Five things you can do in the five days until "Mad Men" Season 5 begins:
Plan your wardrobe. Janie Bryant, the show's celebrated costume designer, lent her name and expertise to a "Mad Men" capsule collection at Banana Republic that's more inspired-by than ripped-from the '60s (and a good thing, too, since Americans on average were thinner then). Think cigarette pants, floral prints and a "Betty dress" for women; fedoras and chino suits for men. All at 2012 prices, of course.
Let TV's No. 1 ad man try to sell you on Mark Zuckerberg's latest gimmick in the YouTube mashup, "Don Draper Presents Facebook Timeline." So much better than being told (and told) that all your friends have made the switch.
Learn to cook like Betty Draper. Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin's The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook: Inside the Kitchens, Bars, and Restaurants of Mad Men includes a recipe for that unhappy housewife's turkey tetrazzini, but you could plan a whole party from the collection, much of it drawn from cookbooks your mother (or grandmother) might still have tucked away.
Read Stephen King's latest, "11/22/63," for a different, but no less detailed, perspective on the period (and what it might have looked like far from Manhattan).
Watch the Season 4 finale, "Tomorrowland," to remind yourself what Don Draper (Jon Hamm) was up to when last we saw him. If you don't have the DVD and don't want to watch online - it's available for streaming on Netflix, for instance - AMC is showing it at 8 a.m. on Sunday. n
