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!

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.

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.

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.

Nicolas Cage Suing Kathleen Turner: Cage Meet his Match?

Call it 'low talker' versus 'slow talker'. Tranny-voiced has-been Kathleen Turner has apparently got actor Nicolas Cage, (who speaks slower than a phone sex operator with a thyroid condition), in her cross hairs.

"That stupid voice of his and the fake teeth! Honestly, I cringe to think about it. He caused so many problems."

Such invectives could just as easily be tossed Paul Anka's way, but it's 'problem-generator' Cage who doesn't come off too 'Super' in Turner's forthcoming autobiography, 'Send Yourself Roses', which also notes, while we're on the subject of physical appearance, teeth, etc:

"I was no great beauty. I was a skinny woman with long legs, almost no boobs, good hair and bad teeth . . . the studio had a fake cover made for them, which was awkward. It changed my lips and the way I spoke. It was uncomfortable, too."

In the soon-to-be-released tome, (which has nothing whatsoever to do with 'View' drunkard and War of the Roses co-star Danny Devito despite its similarly efflorescent title), Turner refers to working with Burt Reynolds as 'nasty' and she even accuses the aforementioned (and fellow hairpiece aficionado) Nicolas Cage of being in trouble with the law, and being arrested twice for drunk driving. And now, it seems, Mr cage is taking the matter to the courts.

Turner herself admits a fondness for the drink, and admits to using it to dull the pain of arthritis, which in retrospect was probably a better treatment option than Vioxx.

"I discovered that vodka killed it quite wonderfully. I didn't want to take painkillers because I didn't like the way they mucked up my mind, so I used alcohol instead", notes the star of Body Heat and Baby Geniuses.

We Shark Guys have covered comparably asymmetric celebrity squabbles here (no lawsuits yet) while Cage and Clooney's status is without question A-level, the jury's out as to whether a more powerful telescope is required to detect either a Turner or a Fabio's star power, at least until the Italian loses and/or cuts his locks or the former stops appearing nude on stage and getting sued by Supermen.

Drunk graffiti artist all washed up... and The Joker's Wild Life: Heath Ledger

[From the recently spit-shined, mahogany editor's desk:


This morning, we figured we'd steer clear of commenting on the early demise of the talented Heath Ledger as revelling in the morbid is more the province of the folks over at The Darwin Awards. So, we figured we'd focus on a different Australian-themed story, a 'near death' one in this case.



Hip hop is universal and responsible for much of the pop culture we do our best to shield our eyes from on a daily basis, ideally, with a ball cap pulled way down and a hoodie.

It's given us, among other things: over-sized duds for fat and non-fat alike, athletic footwear thrown onto overhead wires to mark drug territory (a stern warning against crack dealers bold enough to ply their trade in penny loafers) and seizure inducing ditties.

Purists often cite the four pillars that prop up the Temple of Hip Hop, which include DJing (of the type not done at your cousin's Bar Mitzvah when a drunk uncle yells out for 'Hotel California'), emceeing, breakin' (not advisable beyond, let's say, the age of 25, or for anyone with lower back problems) and of course-- graffiti.

A piss drunk Australian graffiti artist who might've been overcome by the fumes of his art or vandalism, depending on your aesthetic sensibilities, and inside a storm water drain no less (presumably so that the surf could wash out his aerosol handiwork, Etch-a-Sketch-style) was rescued when he himself was swept out into the bay and nearly drowned.

In eastern Sydney, teens with a nose for trouble and one that's apparently lost its olfactory powers too, have been known to body board, or "sewer-slide", inside the drain when there is no surf.

According to a local witness, "The young kids from the area are always in the drain every weekend. I don't understand what the fascination is."

Happy New Year from the Shark Guys! Tips on First Night Boozing from everybody's favorite Festive Boozing Consultants

Chris and Noel (or Noel and Chris if you're reading right to left) , AKA "The Shark Guys" as we're known in better bars and neighbourhood pubs, would like to wish you and yours a Happy New Year. Thanks for being with us so far and we look forward to bringing you the best in booze-a-tainment in the New Year.

Huzzah!

In case any of our loyal readership question our 'festive boozing consultant' credentials, we've decided to cobble together a few helpful quotes at the last minute to meet our blogging deadline, while at the same time honor our steadfast commitment to service journalism, AKA 'news you can use', or as is the case this evening, 'news you can use the next day as you open an otherwise empty fridge and consider downing a can of questionable looking tomato juice'.

Courtesy of The National Post
According to online analysts, the number of Internet videos of inebriated people embarrassing themselves has tripled in the last year. Viralvideochart.com reports that more than 150,600 clips of drunken debauchery were uploaded to the top 10 video-sharing websites in 2006, with Google searches and blog posts on the subject doubling.

"It's oddly comforting to know that regardless of what you may have done, or how bad a night you've had, you didn't do what these people did," says Noel Boivin, a Canadian expert on alcohol-fueled misbehavior.
"Before all this [online video] stuff happened, you could have a crazy night and the worst that could happen was having your friends recount it forever," says Boivin. "But with YouTube, [the incident] could appear online that same night, with thousands of people seeing it. It increases the threshold of shame."

Slice Magazine
While Lombardo and Boivin point out that abstaining is the only guaranteed method of preventing a hangover, they’re still crossing their fingers for a cure. “Though we're not doctors, we imagine (and strongly hope) that our good friends at Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and company are putting their best minds to work in finding a hangover cure that is not some sort of patent medicine scam.”
"If you find yourself on the verge of kneeling before the porcelain throne, Lombardo and Boivin have only one suggestion: “Clutching your pillow and praying to the nearest and most sympathetic god (or, if you're an atheist, a general cry for pity sent out to the cosmos—or your spouse—will do) is really the only course of action. Lie horizontally for as long as the human bladder will allow.”

Advice in the Toronto Star (Lombardo)
Some people call New Year's "amateur night" because people who don't do it regularly are more apt to publicly shame themselves. Definitely, a big greasy meal at the end of the night is good, at one of the downtown establishments that are open all night. Maybe a handful of multivitamins before bed and some ibuprofen and some V8. That works.

Prison Chocolate Ban No Laugh Riot

We were initially delighted when the phrase "Swedish prison" came across the news wires, given the vast storehouse of research material at our disposal— shop keeps who archive a Smithsonian-like collection of similarly themed films, as well as a steady inventory of single cigarettes so we could get a sense of what prison life is all about without all those communal shower come ons.

Unfortunately, without a working knowledge of the Nordic language, and the Ikea warehouse not returning our harassing phone calls (not to mention being indisposed to Googling the phrase “Swedish prison” for fear of incurring some librarian's bifocaled stink-eye) we were unable to figure out exactly what kind of penal institution ‘Brinkebergsanstalten’ is, the mouthful of a prison at the center of the following story. So, with no English language reports specifying the gender of those incarcerated, we decided to eschew modern crime statistics and 200 years' worth of temple-probing criminology and assume it’s a massive minimum security facility for women with daily sheer tube top workouts for the prison volleyball team and unscheduled conjugal visitations for inquisitive bloggers.

According to reports, Swedish inmates have been banned from putting their kitchen detail/extortion savings (that would otherwise be put toward shanking the least popular guard), toward the purchase of holiday boxed chocolates amid concerns over alcohol content. This measure resulted in the warden-undermining spokesperson for Kraft Foods, the provider of the crowbar motel confectionery to note, “In order to consume the equivalent of one shot of schnapps, you have to eat some 32 pieces of confectionery. Gosh, what effort." No less effort than what cell block 2D's finest distiller of Ziploc hooch has to expend, who could certainly make good use of such a sweetener to take the toxic edge off the soggy bread and rotten fruit whiff of ‘Orange Jack.’

In related news, a California school district suspended a 12-year-old for having a piece of chocolate candy filled with a half-ounce of booze. The 7th grade scofflaw received a suspension notice that would not look out of place in the type of institution mentioned above, for having "possession, used, sold, furnished or been under the influence of any controlled substance, alcohol or intoxicant."