MR WRONG: None for the road
Indignity Vol. 6, No. 56
DO THIS FIRST DEP'T.
Tom Scocca
CHAPTER 34 of Tom Scocca's serialized work of fiction appears tomorrow, which means NOW is the time to get caught up on THE STAIRS!
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: The Non-Alcoholic Beer Is Suddenly Good Now and Driving Drunk Is Always Bad
GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY it is now officially a Wet Hot American Summer, on the calendar and on the back of my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty here in Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, in the runup, if you will, to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, where, just saying, we should all maybe take a moment to think about America.
Goddamn! It is 98 degrees of heat and humidity right now, and according to AccuWeather, today there is the RealFeel Shade™ and the Heat Index and the Max UV Index of 7.5 (High) and the Air Quality (Poor) and there’s an AccuLumen Brightness Index™ of 9 (Very Bright) and they even have a stat for an Indoor Humidity of 55% (Extremely Humid) and that’s all highly informative, I guess, but I don’t play all that, it’s too many notes, you know? There’s hot in the sun and hot in the shade, I buy that, and I buy the humidity thing because that’s not so much the heat as that there’s less air molecules per square quart of atmosphere or whatever? To breathe, because the air is completely swolt, see? Science! Less air in the air itself!
Anyway, this makes me want to relax with a cool drink the shade, and if it’s after 6 p.m. on a “work day” (whatever the fuck that means to somebody like me who doesn’t have a Day Job), well, then I would quite possibly care to enjoy a nice refreshing cold beer of some sort, ahh!
Sidebar: I have had a buncha non-alcohol beers in the past, and they have not been very good, and it’s wild how good they are now. I went to a party a while back and mooched a beer out of a cooler, and later discovered it to be an Athletic Brewing Co. beer, which is a funny name for beer, right? I love all these commercials for diet regular beer where it’s all these chiseled sporty types clinking bottles of whatever beer, for the physically fit, har! Anyway, the Athletic beers are non-alcohol, and the one I mooched was nice and cold and delightful (and not just because I mooched it) and it fooled me, I thought that shit was beer, and so if I go out now, sometimes I get an Athletic beer on purpose. It is important for the integrity of the Mr. Wrong column that you are aware nobody paid the Mr. Wrong column to say that we like Athletic Brewing Co. beer, but of course if Athletic Brewing Co. wants to pay me now, after my Unsolicited Testimonial, to say that stuff, about how now I drink it on purpose after I drank it on accident, this is America and I would say that shit, because it has already been said by me and also if Athletic Brewing Co.wants to send me some of their fine beers (also accepting coupons) I would totally be into that. Again, this is not a commercial, it is just the Mr. Wrong column realizing we said we enjoy a Product and then realizing “Hey, we could Get Paid to stay stuff like that.” To say the truth! Truth is sanity, right? We don’t lie here at the Mr. Wrong column, even when we’re going off, at length, in the “Royal We” form! Let’s review: The Mr Wrong column, ACCEPTING ADVERTISEMENTS AND REWARDS FOR TRUTHSAYING.
OK, back to the main part of today’s Holiday Weekend column! It is hot, and I want a drink to go along with the egg I am frying on the sidewalk in front of my house! My powerful Thirst reminded me of a thing I witnessed recently, when I was a passenger, minding my own business, in a friend’s car after I had been having a few alco-beers. Our car got pulled over by a cop, and the officer said some complete horseshit about how he noticed our vehicle “swerved” a-ways back, and the policeman then proceeded to put our driver through an astounding amount of Field Sobriety Test stuff, with which I am intimately familiar. The police had our driver, a friend of mine, do the walking on a line, standing on one foot, some business with a flashlight, follow it with your eyeballs, and then for the coup de grace, homeboy went into the trunk of the squad car and pulled out the Breathalyzer or whatever they call it, and my friend blew into the tube and blew and blew and blew and kept blowing keep blowing, and then it was over, and the cop shook the plastic blowing-tube part off the gizmo and told my friend he was were free to go.
My pal, who is a very good person, shook the cop’s hand and then asked if he could pick up the tube discarded by Officer Litterbug, and he was given permission to do so.
Think whatever you want about that scene, but mainly I want to say that you would probably not be surprised to hear that we here at the Mr. Wrong column That is for Some Reason Really Into the “Royal We” today, have made our share of mistakes, and a big one is driving while drunk, which tends to stem from drinking while drunk. Like the guy says in the Z.Z. Top song “Arrested for Driving While Blind," there is something about “the wonderful feel of rollin’ in an automobile,” when you are a drunk-ass.
We tell the truth here at the Mr. Wrong column! I have done that shit, and it’s bad, and you shouldn’t do it, and the whole reason I have done that stupid shit it is because number one, I do dumb things, and number another, if you do have a propensity to do dumb things, you will geometrically multiply your opportunity to do said things if you have a buncha beers or whatever!
I guess the Athletic non-alcoholic beer company won’t wanna have anything to do with me after this column, but I am OK with my dream of Free Beer (NA) being killed, if it means I have maybe compelled one of the Gentle Readers of the Mr. Wrong column to not pilot an automobile after enjoying their fave adult beverage. I also had a concoction called the Paloma produced by the Athletic Brewing Co. It was grapefruit-y refreshing and taste-tempting! Just wanted to let you know. Service Journalism!
Look, don’t drink and drive, please, if you drive, no drinks! We have always had taxicabs and now there’s fuckin’ Uber and robot cars that might not kill somebody if you sit in one, but quite frankly I would be more comfortable in a Lyft or whatever, but you decide, and I hope you decide to decide to not pilot an automobile after a splash or two, OK?
My trick is, if I drive, I find a spot to park where I can leave my car and not worry about it getting towed, and that way if I end up having any alco-beverages, I leave the fucking car and find another way to get back to my castle.
You can be in your car and kill somebody on a sunny day cold sober, you know? One fucking drink is all it takes to impair your ass, and then what? The Streetz R Deathrow! I’m not talking about numbers on a breath-sniffer, I am talking reality. You do not want to live with something like that. You want to get as close to Zero as possible on an actuarial table! Avoid liability! Can you imagine having to live with something like that? If you are living with something like that, I am sure you wish you weren’t, and since I am blessed with a vivid and paranoid Imagination, I have thought about this a lot, and after a long and unfortunate history of poor choices, even though I have never been locked up for driving while Blind, I mended my ways —no matter how much I dig driving a car when I’m wasted, real talk, what fun, I’m an excellent driver, etc., oof—I don’t do that shit anymore. I am an Adult, and I have the power of a good Credit Score to pay for a ride home as soon as I apply a libation to cause the edges of my hard day to soften! Some of you know what I mean, a nice dark bar with a juke box and a pool table, and there is convivial conversation and stuff, and yeah, I’ll have one.You have just (debatably) improved your day with an intoxicant! Do not drive! Don't let drunks drive!
All right, so here we are at America’s birthday, and you can think whatever you want about it, because that is the beauty of the Idea of America. It’s still an idea, yeah, and you can have whatever kinda opinion you want about this country, but many of you are still gonna have that long Holiday weekend, and that’s when the trouble starts! You gotta plan your possible inebriation. You gotta make sure there’s no way you will be in a position to use a motor vehicle (that includes Electric Car) to get anywhere after you have had even one fucking drink, because think about it, you have one drink, and you get in your ride and then, totally not your fault, you get hit by some goofball in a stolen car going 60 m.p.h. in a 25 and they ran the light, and after they hit you they drive off, get away, and you can’t drive off because you got hurt or because your car is hurt? Well the cops are gonna show up and ask you if you had a drink, and what are you gonna say? That is between you and Your Own Personal Jesus, but if they can, the law will try and find out if you had a drink, so they can solve the case, because no matter whose fault it is, the cops want to make sure it’s somebody’s fault. Cheers.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 28, 2026
★★★ The murky morning made it look as if another soggy day were settling in. Before midday, though, the sun had burned through, bringing on a sticky, glaring sort of read-through for the heatwave due to come. Clothes were loose and easy; clouds were still capable of intervening to bring on a few minutes of cool. A group of young people in Pride gear came strolling along the path by the Pool, and then three young men in wilted-looking dress shirts, one carrying a Bible. The air buzzed with the call of a starling and its offspring on a foraging lesson. As a panhandler was finishing his pitch, a child in a pink t-shirt at the wheel of a pink electric toy car came humming along the path. Up the hillside, by the big glacial erratic there, someone was hammering away at a steel-stringed guitar and singing for an actual small crowd of seated people. The scroll of a bass stuck up into view. Further uphill, a volley of crackling sounds emerged from a hawthorn tree, where a very brown and sparse-furred gray squirrel was clinging to a skinny swinging brand and scrabbling to gobble green berries as fast as it could.
New York City, June 29, 2026
★★ Two cops in dark blue with long pants and short sleeves stood in the broken shade, one leaning on a railing, while a young couple in shorts kissed on the stoop beside and above them. One of the cops took to fanning himself with his hat. It was time to get the air conditioner filter washed and dried while there was still a chance to leave the unit off for a while. A child squealed and hurried into the playground fountain array. The late light was surprisingly clear and the humidity had dropped, but walking was still sweaty work. The clouds and the trees broke up the western sun into separate gold-toned spotlights. Indoors, the unchanged air was worse than the air outside, so the AC had to come on again to refresh it.
New York City, June 30, 2026
★★ A white butterfly tumbled along through the Park. The air conditioner had been blasting away all the fine distinctions between the stages of the advancing heat, but outdoors, the tolerable phase was clearly running out. Kids with fishing rods crowded the little footbridge. Down at the head of the Loch a man in a red plaid jacket and green pants was leading a woman in a white satin dress and a man in a pale tan suit with white sneakers through what seemed to be their wedding vows. Turtles slid along the surface of the water, or just below. The falls were flinging bits of duckweed to gather in bright green drifts on the darkened rock ledges alongside.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of sandwiches selected from Consolidated Library of Modern Cooking and Household Recipes, Vol. IV, by Christine Terhune Herrick, Editor-In-Chief, author of The Little Dinner, The Chafing-Dish Supper, etc., and associate author with Marion Harland of the National Cook Book, with a list of contributors which includes many of the famous chefs and cooking experts of the United States, published in 1905 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
Brunette or Brown Cheese Sandwiches
Take brown bread loaf; spread over the end, after cutting off the crust, with soft, lightly salted, creamed butter; then a layer of cream Neufchatel, or cottage cheese. Then slice about 1/4 inch thick. Butter the end as before. Use crisp, carefully washed lettuce that has been shaken dry. Dip a leaf into French dressing; place it upon the cheese, to which a seasoning of red or black pepper is always an addition. Then cut the next slice very thin; press it gently upon the lettuce. By pressing the palm on the upper slice the two will be made to adhere. White or rye bread cheese sandwiches can be made as the above, also pumpernickel.
If you are inspired to prepare a sandwich inspired by our continued offerings, be sure to send along a description of your experience and a photo or three to us here: indignity@indignity.net.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
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TOM SCOCCA
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
