Why does anyone like Michael Scott?

Why does The Office not understand that it's saying good-bye to Michael Scott, not to Steve Carell? Why does it assume everyone loves Steve Carell? Why am I supposed to care about Michael Scott's love life? Why have I been supposed to care about it for several years? Why is Jim an ass now? Why does Pam do and say everything wrong?

Why was I supposed to pretend that Erin was cute and funny, instead of desperately inept and possibly deficient? Why didn't Gabe make any sense ever? Why was Timothy Olyphant (which I initially misspelled "Oliphaunt," because "Olyphant" is no less ridiculous and Tolkien is awesome) there for a couple of weeks for no reason? Why did that make Jim and Pam even worse than they had already become?

Why is this show no longer funny at all?

Why are women wearing those horrible hoof-shoes?

The point of high heels is to create the illusion that you are thinner, by elongating your legs. This causes you to resemble a woodland spirit--a nymph, or similar.

Unless you are wearing those shoes with the platform only on the front, in which case you resemble a woodland spirit of the smelly, hairy, with-a-tail variety. The variety nymphs avoid, out of a developed sense of self-respect and -preservation.

Yes, a chunky platform shoe evokes the 70s and the 90s, neither of which was a good decade for fashion. But the answer is to eradicate the whole platform, not just the back. That just makes you look like a satyr with a tragic and painful heel spur. And a pretty good spa, I guess.

A regular stiletto is fine, ladies. I promise. It's probably better for your feet, it's lighter, and no one who looks at you will wonder where you left your pan pipes.

Why didn't the gelateria in Eataly have the best flavor?

The best flavor is bacio, which is chocolate with hazelnut. I'm pretty sure this is indisputable, so you should probably not dispute it and make a fool of yourself. I have eaten a lot of gelato, in many cities, some of them in Italy.

And, not only is this flavor the most delicious, but it is also distinctively Italian. The best thing about Italy is that they put hazelnuts in everything (this is not really a backhanded compliment--hazelnuts are amazing). They don't dip your gelato cone in peanuts, as here. They dip it in hazelnuts. It is glorious. Also see: Nutella.

So explain to me why I had to settle for stracciatella.

Why can one buy Easter eggs pre-dyed?

What is the fun in that? Hard-boiled eggs do not taste better if they are pink; most of the joy in dyed eggs is in the dyeing. You know, how every year you leave one in the purple to see how dark it gets (not very), and you try various different madras color combinations (the yellow/green/blue is by far the best), and you try to use the crayon to make an intricate motif (nope, amorphous blobs again). That is the fun. Unless you are some hipster weirdo decorating eggs to put on your design blog, the amateurism is charming.

Moreover, the pre-dyed ones are boring. They are almost invariably solid, which is dull as dishwater. And the colors aren't attractive. They look--because they are--industrial and possibly toxic. No soft pinks and blues for you.

Dyeing Easter eggs is not difficult, and it's diverting. If you have no one to dye your eggs, you probably don't need dyed eggs. How sad for you.

Why is my fantasy baseball team the worst?

So you don't care about my fantasy baseball team. That's nice. I care about it exactly enough for it to drive me crazy. If I cared about it more, it might drive me less crazy, because its failure is related largely to things I can control, which I will present in a handy list:

1. I didn't draft that effectively, because I tried to draft with strategy, but I'm lazy, so that didn't work out too well and I may have actually blown a draft pick on Stephen Strasburg because I have trouble counting exploded tendons and recovery months.
2. I can only pay attention to one baseball game a day (two if the Phils are playing and Lincecum is pitching), so I have trouble noticing when people are either awesome or terrible.
3. I don't understand trades. I have no idea what's a fair trade and I fear being taken for a ride, so I inevitably pick up schmucks off the waiver wire. There's a reason they're sitting there.

But. There are also things I can't control, namely the tendency of my infield's body parts to go on strike. In fact, maybe I should have titled this post:

Why have Joe Mauer's legs fallen off?

Why do tourists feel entitled to take a partial approach to church services?

Churches are houses of worship, and often services of worship occur in them. It is deeply inconsiderate to the congregation to tromp in and out at will in your bad clothes with your shopping bags. Divine service is not, in fact, a show. It is certainly not put on for your personal entertainment.

It's true that churches are often lovely and picturesque, and worth seeing. So go back when there isn't a service going on--which is most of the time. Sunday morning, however, does not qualify. This has been true forever and should not come as a surprise.

And if you want to Experience a service, you could probably spare the time to Experience the whole thing. I've gone to bad services in Paris and Florence because I only had Sunday morning for sight-seeing, but since I am not a jackwagon, I actually attended the services and didn't, for instance, wander aimlessly around Santa Croce. Church is only an hour or so long. You can suck it up.

You can't go to the opera mid-way through an act; why should church get less consideration than that?

Edited: I have just run across an à propos Hungarian decree from 1001, which recommends as punishment for disturbing divine service that "the youth and commoners should be bound and publicly whipped in the forecourt of the church for their temerity."

Why is there a musical of Little Women?

Yes, this is another installment from the "Thanks, Pandora" file.

And, really, Little Women isn't the worst candidate for a musical treatment; Les Misérables seems much less likely, and it worked out rather well. Little Women at least has the useful musical features of romance, a small core cast, and distinct intermittent silliness.

But this is a bad musical. The lyrics appear to have been written with a level of talent somewhere between that of Tim Rice and that of a gibbon, but without even a gibbon's cheesy rhymes. None of the themes are memorable, but that's not so rare nowadays, I suppose.

Jo has a song called "Astonishing" which has the most astonishingly fatuous words. It's about turning Laurie down and how she is shocked and offended that he loves her (yes, fair enough, vomit), but also about how she's a trailblazer and angry that people haven't noticed and don't seem to care. Which is not so far from Jo in the book, I guess, but somehow manages to tease out all of her worst qualities without adding the necessary soupçon of humor that makes her bearable.

And Laurie has a song called "Take a Chance on Me," which is also very stupid (and seems unfortunately anachronistic) and makes him deeply unappealing. Which is hard! I would wager that most young women who have read the book have at one time had a giant crush on Laurie; I certainly did, and I still find him tiresome and awful in this treatment. Way to screw that up, folks.

Oh, and to put the tin lid on it, they rhyme "Massachusetts" with "crèpes suzettes."

Why is DirecTV running those Russian plutocrat ads?

(Why does DirecTV have insufficient Ts?)

First off, I don't really get them. I think I get the one with the mini-giraffe and the gold remote control. Excess is hilarious? Especially when it comes with a funny accent? But the one with the girl walking on the treadmill and the strongman with electrodes just mystifies me. Is it about how he's lazy? Or is just very creepy and strange?

Second, you know what's not funny? Russian plutocrats. Not even a little bit. Because, hey, congratulations, you managed to make things worse after the Soviets. Nice going, there.

Why doesn't MI:5 do basic fact-checking?

Possibly the question is more "Why does MI:5 show so much negligent contempt for the United States?" This manifests itself in various ways; for instance, all CIA agents are enormous, square, and stupid.

But here's a more elaborate example: They had to get close to a congressman from Kansas, so they use the NHL team of which he is part owner. I list the problems here.

1. They called the team the Kansas City Flamers. Perhaps they were not allowed to use a real team; "Flamers" is still an unacceptable name (it's not impossible, however, that this one was deliberate).
2. This Kansas City was the one in Kansas. Where there are not sports teams of any kind. Or anything, right?
3. They buttered him up with a tape of the "Stanley Cup Final," which is not a thing. It is not a Cup Final as in Britain, because that's not how hockey works.
4. Also, no one actually cares about hockey, much less congressmen.

Why has my cheese shop been replaced by a new and inferior cheese shop?

My old cheese shop was great. It had more or less any kind of cheese you'd want, especially of the French or English variety, along with a couple of charcuterie-type things and assorted hors d'oeuvre delicacies. You could get cornichons, olives, and, most importantly, double Devon cream.

The new cheese shop is heavily Italian. Now they have three kinds of prosciutto along with a trillion other cured meats, ninety-six kinds of Pecorino, and various luxuries of the kind that Italian parents buy for their screaming children in the supermarket. By "luxuries" I mean "crap," but "crap from Italy," which is somehow better than crap from here.

They have neither clotted cream nor Wensleydale with cranberries. Which makes them, in plain terms, in all ways useless.

Why is Yaadein such a horrible movie?

Yaadein is the worst. I take as my sample "Hrithik Roshan films," and that is some stiff competition. At least, though, Yaadein has something on Kaho Naa...Pyaar Hai, in that there is no jarring transition from yachting trip to song and dance to OH GOD WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING? to Australia to OH GOD WHY ARE THEY SHOOTING AGAIN? to song and dance. Skiing? (No, that doesn't make sense, but it largely mimics my viewing experience.)

And of course Kites is just mind-bendingly terrible, even though it has production values and the scenery is nice. And in case the posters mystified you, it vaguely makes sense that Hrithik Roshan is dressed as an old-timey Mexican bandit, even though the movie takes place, um, nowish. He does, after all, rob a bank and escape in a hot air balloon. I am not making this up.

A lot of his other movies are dreadful as well (with the exception of Jodhaa Akbar, which is amazing, and hardly made up at all, even the ridiculous parts), but I will still just pick on Yaadein.

Because honestly, once you have managed things so that Kareena Kapoor is unconscious and beset by an alligator, why would you rescue her?

Why do people fetishize Europe?

The whole "Europe is full of attractive stylish people from films and your life will be more fulfilling there" thing is at least comprehensible, if stupid. The "Europe is full of virtuous paragons of community living and ecological scruples" thing (and its corollary: "the US is full of obese morons in SUVs who hate poor people") is, however, false and offensive.

You know where they don't recycle? Italy. You know where they're fat? Britain. You know where people are knifed at sporting events? Italy again. You know where they're racist? France. Oh, and Spain. Oh, and Italy. Oh, and all of Eastern Europe. Oh, and Germany, only it's illegal there, and even more awkward.

Newsflash, pretentious chumps: Europe is not full of well-dressed people on bicycles with a baguette sticking out of the basket, nor do they all farm their own kale. Many people there are unwashed, overweight, violent, uncultured, and eat the local equivalent of Kraft dinner. A lot like here, really.

There is a romance to Europe that the United States lacks, it's true. And you can argue about specific terms of public policy, and how you prefer Scandinavia because you are a ridiculous hippie. But the Europe you use as a stick to beat us does not exist, and you can go to hell.

Also, they smell.

Why does Tim Lincecum have a soul patch?

I actually had a real topic with actual implications lined up, but last night's game forced me to postpone it. (Leaving you to guess: the use of "text" as the past tense of "text" or the expense of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana? We may never know.) And I know what you're saying: in a game that also featured Clayton Kershaw and his disastrous chinstrap, why am I picking on Big Time Timmy Jim? Indeed, Mr. Lincecum doesn't even have the worst facial hair on his own team's pitching staff, which dubious honor is shared more or less equally between Sergio Romo and Brian Wilson.

Well, these are precisely the problem. Even when faced with that sort of stiff competition, the best Mr. Lincecum can muster is that pathetic patch on his lower lip. It doesn't matter if he can't or merely won't do better; as things stand, this is an embarrassment.

So, my dear Timmy, if (like Abraham Lincoln) you are inclined to take the advice of young women you don't know when it comes to matters hirsute, do us all a favor and lose the soul patch. It is not working for you. In fact, it detracts from the admittedly splendid luster of your tasteful pageboy.