Bear Stern: Ursa Major Mauls Mashed Mom and Have A Shark Sandwich on Us: The Shark Guys Mark 100 Blog Entries!

When a tiger nearly made an “uno” out of the duo Siegfried & Roy, the effete conjurer Siegfried did not heed this clear warning that wild animals do not belong in the world of men in sequined jumpsuits, but rather insisted that the tiger that mauled his sidekick was "protecting rather than attacking him".

A similarly baffling disconnect from reality guided the life of the sad lunatic Timothy Treadwell, subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man”, who took Winnie The Pooh as cinema verite and decided to spend his summers among grizzly bears. He didn’t survive his final trip, because, having been lulled into a false sense of security by previous trips when bears had not packed their lunchboxes with his innards, he didn’t bring along the arsenal that we would assume mandatory for such a camp-out: a portable drum of bear spray, sticks of dynamite to light and throw behind you when a bear doesn’t buy your “play dead” routine, a tank etc.

What makes these stories truly puzzling is that they cannot be blamed squarely on the drink – Siegfried and Roy have been performing for decades and heck even Charles Bukowski was known to sober up from time to time. Treadwell, although a recovering alcoholic (who might well still be alive today if he had just kept on boozing) at the time of his death, would have had to have had Budweiser air-dropped in to reach him at his remote Alaskan camps.

In our book, the first-ever published compendium of blue-ribbon drunk stories taken from newspapers around the world “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, we covered feats that were just as gallingly dangerous as the above, but at least those featured in the chapter “Man Bites Dog and Dog Bites Back” were plastered at the time.

One of the stories in that chapter, “Bear-ly Legal”, chronicles the exploits of a drunken Ukrainian man who thought himself so strong that no human could best him, and decided to seek out suitable competition in the bear cage of his local zoo – only alert zookeepers kept him from a Treadwell-ian-like fate.

You can imagine our surprise then when we came across an international news item involving yet another drunk mauled by a bear in the Ukraine. The woman reportedly wandered into the bear enclosure at a local farm, an intrusion which upset one of its occupants – the kind of upset that animals of that species tend to externalize by mauling to death the intruder. The next time you feel bad for opening a door on two lovers at a party thinking it’s the bathroom, just think of how much it might have been.

Along with making sure that our record of chronicling ursine-related drunk stories remains in tact, we also have an announcement to make: this is our 100th blog! It’s been quite the ride, with quite the number of DUI convictions along the way. While not as remarkable an accomplishment as, say, having lived 100 years and being first on your block to get a letter shuffled out by the lowly aid of a high-ranking government official (click here for an example of how to do it up right should you live to 100), we did want to mention it and thank everyone who has stopped by and had a round with us. We're enjoying the party and are glad to have made the acquaintance of a few new drinking buddies to add to our ever-expanding circle, among them the good folks at CollegeDrinker.com where we regularly contribute Shark material.

We'll continue to belly up to the bar three times a week to bring you the best drunk stories, drinking trends and all matter of alcohol-soaked news.

Salut!

The Shark Guys

'Pub Angels' to Bring Florence Drunks Back to Earth

Cross-cultural exchanges programs allow students to gain a deeper appreciation of other cultures, to step outside the bounds of the familiar and explore… Ah, who we are kidding, student-exchange programs are mostly about getting drunk and hopefully laid in some place other than that listed on your beginner’s driver’s license. As such, the “cultural exchanges” taking place may not be what mom and pop read about in promotional literature for these programs.

Take for example the type of “cultural exchange” currently happening in Florence, Italy. Florence, along with Rome, has seen a strong influx of students from the UK and US who spend a term of their studies over there. While these students might take a recipe for a knock-out pasta fagioli with them and be able to make an Italian person feel at home by cursing them in their native tongue, the citizens in Florence get to witness their drinking culture go from one of reserved imbibing to the more violent, binge-drinking style of boozing that is favored in the UK and the US.

Florence is looking to reverse this trend by enlisting volunteers to help monitor the city’s bars and piazzas and discourage “exaggerated drinking”. These people would be called “pub angels” (serving the opposition function of the angels we covered here) wear bright-colored vests, and go around trying to “dissuade drinkers from having one too many”. This, as far as volunteer jobs go, sounds like a right crappy one, but no mention was made of any perceived difficulty in getting people to do this.

It’s also optimistic on the part of city officials to think that a program like this would meet with any success whatsoever unless the “angels” are trained in some sort of bone-breaking martial art and/or carry pepper-spray and a stungun. Brits or Americans faced with a guy sporting a bright-colored vest and engaging in an attempt to “dissuade” them from excessive drinking are unlikely to be met with a “Was I that drunk? Pardon me sir! I’ll be on my way then.” Those who have actually picked up some of the language are more likely to offer a variation of the following: “Vaffanculo a Lei, la sua moglie, e' la sua madre. Lei e' un cafone stronzo. Io non mangio in questo merdaio! Vada via in culo!” (See above link for translation and don’t try this out on your Italian roommate before you do).

Mile Pie-Eyed Club: Drunk Duct Taped to his Seat

Duct tape has many uses as you’ll know from jokes that have been hammered into the ground on a certain show set in a hunting lodge and based on the premise that men are, at the end of the day, basically stupid and that this observation contains enough material to mine for an eternity. In less family-friendly venues, duct-tape is most commonly used to seal the gobs of hostages to keep them from hollering for their freedom as they’re dumped into the trunk of a Cadillac. Your more sadistic baddies will let said hostage grow a moustache first, make sure that the tape covers it, and then, once in a soundproof room, inquire “What’s that you’re trying to say? I can’t quite hear you”, before ripping it off in one cruel tug and eliciting screams from the captive.

But duct-tape is not just for villains. It can be a tool for good as well, and just today was employed to restrain a troublemaker on a flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Details are sketchy so far, however what’s clear is that the passenger involved was putting some frequent flier miles on his liver when he decided perhaps that the drinks trolley was moving too slowly for his liking and went to attack a flight attendant.

About seven years ago or so something happened involving planes that makes doing anything of this sort while flying a really, really bad idea. Fellow passengers jumped in and came to the attendant’s assistance. Somebody was quick-thinking enough to produce duct tape, and we’re guessing that the better part of a roll of the stuff was used to make sure that the drunken lunatic would adhere to his seat, even if he wasn’t adhering to airline safety rules (that is your adhesion joke of the day).

An FBI spokeswoman says the Orange County man was arrested on suspicion of interfering with a flight crew when the United Airlines flight from Hong Kong landed in LA.

Toothpaste for Boozehounds: Get your choppers your whitest, with wine, whiskey flavors

For the average boozehound, dredging themselves out of bed and scraping a toothbrush across their hairy tongue, is part of the pre-work grooming regimen (after dousing less than fragrant loafers with the remainder of a bottle of cologne).

The taste of toothpaste though, is second only to a whiff of the previous night's poisons when it comes to potentially launching that morning bagel into an anti-gravity, toilet-bound trajectory.

So, it's a wonder that at Toothpasteworld.com, speaking of gravity, you can procure all sorts of boozy flavors that would turn your stomach worse than a NASA gyroscope.

Michigan dentist and self-professed 'toothpaste collector' Val Kolpakov features American-produced bourbon, whiskey, wine, and for the high-rolling set, champagne flavors.

Why these exist is anyone's guess, as the market

for people looking to give themselves booze breath when they're not drinking is likely a small one and those who are drinking would like to rid themselves of it.

Of interest, Jigger Bourbon Whiskey Flavored Toothpaste, pictured here: The 'refreshing' [source's quotation marks] morning-after pick up. It contains real alcohol - no more than 3% alcohol by wt., 2oz, so if you haven't slept all night, you can refresh your hellfire and asbestos-singeing breath with the flavors of the night before.

Don't forget to floss.

Cheap Beer in Somalia: Website Lists Prices of Pints Around the World

Air travel is becoming more affordable and places that had been shut off from the rest of the world are opening up – like the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan for example, or Hamilton, Ontario Canada. But what good is visiting another country unless we know beforehand exactly how much a pint of beer will cost when we get there? Thankfully, UK tabloid The Sun helpfully directed the attention of its readers today to www.pintprice.com, a website that allows users to find out the price of a pint of suds in various places around the world.

The website also lists the countries with the cheapest and most expensive ales in the world. Unfortunately, the cheapest beer, 10p (20 cents) a glass, is to be found in places to which your travel insurance is unlikely to extend, like the Congo and Somalia or locales so inaccessible that even the natives have forgotten how their ancestors made the trip originally like Tuvalu in the Pacific Islands. Monaco tops the list of countries that we’ll never visit – there a pint of beer is over US$15.

Planning a summer getaway? Here are some other average pint prices from around the world:

• Go to Cuba (unless you’re an American and not Michael Moore) and celebrate the recent lifting of restrictions that kept locals out of Cuban hotels and beaches by toasting those no longer treated like second-class citizens in their own country with a $2 pint.
• Former Maoist rebels recently won an election in Nepal and many believe that former King Gyanendra might seek asylum in India because he fears for his life. A jar of jam can be had in Kathmandu for $2.05.
• The junta in Myanmar (Burma) will be holding a nationwide referendum on its constitution in May with many critical of whether the Army is truly capable of allowing democracy in a land it’s ruled with an iron fist for so many years. A glass of the good stuff there will set you back a mere 62 cents.
• An official from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran, Iran today to find answers after Western intelligence reports suggested that the country had been secretly studying how to make nuclear bombs. The average price of a pint of the amber elixir in that country is $7.71.
• Pope Benedict has returned to Vatican City after a goodwill tour in the US. A glass of hops in the Holy See goes for $3.30.
• Oh, and Bhutan, along with being the world’s newest democracy, is also home to some cheap booze – the average price of a pint there is $0.73.

Punch Drunk in Aisle One: Barfly Picks Fight with Boxing Coach at Shop

In boxing parlance, a "tomato can" is a hand-picked schlub brought in to go a few rounds with the champ, whose odds of scoring an upset are comparable to say, Madison, Wisconsin landing the next games of the Olympiad.

While these guys are technically professional fighters, at least when they're not earning a living as roofers, drywallers and doing other jobs that don't require a background check, it's not uncommon for the town drunk to take one glassy-eyed look at one of these soft around the midriff ham 'n' eggers and think to themselves, "I could take 'em"--especially if he's facing the other way and I'm swinging a barstool. It's no accident then that "punch drunk" has become part of the lexicon as we'll see in this story.

A London man, on the back end of a two-day drink and cocaine-fueled bender, “weekends” as Keith Richards calls ‘em, walked up to a fellow shopper, 23, and accused him of "gie' in evils” to him. The shopper tried to ignore him (having no clue what “gie’ in evils” means, we would have done the same, though we assume the language barrier didn’t apply here), but the drunk would not quit. He got in the man’s face and punched him before pulling out a sharpened key and slashing the man across the chest. He then challenged the man to “Gie us your best shot”. What the cocaine-addled thug didn’t know about the man in the grocery store buying baby-wipes was that he coached boxing for a living, and a bare-knuckled punch from him is not something that most people would willingly invite.

The boxer laid out the drunk with one almighty shot that smashed his jaw and left him in hospital for two days. The judge took the accused’s having to stick to liquids for a long while into account when accepting his guilty plea to a charge of assault, rather than the attempted murder charge he had been brought in on. The judge gave our binging friend three years in prison, where he will no doubt have people “gie’in” him their best shot, invited or otherwise.

Hallelujah! Now Pass the Beer Nuts: Ministry to Open in Bar

Barring getting lost on the way back from an after-hours bar and popping into one to grab a nap on the way home, it is unlikely that you will see either of the Shark Guys occupying church pew space on a Sunday morning. That said, this story did nearly cause a religious conversion of Paul on the Road to Damascus-like power. It was later determined that the bright lights we thought we saw and errantly attributed to a beacon from a celestial lighthouse were caused by a combination of dehydration and standing up too fast.

Pope Benedict XVI (Return of the Robed One) is currently on his first visit to the US, which has the third-largest Catholic population in the world – this is a fact made most clear in Mafia movies in which gangsters, despite being pimps, killers and thieves of the worst order, can still be counted on to put on a clean shirt for little Antoinette’s baptism. The pope’s goal this time round is to inject a little enthusiasm into a faith knocked sideways by the scandals of various touchy-feely fathers (of the spurned “Russian hands and Roman fingers” sect) and the fact that even Mother Teresa was recently found to have been a closet atheist.

We wish him all the best, but really if he wants to see those collection plates filling up like they did in the good old days when the church owned everything and had the business end of a bayonet ready for naysayers, we suggest he pay attention to the moves made recently by a reverend in Sidney, Ohio. The senior pastor of Sidney First United Methodist Church decided to move his ministry, saying, “We want to minister to them where they are”. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know exactly where they are: at the bar. Thus the reverend has decided to open the Country Rock Church in the Pub Lounge, a typical bar located off the interstate.

The worship sessions will feature “food, fun, and faith”, and those lacking in the third category might just end up converted if the integral fourth “F” – free-flowing booze – is also on offer.

Blue Jays Fans Balk at Beer Ban

The typical baseball game lasts about as long as The Godfather parts I and II, with long periods of inactivity punctuated by short bursts to the bathrooms to piss out all the suds used to down all the peanuts in the gallery. In these cheap seats, especially during a "pitcher's duel" (baseball parlance for when even less than the nothing that usually happens, happens) the combination of heat stroke and freely flowing beer results in normally staid Toronto fans turning into warring savages in the upper deck.

Before the Jays moved into their cozy, retractable domed-roof confines, they occupied an outdoor stadium situated right by the lake, and on a typical opening day the "Boys of Summer" would be fielding ground balls in a snowdrift. During these lean years, it was nearly impossible to bear those temperatures without ingesting a Great Lake's worth of booze (picture the loogan in the accompanying photo clutching a stubby bottle of an aged Molson product and you'll get an idea of how 90 percent of the cheap seats looked in those days).

This season, in a bid to one-up church in the competition for the place with the fewest number of empty seats on a Sunday, the Blue Jays have started a $2 promotion for nosebleed seating. This drew the kind of crowd that is not overly interested in whether inter-league play truly was the most exciting development in baseball in the last 50 years, but rather those who enjoy punching in the head people who take opposing stands on such mundane issues. Some 100 people were ejected during the Jays' home opener, a development that president Paul Godfrey links to booze: "“It’s really unfortunate when some of them feel it’s a night club here." It should be noted that if the Rogers Dome were a nightclub, it would be the worst nightclub on the planet.

Regardless, sports fans who want to support their home team for $2 bucks, get drunk, and knee their fellow sports fans in the face hopefully got enough of that in during the home opener because the organization plans to ban beer sales in the ultra cheap $2 upper deck seats, and is even considering ending the two-buck promotion due to the drunken brawling . Violent though it was, the cheap seat punch-ups marked the first time that Jays fans have enjoyed themselves at a baseball game since the team's back-to-back World Series wins.

Since getting faced in the cheap seats was one of the few fun things remaining about baseball, expect the tumbleweed to be blowing through the upper deck of the Rogers Dome and for the unruly fans to be exhibiting their Labatt lunacy in the comfort of their own homes.

An Inconvenient Truth for Boozers: Global Warming Threatens Beer Supply!

Many who saw “An Inconvenient Truth” left the theatre with one clear thought: I need a drink. The motivation for this would vary among viewers – for some it was the idea that they had just laid out their hard-earned entertainment dollar for the kind of thing that should have been on PBS, for others the combination of the dulcet tones of the former vice-president with all those bloody graphs and maps, and for others the impending doom that it preached was right on our doorstep. Regardless, it was nice to knock back a few cold ones when that one was over, blast the air-con, and content oneself with the knowledge that the globe was not that warm yet (this something that Canadians who suffered through one hell of a winter this year would also attest to).

The causes of global warming are debatable –scientists, maybe hoping for an honorable mention the next time the Nobels are handed out, have weighed in on this one by suggesting that it is caused by everything from the Olympic Torch to, uh, gassy moose. But what’s pretty widely accepted is the fact that globally temperatures are rising, and one threat has arisen that could take away one’s ability to relax after watching a film like “An Inconvenient Truth”: Beer is being threatened by global warming.

A New Zealand climate scientist recently said that rising temperatures would make it more difficult to grow malting barley, which as any tippler worth the price of a pint knows, is a key ingredient in beer. The doomsayer told the Institute of Brewing and Distilling: “It will mean either there will be pubs without beer [this makes the depressing Irish tune “The Pub With No Beer” seem prophetic] or the cost of beer will go up.”

That such a scenario could happen in the next 30 years is very worrying indeed, especially for those of us who are accustomed to a “beer crisis” referring to what happens when you leave one in the freezer for so long that you can no longer drink it. New strains of barley that cope better with the heat will need to be developed – double-time you scientists!

But, being the kind of guys who find silver linings on the darkest of shit-storm clouds, let us remind you that some forward-thinking brewers in Greenland got the jump on global warming a couple of years ago by bottling a brew with crystal clear water from what would appear to be an inexhaustible source: the country’s polar icecaps. Water from the melted caps is a key ingredient in Greenland Beer.

Smoking Bans Increase DUI rates: Of Cancer sticks and stick shifts

Cigarettes and alcohol make a natural pairing. Before cigarettes were invented, people's non-drinking hand would be used to say, illustrate a point about macro economic theory or indicate 'two more please' while the other would be tested keeping the contents of the glass level as your bar legs gave way.

In fact, many vices go together quite naturally, such as pulling the slot machine lever while taking copious sips of complimentary cranberry-based cocktails, or using a pint of your favorite lager to down a nighttimes' worth of pharmaceutical pleasures, while laying down $5 bets on whether the next person to enter a bar was male or female.
In the first study of its kind, a study in the Journal of Public Economics (a real page turner, especially if you're doing hard time and have reading materials restricted) looked at the relationship between the recent spate of smoking bans and DUI rates and the results have anti-smoking advocates fuming.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the University of South Carolina noticed there was an increase in drunk driving accidents in non-smoking cities, as well as the boundary lines that surrounded them. Their conclusion: people like to smoke while drinking (duh) and will go to great lengths to find a bar where you can do both.

Another possibility: people unable to smoke in bars, will light up in their cars drunk, compromising the 'keep your hands on the 9 and 3 o'clock position of the wheel' driving school admonition (resulting in the less popular/effective, 'one hand on 6 o'clock with a cigarette in the other, puffing out the window while listening to Journey's greatest hits' position).

We're not entirely sure what impact this study will have, but we could sure go for a smoke and a cold one right about now.

Cheap Booze Shoplifter: “You’re calling the cops over four beers?”

Who out there hasn’t, while gazing upon some luxury item that is beyond one’s means – a bottle of fine perfume perhaps, or a lady-in-a-bikini bottle opener – thought, “Would that it could be mine, but alas, I don’t have the requisite funds. If only I had the guts to steal it.” Barring a stint in our teens during which we may or may not have stolen anything that wasn’t nailed down, however, most of us feel that shoplifting is wrong – even when it’s a big corporation that couldn’t possibly miss one little item – or we just don’t want to be embarrassed by being hauled into some backroom and put under the bright lights for an interrogation by mall cops, so we either go without or go into debt when it comes to the things we want.

Call it nature, nurture, or Florida, but some people are unrepentant when it comes to availing themselves of the five-finger discount. A woman in Crestview Florida walked into a Tom Thumb 81 grocery store on Sunday, went straight for the cooler, pulled out a four-fer of Anheuser-Busch’s “Natural Ice Beer” – a 5.9% beer that scored 1.02 out of 5 on ratebeer.com, though one that is unlikely to be consumed by anybody who would think to Google a beer brand – and stuffed it under her sweater.

The clerk saw her take the beer and asked her if she planned on paying for it. The woman underscored the importance of non-verbal communication by walking out of the store silently and getting into her car. The clerk followed her out and said that she would write down the woman’s license plate number and call the cops if she didn’t return the beer, to which the woman replied: “You’re calling the cops for four beers?” And to which she might have added, “And four cheap beers at that?”

The clerk did not accept the woman’s attempt to put things into perspective in this manner, and decided that she would involve the police. A check was run on the woman’s car and her most recent address found. She wasn’t there, however -- she was apparently enjoying the shoplifted suds somewhere else.

Help Wanted: $14 / Hour Boozehound

Everyone has a dream job, whether it's stuffing envelopes in the comfort of your own bathrobe, or walking dogs for the elderly in the hopes that advancing senility will result in an inheritance accidentally willed your way.

For the drinking set, the definition of a dream job is simply one whose rigors can be forgotten as soon as they've skipped off two hours early for a 'dentist appointment' that involves convening at the billiard hall happy hour.

For the seasoned boozer, whose grocery bills are regularly eclipsed by liquor store hauls, scouring want ads for new employment is daunting, especially as emergency savings are pissed away buying rounds for the lady who tap dances on the bar.

A Winsor, England man, posted a gig that is by any tippler's definition, a dream job, and one that, like the forklift guy in the warehouse who spins around in circles, involves drinking on the job (and not the kind of 'get paid to drink' gig that requires a CAT scan or your ability to memorize conversational Spanish scrutinized behind a two-way mirror).

The job poster, who recently put his father in an assisted living home and was concerned that pops was too far removed from his mates, put the notice up in the local job office, seeking a twice-weekly drinking buddy for the old timer, to the tune of $14/ hour, plus "expenses". If these expenses include buying a round for everyone in the bar because you can't believe your good fortune, we'd be willing to submit our CVs and regale the old cacker with tales from our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery. We'd only ask for a pub with a nice big fireplace, two woolen sweaters and pipes to be smoked during our readings.

According to the son, who is likely going to be left out of the will by pawning the old codger off on some neighborhood rummy, his 88-year old pa is "a very intelligent man with a physics and math degree." At least it won't be that much of a challenge calculating how much to leave in the tip jar.

Soccer Player DUI Bust En Route to Practice

If you're in a bar and dragged into a discussion over what constitutes a sport and the waitress can't come quickly enough with your bill so that you can extricate yourself from the situation--- without suffering a pounding headache in addition to the one you've already sustained from the pitchers of stale beer--here are two definitions that will serve you well:

1. If you perspire during play, it's a sport (this disqualifies baseball and cricket).
[Editor's note: If the horse perspires, this doesn't count. If you're playing patio darts and you perspire, it doesn't count either]

2. If you're able to quaff a beer without interrupting the course of play, it's not a sport (this includes bowling, darts and the aforementioned baseball and cricket).

That being said, this doesn't diminish the athletic achievements of one John Daly, spotlighted earlier in the first installment of our Boozing Athletes series, whose ability to swing a golf club while simultaneously pinching the bottoms of clubhouse staff and swilling beers, leaves him in a class by himself, at least as far as athletes are concerned.

Today, we turn our attention to the world's most popular sport, soccer, or 'football' to those who take great pains in pointing out its proper name, despite this being news to absolutely no one. It's quite common for the average punter to lament how athletes sign a big fat extension, and proceed to phone in their performance once the pen has graced the surface of the contract. Of course, there are exceptions. One guy who can't be accused of dogging it, is Norwich midfielder Matthew Pattison, whose nightclub piss up the night before, or more accurately, three hours before, did not prevent him from attempting to make his morning practice.

What did, though, was the presence of cops tipped off by the hotel owner where Pattison was staying and, as a result, the first and only orange pylons he encountered that day were those of the roadside spot check.

It's not uncommon for a night on the town to blur into a day at the office, but in many cases, say that of the ornery bus driver who burps a reply when asked for directions, they're not the most physically demanding of jobs and you can blame your computer monitor for your bloodshot eyes if the bossman happens by the cubicle.

Now, if you're a professional athlete, it's a different story. Soccer players are well-known to shed 10 lbs during 90 minutes of play, and to keep up this level of match fitness, practice drills are intense enough to have even sober players rainbow retching all over the pitch. Luckily for Pattison, he was able to spend a few, less grueling hours, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and filling out police paperwork.