my hand, eh?,” from Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone”)

2. “And you out when you ain’t got anyone” (“And you wild when you ain’t got nothin’ on / haha,” from B.o.B. and Bruno Mars’ “Nothin’ On You”)

1. “[ ]” (Snoop Dogg’s entire contribution to Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”)

Maura Johnston can’t believe that someone found OneRepublic “too edgy.”

[Pic via]

by T. J. Clarke

“Did you know that Jason was engaged?” Dree is still on my sofa, feet and legs in the air, toes flicking against an invisible target. Her empty wineglass sits on the window ledge, the glass dirty with finger and lip prints.

“Yeah. I remember him mentioning a fiancée, but then I’ve never met her.” I am sitting at my desk, reading e-mails. Nan wrote to ask how the bar prep is going and included a picture of her and Devon, looking happy and content, on their bicycles. She wrote: We will be back this weekend. Come over for dinner on Sunday if you can. She signed the e-mail with “kisses from Stowe.”

I have been so occupied with studying-and Dree-that I haven’t thought much about Nan since she and Devon went away on vacation. I suppose this means I don’t really miss Nan. I can’t spare the time. My life is a shrunken outline of what it once was: review, instead of learning. For weeks I haven’t been past Clinton Street. Sahadi’s is the farthest I ever walk down Atlantic. Spicy hummus and pita are good at any time of day.

“I mean, engagement.” Dree sighed. “That is so big. I mean, I like him, but is that what he is looking for? Marriage?”

The prospect of Dree marrying Jason makes me laugh. They will be so unhappy. “I think you should ask him about it, if you are so concerned.”

“I am not concerned about anything.” Dree turns to face me. “I know I love him.”

“What makes you so sure?” Certainty begs inquiry.

“You’re going to laugh.” Dree sits up. “It’s the way he kisses me. He does this thing where he holds my head with one hand and wraps his other arm around my waist. It makes me feel so safe.”

“Sounds like you are being groped by an octopus. That’s romantic.” I am disappointed and relieved at Dree’s high-school-girl-in-love description. “And the sex?”

“Oh, very funny.” She lies down on the sofa again, this time curling her body in an S-shape, still facing me. “The sex is amazing. He is very big.”

I am too drunk to hide my smirk.

Anyone can kiss and fuck like they are in love. Lips and skin and roaming hands create heat all on their own. Emotion is the additional burden, the imaginary cargo that weighs down the airship. Sex is air; love is dirt. And dirt is messy. Or at least that was what I always felt dealing with cocks. All of it, the sex, the fake courtship rituals, the awkward “are we still dating” break-up conversations, all of it acted out with a barely veiled threat of violence. I felt, always, that if I didn’t go along, give blow-jobs, get on my knees and moan, then something worse than a stone-hard penis in my face would have been the result. But the threat wasn’t just slaps and kicks, it was being made to feel like a freak, an ungrateful thing who doesn’t know just how good she’s having it. Even the shy boys who let me undress them and wanted nothing but to hold me and kiss my lips, even then there was always the final, Thumper send-off and the self-satisfied smile. Those were the moments I knew sex was just sex, not love. Never will be.

“Are you dating anyone?” Dree asks, in a quiet voice that is almost a whisper. Maybe she is thinking about Jason and too wrapped up in dreaming of his kisses to speak intelligibly.

“It’s too early to tell,” I say.

T. J. Clarke is the pen name of a struggling writer. She lives in Brooklyn.

by Nate Freeman

On Thursday afternoon, a Jumbotron at 43rd and Broadway in Times Square streamed a live performance of the “adult contemporary” band Train. The actual performance took place just across the street, high up in the Reuters building, and if you are a fan of  “adult contemporary” and watched this broadcast-which also streamed on Facebook-you would have seen me in the audience.

I do not like the band Train. Or, more accurately, I have no opinion of the band Train-they fall into the category of bands that I know “exist.” I am aware of that song with that catchy mandolin about greeting a “soul sister,” and that’s about it. But there I was, forging with them that special bond that can only come from a shared presence on a Jumbotron.

The studio was stuffed full of cameras and men with headphones. The TVs hanging from ceilings and walls idled on a single image, that of one the two sponsors. The company logos were everywhere, and the audience was stuffed to one side of the band’s gear. I stood with people associated with the sponsors or the PR firm, friends, and family. Three teenage girls were placed up front, getting antsy waiting for this “adult contemporary” band to come on. They were clearly very excited. They were giggling so hard they looked like they had found a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s confectionery sweatshop.

“It’s just like TRL!” one of these girls said, baring her plastic braces.

“What’s TRL?” said the woman next to her, presumably her mother.

“Omigod you don’t know what TRL is!”

The girls giggled more.

I was standing in front of three twenty-something guys, and asked if they worked with the sponsors. They informed me they were friends of the host, Allison Hagendorf. I had no idea who that was. They pointed her out. Makeup people were puffing her cheeks painting her lips with lipgloss.

“Oh, right,” I said.

“She’s the host of the Fuse TV’s Top 20 Countdown,” one of them said.

“Oh, probably should have known that,” I said. “She’s pretty attractive.”

“These are her parents,” he said, and waved to the older man and woman standing directly next to me.

“Oh, hey,” I said to Mr. and Mrs. Hagendorf. “Um, sorry about that.”

A few minutes later Allison Hagendorf, primped up and sporting a well-practiced smile, introduced the band-”You can catch a subway anywhere in the city but today you gotta look up if you wanna see TRAIN!”-and out they came. The lead singer had on a purple tight tee shirt and more gel in his hair than The Situation. The guitarist was bald with Bono-style glasses. The drummer was blonde and in the interview part asserted that John Bonham was “the best drummer ever.”

First up was “Drops of Jupiter,” an exercise in schmaltz-pop held up by rolling electric piano and lyrics filled with clunky reference to soy lattes and fried chicken. I hadn’t thought about the song in years. Alison Hagendorf described it as “cosmic.” Right. Jupiter.

They played their new single, “If It’s Love.” I wasn’t exactly listening, as I was too intent on making sure I didn’t scratch my nose while millions of teens watched this nightmare Facebook. Pat Monahan, the lead singer, did some pompous breast-stroke movements; his other blindingly white dance moves during the show included, but were not limited to: the arm roll, the fists-clenched shoulder-shake, the hip-boogie, and the look-at-the-camera lunge.

Then they broke into “Hey, Soul Sister,” the song everyone knows, even if you have no idea what these guys look like (I sure didn’t-I Google imaged them on my phone in the bathroom). The kids really liked this one! They swayed, smiled and mouthed along with the words. Unsurprisingly, the “adult contemporaries” in the room liked it, too. I mean, it is their music. They got down!

After the show I tried to speak to the band about how awesome it is to play shows surrounded by corporate executives and products getting pimped out. First I talked to a very nice PR guy who showed me the laptop music software/headphone combination that sponsored this concert. Yes, you are correct. There was a shit ton of bass. Totally beast setup, bro.

Then, I was told the band had to keep to a strict schedule, and they were sorry they couldn’t talk to me. I’m sorry too, Train. The future adult contemporary fan inside of me is very sorry.

You are cordially invited to save the date of August 10th, 2010, for the Official Awl Los Angeles Commenting People’s Good Times Jamboree Get-Together, hosted by DeepOmega and Natasha Vargas-Cooper (yeah yeah, buy her book, etc.) and our other many fine friends of Los Angeles. August 10th! At The Dresden in Hollywood.

The War Against Birds (Birds: We Have Always Been At War With Them!) just got insanely serious: “A nine-page report put together by a variety of national, state and city agencies shows that officials hope to reduce the number of Canada geese in New York to 85,000 from 250,000.” By, you know, euthanizing them and burying them. (Somehow, may I add, actually eating them doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone?)

I guess… we’re winning.