All stories published by The Awl on December 01, 2009

Extra-Dumpy Pants Making a Comeback

Stuart Elliott at the NYT is hysterical. Check it, he says, “FIRST, Justin Timberlake brought sexy back. Now, Dockers will try to bring khaki back.” MAHAHAHAHAHA. Isn’t that great? I mean, I don’t know about you but I think mashing that message into the squarest lead…

Someone Go Help Nine West. So Bad.

If you’re anything like me (a girl) you have a squillion pairs of very expensive shoes on ice, and two pairs of Nine West jams that you hoof about in on the reg. And if you were at all excited at the prospect of potentially buying a pair of $41-on-sale sandals for…

The Awful Rise of Snuck

Things are getting hectic over at Language Log, in a conversation about the rise of “snuck” instead of “sneaked.” (The chart at left: usage in the Times over the last few decades.) Notes one commenter: “Seems ‘received’ grammar has little stomach for regression toward non-standard false strong verbs.” FOREALS YO!

How Much Does the Modern Father Suck?

Lizzie Skurnick reads the Foer and the Chabon alike in search of understanding what’s gotten so hideously annoying about modern dads. “Foer’s unhinged screed against the dangers of the modern meat-industrial complex takes ‘me too’ fathering to a new level…. There…

New Zealand’s Space Mission Is Adorable

In a quest to be EXACTLY the place where Jemaine, Bret, and Murray WOULD come from, New Zealand has managed to launch a wee little rocket just slightly beyond our atmosphere into a stratum of area that could technically be called space. It then triumphantly…

Dave Bry in The Awl

The Dirty Three In A Hotel Room, With Nick Cave On Keys

Instrumental rock is a tough sell. It’s hard to sing along with, for starters. (What I am supposed to do with this hairbrush, brush my hair?) And it’s often boring, a film score without the film. But Australia’s Dirty Three do it…

The Awl

Iced Out, with Katie Baker: Hockey Meat, the Disaster of Whistler Blackcomb and Next Year in Vancouver

by Katie Baker

Why is nobody excited for the Olympics? The Winter Games are less than three months away, but I haven’t heard a…

The Awl

Real America, with Abe Sauer: Oscar Season is for Patriots

by Abe Sauer

Like Christmas, and puberty, the Oscar movie season gets earlier every year. This year, one ambitious writer even declared “The Oscar Season Begins In August With Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious…

Italian Cop Car Eats It

I can’t help but feel giddy schadenfreudeish glee that the Italian PD has suffered a major blow to their unctuous swagger since their obscenely expensive 200 mph Lambo Gallardo got smithereened by a Seat, a Spanish car that’s basically a toy Audi. And the ill dork Easter egg has to be…

In Praise of NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month screeched to a halt at midnight last night, and, pencils down, everyone! Last year, 119,301 people declared that they would write a novel in November. In total, those people wrote 1,643,343,993 words. (That’s, on average, almost 14,000 words each.) They’re…

Who Killed Jane Austen?

A British medical researcher has put forth a new theory on the disease that claimed Jane Austen’s life. While previous speculation centered around Addison’s disease or lymphoma, “Katherine White of the Addison’s Disease Self Help Group has written an article for the British Medical…

Idle Hands Etc.

Your word for the day is ‘sexsomnia’: “THIS woman suffers from a mysterious disorder which turns her into a sex addict — when she is ASLEEP. Stunning Belle Floor is a Sexsomniac — meaning she engages in sexual acts while she is sleeping — and cannot remember ANYTHING the next day.” The condition is also known as “being a dude.”

Dave Bry in The Awl

Man Uses Word “Talismanic” For Good Cause

“When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac’s typewriter. It’s as if Mount Rushmore was…

From the comments on our list of Best Obama-Related Right-Wing Photoshop Movie Posters, a winner speaks: “May I say in accepting this glorious honor that it is only honest, right and moral that I return the the racism and contempt Barack Obama has for his mother’s white race by equal racism and contempt for his father’s black race. Obama is the scum…

Some People to Demonstrate in New York City Against Fair Trials and Democracy

The anti-American group calling itself the Florida Security Council is coming to New York City, to join with the 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America in a demonstration against our legal…

Dave Bry in The Awl

Radio Station Annoys Man Sitting In Car

I sat in a parked car for an hour this morning, waiting out the no-parking-for-street-cleaning window, listening to Hot 97. I know they’re basically a top-40 station, dedicated to whatever’s currently most popular in “blazing hip-hop and R&B.;” But, God, I…

Dave Zirin on the Situation of that Famous Golfer: Dubai, Chevron and Malcolm X

This should be just about the only coverage regarding the situation of that famous golfer in which we will indulge: Dave Zirin, the sportswriter for The Nation (yes!), on the actual questions one might be asking of said golfer.

It’s Science!

Scientific American gives you Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense. Not that the people who spout contrarian nonsense in the first place are willing to be swayed by “reason” or “logic” or “science,” but, still, nice to have handy.

No, Let’s Not

“For much of human history, exacting retribution on your enemies-as opposed to fantasizing about it-was too much of a hassle for most people to bother with. It involved duels, poison or, at the very least, clever rumors that took ingenuity to create and patience to spread. By the time you had devised a…