Olympic Boozing: Would someone shut up that drunk? Oh, hello Mr. Sports Minister.

The Olympic Games have thus far yet to provide any really satisfying doping scandals. The major one thus far had to do with a North Korean shooter recently found to have used a banned substance. And it wasn't as if he was taking anything that would give him superhuman eyesight or the aim of Rambo in the bush -- just some drug that helped him chill out. Yawn. Next most exciting doping scandal? A Vietnamese artistic gymnast, who didn’t even make it into the top three, took something of some sort to help with whatever it is an artistic gymnastic does.

It’s as if people are no longer making the effort in the shadow of Ben Johnson, who humiliated our country by taking anabolic steroids (read: didn’t cycle the drugs out of his system in time) prior to setting a world record in the 100-metre dash in 1988.

In lieu of that and since we would rather not walk down the easily-misconstrued-comment-laden road of the age scandal surrounding female gymnasts (an over-40 part-time athlete only gymnast competition -- now that would be entertaining), and because we believe that Bob Costas was one of only about 16 people who saw the original lip-synched child folksong performance, we were pleased that amid all of this a minor scandal broke that is more up our alley (story here).

The incident occurred while Argentina and Belgium were playing a doubles tennis match. Tennis is not typically given to the type of abusive bellowing that is considered a matter of form in sports like baseball and football. But one fan was hollering for the Belgian players so loudly that at one point an Argentine player lost it and told the guy to shut the hell up.

The raucous fan turned out to be our new favorite politician, Belgian Sports Minister Michel Daerden. Holding the government sports portfolio usually means with being faced with tasks about as challenging as cutting the ribbon at the local YMCA or deciding whether or not the part of the local stadium's ceiling that fell onto the heads of spectators last weekend could stand some fixing. In a post like that you might as well enjoy yourself, and Daerden apparently has been doing just that. Not only was he also spotted drunk cheering on the Belgian hockey team, but he has reached the point of having such a rep as a drunkard, that his antics have made it onto YouTube.

Here then is the minister speaking shortly after an election of some sort or other in Belgium. Language barriers are not a problem here, as he is clearly speaking the international language of drunk:

Nanny State in an Uproar Over Generous Jagermeister 'Spirit Dwarf'

Bars and booze companies have all sorts of ways to facilitate that all important transition between bottle and gut. Liquor companies quite often engage the services of good looking people stuck in that gray middle world between legitimate modeling work and chrome pole duty at the local Gawk and Whistle to hand out samples of their product, while refusing requests for phone numbers as politely as they can. For some reason, these sorts of promotions don’t make headline news or inspire the wrath of politicians, but you put just one muscular dwarf in a tophat and…

A pub in Melbourne Australia called “The Saint” caused a hubbub recently when it hired a dwarf to walk up and down the length of the bar with a bottle of Jagermeister from which he'd pour shots into the expectant gobs of pub-goers. Two possible causes of concern with this would be, first the lawsuit that would likely result if the unnamed dwarf in the photos slipped on the bar and injured himself. (Editor's On-A-Tangent Note: For an excellent film in which a drunken dwarf stands up on a bar and curses out an entire pub full of backwoods hicks, we recommend The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage). That said, the man in the photos appears to be having a good time, and we can assume that he was paid damn well to don a top-hat and march along a bar half-naked. Had someone fell asleep drunk at the bar earlier and awoke to the site of a bare-chested dwarf in a tophat proffering a bottle of booze, this might have had a disquieting on the person, but that didn't happen as far as we know.

But of course in the world of the nanny state this bizarre method of getting people to drink the sickening-when-served-warm concoction that is Jagermeister – which is not, to our shock and surprise made from the blood of the newly dead – became a matter of such national import that Australian lawmakers were going on the record about it, and comment was even sought from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (though he has yet to issue a public statement on the matter, presumably weighing the significance of the top hat with his key advisers).

Nanny-state politicos were up in arms about the promotion, with the Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs (the Victorian being a reference to the Australian province of Victoria not the time period, though he would have fit in well then) going as far as to say that "Patrons accepting these free drinks will have no idea how much alcohol they have consumed."

While patronizing government officials believe that a promotion like this will somehow bring bar patrons to ruin -- it's not like the dwarf was forcefeeding them the Jag, even though he does appear to be doing so in the second photo here -- the drinkers themselves have a clear message for politicos: Get lost. "It's just a bit of fun," said one patron. "Why politicise it?"

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.”