Beer Couture: Top 10 Suds Fashion Duds

For those whose "Sunday Best" refers to what's worn at the Piggly Wiggly cashing in those cheesy nacho Hamburger Helper coupons, here are a few beer-themed sartorial suggestions you can run by the missus as she lights a Vantage Ultra Light off the propane barbecue and kicks back in a hammock.

Now, we've chronicled all manner of drunken exploit in our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, from leaping into a stark and stingray-filled aquarium drunk on a bet (the title story) to trying to beat a DUI rap by handing the cops ID belonging to a guy with a glass eye and hoping they wouldn't notice. Our guess is, the type of person who'd get up to such hijinks would undoubtedly have a drawer filled with garments like the ones we're showcasing here that the wife would most certainly try and shrink in the wash or sneak off to a church clothing drive when her man is out of town.

For a night on the town blinding a biker with your pool cue's butt end, beating the snot out of a motel ice machine, and kicking up dust at the state police, nothing says 'I'm not to be messed with' like a good ol' 1) Classic Beer T or Tank Top. If you're the adventurous type, it comes complete with double entendre seen here.

How do you establish territorial boundaries and also alert people to the fact that your name is Dick, and you drink beer? The answer is to the left, though technically the T would make more sense if it were on the actual beer, like a beer cosy perhaps. If you receive this as a gift and your name is not Dick, it's probably best that you reconsider the nature of your association with the person doing the giving. To the right, we have the kind of T-shirt that is a must for anyone who has ever worked out for longer than one week. What use is having the big guns unless you wear one of these to show them off? There is no point in lifting weights, or even in breaking a sweat, unless you have the kind of clothing that can reveal your efforts to the outside world.
[Fashion Suggestion: Best paired with an undergarment of some kind, though for the girl who is looking for instant popularity this is completely optional.]

2. The Coors Draw String Pant. Elegant, stylish, these are words that are never mentioned in conjunction with this item. A comfy expandable elastic waistband, means you're limited only by how many Hardee's Thickburgers can be forced down your gullet and by how many negative triglycerides readings come back from the lab that you choose to ignore before that tingling sensation in your arm gets too worrisome. [Fashion Suggestion: Pair with a sleeveless Stone Cold Steve Austin 3:16 T, Crocs, a frog doing something sexually suggestive tank top or bare-chested if you have errands to run and drive a jeep]




3. Budweiser Tie. For more official gatherings, like say the christening of the neighbor's riding mower, the burying of a beloved family pet or a sentencing hearing, you can get the gavel banger to at least chuckle at your official Budweiser Tie before sending you straight up the river without a raft. Whether such bold haberdashery really constitutes throwing yourself on the mercy of the court (or just a cheap ploy to beat that Oxycontin possession/indecent exposure rap) is up to legal interpretation.








4. King of Beers One-piece/Corona Bikini Top. For a more tasteful statement, such as a backyard grill-off where the neighbor's leering nephews are present, here's a two-piece, left. For wrestling in wet lettuce/impromptu Playboy Mansion badminton, to the right is a sassier version once those same kids turn 17. [Corrupting a minor charges vary according to state]




5. The 'Got Beer?' Combination Belt/Bottle Opener.
Who says style can't be functional? Give your back molars a rest as this versatile product will pop open bottles, hold up your pants, and if a rumble breaks out, you're an arm and a 38 waist's length away from being able to reach out and flog someone.





6. The Beer Belly Pouch Best accessorized with a Corona Draw String Pant if you're asymptomatic after that gastric bypass. With specs including an 80 ounce capacity and able to accommodate up to a 40-inch waistline, this product will fit at least one third of the target demographic. For a similar product we've reviewed here, click [Fashion Suggestion: For special occasions like staff meetings, sales presentations, wear a collared buttoned shirt over top, feed the drinking tube through the sleeve and surreptitiously sip from the wrist. This only applies if you're not the one conducting either meeting, unless you want to call a five minute recess to take a few swigs in the office's handicapped bathroom]


7. Miller Lite Thong Floss that 'junk in your trunk' and show your significant other that your tastes in the boudoir correspond to the case of junk you just stashed in the trunk.







8. Budweiser Beer Hat. Protect yourself from UV radiation, skin damage, good taste and the company of womenfolk with this bona fide Budweiser Beer Hat. Also, prevent sustaining any further head injury of the type that would result in the decision to sport this anywhere beyond the backyard (where it should only be donned if there is a sufficiently tall hedge) or the local laughing academy, where unfortunately, all such beverages would immediately be confiscated.




9. St Paddy's Socks Celebrate St Patrick's Day all year round with St Paddy's Day Commemorative Socks. I don't know about you, but we feel green just looking at them.










10. Pints of Beer Cuff Links. For your first time wearing cuff links, take your cue from the tone of the event you're to attend and what others will be wearing. If those people are completely and wholly unreliable, create a stir with your very own Pints of Beer Cuff Links [Fashion Suggestion: Wow the VIP section of your local Tough Man Contest with these beauties]

Beer Pong Video Game Taps Teen Market

There are certain phrases that should be bookended by inverted commas, "Professional Psychic" being one of them. We'd previously thought "Beer Pong Industry", was another, until we ran afoul of one of the makers of a portable Beer Pong table, a slapped-together contrivance we took great delight in mocking until they gave us a stern reprimand. Don't be fooled by their insouciance, as much like the Freemasons, they mean business.

Beer pong, for the uninitiated, un-phased by all the innuendo-laden pics we've posted here, is like billiards if you had to drink a cup of beer every time your opponent sunk a shot, and risked sending pavement pizza all over the felt, and frankly, completely marring the game's inherent gentility (Snooker, that is, not 9-ball, where in less reputable taverns, someone sporting an eye-patch and a denim vest will hustle you out of a week's pay)

Played on a table tennis-like surface with plastic cups, Beer Pong involves sinking a plastic ball into one of your opponents' cups, forcing them to remove the cup from the table after the contents are consumed (typically mass-produced swill that Belgians wouldn't serve to their alcoholic dogs, but any beverage of your choice will do).

The first team that rids the other of their cups, as they get increasingly into them, is the winner, if by 'winner' you mean the team that doesn't immediately strip down to their skivvies, put their head through a glass door or otherwise make their parents resent forking over hard-earned mutual fund dollars so no-goodnick fruits of their loins could get the 'whole college experience'.

JV Games of Las Vegas, like the makers of Grand Theft Auto [click here] have stirred up a giant goulash soup of controversy with their new Beer Pong game for the Nintendo Wii (a game console that allows you to mimic popular sports, without having to go outdoors or have any discernible skill).

After objections from various state law-makers to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, JV Games has had to alter the name of the yet-to-be-released game, Beer Pong, (rated suitable for post tween future booze-hounds), to Pong Toss and is eliminating all references to alcohol, except for, it should be noted, 'Toss', or, for that matter 'Pong'.
Now, we can see the entire beer pong industry quaking in their soiled boots, as instead of drunken participants having to track down a custom table with a bikini-clad woman on it resembling the woman here (everything IS indeed bigger in Texas) for over $200, they can just play virtually, without having to clean up any spills that aren't internally generated.

For anyone who is interested in pursuing this further, the good folks at 'Webtender' have a handy list of Drinking Games (and are not responsible for any related stomach pumpings), which they'll no doubt update once Pong Toss takes the gaming and heavy college drinking worlds by storm.

Of course, detractors of the Grand Theft Auto series will tell you that while the video game is fun and all, nothing can compare with the thrill of actually staging a carjacking or committing vehicular homicide, and the same is no doubt true with Beer Pong, or Flip Cup as it's known to the guys staging the largest tournament of its kind ever in the US in October.

The Flip Cup Guys contacted us about the event, which will take place on October 11, 2008 at the M1-5 Bar and Lounge in New York City and will feature 64 six-player teams and, presumably, an army of mops at the ready. That they also mention "open beer bar specials" means that there is a possibility of a Shark Guy showing up.

Check it out and get yourself registered early at: www.FlipCupGuys.com!

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.

Single Malt Scotch Fire-water sale: For a taste of your whiskey...the kids aren't going to college

For small-ticket items like umbrellas, polyester money-belts emptied of cash or novelty hats, bargain hunters and holiday-shopping cheapskates can save a few shekels when shopping for those who have nothing by hitting their local public transit auction.

If you’d like to get your greasy mitts on bigger-ticket items with the serial numbers filed off, you can always hit a police auction and take your pick of the repository of stuff confiscated from local riffraff—a station wagon with the tires shot out, an outboard used for immigration excursions into the Florida panhandle— before your friendly neighborhood beat cop has a chance to sell it back to them.

For bona fide high rollers who would like to squander their riches on things like a a thong that once flossed the arse of Demi Moore or a bottle of Elvis' halitosis breath, there are auction houses like Sothebey’s and Christie’s where there’s also a lucrative market for those heirlooms that mysteriously came into your family’s possession after the war.

At an auction held by Christie's in New York State recently, the paddles were flapping faster than a round of amphetamine-fueled table tennis when a bottle of 81-year-old Macallan Scotch sold for $54,000, the highest price the fire water has ever fetched at the auction house.

The whiskey was distilled in 1926 in Scotland and bottled in 1986 before being purchased by a private investor. An expensive wine of that vintage that had been exposed to air would most likely prove useful only to wilt flowers and ward off bats in an enclosed space, but, fortunately for the purchaser of the rare bottle of hooch at Christie's, whiskey suffers from no such limitations.

"You can open it up, have some, close [it] and enjoy it again at your leisure. It's not going to spoil," according ot the head of wine and spirit sales for Christie's America.