Mad Men Season 4: Prediction Time!

Matt Weiner, Mad Men creator/tyrannical czar, recently told Entertainment Weekly:

"The theme of the season is 'Who am I?' It's about stripping away the things that these people think define them. Once they're taken away, they just may have to look at who they really are."

What are these essence-defining things our favorite elegantly-draped, abulically unhappy characters will have to learn to live without? Some guesses:

Don will lose his penis (or at least a section of it) in the front seat of his Coupe de Ville, one fateful night with the over-earnest, possibly unhinged school teacher, you know, World According To Garp-style.

Sally will lose her lisp, and her long hair, so she can emerge from puberty as the tool-bearing "little lesbian" we all know (and hope) she can be.

Joan will lose her dick of a husband in the war (THANK GAWD). And to get a little meta here, hopefully Christina Hendricks will lose her unfortunate penchant for giving dumb interviews that make her seem far more one-dimensional than the character she plays.

Betty will lose all the money that she inherited after her father's passing when her family's BP stock plummets during the oil leak in a special Doctor Who/Mad Men mashup episode.

Pete will lose his clothes, his apartment, his car, his toilet...basically, his dignity. Oh wait.

And Peggy is perfect and she doesn't need to change shit and don't you dare disagree with me here.

If I Knew How To Edit Film I Would Make A Montage of All The Computer Disk Scenes From 90's Movies, But I Don't.

If you choose to do it, please start with these incredibly hilarious shots from The Net:

Do You Know What A Brooklyn Hit Is?

I shall tell you.

In this life, you will meet people who do activities because they enjoy doing them, and people who do activities because the activities like them back. You might also meet people with horrific handicaps who are incapable of activity. If I hadn’t already adapted my drafting compass for use as a sophisticated heroin injector, I would Venn-D this shit because there’s some obvious overlap between the various camps—like if you’re born with the natural physique and testosterone stores that make one innately good at crushing nerds into garbage cans there’s a good chance you’ll probably learn to like crushing nerds into garbage cans.

The real important point of this exposition is that I’m part of the latter group— I power walk because my body does good at a bouncy 4 mph. I put the hamburger in my mouth because that cow specifically requested to be there. And now I bowl, because I recently scored a 111, which I’ve been told is great score for a lady without a mullet.

There are many terms batted about the universe of bowling—“Strike,” “Spare,” “Where’s the fucking money Lebowski?”—but today we’re going to concern ourselves with a shot called the Brooklyn.

A Brooklyn is a roll that hits at the opposite side of the pocket from where it was thrown. If you’re a rightie, that means the ball impacts at the 1 & 2 pins; for the left-handed among us it’s a shot to the 1 & 3. It’s a fairly ugly ball that rarely yields any marks (but when it does it’s called a Brooklyn Strike). Contrary to many Internet rumors out there theorizing that the Brooklyn hit is a geographical metaphor—the logic being the denizens of Manhattan are DOIN’ IT RONG when they “cross over” to Brooklyn, the true derivation is from another, smaller-balled sport: baseball. Specifically, a baseball team, The Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1956, after a stunning season in which the Dodgers finished in first place with 93 wins, they went on to face the New York Yankees in the World Series. There they were humiliated like shaved Chihuahuas before a pack of wolves. The Yankees won all seven Series matches, one of which was a perfect game thrown by Yankees’ pitcher Don Larsen. Thus the sloppy form of the Brooklyn Dodgers during their disasterous ’56 World Series showing became immortalized as a term for a typically ill-fated bowl to the opposite pin side. And this is what we talk about when we talk about Brooklyn Hits at dirty bowling alleys.

Here is an interview I did while RAGING on ENERGY JERKY!!!!!


And here is a fascinating article about how the Donner family WERE NOT actually cannibals.

The only relation between these two things is that everything you know is wrong.

Lines From Emails I'd Like To Find Another Use For

"Ditto what your Mom said about last night."

"If they're not here by tomorrow, I'm going to start killing one Girl Scout for each day they don't arrive."

"MY BWLCH IS BOOMSLANGING ALL OVER THE PLACE."

"You know what just totally crept up on me this year like snakes on a plane or my heroin addiction?"


"DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT MESS WITH THE ZOHAN?"

"Well here's the thing about the laid off menfolk. he's going to be all waaaaaaaah, you know my life is really difficult and i've got a lot of shit going on right now."

"OK after I see Dear John and the Ghost Writer I will work on that."

"Masturbate on everyone's chair! Weeeeee!...Do you think I'm retarded? I'm asking you honestly."

Thank You, Janeane Garafolo, In A Few Very Long Run-On Sentences

On the long list of small kindnesses that Janeane Garafolo has bestowed upon me over the years-- the majority of which are oft-repeated quotes from The Truth About Cats And Dogs that, in 1996, probably resonated a bit too much with my woeful B-grade girl soul, comes this most recent kindness, via the hazy, dense medium of anxiety dream. Janeane starred as an RA-figure of sorts (Side note: WOULD SHE NOT BE THE GREATEST RA? Tell me a bedtime story about date rape, Janeane!) in a rodent-infested dormitory for grown-ups. You know how dreams have a sort of inviolable logic of their own that you don't think to question when you're in them? Like, say, Stalin is disguised as your brother at the dinner table, but you can't signal this to your parents because he's implanted mini-Russian poltergeists in their souls or something? So whereas in real life if you were confronted with this situation you would just be like, "Mom! That's not Danny! THAT IS STALIN, THE DEAD DICTATOR OF RUSSIA!", you can't in your dream, because he'll know about it and then kill you with his alpha-red laser eyes. So in the internal logic of this specific Janeane dream, the mice infesting the dorm loved water. Thus I was afraid to even take a shower, but at the same time, I really needed to take a shower. Janeane took me aside and told me in her totally cool, even-keeled voice, "Look, girl, there are going to be mice in the shower, and they are going to freak you out, and you are going to get so freaked out you're going to fall down on the shower floor." As I was only beginning to process the terribleness of this prediction, Janeane bent down and started painting my knee caps with this sparkly-glue like paint that smelled like My Little Ponies. Then she moved on to my elbows, and as she was painting my elbows the paint she had put on my knees was starting to dry into a sort of rubber encasement. "This is paint-on protective gear," she told me, "I invented it after I couldn't get work as an actress. This will protect you from breaking your kneecaps when you fall in the shower." In the end, even though this was an anxiety dream and I had to get in the shower with rodents, I felt a lot better about things.

So thank you Garafolo.

BETCHY LINES YOU CAN SAY ABOUT NAPKINS AT BUSINESS DINNERS

Senior year of college our attendance was encouraged at a black tie-mandatory Etiquette Dinner held at Brown's Faculty Club. It was hosted by an ancient lady with a Winehouse-esque beehive that probably hadn't been taken down since 1982 and was clearly mummified with toilet paper each night. She spoke with a long-lost upper-deck-Titanic affectation and over the span of three courses, she taught us how to give a toast, how to excuse oneself from the table, and all the other behavioral niceties one should know for a business dinner. During the Q & A after dessert, one student asked what she should say if a business associate had food on their face.

"There are times when I find a napkin very useful."