I receive these flasks, but I dont get these flasks. I mean, I get their ostensible purpose: the secreting of alcohol upon your person-usually when youre wearing a suit. The problem is: If youre secreting alcohol into anything other than a prison in the 1930s, then its probably not a less-than-appropriate scheme. If you find yourself in a situation that would be drastically improved by ingesting a few ounces of alcohol sloshing around in a container that makes you look like your pacemaker is trying to escape, then ask yourself: A. Should I have agreed to go to this event? B. Is booze really the answer? And C. Where is the nearest bar?
Also: Unless youre wearing a giant sack suit (which youre not), the flask creates an unsightly bulge on your chest. Or worse, youre carrying it in your thigh pocket, and then you have a bulge on your thigh and thats, well, Ill let our fashion editors address that one.
The flask requires way too much forethought. It also requires a funnel. And it requires a cynicism about the hours ahead. But the flask is only a symptom of a much larger problem: Men are really hard to buy gifts for. We are. Thats because we tend not to help.
So let me help. These are all better gift options for men than a flask:
A really nice water bottle Something that addresses an extremely specific interest youre sure he has. Is he into weightlifting? Gloves. Whittling? Knife. Postage stamps? Tweezers. Tweezers? Postage stamps. Anything on this list (except the flask) Anything involving shaving I have never received a shaving-related gift I didnt love. Does it seem a little generic? Yeah, but for the non-bearded man, shaving is all chore and necessity. Anything that addresses that chore and makes it better or easier to do is welcome.
Really, though, men want the kind of gift that anyone wants: one that says, I spent 30 seconds to a minute thinking about you and then I spent a few more seconds thinking about your desires and enthusiasms and then I spent about three seconds thinking about the amount of money I wanted to spend on you, which is somewhere between $25 and $40, and then I spent approximately 10 seconds Amazon Prime-ing it.
Heres to better gifts.