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There are five emails that I receive all the time:
1. I know I write this to you every week, but I laughed very hard when I read your last column, and I really think you should send it to The New Yorker. It’s a beautiful sunny day so we’re taking the dogs for a walk. Love, Mom.
2. I think you meant “bare” not “bear”
or
The link to the playlist doesn’t send me to your playlist. It sends me to an Italian rifle manufacturer.
or
Do you need a volunteer editor? I think you do. I’ll do it. I really think you should consider this. Get back to me.
(I realize those are three separate emails, but I’m lumping them together because they all get forwarded to our Department of Ridiculously Unfair and Moronic Protestations, Corrections, Omissions, Information Technology, and User Services).
You’re an idiot.
A Why?
You just are.
A Yeah, but why?
You really don’t know?
A I really don’t know.
The acronym for your corrections department is RUMPCOITUS.
A Oh. Okay. What’s RUMPCOITUS?
I don’t know, man. You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.
3. CONGRATULATION!!!YOUE EMAIL HAS WON YOU A PRIZE/AWARD IN EUROPEAN LOTTERY COMMISSION ANNIVERSARY
4. You creep me out.
5. (And this is the important one) Hey, I need some manvice. Is it okay to (insert questionably manly activity here, like gardening) while (insert even less manly activity here, like listening to Enya on my girlfriend’s iPod) if I (insert excuse here, like call it landscaping and don’t sing along.)
If you’re wondering what “manvice” is, it’s advice for men, and if you’re wondering if the trend of using “man” as a prefix to masculinise otherwise neutral words (see man-purse, man-date, man-law, and manatee, which is a male walrus that has a goatee instead of tusks) will ever end, it won’t.
Dispensing manvice is becoming one of my most time-consuming activities, and my responses to readers’ inquiries are usually similar – yes, it’s okay to garden while listening to Enya on your girlfriend’s iPod as long as you call it landscaping and you’re using a tool larger than a spade and as long as the iPod is in shuffle mode (so it’s not your choice to listen to Enya – it just happened). So I figured I’d use this week’s column to answer some frequently asked manvice questions.
Here we go…
Is it okay to watch The Lake House starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock if you’re watching it solely as a study of time travel? - Luke, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Yes. In fact, this is the only way it’s okay to watch The Lake House.
If you haven’t seen The Lake House, here’s the premise: Keanu moves into a house (on a lake obviously), and there is a note waiting for him from Sandra, the previous tenant. But here’s the catch: the note is from 2006 and Keanu is in 2004. They correspond through the magic mailbox and eventually fall in love, but struggle to unite because of the two-year time gap (this is the same reason (and the only reason) that I will never be able to steal Nicole Kidman away from Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder.)
When I saw a preview for The Lake House, I remember thinking, “That’s the stupidest premise for a movie I’ve ever seen. All they have to do is pick a place to meet in 2006. She can go there on the next day and he can go there in two years and a day.” It turns out that they do arrange this, but their plan is foiled because Keanu gets hit by a bus (which Dods called, by the way).
Eventually Sandra prevents Keanu’s death, but the movie never answers the following questions:
1. Why isn’t she giving him stock tips or slipping a note into the mailbox that says, “Hey, I know this sounds crazy, but put a ton of money on the Red Sox. They win it all in 2004.”?
2. Why do they own the same dog? Couldn’t the studio afford to pay for two trained canines?
3. If Keanu was supposed to die, but didn’t, how does this affect everyone living in Sandra’s time?
I know how time travel works (I figured it out in college while watching Back to the Future), and I was going to explain it here, but I realized it was going to take three thousand words, and I doubt anyone wants to read that. But if you’re going to make a movie about time travel, you have to explain how it works. And The Lake House never did that. That’s why the movie sucked.
Lately I’ve been listening to this awesome dance track, “Star to Fall” by Cabin Crew, on repeat. Is that okay? - Wayne, Arizona
Yeah, that’s totally okay! I know the song, and you’re right – it’s awesome. But it’s probably only okay to listen to it if you found it on your computer by accident like I did. Apparently my old roommate, Kurt, gave me a compilation disk of electronica that he apparentlythought I would like and apparentlyone of the songs was “Star to Fall” and apparentlymy iTunes played the song on its own accord, so apparentlyit’s not my fault that I listen to this particular song all the time, even in taxis on the way to the bar when I ask the driver to tune his radio to 87.9 so I can play “Star to Fall” off my iPod using iTrip.
Am I allowed to wear a jacket that’s designed by a woman (like Liz Claiborne)? I enjoy the jacket - it’s one of those waist-length wool ones with a collar and buttons - but somebody called it a peacoat and I don’t want to wear a peacoat. Thanks. – Bryan, Los Angeles
Oh, one more question: can I wear Seven jeans? - Bryan again, still Los Angeles
Good questions, Bryan, and timely. As it happens, I just bought a Claiborne jacket (this was before I was informed that she’s married to a fascist or something) and Seven jeans, but I bought them both at Marshall’s they were very cheap and when I got home I snipped out the stitching from the back pockets of the pants so nobody can tell that they’re designer jeans unless they tackle me and look inside the waistband, which is actually pretty likely to happen because I work in the South End of Boston where guys seem to be very interested in my “south end,” if you catch my drift.
By the way, a peacoat is, by definition, double-breasted, so don’t call my jacket a peacoat. Double-breasted jackets are for women. If they were for men, they’d be called double-pectoraled or double-pecd or man-breasted. Hopefully not man-breasted.
Should we be rooting for Pam or the New Girl on The Office? And is it okay to “root” for a character on a show? I feel like a girl who worries way too much about whether or not Sarah Jessica Parker should move to Paris with Mr. Big. I also wish I didn’t have the necessary resources to make a Sex and the City reference. – Roger, Syracuse
Let’s say that for the last five years you’ve wanted to buy a tractor. One specific tractor, actually. This tractor is smart, funny, cute, and you have the kind of relationship with it where you can finish each others’ sentences. But the tractor has always been unattainable because you were broke and/or it was engaged to a different agriculturalist. Now you’ve saved up enough money for a new tractor, but you have to make a choice because the Pam-tractor is no longer the newest tractor on the market. There’s a brand new tractor that is smart, funny, cool, exotic-looking (its dad was probably a G.I.), and most importantly, this tractor hasn’t rejected you yet.
Would you pick the Pam-tractor or the new tractor?
If your answer is, “I don’t know,” then we’re on the same page. The tractor analogy didn’t help me either. I say we just sit back, enjoy the show, wait for Pam to get a makeover (because she definitely will at some point), and see what happens.
Also, you’re allowed to “root” for a character in any show that doesn’t use “How to Save a Life” by The Fray in its commercials.
Is it okay to know all the words to the “Elephant Medley” from Moulin Rouge and sing them, even Nicole’s parts, in front of your co-workers? - Fred, Wichita
Interestingly enough, this is another scenario that recently presented itself to me. The answer is Yes, but only if you meet the following requirements:
1. The first time you watched Moulin Rouge, you didn’t want to watch it. You only popped the DVD into your computer because you’d seen every other movie owned by the girl across the hall in your freshman college dormitory.
2. One of the reasons you know all the words is that your girlfriend liked the movie, too, so you once spent an entire drive through New Hampshire singing the words of all the songs to each other.
3. I just decided that number two is not a good reason.
4. You don’t realize you know all the words until you start singing it.
5. You’re only singing Nicole’s part because nobody else knows the words.
Is it okay that I love Love Actually? – Kevin, Anchorage, Alaska
No. First of all, the movie is not good. Second of all, you’re not allowed to love any movie in which a step-father tries to cheer up his step-son by saying, “We need Kate, and we need Leo. And we need them now,” then places Titanic in the DVD player, fast-forwards to the scene in which Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio pretend to fly on the bow, recreates this act with himself as Leo and his step-son as Kate (in the “taker” position no less), and goes to prison for life (hopefully).
There are about 4,000 other problems with Love Actually, including Dido, but the Kate and Leo thing is the big one.
When is it okay to wear women’s sunglasses? - Doug, Minnesota
When you’re bartending and it’s really bright out and the bar is made out of zinc, so it’s like there are two suns shining on you and the women’s sunglasses are all that are available. By the way, are you D.B. Sweeney’s character from The Cutting Edge? Because he is also a Doug from Minnesota.
My boyfriend has been using his weekends to put on a sunhat and go “landscaping.” But really he just obsessively uses a spade to pat the soil around the flowers in our garden. I wouldn’t mind this, but he steals my iPod every time, and the next time I use it it’s always set to an Enya track. I don’t even like Enya. He must have downloaded it himself. Should I dump him? - Kelly, Miami
I think I received an email from your boyfriend about this, and I told him what he was doing was fine, but he phrased the scenario a little differently. He really wears a sunhat?
Yes.
And he doesn’t have a good excuse for this? Like a hypersensitivity to light?
No.
Then you’ve gotta dump him. Sorry.
See? You just need an excuse. If you’ve got one, you’re golden. If you don’t, you’re probably the color of shame, which is brownish-orange.
Feel free to email me any future manvice questions. All other inquiries can be directed to RUMPCOITUS@theadamwhite.com.
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