In recognition of today’s extremely warm weather forecast (RealFeel® 101°), the Awl has relaxed its ban on the wearing of shorts for the following groups: little boys, professional tennis players, and those super-cut dudes who work the door at Hollister Co. down on Broadway. If you do not fall within one of these exempted categories then you are still required to DRESS LIKE A GODDAMN MAN. Thank you.

by Fratboy Slim

Since we last checked in, Bros Icing Bros has become even more of a THING. This bro himself was Iced five times in a 36-hour span over the weekend. A Bro friend at Stanford Business School sends word of what was potentially the first-ever group Icing on Monday — at the hands of a restaurant waiter, who brought an ice-cold sixer out with the entrees. One of the victims was the CE-Bro of a pro sports team. Another Bro acquaintance had to schlep to three different Lower East Side bodegas on Sunday to find one that even had Smirnoff Ice in stock. I will make an educated guess and say that that was the first time that any of those bodegas had ever sold out of the drink.

Yet as the Icing phenomenon gains steam, anti-Bro haters have become increasingly vocal in their claims that this is purely a viral marketing stunt. In this week’s New York magazine’s “Approval Matrix,” Bros Icing Bros is characterized as “probably a marketing stunt” (it’s in the Lowbrow/Brilliant quadrant.) A blog post at the New York Times also warned that this is a “possible marketing stunt.”

So cynical! Luckily, this Bro was at a house party over the weekend (yes, he was Iced), where he randomly Bro’d out with a marketing rep for Diageo, the parent company of Guinness, Baileys, Tanqueray-and, yes, Smirnoff. Said Bro was kind enough to put me in touch with a Senior Director of Corporate Communications at the company, who agreed to talk about the meme of the moment-though wanted to only be identified as a “spokesperson.” Here’s what she had to say.

SO WHEN DID YOU GUYS BECOME AWARE THAT THIS WAS HAPPENING?
It got on our radar over the last few weeks, as it became an online thing. People started sending pictures and stories to employees at the company.

WHAT WAS YOUR INITIAL REACTION?
There are a lot of interesting things that consumers do with our brands. This was just one of those things. If you look around, there are lots of examples of this sort of stuff happening with the online community. Things like this happen.

TELL ME THIS ISN’T SOME MARKETING SCHEME HATCHED INSIDE YOUR OFFICE TO GET PEOPLE TO DRINK YOUR PRODUCT!
Icing is consumer generated. Some people think it’s fun. We never want underage Icing, and we always want responsible drinking.

HAVE YOU NOTICED AN IMPACT IN SALES FROM THIS?
That would require an awful lot of icing [laughs]. Smirnoff is a large brand, and so is Smirnoff Ice. It would have to be much bigger for us to notice anything in terms of sales.

WHO IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL SMIRNOFF ICE DRINKER? IS IT A BRO?
We have a very diverse and loyal consumer base. People might be surprised to know that it’s about 50–50 male-female. Most of our consumers are between 21–39. It’s a national brand and a national product.

SO YOU GUYS DON’T TARGET BROS? I’VE ACTUALLY HEARD THAT IT’S MARKETED TOWARDS YOUNG “URBAN” COMMUNITIES.
I would characterize our base as diverse. We have a 28 percent market share of the malt beverage business. It’s a popular beverage.

WHAT’S THE COMPANY’S TAKE ON ICING?
I’m sure everyone has a different view. I wouldn’t say Diageo has a view on Icing. It’s just something consumers are doing.

A LARGE PART OF THE HUMOR SEEMS TO BE DEPENDENT ON THE FACT THAT PEOPLE FIND SMIRNOFF ICE, UH, UNPALATABLE. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?
Smirnoff Ice is one of the best-known brands in the world. Fans will continue to enjoy it, regardless of the Icing phenomenon.

OKAY. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME. YOU SWEAR YOU’RE NOT BEHIND THIS?
Yes. We were as surprised as everyone else.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ICED?
No.

Fratboy Slim is a bro in New York who doesn’t want to lose his job for writing about the joys of icing bros.

In preparation for a possible strike by American Airlines’ flight attendants, with whom the company is negotiating a new contract, AA is scouring the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area for 4,000 of what it’s calling “volunteers” who can undergo a 17-day training program and then report to the skies for snack-handling and pillow-distributing duties. The word “volunteers” doesn’t imply “no pay” to just me, does it? Or is it just American’s attempt to appear all “let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, comrades” about what looks to be a somewhat pitched battle between labor and management? [Pic via]

You know what helps to stop think about the oil spill for two minutes? (The “top-kill” procedure being attempted today-plugging the hole with mud and cement-is being given a 50/50 chance of working, and may make the leak worse if it fails. So yes, please, any diversion.) Watching a squirrel run around the field during a major league baseball game. It’s also comforting to know you can count on the announcers to make the very same joke every time something like this happens.

“There’s more cleavage in this film than at a pro wrestler’s wedding.”
— Who knew that the man who wrote Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls would one day be shocked by a flick’s flaunting of boobs? I guess Sex And The City 2 really is a ground-breaking movie!

“I would also ask you, as overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan permit, to consider wider deployment of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] along our nation’s southern border. I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, and it seems UAVs operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug missions.”
-Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wants to open a third front in our ongoing wars.

Look, I love babies and I love smoking. But the intersection of the two just makes me sad. There’s video at the link, but unless you really hate children or really love the exploitation of poverty, you’re not going to enjoy it.

His Wu-Tang Clan will be performing their 1993 debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) this summer on the annual Rock the Bells rap tour. (Only four shows this year, though: New York, L.A., San Francisco and D.C.) But for now, Raekwon is back on a track produced by BT, who made the beats for “Return of the North Star” and “Penitentiary” from last year’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… 2. Also, look at this Wu-Tang pizza someone made.

Millionaire Upper West Side resident and contributor to the Atlantic and the New Yorker goes all aw-shucks, my car has 150,000 miles on it about the elite at a TriBeCa book party.

Here is a question that wrestles with the very odd state in which we find ourselves now: we can currently keep insane quantities of data, but can we keep it for longer than, oh, five years? “I just found out that I have a very serious disease. I may have only a couple of years left, probably no more than five. I have two very young kids. How do I archive stuff on the Web so I know they’ll have access to it, whenever they want, for at least the next 40 years?”