New York Jets Fans: Keeping up with the Jets set

Considering all of the potential exposés that it could have chosen to break – like once and for all bringing those blasted all-nude RV and boat shows into the open – it seems strange that the New York Times would instead choose to shake the earth by revealing that men who attend NFL games like to get drunk and hoot at women. That same conclusion, no doubt drawn before the reporter strapped on his visor and went to work, could have been borne out with far less effort by just popping over to the house of any Sunday football loving Joe Lunchbox with a case of beer and a copy of Lusty Luanne’s Lunar Calendar 2007/2008 in tow.

A Times reporter did go to a New York Jets game a little over a week ago and when it came to half-time and most of the crowd had gathered on the pedestrian ramps of Giants Stadium’s Gate D, cruelly ignoring the lifetime achievement award or some-such being given to one “Curtis Martin”, he went to see what all the fuss was about. He found hundreds of men gathered on the ramps, whooping it up and looking not unlike rows of lifers out of a prison movie lustily welcoming the weak-looking thin guy who has just sauntered into their lives.

The Times reporter catalogued the jeering bunch’s requests that each passing woman oblige the crowd by giving them a gander at her Mardi Gras finest, which, to the hooting delight of the hordes, some did. One such obliging lassie managed to take the starch out of this “exposé” somewhat when she told the Times reporter, “I don’t care… I love my body and I like what I have, so let everybody share it.”

The President of the New Jersey Senate, Richard J. Codey, showing that he keeps in touch with the needs of his people, in that he reads the New York Times and circles anything apropos, was quick to promise action and heap condemnation on the unruly goings-on at Jets games, even throwing out a witticism that media outlets could repeat until their audiences vomited in unison: “It seems like for some Jet fans, that Gate D stands for drunk and disgusting.”

Well, according to this more recent column, the party over at “Gate Drunk and Disgusting” has quieted down of late, with more than 50 security guards in yellow jackets and 25 state troopers assigned there and no arrests made during the Jets last home game.

And while we would never condone the use of verbal pressure and liquor to convince a woman to bear her breasts outside of the state of Louisiana and/or a Girls Gone Wild video, we are saddened to think that these new security precautions may also mean the end of another Jets half-time tradition “Da Money”. In this far funnier ritual, those on the upper level of Gate D throw dollar bills down to ground level. Sooner or later someone passes by, spots the cash and goes to pick it up – but before the little money grubber can thank his stars for this unexpected good fortune, a shower of beer and garbage, as well as taunts and verbal abuse, reigns down on him from above. Now that is the kind of sport we could enjoy.

Remote Control Beer Gadget: Paging Dr Drunk!

Boozing, when done well, is the welcome opposite of work. Very little effort should go into a good booze-up; the drinker’s main concern should be remaining smilingly ruddy-faced while pouring the nectar down his or her gob and thinking capital thoughts. There are, however, certain minor exertions that interfere with the complete rest that is the drinker’s due when tippling, and it is here that technology has stepped in admirably to help out.

There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy “orders up another.”) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we, in the interests of keeping down breakfasts, did no further research into that.

Pictured here is another addition to the beer accessories market and it is one that makes the beer rocket-packs we covered last month (3-liter beer dispensers strapped to the back of a ball-gown-wearing waitress who may or may not be sporting a pair of giant black wings) seem downright sensible. The remote control beer pager is designed for beer drinkers who may have misplaced their drinks at a party. If your beer is adorned in one of these babies, you need only press a button on a mini-remote that attaches to your belt (presumably, in keeping in mind the target demographic [pictured none too subtly on the cozy itself] this will also clip just as easily on to a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants) and the beer cozy will light up and “let loose a satisfying belch.” Class.

We can appreciate the need for tracking mechanisms on beer: after all who hasn’t swallowed the odd cigarette remainder after picking up the wrong beer at a party? That said, a critic might point out the fact that the loud belch that accompanies the paging is both excessive and potentially confusing since at any party where this sort of thing is present, a loud satisfying belch would not be the distinctive sound the makers of this seem to think it would be, and, not to be a couple of spoilsports, but wouldn’t simply placing your beer into this unsightly thing be enough to distinguish it from all others without the technological intervention?

Such niggling points aside, the price of the remote control beer pager is, depending on how you value money, somewhat reasonable at $20 a pop and an item to keep in mind for the holiday shopping season (provided you do not live with or intend to party with the intended recipient).

Molson Beer ad campaign fizzles

University administrators, you know, the guys who kept you out of the top three colleges of your choice, relegating you to an institution unfit to grace the bumper of your parents’ Volvo, are slamming a new ad campaign by Canada’s foremost purveyor of bland suds, Molson Beer.

In a Globe & Mail report, critics blasted the brewer's latest marketing initiative as at least as tasteless as the product itself, saying that it is "harmful for students seeking jobs if a potential employer discovered their raucous partying poses on Facebook." Now, as we’ve documented in the Sh*t Faced Femmes of Facebook, the boundaries separating the public and private are often as blurred as your vision after you’ve drank 11 or so cans of Molson's "finest", as people are rarely red-faced when posting compromising pictures online.

The Molson campaign asks college students to post such pictures so that the "top party school in Canada" can be crowned. We Shark Guys, several years removed from dancing a two-step back and forth over that academic probation line, and decidedly bitter over not yet being granted honorary degrees from our respective alma maters, are sadly ineligible for the prize—a public pool urinating, Mexican jail, wake-up-face-down-in-the-surf spring-break Bacchanalia to Cancun for five.

The dean of students at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, a school whose engineering students are known for, among other things, calculating the trajectory and force required to dent a forehead with a can (and vice versa), is "disgusted" by the Facebook ad campaign’s "dangerous disregard for the way it promotes an abusive use of alcohol.”

From what we gather, to put it in standardized test terms, "The Campus Challenge" is to "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night", what "jejune" is to "lurid", although stomachs will be tested by the odd broad-shouldered frat guy in a less than supportive bra.

The national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, said the Molson campaign is "unfortunate" because it stereotypes young people as being interested only in partying, rather than something closer to the truth—partying AND getting laid.

Drunks for Thanksgiving-Day Weekend

Both of the Shark Book authors hail from Canada, a country where Thanksgiving is celebrated a month earlier than it is in the US (the sincere thanks being given around Canadian dinner tables at that time of year usually has to do with it not yet being winter). However, we don’t see a problem with breaking out another turkey – one that has hopefully been pumped up with steroids to delectably plump, juicy proportions – a month later and celebrating the holiday once again in solidarity with our neighbours to the South. Also, phoning in sick to work and taking an undue Thanksgiving-weekend rest is quite appealing.

In the turkey-time tryptophan and bourbon-inspired mood of the season, we have decided to step back from our regular efforts of focusing on drunk-related news and tales of world-class drunks to focus on two smaller stories from our drunk police blotter that, if you ever thought otherwise, confirm the link between dedicated boozing efforts and the increased likelihood that a person who is already not the brightest light on the Christmas tree will go one can of malt liquor beyond all reason and commit a crime.

In The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), we devoted an entire chapter to such tales entitled “Crime Doesn’t’ Pay (Your Bar Tab)”, however owing to space limitations here we suggest that for more depth on the subject you pick up Shark at one of your better local bookstores, insist on paying the full jacket price and then test the seller’s reaction when you casual mention that you know us personally. (It’s worth a shot, but unlikely to raise an eyebrow of the cashier who’s just returned from a smoke break—if it does, check as discreetly as possible to make sure it’s not some botched plastic surgery forehead asymmetry).

We are not suggesting here a link between drinking and crime to support condemnable efforts to wrest a pint out of the hand of your average, misdemeanor-at-worst sort of drunk, but rather to point out the cases in which those already given to criminal predilections tend to become emboldened from a bit of extra liquid courage.

In a South Salt Lake City bar, a soused pool shark absconded with another man’s car keys and vamoosed, only to realize he’d left his credit card at the crime scene. This sort of oversight is standard in cases of drunken crime, as is the brilliant plan he devised to recover the incriminating piece of identification. According to the bartender, “he came back here, tried to change his appearance by taking his hat off [and] changing his coat." This bit of subterfuge didn’t work and his 8-ball was sunk. [to see the video news report on this one click here]

Meanwhile at a Santa Barbara California, Carls Jr burger joint (west coast sibling to restaurant chain Hardee's—for purposes of mental imagery picture the obese twins riding the motorbikes in the Guinness Book of Records, and incidentally, the restaurant whose national ad campaign featured a lubed up Paris Hilton provocatively washing a car) a teen was charged with a B&E after breaking into the eatery after hours, not to steal or vandalize, as would have been more acceptable, but rather because he was hungry and was looking to cook up a gratis pre-Thanksgiving Day feast for himself. Police stopped him before he could give himself botulism. [video news report here]

George Clooney Versus Absolutely Fabio-lous

We Shark Guys generally steer clear of tabloids, unless of course, it’s to get the latest GPS coordinates for Angelina’s lost baby or to find out when the biblical rapture is coming to a town near you (get that bulk shopping done now, Kearney, Nebraska).

Yes, there are tens of thousands of blogs out there that already go into the extreme minutiae of celebrity exploits, from the rum-laced oatmeal that starts their mornings to the evening’s highway hot toddies that result in more DUIs per capita for the high-rolling set than anyone else.

That said, as with our respective addictions to restoring functionality to Civil-War-era cannons and firing them off, and needlessly polluting public parks (we won’t say which of us suffers from which addiction), we do occasionally feel the need to indulge in a bit of trashy, celebrity gossip, especially when the stars of the tale are as unlikely a pair as this one. We could no longer resist the temptation to cover male-model extraordinaire Fabio's recent dust up with George Clooney at an Italian restaurant again after the Fab-ster rehashed the entire incident in an interview with Ok Magazine earlier this week.

The incident started when George Clooney suspected that one of Fabio’s dinner companions (a group who had won a “Dinner with Fabio” prize in some sort of housewife fantasy contest—we were unable to determine who sprung for the tab) was taking photographs of Clooney gorging himself on the expensive Italian fare without his permission. Clooney was photographed with middle-finger poised Fabio-ward (see above), so we can assume that Clooney was right in thinking this, though we typically reserve the middle-digit for more worthy recipients like the guy at the highway toll booth, who can’t do crap about it anyway.

Fabio, who has graced hundreds of covers of romance novels and once was so absolutely incredulous at the thought that a margarine spread was not butter that he starred in a nationwide advertising campaign to that effect, came to the table, told Clooney no photos were being taken of him and to take it easy. Clooney paid up and then, according to Fabio, dealt out a parting-shot to his table referring to one of his lady friends as “a fat cow”.

Chivalry is not dead, as long as Fabio is in the house while George Clooney is drinking wine. He came to their defense, later telling OK! “You have to be a low-class, scumbag to start calling a woman a name. If you're a man, you should never. You should be a gentleman. These women were with me and as a man I defend them.” If Fabio’s version of this is correct, he then chased Clooney out of the place, later saying “He was lucky he ran out of the restaurant. He's not even half a man."

We consulted some street fight analysts (read: rummies who say they could and would have kicked your ass seven ways from Sunday when they were your age) and, on providing them with the tale of the tape -- with Fabio at 6'3 and in good shape and Clooney at 5'11 and presumably too preoccupied with his career as an A-list Hollywood actor to waste his time on martial arts -- the majority opinion was not in Clooney's favor. As one wag surmised: “That big bastid Fabio would tear his freakin’ head off!”

Eat Shit! Book archives

As we mentioned in our initial blog, certain stories that we collected for "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery)" did not make the final cut due to length concerns, or, in the case of this particular story, because of an overall consensus between the writers and the publisher that it was just too disgusting.

However, in the interests of completeness -- the star of this one deserves a spot among the world's most notable drunks, even if his story is far more nauseating than the others -- we have decided to post the unpublished parts of the book here on occasion.

We included many stories of drunks trying to beat the law, however few of our protagonists took matters as far as the gentleman in this following story, and hopefully very few have since.

Coprophagia, the consumption of faeces, from the Greek copro (faeces) and phagy (eat) is practiced by several animals due to limitations of their digestive systems or diets. The makers of Binaca breathspray however have yet to engineer a product potent enough to quell the mouth odour brought on by such a diet and as such eating one’s own merde is something of a societal taboo.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the re-ingestion of soft faeces captures vitamins that would otherwise be wasted in certain animals. Perhaps then the 57-year-old man who stuffed his mouth full of his own excrement was doing so not to beat a breathalyser test, as was the assumption of police at the time, but rather in hopes of replenishing vital nutrients after a night of heavy drinking.

Found driving erratically on a lonely stretch of Ontario road, the man was shoved into a patrol car and, in what would assume was a nightmare the next day for a car cleaner, he went on to vomit, urinate and defecate in the backseat. Once at the cop shop the man scooped up some of what he had recently expelled and put it in his mouth before he had to submit to a breathalyser test.

A police inspector speculating as to the motivations behind the man’s spur of the moment feast said he did not think that the man’s level of intoxication could have been solely responsible for making him do something as “disgusting as that”.

The man, alas, had nary a “shit-eating grin” to crack as sadly, he was unsuccessful in this innovative bid at cheating medical science. The breathalyser clocked him at twice the legal alcohol limit, and no doubt, he did not receive an offer that night to share the cellblock’s communal string of dental floss. (Source: The Toronto Sun, November 2005)

Make it a double – she's drinking for two

Authors of a recent study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health offered some good news to pregnant women who may want to continue on in the lifestyle that got them in that condition in the first place when they said that it might be ok for expectant mothers to binge drink on occasion without harming their unborn. This goes against orthodox thinking on the subject and will come as a surprise to those who have lost major points with the missus when suggesting during a lull in Lamaze class that everybody repair to the local bar because “this is all just a big money-grab anyway”.

But before you and your mates and a yummy mummy of your acquaintance toast the baby by gently tapping the outside of the womb with your can of Michelob Light and rubbing it for luck, keep in mind that the study was limited to the effects of the occasional binge enjoyed by someone who was not a chronic alcoholic. A number of studies have linked heavy drinking during pregnancy to stunted growth, birth defects and abnormal neural development – in short, the conditions that plague the starting line-up of your company’s softball team.

After an examination of thousands of research papers and more brow-furrowing than goes on at the cue-card prepping session at the Miss World pageant, the study’s authors concluded that there was almost no conclusive evidence linking binge drinking, which they pegged at five drinks in one session (low, but we’ll let it pass given the context), and such birth maladies as fetal alcohol syndrome.

The study did find a minor connection between a mother binge drinking and the issue of her loins ending up with a lower verbal IQ, learning problems, a predilection towards delinquency, and – pure speculation on our part here – an increased likelihood that PTA mailings concerning the child’s schooling will need to be delivered to the neighborhood pub.

For those of you who take your medical advice from us – not recommended, though we will gladly dispense with recommendations on patent medicines that can treat all sorts of ailments – the study was inconclusive and its authors recommended that women not binge drink “just to be safe”. That said, the authors also say that those who do go out to tilt the odd half-dozen in celebration of the blessed event, or to drown their sorrows as they bemoan how unreliable birth control is, should not feel too bad because as of right now the evidence is minimal that it will do any harm.

The Shark Guys

Energy Drinks: A lot of (Red) Bull?

We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district. Okay, let’s rephrase that so it appears less sordid. We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district where a bloody kick-boxing card was being held. Better. Alright, never mind. We were in attendance, VIP section, when the ref was conveniently looking the other way and one of the combatants took one for the team, right smack in the Red Bull logo where one hopes the Muay Thai tomato can in question was sporting a protective cup. (Said logo was placed nearer to home base than it is in the accompanying photo).

Speaking of cups, and in tribute of segues that hit you like a Muay Thai roundhouse to the head, we Shark Guys drink our coffee black -- you know, like real men. None of this foam that looks like it would line the mouth of that German Shepherd that guards the lumberyard. As coffee purists we’d never really taken notice of any other caffeinated beverages like Red Bull and generally steered clear of those who’d consume it, thinking them the type of people with far too much energy --and much of it misguided-- to begin with anyway.

Doing some investigative work though, which may or may not have included an ill-advised downing of a can of it during an amphetamine bender (for research purposes only you understand, and for safety reasons we may or may not have had a guy in tow who claimed to have done a year of med school in the Caribbean), we tentatively concluded that it could indeed be described as "an energy drink". However, given we’re pretty energetic already and known to fire off a few daybreak rounds from a rooftop balcony after being up for the duration of the night, we were indisposed to blaming the drink for this particularly animated state.

If you don't already know this (perhaps you were the last graduate of that nunnery before it got shuttered), mixing caffeinated beverages with alcohol makes many a delightful tonic. (Indeed, several Shark Book blogs have been written with the authors using dizzying centrifugal force to get just the right Cuba Libre mix in one hand and typing with the other) It's also the conduit for getting cheap whiskey down many a gullet as well as getting the irredeemably unattractive the sexual attention they don't usually garner—but now that the Coke or Pepsi in a highball has been replaced by something researchers have described as (like pretty much everything else a human can ingest) "dangerous to your health" and as potent as three cups of coffee at once.

Apparently the top watchdog, or monger of fear depending on who you ask, the FDA, does not subject dietary supplements to safety and efficacy testing prior to approval, meaning that the full slate of ingredients in energy drinks, much like hep A at your favorite lunch spot, are not fully screened.

The Shark Guys

Beer cheaper than water – And that's a bad thing?

The UK’s Daily Mail, fast becoming The Shark Guys newspaper of choice in terms of rich source material, recently ran a lengthy double-byline investigative piece (full story here) into the rising trend of supermarkets selling their own brands of beer for less than their bottled water. This came hot on the high-heels of an earlier exposé into another alcoholic scourge: those midriff and visible panty-line revealing Facebook girls gone wild, (a story we covered here).

The Daily Mail reports that supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda are selling their own brands of beer at 22p (US$0.46) a can, which is less per litre than it costs to buy the stores’ mineral water and cola, and, in what would seem to be pure hyperbole given the alcohol content of the beer is between 2 and 3 percent, “cheap enough to allow someone to get drunk for just £1” (more on how they sent a reporter out in order to prove that claim later).

Competition between the three supermarket chains led to the low price, with the stores taking on up to an 8p per can loss just to keep up with one another. All three chains now offer the cheapest beer on their rosters for 50p a litre, while mineral water costs between 56p and 92p a litre depending on the store. (The latter price is of course the real scandal, but we'll leave the great bottled-water debate [your wallet and good ole' mother earth are better off with the tap] to blogs such as this one).

Many readers, especially those from Ontario, Canada where a government monopoly necessitates a drive out to the hinterlands for beer restocking, will see all silver-lining and no cloud when it comes to having such easily accessible and cheap booze at the ready. The Mail, however, did not write this one as a feel-good piece, but rather took the occasion to sound several alarm bells.

The main concern was that the youth would put down their alcopops and rush for the cheap lager, which, we presume, is typically the purview of your older recreational drunk. One public health advocate whose comments were included by the Mail in an attempt to strengthen this point came out with an interesting bit of armchair teenage psychology when he ventured that teens would "think that if it's so cheap, it must be OK". The reported low to which Finland has sunk (who knew!) following a 40% cut in its alcohol taxes was also thrown in for extra points.

The Mail even went to the trouble of sending out one of its reporters to drink the cheap beer and report back on its effects in an accompanying piece entitled"How I - a twenty-something woman - got drunk on £1 worth of the 22p lager" (that story here). The reporter, a 27-year-old woman who stands 5 feet tall (and is not as wide as she is tall), might have seemed an odd choice for this test, but here were some selected observations from her afternoon on Asda's own-brand three percent lager (on which she spent £1 hence the headline):

"The first taste is disgusting - a mouthful of gassy, foul-tasting liquid. I don't drink lager often, but even I can tell this is scraping the barrel. The first can is hard to drink but I don't notice too much of a change in myself."

Later, she's loosened up a bit but appears somewhat self-conscious...

"Two cans down and I realise that I am wittering, getting more talkative and, I fear, slightly boring."

Ah, the glorious third can, now things are rocking:

"Into the third can I start feeling more affectionate and my inhibitions are lowered - swinging my legs over my chair, I find myself telling the photographer what a fabulous chap he is and how much I love working with him."

However, those who would be thanking their lucky stars for this, the cheapest of cheap dates, might be put off by the likes of the following:

"The gassiness is getting to me and I keep emitting rather unladylike burps."

And it all goes to pot on the last can and a half:

"On my fourth can, I am getting a bit aggressive - pointing at the photographer as I make another "fascinating" comment and swearing more than I ever would in polite company. By the last half, I have definitely had enough. My voice is heavy and slurred, my limbs feel floppy, my eyes have gone droopy and I have lost the ability to concentrate on anything for longer than a couple of minutes. Worryingly, the lager tastes OK, even nice, and I feel as though I could carry on drinking it if asked."

And, with that, comes a moral to the story of the type that is slightly subtler than a jackhammer in the ear:

"I am a 27-year-old woman and, although only 5ft, am used to drinking alcohol and can deal with the changes it causes. But take each of the physical and emotional side-effects that I felt - and imagine the effect they would have on a teenager."

The Shark Guys

Shia Laboeuf drunk: actor Shia's not so 'Sunni' Disposition

As our devoted readership may have noticed during down time between scheduled Thorazine dosages, we Shark Guys are very reluctant to comment on celebrity transgressions -- mainly because we hope to one day run in those circles and don't want future champagne and orange juice breakfasts ruined by tension resulting from a post here -- but since neither of us had heard of Shia LaBeouf (which sounds like a 'Bichon Frise' that would leave tiny clumps of poop in some of the finer manicured parkettes in Manhattan's Upper East Side, or a lip-synching drag act in the outer suburbs of Marseilles) we figured he/she/it was fair game.

Due to the fact that we're a good 2o or so years removed from sitting cross-legged on the living room floor and having our GI Joes violate Geneva Conventions with our sisters' Army Brat edition Barbies, neither of us had seen the Transformers movie, but upon cross-referencing of numerous Google sources it appears he was in it.

Since neither of us wakes up during daylight hours, we were also unable to confirm or deny (we'd grown weary of cross-referencing Google sources at this point) whether he'd won a Daytime Emmy Award either.

Be that as it may, Shia has somehow found himself on our boozing radar, the coordinates of which are typically more fine tuned and for which we likely now have to call a repairman. Regardless, the star of Surf's Up and the latest Indiana Jones installment was recently arrested for allegedly drunken disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing in the wee hours of the early morning, wandering around a Chicago chain drug store, and while we can appreciate the need to pick up some domes and perhaps a sugary late night snack for a lady friend at such an unorthodox hour, testing the wild-eyed, insomnious patience of a security guard with a billy club isn't advisable, especially without greater star recognition.

Speaking of which, Rebecca DeMornay, appropriately enough the star of Risky Business (whose tastes in men ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime--Tom Cruise and Leonard Cohen, respectively) was recently busted for a DUI in Beverly Hills.

The Shark Guys

Drunk Girls on Facebook: The Sh*t-Faced Femmes of Facebook

The Internet has long been a blessing for creeps and stalkers the world over and arguably the greatest gift it has given them has been Facebook, which is at the forefront of “social-networking sites” (anti-social networking having fallen off the typical MBA syllabus in the mid-80s). Facebook, in which Microsoft recently invested millions (a move that this Guardian columnist puts somewhere on the level of going to the racetrack and betting on the horse with the nicest eyes), allows you to stalk comfortably from your home, without having to jump into a thorn-filled bush to avoid being spotted, or ruining your favorite slacks by getting garbage-juice on them whilst sifting through the neighbor’s green bin.

Information that in years past would have required a private detective of Magnum PI-like skills to unearth is now visible to all of a person’s most far-fetched connections (at least those who haven’t been relegated to the shameful “limited-profile” status). While you might have one day expected to cross paths with that guy in elementary school who beat you up because you carried a briefcase to school, you would likely have expected this chance meeting to occur while he was pumping your gas and you were wild-eyed and chain-smoking – not via a Facebook message in which he reminisces on your school days as “such a larf!”.

Despite the privacy concerns it raises, and the doors to one’s troubled past it opens, Facebook has become hugely popular and most users do not fret a bit about keeping their Facebook fold informed of the yawning minutiae of their daily lives – events that, in the past, it would have seemed exceedingly arrogant to detail in a greeting card.

The UK newspaper The Daily Mail recently ran a finger-wagging piece on one group of Facebook members who truly could not give less of a sh*te about traditional public/private boundaries called 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night – 80 reasons fewer than the 110 signposts offered by the tour guides for the recreationally drunk, The Shark Guys, in the seminal “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery”. (All the reasons referred to in the group's name, including “You find yourself peeing behind random buildings”, can be found here). Postings from this group comprise in part pics of women on the back-end of benders, passed out, exposing themselves, falling into bushes, or, in other words, behaving like 90% of the men their age who go out on Saturday nights.

The Daily Mail's story, the word count of which seems to have been padded by the headline “The ladettes who glorify their shameful drunken antics on Facebook”, achieves a tabloid double-whammy both by striking a conservative pose and churlishly criticizing these girls’ drunken antics, while at the same time finding an excuse to run large photos of young women with knickers in plain sight (the two we've run here being preferable in case nosy-bastard coworkers are a problem where you are).

We speak from experience when we say that journalism is largely the domain of those whose first choice of job, professional alcoholic, was unavailable, and as such we're guessing that the latter reason – Rule 141 of the Tabloid Handbook: When in doubt, think “Girls Gone Wild” and work from there – factored far more heavily into the decision to run the story. (Click here for full article)

The Shark Guys

Drinking and driving in the deathmobile

Unless you’re a signatory to some government/Nasa Area 51 non-disclosure pact, or otherwise other-stratosphere rich, it’s unlikely that your desire to have your ashes fired off into space along with the charred remains of your lifetime accumulation of Star Wars memorabilia will be accommodated. As such, your final ride on this earth, or to put it another way, God’s checkered flag coming down on the victory lap of your life, will be in a hearse – and hopefully not the late model, back-firing jalopy pictured here. [Editor’s Note: This would of course precede, depending on your particular religious beliefs, you being shot up to heaven via some kind of seraphic service elevator.]

Hearses were originally horse-drawn and lest you think the word itself was derived from a slurred, drunken elocution of "horse"—unfortunately, it wasn’t. (The origin of "hearse" isn’t that compelling and for a dreary explanation click here, or feel free to circulate our more interesting derivation). What's certain though, is stopping every hundreds yards or so for an equine plop must’ve really detracted from the solemnity of the proceedings, and resulted in the wiping of many an extra tear and the covering of many a nose.

The development of the internal combustion engine (the trend of caskets being pulled by a convoy of underpaid cyclists having been short-lived) put an end to the funereal use of beasts of burden, giving rise to consumers having a whole range of opulent choices like Rolls Royce, Jaguars or Mercedes, so that their final commute to that big, luxury showroom in the sky is a smooth one. For the easy-riding set, there’s even a motorcycle-style hearse with a sidecar—not recommended for navigating winding, hilly terrain (or for those with any sense of dignity and decorum).

In New Zealand, a beer-guzzling mourner took a hearse out for a mid-funeral "joy ride", though it’s hard to grasp how much joy could have been derived from the stunt given both what we would assume to be the solemnity of the day and the fact that the weighty conveyance couldn’t even outrun a postal vehicle, except on a 30-degree slope with a stomach-stapling casualty riding in the rear.

Indeed, while the authors of The Shark Book covered the aftermath of the customary booze-up that is part of many earthly farewells in a chapter of the book entitled "Last Call and Last Rites: Funereal Debauchery", none of those mashed mourners went so far as to steal a hearse (though one drunk non-mourner did plow through a funeral procession, which, in one of the book's darker ironies, was being held for a person killed by a drunk driver).

With numerous police officers on hand, eating up time and a half as they always are on such occasions, and lead-foot funeral directors in hot pursuit, the hearse thief, who’d been drinking all day, didn’t get far. Upon his capture, the one that didn’t get away told authorities he was "going fishing", but that first he wanted to "check out the sea conditions”. And yes, just in case you were wondering, a delivery was not waiting in the back of the commandeered death wagon. [Full story here]

The Shark Guys

Robert Goulet: The "T" is silent and, sadly, so is he...

We here at TheSharkBook.com momentarily paused with our drinks in mid-air on Tuesday, took in the news that Robert Goulet had passed away, finished what was remaining in a single gulp and, once the next round was served, raised our glasses and said “To Goulet!” (We then retired to our respective homes and shot up our television sets).

Our ties to Monsieur Goulet are shaky: one of us has a French Canadian background and the other is a fellow graduate of the University of Toronto who also studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music (and ruined more than one soprano’s sense of pitch with less than inspired noodling on the oboe – eschewing the electric guitar, following a less than reputable source’s suggestion that woodwind guys get all the chicks). Yet we thought it fitting that we mark Goulet’s passing on to that great hotel, resort and casino in the sky (the “Foxy Boxing” in Heaven is rumored to be superb) by doing what we do and paying tribute to an incident involving Goulet and alcohol, which as William James once noted has the “power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour”.

Despite the average American citizen hearing the national anthem constantly throughout years of schooling and at every public event they attend apart from charity car washes, some of that country’s most famous citizens have managed to botch the lyrics or otherwise sully the ditty in front of thousands on numerous occasions. Roseanne’s turn at a San Diego Padres game is the first to come to mind, but there have been others including an embarrassing outing for Michael Bolton (check that out here and note the intensity of the booing when he forgets the lyrics and how it seems to go beyond mere patriotic zeal and enter into “We just don’t like Michael Bolton” territory), and even Bobby Vinton (click here for his botched version of the anthem – capped off by a Polish joke from the commentator). Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler thought he’d come up with a brilliant flourish when singing the anthem at the Indianapolis 500 by closing with “and the land of the INDIANAPOLIS 500!” The war veterans in the audience led the chorus of boos and Tyler later apologized. And for some inexplicable reason, someone figured it would be a good idea to ask gold-medal Olympian Carl Lewis to sing the anthem before an NBA game (it was not).

Surprisingly, none of these incidents involved alcohol consumption, as far as we know. However, our favorite tale in this regard, and the one in which Mr. Goulet took the central role, did.

Goulet was hired to sing the anthem prior to the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight on May 25, 1965 in Lewiston, Maine. Though born in the US, Goulet was raised mostly in Canada and had not performed the anthem publicly prior to that booking (whether or not he serenaded passengers on buses making the border run between Niagara Falls and Buffalo is not mentioned in wire reports). Still he was a big fight fan and the gig meant a pair of free tickets, so he accepted.

Goulet had dinner with the governor of Maine prior to the big fight, leaving occasionally to go out on the porch and “practice” – i.e. drink wine.

Later in the evening, all of the under-card’s talent had slugged it out and it was Mr. Goulet’s turn to fire the crowd up with a bit of nationalistic fervor to mix in with the bloodlust. He botched the opening line, singing “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early night” (some wondered about Goulet’s powers of prophesy as it was indeed an “early night”, with the controversial main event not lasting a full round). Journalists at the time also insisted that he made a second mistake later on in the song, singing “gave proof through the fight”, though Goulet himself only owned up to the first gaffe. An eyewitness account referenced in this story, which suggests that Goulet was off-key and out of synch with the organ accompaniment, but that he “managed to slur his way through it”, suggests that the great Goulet’s powers of recall are not to be trusted on this point.

Goulet would go on to provide the silky baritone soundtrack to more than one Las Vegas evening, however this story never left him and whenever he was at ringside during a big match at Caesar’s Palace, some wag would be sure to pipe up with: “How’s about a few bars of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ Goulet!”

To his credit though, Goulet braved this early drunken shaming and made it up to Americans by delivering dozens of note-perfect renditions of the anthem at all sorts of sporting events, as well as singing the Canadian anthem at Wrestlemania VI, a historic moment that was soon overshadowed by Rowdy Roddy Piper painting half of his body black in an attempt at racial solidarity.

“To Goulet!”

The Shark Guys