New Coke Vitamin Water (Bottle of snake oil not included)

Tales of Coke's ability to dissolve a set of choppers in a glass overnight or to put a sheen on a rust-stained kitchen sink might be urban legends (we ended up eating the T-bone we had soaking in a vat of the stuff, so we can't comment conclusively on that one, but don't recommend this method of preparation to diabetics), there is no doubt that the soft drink has ruined many alcoholic beverages. As far as we're concerned, Coke is the sine qua non wimp-additive for those who can't handle their liquor, and responsible for ruining otherwise perfectly good rum. You can distinguish the coke-base drunk from your typical drunk by the rotten teeth that accompany his pickled liver in his golden years.

The "Cuba Libre", (or Rum & Coke) as it's known in countries, such as Canada, where freedom of mobility rights extend to actually visiting there whenever you choose, is the world's most popular highball though the "Coke" part is usually abandoned for straight rum by the time the taste-buds warm to it, or when someone turns 17---whatever comes first.

Now, Coke, which was a lot more fun when it was being hawked in the sticks as a coca-leaf infused patent medicine, is returning to its old-timey hucksterism glory days with the introduction of a "vitamin drink" to compete with Gatorade, because when you think "vitamins", your neurons automatically fire "malty, high-caloric, brown sugar beverage".

This drink, Vitaminwater, counts among its high-profile endorsers, fast-break fornicator Kobe Bryant, and a bunch of NBA ballers, who if they were compensated well-enough, would even smack their lips at the prospect of a root vegetable turnip-based libation.

Back in our day, its competitor Gatorade came in a packet not unlike the cheese in Kraft Dinner and was mixed with several parts water on the soccer field , and would've been dumped on the coach in victory had we not lost or forfeited every game.

Apparently, according to reports, this saccharine soylent green currently occupies 80% of the sports drink market, and Coke is looking to get in on the action. Shockingly, according to the website Scienceline, Coke is not putting out the healthiest product on the market. First, some vitamins are water-soluble -- ie they can pass into your bloodstream easily via water, and others are fat-soluble which means you can gulp back as much Vitaminwater as you like, but unless you're washing back a meal, you're unlikely to enjoy any benefits whatsoever. (And if you are washing back a meal with vitamin water, we don't want to have dinner with you.) Moreover, the two heaping tablespoons of sugar that are dumped into every bottle of Vitaminwater will ensure that while you are deluding yourself about the health benefits of this sugary drink, your dentist will be out in his driveway patting down his new Mercedes with a baby's diaper and thanking the heavens for the arrival of Vitaminwater.

Vitamins in the B-complex group are water-soluble, and if you're a heavy drinker, then it's likely that you will develop a vitamin-B deficiency over time. While its claims to producing the "Gatorade of Beers" might be a stretch, at least Stampede, the Texas brewer of a Vitamin-B-infused beer, has got its vitamin basics down.

Big Deal: Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) Switches to Paper Bags, Maintains Python-like Grip on Booze Sales

When it comes to purchasing alcoholic bevvies in our home province, there is only one game in town and that is the retail equivalent of Dodge Ball, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). When Ontarians speak of going to "The Beer Store", or "The Liquor Store" it is not due to some inherent Canadian fondness for speaking in generalities, but an actual trademark reflecting the incredible heights of the government's creativity.

The LCBO holds a government monopoly over the sale of alcohol. To suggest that this should be otherwise is practically a form of apostasy and categorically dismissed not only by the folks who benefit from such an arrangement (the cashiers who lug your cold ones out of storage for $29 an hour in the case of the Beer Store), but by digit waggers who believe that corner store hawkers would be less than diligent about checking for ID (kinda like R Kelly) and that society would descend into oil-drum fire burning, Hobbesian lawlessness.

Of course, these are the same folks who fail to realize that booze is actually purchased for minors by older brothers or more commonly, the guy who hangs around the parking lot who will do it if you slip him a fiver. [Editor's note: those do-gooders also believe the allure of cigarettes is so compelling to young people wandering into a corner store looking for cheese doodles, that packs of smokes should be completely hidden from view]

Along with a minority of people who are of the ludicrous belief that keeping a government monopoly in place and thus a competition level of zero in the liquor market actually ensures a better selection of booze, moves to privatize the LCBO have been stonewalled by the lobbying efforts of a union that would have made Jimmy Hoffa look like the boss's arse-kissing son.

To mitigate the natural resentment many feel towards monopolies and being treated like infants, the LCBO blows millions of taxpayer dollars making their stores look like Saks 5th Avenue outlets (unless you live in a bad neighborhood where they don't bother, and where a security guard with a baton will follow you around keeping a watchful eye on your purchase of an Antinori Chanti Classico or can of Schlitz malt liquor). To boost its public image, which is often more tarnished than Phoenician pottery, the LCBO has recently taken to fancying itself a steward of the planet.

"We try as a government to demonstrate the kind of behaviors that we want others to emulate," according to Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan, who is responsible for the LCBO.
[Editor's note: Ontario ranks among the top polluters in North America and is number one in Canada]

According to reports, The LCBO hands out some 80 million bags a year. Now, these will be solely of the paper variety, so the transition between laying down your hard-earned $2.75 for that King can and swilling it right out of the bag on the street will be made that much easier.

Ontarians who've had to make the frozen trek to the nearest government-run liquor store or beer store in the dead of winter, polluting the air with their cars and their curses because they're unable to pick up booze at a grocery store like a normal human being, are unlikely to be too impressed by this too-little-and-too-late bid for good PR.

Beer as Fuel, and not just for your drunk Uncle Lou's awkward advances

In a previous blog, we drove home the true threat posed by global warming. Several polar bears may have been set off on that great ice-floe journey from which there is no return since that posting; however, the danger that we were pointing out looms large much closer to home – as close as your basement fridge – the possibility of a global beer crisis due to a lack of barley.

The warming of the planet, combined with a supply-side crisis, has also resulted in a short supply of hops in the US. Microbreweries, faced with less available hops, a key ingredient in their product, have taken to jacking up their prices, and, unless there is a change in the situation, we may be forced to either pay through the nose or agree with those who taunt us for drinking microbrews and settle for whatever is cheap and available because, after all, beer is beer.

This is the kind of news that is best met drunk. A recent TV news report suggested that beer is recession proof, and we would tend to agree. A few years ago you may have been toasting your good fortune, wondering why in the world someone would give a walking debt machine and astronomically high credit risk like yourself a mortgage. Now, with fortunes having reversed, and gas so expensive that you’re bargaining with the neighbor’s kid for his used 10-speed, you can tilt that same bottle to keep your mind off the dark state of your financial affairs.

Beer, however, is useful for more than just pouring down your throat in an effort to escape from the crippling grim reality of the diminished financial and natural resources of you and your country, although it is quite good for that. Beer is working for a better tomorrow.

The 2008 Democratic Convention will be sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Company. The company’s Coor’s Light, which can most charitably be described as “quite quaffable”, will be on sale at convention events. Despite both he and Hilary Clinton attempting to appeal to the lumpen by palming the odd pint on TV – which we covered here – Barack Obama tied with “none of the above” on a survey asking Americans who among the presidential candidates would make a good drinking partner. To be fair, the best drinking partners we know are able to do things like put cigarettes out on their tongues and so forth, and they would not make good holders of public office.

Perhaps sensing that it would not find a future presidential candidate that was as beer-drinker friendly as Bush, Coors chose a different and innovative tack – rather than merely fueling the drunken antics of young Democrats in functions near the event itself, it will also be fueling the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. As the “official ethanol sponsor” Coors will donate fuel made mostly out of beer waste – E85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol (beer in this case) and 15 per cent gasoline). When we speak of beer waste here, we’re not talking about spillage as a result of a shaken beer, or what results when you knock one over your keyboard while typing out a blog. The waste beer being turned into ethanol by Coors comes from beer that had been lost during packaging, or rejected for quality reasons.

Rarely, have the words of Homer J. Simpson been more appropriate: “Here's to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life's problems.”

Champions League Beer Shortage: Brits Drink Moscow Dry

A common complaint leveled against soccer is that it's boring. Meanwhile, nobody bothers issuing the same critique about baseball, where the guys hawking Amstel get more of a workout running up and down the aisles plying semi-conscious onlookers with cheap suds than the various mesomorphs manning the field and where the play -- which is about as frenetic as a Van Gogh still life -- is interrupted so that a pitcher can practice.

No other sport we're aware of, save for highly competitive mobster bocce ball, allows the flow of action to grind to a halt so that one of the participants can get in a proper warm up while eyelids flutter. Basketball players don't stand around while play stops as a guy who previously temperature-controlled the bench with his arse hoists a few shots at the hoop and soccer players don't lounge about so a substitute, who's just finished wowing middle-aged housewives with sideline calisthenics, can come onto the pitch and take a few practice kicks.

[Editor's note: baseball is also one of the few sports where the manager, even though he's older than fossil fuel, suits up like the players as if a septuagenarian is going to be called in to pinch hit. It's also one of the few outdoor sports in which play is suspended for an amount of rainfall that would not put a halt to the average wedding]

One thing for certain is that for soccer or baseball, whether it's the heaps of abuse screamed at the mascot, impromptu cheap seat 'bat day' beatings, or flares resembling a Hezbollah missile attack fired off in the stands, the real action is either in the crowd, or in the case of British football, the 18 hours prior to kick-off when the heavy drinking commences.

Dutch fans have been known to whiz on automobiles with German plates, fans of some Italian squads to do fascist salutes, Argentinian fans to knife one another pre-match, however these supporters show Salvation Army-like gentility compared with their British counterparts.

That being said, British fans gave a better than usual accounting of themselves recently, when according to the Daily Star, the 80,000 yobs who descended on Moscow for the Champions league final between Man U and Chelsea, didn't kill or maim anyone, but instead, completely depleted the local beer supply.

A United fan noted, “We were all on good form and the drinks were flowing in this little place we had found near the Kremlin. “But suddenly the barmaid threw up her hands and said: ‘No more!’

Fans complained bitterly as the lager ran out and they were told, 'no beer, just vodka'.

For more on beer shortages of a more serious, global nature, click here.

French Happy Hour not so 'appy after all

As we've pointed out a few times here, we're Canadian and many Canadians take great pains to explain to bored foreigners who could not give two shits otherwise: we're much different from Americans. For example, the Great White North, for those of you who don't know, is an officially bilingual state, though in reality English speakers are much more well-versed in what's known as "Cereal box French". For our American friends, this refers to French language proficiency a well-fed gorilla could comfortably master in sign language, and that might lead the average tourist to a bathroom or the nearest lost and found should they be parachuted into Basse Normandie.

Colloquially, it refers to an ability to do little more in "The Language of Love that's not Italian" than read the back of a cereal box and determine its ingredients (say, if peanut products, a plastic inhalable toy or trans fats are contained therein) but would not get you off with Juliet Binoche if you met her in a bar.

For those of us who couldn't converse with an "enfant" with our "terrible" Francais, it's tempting when encountering a Frenchman to simply precede an English word with "La" or "Le" and hope not to be met with quizzical stares.

One phrase that would not be lost in translation, (like the eponymous movie starring Bill Murray should've been), is "Le Binge Drinking", so obviously adopted from the English as in the UK it's their national past-time second only to differentiating themselves from lowly continentals and not combing their hair.

Indeed, there are few countries, save for Russia or Germany, who can even begin to compete with the levels of self-ruination we've chronicled across the pond.

According to a recent report though, even France is battling the scourge of increased public drunkenness and is mulling over the banning of happy hour, that period of time between work and home life that doesn't leave you looking at your watch and wondering when it's time to punch the clock or go to bed.

Other possible measures could include restricting the sale of vodka, whiskey and other high-powered potables in discos to glasses, rather than entire bottles, that you could previously hoist above your head and swing around to the beat of 'Love in this Club' while pouring the contents into the mouth of whoever you'd like to bed that evening.

They are also considering raising the legal age to three years below that of the US, where hairlines can recede, and mortgages can be bought at the comparatively ripe age of 21. Mon dieu! Sacre bleu!

Get 'Em When They're Young: Brewery draws fire for billboard outside primary school

One of the more ghoulish sounding objectives in marketing is the drive to create cradle-to-the-grave consumers. A mind that is still in its formative stages and that does not yet have the capacity to think critically or to visit the website Snopes.com is likely to believe anything, whether it’s religious hullabaloo popularized by ancient tribesman who had yet to understand the germ theory of disease, or the idea that McDonald’s is actually selling something that might fall into one of the four food groups. Indeed, the latter knows that if you include a cheap plastic toy with a youngster’s nutrient-vacant meal, you create a positive impression in that child’s mind and – if he doesn’t’ end up reading “Fast Food Nation” and swearing off that kind of food forever – he’ll likely end up cutting out Mickey D’s coupons out of his newspaper when he’s 45 and about to become a checkmark next to the “grave” portion of the cradle-to-the-grave idea.

Then there are those companies who take matters a step further and hope to “Get ‘em young”, when, legally speaking, they are selling products that the consumer can’t buy until they reach a certain age. Joe Camel, is, of course, the standard bearer in this regard. A chain-smoking cartoon camel that dresses like a pimp might not appeal to your grandpa, but it might make a lifelong brand follower out of a pimply teen who may then later disregard those gruesome displays on cigarette advertising and to whom the threat of impotence might not seem all that important.

Booze companies are also known for occasionally blurring the line between applying to a youthful audience and wanting to replace that bottle of milk in a baby’s mouth with a Mike’s Hard Cranberry.

Tasmanian Brewery Boag may have gone a step too far in the latter direction with its choice of placement for a sign promoting its “St George Beer”: the entrance of a local primary school. As children enter the school, they are greeted with a large advertisement reading “There’s fun brewing”, and while the advert doesn’t show little Johnny tilting one in the sandbox, it does have some local residents concerned that the billboard might corrupt the minds of the youngster.

A 67-year-old grandmother of one of the tots exposed to the advertising was outraged, saying that it advocated binge drinking to impressionable minds. “It's saying, 'Drink, get drunk, it's a great way to have fun'." What the grandmother neglected to mention, however, is that this is 100% true and that getting drunk is in fact one of the best ways to have fun, though it’s the kind of lesson that’s better learned at college keg parties and the like.

The Top Bouncers of All Time!

If your job description includes being able to thrash someone within an inch of their miserable lives and doing so with impunity while enjoying the odd drink on the job, you're either a cop or a bouncer.

Recently, we shone the spotlight on everyone's favorite enablers, bartenders, in our Top 10 Coolest Bartenders of All Time, but what of the guys whose job it is to look menacing and keep raging, violent drunks on the other side of the velvet rope (so they can beat up random strangers, instead of the good folks who patronize your pub)?

Bouncers, like cops, are there to maintain the status quo: ensuring that the good-looking, monied classes get preferential treatment and aren't made to shuffle their feet with the rest of the lumpenproles in line, however this isn't their sole responsibility: they're also called upon to do the kind of math long forgotten since the 5th grade: being able to calculate how old someone is, simply by looking at the date of birth on their authentic, state of Hawaii Driver's License.

Bouncers face occupational hazards that the average cop doesn't have to deal with, the "I could take that guy" delusion that drunks with superhuman Popeye strength brought on by cheap bourbon rather than leafy greens think they possess. A cop faced with a similar notion could, say, have you quickly chalk outlined on the street, whereas a bouncer has to put aside their headset and determine whether a disorderly patron can be talked down, or separated from both their dental work/teary girlfriend and sent a-packing.

You'd think a profession where there's a near constant threat of having a pinot bottle slammed off the side of your noggin like a newly christened cruise ship would land bouncers more film and TV gigs beyond the usual "Sorry sir, I don't see a 'Lindonhoffer', party of two, anywhere on the list?" roles. Generally though, it's their biceps that are called upon to wring the neck of the depressed, drunk protagonist, ignoring pleas of the leading lady as they toss them out of their favorite watering hole.

The doormen we've focused on here however, have accomplished more than simply folding burly arms and wearing suits three sizes too small, they've become pop culture icons.

So, for those who get paid to kick some gluteus max outside the confines of a ring or the auspices of an Athletic Commission, and who'd rather hold out for bribes than slave for tips, we honor the humble bouncer, with our Top Bouncers of All Time!

9) Pat Roach, "A Clockwork Orange": Roach, a Judo black-belt and former wrestler, played a red-bearded bouncer in the Stanley Kubrick classic (below), and though he didn't actually utter any lines, he impressed the director so much that he was cast in "Barry Lyndon" and then famously, as the guy who gets his ass beat twice in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and is dispatched by propeller (right). The mute Clockwork role eventually led to parts in "Never Say Never Again", "Willow" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". For making the most of being menacing, and doing security detail for one of the coolest bars around, the Korova, which serves up narcotics-laced milk rather than the use with which we're more familiar---as a tasty dairy adjunct to Kahlua, Roach lands a spot here.










8) Michael Clarke Duncan, "A Night at the Roxbury": SNL, for the better part of a decade, has brought us mirth-free Saturday nights, but prior to this, they were known to broaden eight-minute sketches into gray matter-atrophying, feature-length forgettables. "A Night at the Roxbury" bucked this trend somewhat, and did its best to derive Toyota Prius-like comic mileage from heads bopping along to the beat of What is Love? (baby don't hurt me). Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking gawk who later starred alongside Tom Hanks in the Green Mile, is no stranger to holding onto a clipboard having held down bouncer roles in both Bulworth and Married with Children for the doorman trifecta.






7) Craig Robinson, "Knocked Up": In most movies, bouncers get about as much dialogue and have as much on-screen presence as a large cactus, but "Knocked Up" bucked that trend with its hilarious exchange between Craig Robinson, of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "The Office" fame and Lesley Mann. Striking a blow on behalf of anyone ever deemed too ugly or old to enter a club, the Mann character lays into the bouncer, "What the fuck is your problem? I'm not going anywhere, you're just some roided out freak with a fucking clipboard!" Robinson, showing that, although all appearances may at times point otherwise, bouncers are human after all admits that the system is unfair, "It's not cause you're not hot, I would love to tap that ass. I would tear that ass up. I can't let you in cause you're old as fuck. For this club, you know, not for the earth."









6) Max Baer, "The Prizefighter and the Lady": Boxer Baer famously got Hitler's mustache in a twist by dispatching Max Schmeling at Yankee stadium, while sporting Star of David trunks. "Madcap Maxie" also laid out 6'6 Italian strongman Primo "The Ambling Alp" Carnera, who, along with former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey make appearances in the 1933 flick, "The Prizefighter and the Lady", about a bouncer-turned boxer who tries to not let fame, fortune and loose women get to his punching bag rattled head. Baer also famously killed a man in the ring, an achievement he appears to relish if we're to take the Ron Howard movie "Cinderella Man" at its word. With that kind of resume, he's the exact kind of guy you'd want to be standing at your door if you're a bar owner to pound a hippy into the dust if need be.








5) Steve Collins and Lenny 'Gov-nor' Mclean, "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels": More former boxers to add to the list, same flick: one legit (well, as 'legit' as the current state of boxing could ever be), The "Celtic Warrior" Steve Collins, who once said of pound-for-pound champ Roy Jones after a deal fell through that he'd "fight him in a phone box in front of two men and a dog". The other bouncer pugilist, famous in the less than legit London East End bare-knuckle scene, was a 500 lb bench-presser, who tossed enough toothless yobs out the front door of enough taverns to be crowed 'King of Bouncers' in the city's pub scene. Though technically not portraying a bouncer in this film, The Guv-nor gets kudos here for his Barry the Baptist portrayal as well as for his scene stealing appearance in Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope


"No one in here but card-players tonight and I do mean no one!'





4) Ray Winstone, "Bouncer". The “Don’t forget to carry a big fuck off stick” and "This is the biggest irony. The ones that like you the least, normally those who have a degree in philosophy under their pacifist belts, and absolutely no fuckin' idea about the reality of life outside the college campus, they are the ones that need you most when shit and fan meet." bits of counsel, lands Winstone a spot here. Another former boxer, but more interestingly, another Indiana Jones connection here in that Winstone is to appear in the forthcoming flick Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Hollywood A-listers John Hurt, Cate Blanchett and the increasingly creaky piece of archeology that is Harrison Ford. Winstone, the actor, is a fan of the east London soccer team West Ham United, which neatly segues into our third position.





3) Ricki Harnett, "Rise of the Footsoldier" This Brit flick chronicles the rise of Carlton Leach, a West Ham soccer hooligan whose exploits randomly beating the crap out of opposing team supporters, were exactly the tools of the trade required to bounce in some of east London's dive bars before becoming an enforcer for the local neighborhood heroin dealers.
"Everybody got what they came for. If you came in looking for a drink and a couple of birds, that’s what you got. But if you came in for anything else, you’d end up with my fist in your face. And if you came back with your little army wrapped around ya, well, I’d just have to get my metal bar out."



2. Chow Yun Fat in "Full Contact" Chow Yun Fat plays a club bouncer in the seedy back streets of Bangkok, Thailand, where instead of laying the smack down on pudgy middle aged Dutch pedophiles, runs afoul of a sleazy underworld boss and has to flee with his dancer girlfriend, a fellow bouncer, and his best buddy. Shown here in full on switchblade, ass-beating glory, here's some 'Fat' camp.

Getting Pie-Eyed on Pizza Flavored Beer and Other Strange Brews

Recently we covered booze-flavored toothpaste, just the thing for those looking to spruce up in the morning by brushing their teeth with something that will give them an instant and sickening reminder of the 11 highballs from the night prior. More common is the trend towards making alcohol-related products taste like something else – hence the rise of alcopops and various other beverages that are commonly ordered by girl drink drunks.

Beer manufacturers are doing this by adding ingredients to their brews to excite the Budweiser-deadened tastebuds of your average guzzler, and, in some cases, to test their gag reflexes. Pizza-flavored beer seems like the type of unorthodox brew that would do the latter, as, up until this point, the only pizza-flavored beer familiar to the recreational boozer has been the end of the night palette clearing, known in some circles as “bending and sending” or more commonly blowing biscuits.

However, according to this review from the Fairfield County Weekly, Tom Seefurth’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is actually quite quaffable, if not actually the most authentic-tasting beer. While the brewers do include oregano, basil, tomato and garlic in the mix, it isn’t exactly a slice of pie crammed into a beer bottle. According to the reviewer, “…it resembled the taste of pizza-flavored Combos or Pringles… rather artificial, kind of like the Baco-Bits of the alcohol world.” The reviewer, a Shark Guy in spirit, scoffed at the pizza beer’s low alcohol content (4.5 percent) and said that he’d “just as soon knock back a beer-flavored beer.”

For those looking to explore the world of flavored beer, here is a quick look at what’s on offer. We take no responsibility for sickened stomachs. (Editor’s Note: The first one is not meant for humans, but like those sad stories of senior citizens on fixed budgets being left to dine on the Alpo, there is nothing to stop you from trying it out for yourself).

Steak-flavored beer for dogs: Who among us hasn’t emptied out the odd pint into Rover’s bowl just to see what would happen when he got a little tipsy? One of our favorite tales in the animals section of our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), concerned a footman of the Queen of England who was fired for putting whiskey in the water bowls of the royal corgis. (They have since straightened out incidentally). The beer we’re talking about here though, the Dutch Kwispelbier - "tail-wagging beer" is non-alcoholic, and tastes like beef. The beer has recently gone on sale in the UK and is being imported from Holland. According to the distributors of the canine brew, while little Fido may not end up as hammered as his owners, he’ll at least be drinking in solidarity with them: "It means pets are even more a part of family life as they can enjoy a beer, too."

Beer and Milk Makes Bilk: According to the good folks over at PETA, beer is actually better for you (not to mention poor ole’ Bessie the cow) than milk. “Beer in moderation is good for you, while even one glass of milk supports animal abuse and harms your health,” says a PETA spokesperson. But for those of us not quite ready to throw dairy out the door and embrace the joys of soy, the good news is that the salutary effects of both milk and beer can be found in one ingeniously named Japanese product: Bilk. The brewer, dealing with an oversupply of milk due to lower consumption in Japan, decided to use surplus to create a beer that is 30% milk. According to Reuters, “apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer”. Currently, Bilk is available only in the region where it’s produced, Hokkaido, and by mail order. The manufacturer said that further distribution would depend on how the initial beer fared in local markets, and we’re guessing the lack of reports following on from its introduction last year tell us pretty much all we need to know about how that went.

Champagne Beer: Champagne tastes? Beer budget? Willing to drink anything we suggest? Well boy do we have the beer for you. The Krait Prestige Champagne Lager, the US named for the UK Cobra Beer, claims to be the world’s first champagne lager and the only lager to be refermented in the bottle, a process usually reserved for Trappist ales (drinking Trappist ales, incidentally, is the best thing about being a Trappist monk). The bottle is made to look like a champagne bottle, and offers a combination of the two products inside (throwing into complete chaos standard rules such as "beer after wine, you'll do just fine"). Whether such a mix would appeal to you depends on whether you enjoy champagne. If you are of a mind with the journalist Christopher Hitchens who once said, “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics” then this may not be the product for you.

Chocolate Donut Beer: Brewed by Shenandoah Brewery in Alexandria Virginia, which, we shit thou not, offers a major discount for law-enforcement officials (the discount doesn’t specifically apply to the donut beer, but still…) comes the Chocolate Donut Beer. This begging-for-a-Homer-Simpson-reference beer is in league with pizza beer in terms of giving you something to drink to remind you of the unhealthy things that you like to eat. The beer overwhelmingly positive feedback on Beer Advocate, including an A+ rating from a guy who said it smelled “Like you just opened a pack of those cheap waxy corner store chocolate gem donuts”.

Soon to be Dancing Behind Bars: Drunk Dancer Does a Backflip onto a Police Car

For those of us who are not secretly pining to shimmy beneath the bright lights of Broadway, dancing in public is something that requires a considerable amount of inhibition-killing liquid courage to even consider. Before you can respond to an invitation to dance, you must first ensure that you are sufficiently drunk – i.e. that you have reached the point where you can hit the dance floor fully confident that you will not sober up and realize what you’re doing mid-boogaloo.

Drinking and dancing has its benefits though; providing you don’t slip on a puddle of beer, strutting your stuff on the dance floor slightly lowers your odds of going home alone. Slightly. However, there are some times when drunk dancing really only benefits the kind of people who chronicle and laugh at feats of drunken stupidity – namely, well, us.

A 25-year-old man in Australia’s Northern Territory was drunk in a casino parking lot at 3am and felt the need to keep the party going. A paddy wagon and police car were stationed at the casino to corral drunks just like him. Our drunken friend did not take the presence of the paddy wagon as a hint to walk as quickly and as upright as he possibly could in the opposite direction to avoid a night of having Barfy Ben whisper the secrets of life in his ear at the local drunk tank. Instead, he decided, he must dance, and thought that the top of the paddy wagon’s cage would be just the place to do that.

He hopped up first on the bonnet of the paddy wagon and then this lush Lord of the Dance did a little of the ole’ soft-shoe shuffle on top of the wagon’s cage. Clearly a showman, the man knew that every truly memorable dance performance needs a spectacular finish and decided to cap his act off with a backflip onto the police car behind the paddy wagon.

According to a local sergeant, the two cops sitting in the patrol car “got quite a surprise”, when the drunken dancer came hurtling toward them, crashing through the car’s windshield and severely damaging the hood. The officers weren’t hurt and neither was the dancer, the sergeant said: "He was very, very intoxicated -- maybe that's why he didn't get too hurt from the fall.''

UK Study Says One in Three Hungover at Work (Other Two Still Drunk)

Before the manufacturing base took a hit, it was not uncommon for Johnny Lunchbox to take a hit of his own from time to time from a flask kept in a flannel pocket to help alleviate the drudgery of the assembly line. After some people stumbled into deep vats and others were left with one less limb with which to raise a pint, drinking on the job became seen as dangerous, and people were encouraged to save their heavy drinking for evening television viewing with the wife and kids.

Now, with the greatest danger in most workplaces being the guy whose score you just topped in “Scrabulous” giving you a sock in the jaw, people are once again seeing the benefits of a morning eye-opener followed up with a liquid lunch.

According to a study by Norwich (kinda rhymes with porridge and that’s not the sort of thing it’s advisable to eat while hungover -- See our Hangover Tips) Union Healthcare in the UK, one in three employees has been to work with a hangover, while more than one in 10 reported being drunk at their desks, according to a recently released poll. These numbers increase significantly when you take into account the fact that everybody lies to people conducting surveys like this.

"It seems that alcohol and the workplace often do go hand in hand", said one researcher, noting a pairing that is as natural as, say, a glass of whiskey and a mint Nat Sherman, which can be tucked under the increasing-at-the-rate-of-a-landfill to-do pile (see picture).

The study also found that 25 percent of people did the minimum amount of work and went home as soon as possible. The remaining 75 percent are presumably indentured servants, or insane.

Hillary Clinton Takes Shots, Not at Rival Obama but of Whiskey

Based on the dismal two-term bargain basement presidency of George W, we can make this blanket statement: tipplers make better presidents than teetotalers as anyone up to this point, including notorious booze-hound Dick Nixon, has been a better president.

Dubya, who was a lot more fun back when his nose was more full of the white stuff than a face-planting Picabo Street or when he indulged in the occasional brew, hasn't enjoyed a drop in nearly a decade (he was photographed at a 2007 summit in Germany, swilling a piss-poor non alcoholic 'near beer', a nearly punishable offense in that country, not to mention a product brewed by mediocre foreign rival Heineken that luckily didn't result in an international incident)

The current crop of Oval Office aspirants, though, are no strangers to the odd bevvie, and currently reaching out to voters, by reaching for the occasional pint.

Automaton former first lady Hillary has been urged to 'loosen up a bit' and is taking this to heart as she compounded her populist rhetoric recently by pounding back a few on the campaign trail at a Fort Wayne, Indiana watering hole. [Editor's note: forced banter with someone sporting a 'DAD' sweatshirt and prominent under-bite, in a state more backward than the Hebrew alphabet is best undertaken with a few dollops of liquid courage]

According to a local wine-and-spirits representative with no vested interest whatsoever, "I think she'd loosen up better" [if she had a few]

In terms of jump starting the economy and decreasing income inequality, her campaign platform would be well served to include the following bit of wobbly, booze-friendly research (correlation not implying causation here, unless the profs are springing for the tab). According to a study out of San Jose State U, where you can major in advanced beachcombing, "drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking", with females representing the higher end of the spectrum.

Also, and this will provide a built-in pretext for browbeaten hubbies to have a few hours' respite from the missus--men who go to a bar at least once a month earn an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percent drinking premium. Of course, we'd expect diminishing returns if this figure were to include more than ____(insert double digit figure deemed appropriate here)

Here's rival Obama gingerly sipping on a pint in PA, perhaps aiming to close the gap between beer drinkers and wine drinkers, the former predominantly GOP voters according to the latest CNN Lou Dobbs book-ending filler poll.

Holy Christ in the Cornflakes! The Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings

Unless you’re mixing your booze with a cupful of the communal Kool-Aid at a Ken Kesey-themed 60s night, it’s unlikely that getting drunk – even on absinthe as a recent study revealed – will lead to hallucinations. (Editor’s note: Spinning rooms don’t count in this regard, and neither does vision compromised because you just broke your glasses head-butting a vending machine). Only a drinker approaching last call (and not the one they ring the bell at the bar for) is likely to experience hallucinations, and thus most drinkers are denied the more mystical side of chemical enhancement that their hallucinogenic-eating peers enjoy.

This past weekend, however, one pub drinker had a religious experience of sorts while out on the piss. The Daily Mail reported on how a taxi driver from Darlington ordered a bottle of cider and “got goose pimples” when the waitress opened it and staring back at him from the foil on the neck was the face of Christ himself. "I have no doubt it is the face of Jesus. You can even see his beard and hair," said the man of what is a decidedly more bug-eyed image of JC than the usual one.

The man gathered around his drinking companions to share in this miracle and snapped a photo of the bottle before it was taken away. (None of the other bottles that night bore the face of Jesus, though unconfirmed rumors have it that a glaring John The Baptist was seen in the settling foam of a pint of Old Speckled Hen.)

The drinker didn’t realize how crisp the likeness was until he checked the photos the next day and it was too late to retrieve it. "I'm not sure what message Jesus was sending and maybe now we'll never know,” the man said. The message may have been “Put me up on Ebay and we’ll have many good nights on the cider together son,”; as the Mail mentions, a similar find, the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, sold for $28,000 just four years ago (Click here for “Virgin Mary (again)”, an up-to-date chronicle of sightings).

His appearance at the British pub was only the latest stop on an unorthodox tour; the Nazarene has popped in for a visit via some unlikely, and occasionally delicious, places over the past few decades. Here then is The Shark Guys’ rundown of the Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings of All Time!

10) Fish-stick Jesus: This is the sole Canadian find on the list and appropriately enough was made when a guy was cooking up that quintessential Canadian repast: fish-sticks. Kingston's Fred Wan had left the fish-sticks cooking for too long, a common mistake am