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:

Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems, Part II

For those of you who have missed your Amnesty International “urgent-action” mailings for the past eight years, the Olympics are now underway in Beijing. Athletes from around the world have come to demonstrate their athletic superiority over millions – that is in the case of sports that people actually give a damn about like basketball or foot-racing. The same cannot be said for sports kept alive by Olympic amateur athletic life-support and played with any level of dedication only by the 61 people who receive such funding, like, say, badminton or synchronized swimming. [This number diminishes significantly for Winter Olympics events, particularly the luge. Only about 18 people are involved in this; they use figures carved out of balsa wood and stuffed in winter jackets to pull off the illusion of more].

Of all the events on the Olympic roster, these two might just take the cake for the most ridiculous. Synchronized swimming could give out points to the competitor whose eyes show the greatest tolerance to chlorinated water and be just as legitimate a sport as it is now, and badminton is tennis minus the skill or athleticism played primarily by drunks at cottages who have tired of pelting beer cans with rocks. It’s a mystery why these events have survived, when others that are also better suited to the beer-cooler crowd have been cut, like the tug of war, or the motorized water sports event of 1908, an Olympian feat in sloth that couldn’t be topped unless go-karting making it onto the Olympic program.

But regardless of the sport and whether an international gathering of its devotees could be held in a phone-booth, all winners get to hear their national tune when they’re up on the podium and receiving a medal that they may or may not pawn in the lean years to follow. Canada, our home country, has quite possibly the most namby-pamby anthem around (though it's a toss-up between that and “Advance Australia Fair”).

Far more evocative and interesting, if also jingoistic and violent, are the songs on this list, those primarily born out of revolution and bloodshed, that nonetheless give the people something to be fired up and shake their fists for during international sporting competitions.

Here then are the Top Five Most Violent National Anthems of All Time!

5) Turkey: This one beseeches each faithful citizen of Turkey to: "Render your chest as armor and your body as a trench!" Ouch! Why? The anthem goes on to explain: "For soon shall come the joyous days of divine promise... Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow? Perhaps even sooner!" Perhaps even sooner! You never know! Maybe next Wednesday... Possibly Labor Day.

This one wins the prize for pure intensity with one of its closing quatrains, describing a citizen so full of love for his nation that HIS TOMBSTONE prostrates a thousand times in ecstasy because things are going right in Turkey.

Choice Lyrics (Full anthem here)

For only then, shall my fatigued tombstone,
if there is one, prostrate a thousand times in ecstasy,
And tears of fiery blood shall flow out of my every wound,
And my lifeless body shall gush out from the earth like an eternal spirit

And now, a child singing the full version of the anthem. Actually, we're just guessing on that. She might just be reciting the traditional couple of quatrains typically saved for public performance, and the rest is a rant on the declining quality of Turkish Saturday morning cartoons, we're not sure.

4) Mexico: Latin America has more than its fair share of bloody national anthems -- see Uruguay and its national tune featuring the catchy refrain "Nation or the grave!" -- but Mexico's gets a place here for its Rambo-like obsession with blood -- blood in the fields, blood on the flag, bloody noses that don't stop when you pinch your nostrils and tilt your head backward... Well most of that anyway. This is another one with extra verses that are never sung in public. That's for the best as we're guessing it would be enough to frighten those with less violent anthems from daring to compete.

Choice Lyrics: (Full anthem) War, war! Let the national banners
be soaked in waves of blood.

Oh Fatherland, ere your children, defenseless
bend their neck beneath the yoke,
may your fields be watered with blood,
may they leave their footprints in blood.







3) Vietnam: A country that has overcome so much in the past half century, not the least of which was having its name associated with an obnoxious Robin Williams movie of the 1980s, to become one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing economies. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In this anthem we learn that the road to prosperity is paved with the corpses of the enemy, and also that gunfire provides a nice backbeat:

Choice Lyrics: (Full anthem)
Our hurried steps resound on the long and arduous road.
Our flag, red with the blood of victory, bears the spirit of the country.
The distant rumbling of the guns mingles with our marching song.
The path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes.

And here we have further proof of a universal truth concerning national anthems: they sound better when sung by a bunch of drunk people in a bar.

2) Romania: One of the few songs we can ever recall hearing that manages to work in a mention of the "knout", a leather (though often adorned with metal, particularly hooks) whip popular in czarist Russia for strapping serfs. And then it gets violent.

Choice Lyrics: (Full Anthem)
Priests, lead with your crucifixes! Because our army is Christian,
The motto is Liberty and its goal is holy,
Better to die in battle, in full glory,
Than to once again be slaves upon our ancient ground!

1) France: Home to Paris, the city of love, and Le Marseilles, a Valentine to violence disguised as a national anthem. Composed in revolutionary France, this ditty doubles as a nice all-purpose theme-song for the guillotining of noblemen, and the expelling of the foreign hordes.

Choice Lyrics: In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

And the best anthem sung in a movie scene ever:



CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE TOP 10 MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!

Olympics 101: Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems, Part I

Despite sinking more coins into our Olympic coffers than a virgin at Lucky Fountain, Toronto has been repeatedly denied the chance to host the games and as a result, we won't get to see if the shot-put can, after 2500 years of failing to do so, finally ignite the public's imagination.

By not landing the Games of the Olympiad, we'll not only miss out on yelling 'Geronimo' off a 10 meter springboard, but also the aesthetic thumb in the eye that is the opening ceremonies, which distill a nation's character down to a few silly gesticulations, which in our case would be break-dancing Mounties, some sort of giant papier-mâché leaf and a chorus line of lumberjacks.

However, the Olympics are about more than just cheap showmanship, like your uncle who can balance a cane on the end of his toe while whistling "Chevy Van". They're a chance for countries to atone for past sins, march together in a show of togetherness twice a decade and see whose athletes can pump themselves more full of pharmaceuticals than an Amy Winehouse pot luck.

There are some countries, such as those whose main export is a variety of tart nectarine, that you never really get to hear from in non-Olympic years unless an extradition treaty is violated or some autocrat is ousted and replaced by an antelope as the interim head of state.

The odd time though, one of these nations will unhinge the masturbatory grip on the podium held by Russia, Germany or the United States and you'll get to hear an off-key warbling of some country's national anthem and bear witness to a moment of pride that'll last for generations to come, if you define "generations" as however long it takes for the urine sample to come back positive, the sportsman in question to defect, or when the next commercial break will air.

But what exactly are they singing about as banners are raised to the rafters and the eyes of the world (or at least the eyes of the world that aren't glazed over by a less than rousing game of handball) are upon them?

Not surprisingly, most anthems are a call to arms, mostly partisan hymns that are a soundtrack to bayoneting your nearest geographical neighbor and a tune you can tap your jackboot to as you proclaim the superiority of your culture, mountain ranges and comely women (the seldom heard fifth stanza in Slovenia's national anthem: "To you, our pride past measure, Our girls! Your beauty, charm and grace!")

There are some ditties sung that are much more ominous than any ‘Bombs bursting in air', you might've whistled while relieving yourself after a heavy lunch, and that would make a scout troupe cower in fear more than a scoutmaster's invite to a midnight swim.

Of course, officials quickly noted that when performed at certain epochal functions, some of these stanzas were better left out altogether, like in the case of Italy, where if something of import were to be held in Warsaw, for example, it might be prudent to omit the bit about "the Polish blood they drank, along with the Cossack."

We thought we’d share a few choice verses, unearth a few national secrets, and perhaps create a diplomatic shit-storm with this, our list of the Top 10 Most Violent National Anthems!

10) Algeria: Being that Algeria's national hymn was written not long after the North African nation broke free from France, thus ending one of the most violent and oppressive periods in European colonial history, we're not surprised that their national anthem makes scant reference to daisy-picking and the value of complacency. Of course, as you'll learn during the course of our bloody world tour of national anthems, nothing ups the carnage in a national anthem like a good throwing off of the yoke of an oppressor. However, this one gets bonus points for the fact that amidst all bloodshed and overthrowing of oppressors, it never forgot the importance of the beat:

Choice Lyrics:
"When we spoke, nobody listened to us,
So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm
And the sound of machine guns as our melody"
(click here for full anthem)








9) Tunisia / Haiti: Continuing on with our theme of countries breaking free from French colonial rule and celebrating their independence in violent verse, here are two nations that preferred death over French rule, much as we'd prefer such a fate over say, a screening and subsequent discussion of the Sex & the City movie.

Choice Lyrics:

"The blood surges in our veins,
We die for the sake of our land."

"For the flag, For our country
To die is a fine thing! Our past cries out to us:
Have a disciplined soul! To die is a fine thing!"
(Full anthem: Tunisia, Haiti)

8) Albania: It is impossible to enter into a discussion about Albania, without in some way referencing Mother Teresa. That should suffice. For a far more eyeball-rewarding look at a native of that country, turn your peepers to the left. Saints preserve us!

And in its national anthem we have a recurrent theme in many such ditties: the glory of having your ass shot off in a war.

Choice Lyrics:

"From war abstains only he,
Who a traitor is born,
For he who is a man is never frightened,
But falls, but falls a martyr to the cause!" (Full anthem)




7) Hungary: The Magyar Himnuz, based on a poem of such emotional intensity, that some interpreters apparently see it as an example of the nation's deeply-rooted pessimism. We would agree, but what does it matter anyway?
Choice Lyrics:

"But no freedom's flowers return
From the spilled blood of the dead,
And the tears of slavery burn,
Which the eyes of orphans shed."

(and later) Grief and sorrow all the same
Underneath a sea of blood (Full anthem)

CLICK HERE FOR THE TOP FIVE MOST VIOLENT NATIONAL ANTHEMS!

The Top 10 Best NFL Names: Dick Butkus Would Approve

Being the kind of guys who would ask the bartender in a sports bar if he wouldn't mind changing the channel because "I think 'Wheel of Fortune' might be on, and tonight's Caribbean-themed," we are likely not the ones most NFL fans would turn to for commentary or analysis as the preseason gets underway this weekend. And that's for the best, because we aren't about to offer anything of the sort.

We can appreciate football's importance to gamblers; after all, without this sport to bet on, there might be a major-sports-less gap in the year that could see attendance at dog tracks overwhelm capacity. But for us, the NFL is just the XFL stripped of all its glorious theatrics slick production values, and unorthodox rules that breathed new life into the sport (Reference the decision to let players put whatever they wanted to on their jerseys, [see left. That is unfortunately not his given name, though we're not sure if "he" still hate him or whether he has had a change of heart, and now he "likey" him]).

So rather than combing through football rosters for information relevant to a player's on-field performance, or using said info for any useful purpose whatsoever, we've instead gone through the ranks to highlight something over which players had absolutely no control: their names. The NFL has given us people with nicknames like William "The Refrigerator" Perry, so called because of his frequent visits to one and also because he looked as close as a human could to one without being robbed of the ability of forward movement and others with names like Man Mountain, which also wasn't in any way ironic.

Here, however, is a list of gridiron athletes whose given names are so stellar that they do not need nicknames. Compiled from current NFL rolls and barring any exploding kneecaps or other assorted football injuries over the weekend, here, in no particular order, are the best damn legal names currently on a National Football League roster. That's currently, people, so no waxing poetic about Blood Mcnally tearing up City Stadium in the days before helmets.


10) Ritchie Incognito, St Louis Rams: With a name that makes him sound like the guy who runs the panini shop in a Danny Aiello movie, Ritchie Incognito of the St. Louis Rams gets the first slot here. After being suspended indefinitely from two colleges (one wonders if anything short of tearing off another human's head could warrant the indefinite suspension of a star athlete from one American college let alone too), Incognito has since gone on to become a well paid NFL star, driving around in a BMW 750 with "23 television screens... including one in his gas cap door." Alright, it's only a surname, but come on.

9) Guy Whimper, New York Giants: This one works even better if you choose to pronounce his first name the French way. "Monsieur Guy Whimper", table for deux!" While this guy tips the scales at over 300 pounds, and we can imagine few things more frightening than a guy half the size of a pickup truck looking to knock us down, one wonders of the psychological effects on an offensive tackle of having a surname that calls to mind the sound a cockerspaniel makes when it's been left out in the rain and wants to come back inside.


8) Coy Wire, Buffalo Bills: Nothing screams tenacious, frothing at the mouth, NFL linebacker like "Coy", defined as "coquettish, or artful playfulness and showing reluctance to make a definite commitment." This also describes the way the Buffalo Bills consistently like to play in the post-season. Well, he has it better than the "Demure" Dan Jenkinses of the world whose football careers never left the playground. He's pictured here, and if your name is 'wire' you better damn-well hit the weights.



7) D'Brickashaw Ferguson, New York Jets: In parlance common among people commenting on the gargantuan size of another, the phrase "Yeah, he's built like a brick shithouse" is not uncommon. And here's a guy who is not only built like said durable outdoor commode, but whose given name actually includes "brick" in it. This would of course give him the credentials for having the coolest name in the NFL entirely were it not for the truth behind the origins of his name. It seems that D'Brickashaw is a take on the surname of Father Ralph de Bricassart, the Roman Catholic priest played by Richard Chamberlain in the television miniseries "The Thorn Birds."

6. Clevan "Tank" Williams, Minnesota Vikings:If your parents name you 'tank', they're either Wehrmacht war buffs or have Body Mass Indexes that are so off the charts, they figure their chip off the old block is more likely to look like the block itself. Tank is an exception to our rule of including actual given names since in his case, his little sister dubbed him tank as an infant. He thus effectively went through life with the name "Tank" rather than being given it while already a professional football player. Anybody who was known around the house as "Tank", even while stuffing crayons up their nose and screeching at Big Bird, probably couldn't have made many career choices other than football and certainly deserves a spot here.

5. John McCargo, Buffalo Bills: John McCargo: a name that sounds like a cross between a cut-rate company that will take care of all your industrial shipping needs and what the McDonald's menu would sound like if they were forced to be honest. While slightly easier on the ear than "John McLoad," this is another weight-themed family name that leads one to suspect that the person bearing it is unlikely to excel at synchronized swimming or trampolining.


4) Quentin T. Jammer, San Diego Chargers:: Quentin T. Jammer is either a cornerback for the San Diego Chargers, a core member of the comic-book superhero team "Max Gravity and his Galactic Spectaculars," or the villain in a future installment of the Matrix series. We're not quit sure which. Regardless, with a name that screams to be put on a comic book or turned into a new dance craze, Quentin T. Jammer definitely lucked out in the surname sweepstakes.





3) King Dunlap, Philly Eagles: Striking a blow for the everyman, Dunlap's parents eschewed heredity and decided that their youngster was just as kingly as anybody who gets the title the old-fashioned way. While we have no clue whether Dunlap's play on the field can be deemed majestic, he does seem to strike a "I just plundered this kingdom" regal pose when it's picture time (as shown in the photo to the right


2) Atari Bigby, Green Bay Packers: Before anyone gets too excited, Atari Bigby was not named after the 1970s video-game pioneer, so anyone thinking of naming their offspring Gamecube Calhoun as a tribute should reconsider. His grandmother named him "Atari" because of the word's Japanese meaning: attack. Coincidentally, we're guessing that's what Atari had to do every time someone jibed him as being named after the ancient video-game maker. "Bigby" is an added bonus, sounding as it does like the name of an octogenarian Rolls Royce chauffeur who taxis you to your country estate in Wales.


1) Melvin Bullitt, Indy Colts: Quite simply, regardless of how well or how horribly this guy plays, nobody can take away the fact that he has THE baddest name in the NFL. He could be his own blaxploitation 'let me pass, or they be takin' these mother-f*ckin' hush-puppies out yo ass', film star. And, yes, he is number one with a bullet.

Shark-bite DVD Review: Heartbreak Kid: Fleecing the audience like the Patagonia product line

"You should go with the Patagonia. It's made from 100% recycled material."

Nothing will have you have you reaching for a bottle of antacids and chasing it with a gulp of de-fizzed Canada Dry like hammer-fisted product placements, and if you do manage to slip the first punch (a camera shot that lingers on the Patagonia sign in Stiller's sporting goods store) the ringing endorsement above will surely put you on the canvas.

The Heartbreak Kid is recycled material too. Enough to re-pave an LA freeway.

Or San Francisco, in this case.

Stiller plays the role that has lingered in a Hollywood blue box container for years, albeit more often with the fairer sex: the guy, in this case, who just can't seem to settle down/keeps meeting the wrong person, who has numerous character failings that are offset by being a genuinely nice guy (discovered by a 'nice girl' counterpart who at first doesn't take notice but gradually comes to do so---or not so gradually as it seems, as these romantic comedies are always criminally overlong).

Stiller is 'Eddie', the socially awkward, put upon, Bay City hard luck chump who bemoans his single-hood and is dispensed not so paternal advice ('you should be crushing pussy') from real life dad Jerry.

His good Samaritan ways capture the attention of the mugging victim, Swedish knock-out Malin Akerman ('Lila') and after six weeks of whirlwind courtship, an atmospheric event that unfortunately didn't send the pages of the Neil Simon script adaptation flying in a direction away from whoever green-lighted this--they end up in Cabo on a honeymoon.

This is where things begin to unravel. Unlike the charmer he was earlier: 'A UFO is an 'FO' to them [aliens], 'cause they know what it is', she is soon put off by most of his interests, and he by hers especially when finding out she is not really an environmental researcher (apparently, the phrase 'exactly what kind of research are you involved in?' or 'what did you study in college that led you down this career path?' didn't come up in the weeks leading up to their nuptials) but some kind of hippie granola volunteer who hands out pamphlets, and wants to move to Holland.

After suspecting their personalities aren't quite as compatible as previously thought, Eddie finds out this is the case sexually as well (apparently, their six week courtship was an abstinent one), with a painful, in both senses of the word, string of related gags.

Despite his warning that she don sunscreen, Lila suffers a debilitating sun burn and Stiller's Eddie does what any supportive husband would do: leaves her alone, goes down to the beach, drinks himself silly and hits it off with a southern belle and her charming family who he then proceeds to bamboozle in every way imaginable to keep up the single charade, until he's found out and has to make amends with all concerned.

If you've heard all this before, you have, except this time with the Farrelly Brothers stock-in-trade: obscene latrine humor and a really sick donkey sex sight gag with the beast of burden sporting wood.

While a similar gag actually worked in Clerks II, and at this point I can't believe there is a cinematic precedent, it, like all the others gags here, seems to fall flaccid. The camera lingers on for too long (especially harsh in this instance) and the brief bits of physical comedy just seem arbitrary and out of place. It should be mentioned, so does Seth Rogan, who pops his head into one scene for the briefest of cameos, hands someone a beer and seems embarrassed to be there and leaves.

And quite rightly.

Miles away from his San Francisco sporting goods store, Patagonia rears its head again, this time as a reference to a 'bunch of suppliers' Eddie supposedly met on the beach, a gambit to thwart his increasingly leery wife, a half-wit to the beguiling Stiller, but still undeserving of such cruel deceit while laid up in a hotel bed. Pleading with his suspicious bride Stiller blurts: "Patagonia is my biggest supplier. I carry their entire line".

The audience, nor her, are buying it and at the end of the day, are fleeced.

Chris, Toronto
www.thesharkguys.com

Crocodile Tears in your Beer: Aussie barflies get visit from baby croc

Those of us who grew up watching professional wrestling had, at one point or another, to come to terms with the fact that the stereotypes represented in the rasslin’ ring were a few metal folding-chair head-shots apart from reality. So when the wrestling world told us that Australia was comprised of a mix of people that were halfway between Outback Jack – a “Let’s capitalize on Crocodile Dundee’s popularity” 80s wrestler who lost more matches than he was in – and the Bushwackers, two toothless stereotypes, who marched around the ring, swinging their arms above their heads (see below -- it's a bit like power-walking, but with a lot more arm-swinging and cretinous head bobbing) in a fashion not encountered since one of us observed it replicated by a very drunk English football fan on the streets of Amsterdam.

(The Bushwackers, it should be noted for the sake of people who would lose sleep tonight if this correction were not made, were actually from New Zealand. The best way to upset a Kiwi? Tell them, “I love New Zealand. They filmed the Lord of the Rings movies there. It really is the most scenic part of Australia.” Australia is to New Zealand as the United States is to Canada and such jibes do not go down well as an American telling a Canadian in a foreign land, “Ah, what a relief to hear an American accent.”)

But surely this was all stuff and nonsense and actual life in Australia does not bear any actual resemblance to a bunch of people living out in the bush and making lasting friendships with the koala bears? Well, actually, no, the Bushwackers or their like might actually have been holding fort in the bar where the following took place.

Drinkers were enjoying an afternoon’s tipple at the Noonamah Tavern, located 25 miles (40 km) from the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, basically a point on the map marked with the label “Middle of Nowhere.”, when a baby salt-water crocodile, or “salty” in the local parlance, walked into a bar. No it wasn’t accompanied by a nun and a circus dwarf. Rather than being frightened by the site of this creature, that likes to when it’s full grown sink its chompers into anything from water buffaloes to humans, the drinkers taped its jaws shut and brought it inside for a photos.

The woman who tends bar said that having the wild kingdom stroll in for a jar of the good stuff wasn’t an unusual occurrence. “We've had a lot of horses pop up. We've had cane toads, which are yukky," she said. "We have had a big buffalo come in, wander around. There's a photo of him with a beer."

Since the creature is at home in saltwater and would have had to travel pretty far to reach the pub from such a habitat, the bartender reckons it was either dropped off there accidentally by a fisherman or as a practical joke. Regardless, the carousing croc escaped his brush with bush-country pub life and is now among his fellows at a local crocodile farm. (Full story here). (For more on crocs and the boozers who love them, check out this story from our archives).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.