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.

Keep your Eyes on the Road Your Hands Upon the Wheel: The Top 10 Drinking & Driving Songs of All Time!

No amount of minty fresh Scope kept in your glove compartment or complaints to an arresting highway officer that you are heavily medicated and having one of your "spells" is likely to keep you from a night in the drunk tank that would not be nearly as romantic, or as free from dangerous lunatics, as it sounds in that Pogues song.

Not surprisingly, drinking and driving, like most other social vices we've chronicled here, has found its way into popular music, and, we Shark Guys, much like we did in our infamous Da Nose Knows: Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All time, have tracked 'em down for you in list form, saving you monthly investments in those Time Life infomercial hits compilations, not to mention countless hours.


The Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs of All Time!!

Editor's Note: Disclaimer: The authors in no way condone drinking and driving—unless it’s done on a closed course while a paint-by-numbers buddy flick is being shot (and if the car did happen to careen out of control, modern cinema would benefit from it skidding right through Michael Bay—folding chair and megaphone).



10. "One for My Baby" (and One More for the Road)
The catch phrase that started it all for the asphalt slalom set, "One for the Road", as performed by the Chairman of the Board (oh that we could have co-chaired a meeting, we would've delighted in drinking ourselves under the mahogany table alongside the Rat Pack -- no doubt outlasting Sammy, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, though Mister Frank and Dino would likely have been a greater challenge).

We're drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road



9. "Have a Drink on Me" by AC/DC. Five spirits distilled into one simple rhyming scheme, from the boys Down Under: Attempt mix in the comforts of your own home or cheap motel where they didn't ask for your credit card.

"Oh! Whiskey, gin and brandy
With a glass I'm pretty handy
I'm trying to walk a straight line,
On sour mash and cheap wine"




8. From our hip hop friends, because we love puffy jackets as much as the next guys, and appreciate the urging of friends to assist in times of crisis, it’s “Get Buck”, by Young Buck

“Let's play the game I'm the quarterback, don't stop homey
I go to jail if I get sacked, so block for me…
Drunk drivin’ in my Cut dog,
I got my truck parked
Seventy Two Tennessee Titan, like what up y'all?!”

While we’re not certain exactly what this means, you can certainly tap your foot to it, and references like this will help the sagging domestic car industry and sales of Cutlass Supremes.


7. Some classic tear in your beer twang, performed by everyone from Springsteen to Acuff, "Wreck on the Highway"

"There was whiskey and blood all together
Mixed with glass where they lay
Death played her hand in destruction
But I didn't hear nobody pray."




6. A statistical argument from NOFX in "You Drink, You Drive, You Spill"

" 35% of accidents are caused by pixilated, the other 65 are not alcohol related what does this tell us about the drunk drivers? they seem to have a better record than the sober team "

5. Because they found it relaxing -- "Lovin’ Cup", by the Rolling Stones

"Yes, I'm fumbling and I know my car don't start.
Yes, I'm stumbling and I know I play a bad guitar.
Give me a little drink from your loving cup. Just one drink and I'll fall down drunk."

4. For its deep sense of loyalty, “Sugar Magnolia”, by the Grateful Dead

“She takes the wheel when I’m seein’ double, pays my ticket, when I speed.”

3. For its declaration of effortlessness and clarity, we go with "It’s So Easy" from the seminal “Appetite for Destruction” album by Guns ‘N’ Roses.
“Cars are crashin' every night, I drink ‘n' drive everything's in sight.”

2. "Roadhouse Blues", the Doors. For advanced 'orange pylon avoidance' technique:
“Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel.”









1. If Drinking Don’t Kill Me, Her Memory Will, as performed by George Jones. This melancholy ode from a guy who sings it like it is (if it "is" really, really bad) is perhaps the quintessential drinking and driving sing-along:

“I lay my head on the wheel
and the horn begins honkin’,
the whole neighborhood knows, that I’m home drunk again.”