Happy 4th of July! The Shark Guys' Top 10 Shopping Guide for the Patriot Who Has Everything

We are both Canadian, as those who are close to us and those who update our driver's licenses every 10 years know (these two groups are, for now, mutually exclusive... but we're working on buttering up a few of the people who give the eyesight test).

However, we have enjoyed numerous benders throughout the United States, most memorably in New Orleans, Nashville and New York City (Doc Holliday's currently has a plaque by our barstools which we visit on occasion to spit shine), California, and a fair number of ports of call in between. The vast majority of the stories in our book, "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery" took place in the USA and, while that might not be something that McCain or Obama would mention in patriotic speeches while campaigning, it is something that we greatly appreciate.

As such, we'd like to extend our wishes for a happy fourth of July to our American friends, and, going that one step further, we'd also like to offer a gift of sorts on this auspicious day, a Shark Guys look at The Top 10 Fourth of July party gear. It may be too late for this merch to brighten up this Fourth of July, but as with Christmas lights on the house in June, it's never too early to get ready for an upcoming holiday even if it's months off. So here it is...

The Shark Guys guide to Fourth of July Party Gear!

1) Stars and Stripes Guitar-Shaped Belt-Buckle and Bottle Opener: This product, which can be yours for the low-low price of $15.99, is quite possibly the greatest patriotic item in the history of mankind. Are we exaggerating? Short answer: No. This is for the patriotic citizen who is looking to spend his Independence Day kicking ass and chewing bubblegum, but who suddenly finds himself lacking completely in bubble gum. Not only is this item rock n' roll by its very shape -- tell us you don't think of Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner when you clock your eyes on to that -- but it's also an extremely versatile product. First it will help hold up your pants, and if you're going to be cutting loose on the dance floor this Independence Day, that's a mighty important thing. Two, you can open your beers on it. What's more, you can make friends, and possibly win a future wife, by letting others open their beers on your belt. Of course, any bar where belt-buckles like this are the norm might be the kind of place where a broken nose and a fist-fight are part of the floor show. That is where it's third use comes in: as a weapon. What better way to celebrate your country's birthday then by leaving the impression of Ole' Glory on some idiot's forehead?

2) American Flag-themed rolling papers: While marijuana is still illegal under US federal law, several states have decriminalized in it. In California, you can get a medical permit to access enough of the stuff to make Snoop Dogg want to throw up from the smell. Celebrate the great freedoms in the US that only promise to get greater as the decriminalization of pot continues by sparking up an Independence Day joint that is the size of Shaq's middle finger using these appropriately-themed rolling papers.

3) Budweiser American Eagle Beer-tap Handle: Frank Zappa once said "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

America's beer (for now, until the takeover deal with Belgian mega-brewer Inbev goes through), and a surprisingly popular choice in Ireland where there is better beer (like Beamish) on offer, is Budweiser. We cannot trash talk this brew too too much as we have our own similarly shite beers in Canada, thank you Messers Molson and Labatt. This ornamental beer tap however can be put on any sort of brew and you can put a piece of masking tape over the Budweiser name. Drinking draft beer is about the most pleasantly patriotic thing we can think of doing, and what better way to do that then by tapping the symbol of American freedom, and the motif for many a bad tattoo, the bald eagle.

4) Story of the American Revolution Beer Stein: You've sat through hours of history class in school and made a concerted effort to forget what you were learning the moment it hit your ears. You watched the HBO John Adams miniseries and enjoyed it, but couldn't reconcile one of your founding fathers being played by that guy from Sideways who slurped wine out of a McDonald's super-sized cup. So how do you keep up with a conversation on patriotism and the American tradition on this auspicious day? By guzzling beer from one of these handsomely decorated beer steins. Running along the sides of the beer steins are four of the most important battles of the revolutionary war -- the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Princeton, the Battles of Saratoga and the Siege of Yorktown. Remembering these four names and remarking, "Ah, it really gets to you when you think of the fine men who fought at [insert name of battle depending on position of stein at the time of utterance]." If you're drinking with fellow patriots, and you are drinking in public (the latter unlikely unless you are the kind of guy who brings his own stein to the bar, in which case we salute you) someone may even buy you a round.

5) US Military Pool Cue Set: Americans may not have invented the game of billiards, but they have certainly produced some of its finest champions, invariably dubbed 'Fats' and they most definitely have made the best movies on the sport -- we're talking "The Hustler", not its inferior sequel which Martin Scorsese made to pay off creditors. The cues can be purchased separately and there is one each for the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, and the U.S. Flag. This is the ideal way to support the troops on Independence Day, acknowledge the sacrifices made by past generations so that you could enjoy your present freedoms, and win 10 bucks by hustling some rube who thinks you can't play worth a damn.

6) Stars and Stripes Nunchucks: If you party the way you should be partying on Independence Day, chances are the neighbors are going to get upset. Raising a ruckus and getting all the neighborhood dogs howling in unison is what freedom is all about. The perfect gift for the Independence Day partier who lives on the wrong side of the tracks, these slick-looking nun chucks will most certainly club the nearest beat cop investigating a disturbance into quick submission. They have "don't tread on me" written all over them. It is recommended when rapping someone across the knees with these babies that you say something along the lines of "And that, came from the good ole' U, S, of A".


7) Old Glory Surgical Cap: While in revolutionary times, it's unlikely to have been donned while lopping off a gangrenous limb, you can perform impromptu living room gallbladder removals or, if you're actually a saw bones, atrial septal defect repair in the more sanitary confines of a surgical suite, while winking at the surgical nurses who'd no doubt delight in your youthful exuberance.



8) Stars & Stripes Guitar Pick Earrings. Have you ever been at a party where you're asked to rock out on someone's axe, and you demur with a 'uh, I don't have a pick?' (or even a Mexican peso, famously played by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top) Well, now you don't have to empty out lint-riddled pockets with your very own, guitar pick earrings. Also works well with Hendrix, playing-guitar-behind-your-head impressions [for a quick tutorial, check out this portly fellow]



9) Red, White and Blue Cat Collar: Make Fluffy easier to find if she makes a mad dash for freedom.





10) A Hat That Will Give you a Standing Ovation: This item speaks for itself, as does the pained expression on the model's face, who looks like she's being asked to 'pull my finger' rather than the string that makes the hands clap.

HAPPY FOURTH AMERICA!

On St. Patrick's Day Even the Crack is Green

On Monday, we presented our Tips on How to Put Some Irish into Your St. Patrick’s Day. Number five on that list was: “Don’t just stop at green beer: On St. Patrick’s Day, not only should your beer be dyed green, but so should your infant’s milk, your pets, your elderly relations and your shrubbery (any exotic species you may have that is not already green by nature).”

What follows may be sheer coincidence or it may point to the fact that we hold sway with a group not often considered a target demographic by any legitimate businesspeople: crack dealers.

Police in Marietta, Georgia arrested five suspects for “peddling green crack on St. Patrick’s Day”. We normally don’t cover the goings-on in the wide wild world of hard drugs, mainly because the book we wrote focused on tales of drunken excess and pound-for-pound tales of crack-rock-induced derring-do just aren’t as funny, however in this case we've decided to make an exception in honor of this festive time of year.

Undercover police officers made two purchases of the holiday-themed crack before arresting those involved in the selling and another pair whose St. Patty's day was ruined due to outstanding warrants.

As to why the dealers dyed the crack green, we can only guess. We would like to think it was Monday's blog, but something tells us that guys hanging around in a van with the back door open for crack selling might not be RSS subscribers. Presumably it was not a customer--service measure either; t'would be unlikely indeed for a would-be purchaser to be handed a standard baggie of the product on March 17 and object: "What is this! It's St. Patrick's Day for chrissakes! Would it have killed you to use a little green food coloring -- to make that tiny bit of extra effort?! I mean it's like you're not even trying more. I have half a mind to take my business to Itchy Elmo next door."

Still though, police did note in the source story that "seasonal crack" has been found in the past -- red crack at Christmastime for example (if you get that in your stocking Christmas day, "Santa" might soon be in for a felony). A more likely explanation is that the crack was meant to pass for candy during a police search. It was a ruse that failed though and the judge is unlikely to give any of the five accused points for creativity or sticking to holiday theme when sentencing time approaches.

The Shark Guys’ Tips on How to Put Some "Irish" into Your St. Patrick's Day

To drinkers, St. Patrick's Day is an occasion that holds an almost religious significance. In fact, some drunk in a bar many St. Patrick's Days ago once told us that the occasion was rooted in some sort of Catholic tradition. He described a highly improbable scenario involving snakes having infested Ireland, and a saint named Patrick coming along to drive them out like some sort of pest control superman. Being that this entire business reminded us of an awful Jon Voight movie out of theaters by then that we had hoped to put out of our minds as well, we proceeded to move to the other end of the bar. Guinness brewery has been pushing the idea of making St. Paddy's an official holiday, and we are all for it, but even if they're not successful, to us St. Patrick's Day still has a special status -- we call it "Drunk's Easter" -- and it would be a disservice to our readers and a slight on the Irish ancestry of one of the authors if we did not pay tribute to this day by stopping on our way to the bar to offer some suggestions on how you can put the "Irish" back into your St. Patrick's Day celebration:

1) Spike your Morning Starbucks’: When ordering your ultra-venti sized iced raspberry frozen frappucino chai cum latte on the morning of St. Patrick’s Day be sure to dump half of it on the floor and top up the remainder with delicious Bailey’s Irish Crème – the perfect coffee companion (Irish Whiskey is also acceptable, although it might be a bit hard on the stomach first thing in the morning -- remember you only want to approach stomach-pump drunk by night's end, so you need to pace yourself). While on most days this would raise the ire of more than one Starbucks “partner”, on St. Patrick’s Day it shows them that you know how to enjoy yourself. Another option, recently suggested by LAist, is doing the same to liven up a bit of the tasteless spearmint-flavored concoction known at McDonald's as "The Shamrock Shake".





2) Speak in a think Irish brogue: The Irish accent is undoubtedly the world’s easiest to mimic and the secret to perfecting it lies simply in drinking more; the drunker you are, the better your accent will be -- that's just a fact. Go throughout your entire day as if you were Brad Pitt using method-acting techniques in preparation for his role as an IRA terrorist in "The Devil's Own". Adopting an Irish accent is all the more effective if you choose an offensive Irish stereotype, such as Paddy the no-nonsense red-headed cop, loony Father Feeny who flashes the congregation at holy communion or Sister Mary the maniacal nun. The movie "Boondock Saints" was hugely popular both among lovers of Irish immigrant tales and also those in favor of Bernie Goetz-style justice. Here is an outtake of an actor in that one perfecting his Irish accent. Can you tell the difference from the real thing?





3) Deny that Ireland has modernized: Refuse to believe that Ireland is now one of the world's leaders in IT and software and that companies as important as Apple would even think about putting their European headquarters in the country. Ignore any mention of Ireland leading the world in quality of life and of Dublin being a prohibitively expensive place to live, to you it's all potatoes and four leaf clovers over there and that’s how it should be on St. Patty’s Day.

4) Learn Gaelic: What's taking the excruciating time and effort needed to learn a near-dead language between friends? You'll be able to not only finally understand why someone named Shawn would spell it "Sean", and why "Sinn Fein" is not a misspelling that people are too afraid to correct, but you'll also wow Irish and Scottish folks who had this language crammed down their throats in school. Since you probably won't have time to learn the entire language today, a few handy phrases will do, such as learning how to order a beer etc, which can be found here.

5) Don’t just stop at green beer: On St. Patrick’s Day, not only should your beer be dyed green, but so should your infant’s milk, your pets, your elderly relations and your shrubbery (any exotic species you may have that is not already green by nature).

6) Tell ridiculous lies about how much worse you had it in the ‘old country’: Even if you're not that old and do not have a drop of Irish blood in your veins, spend the day clipping your younger relations behind the ear and reminding them of the various struggles you and yours had to go through – eating the family pets, having to shoe wild stallions and boil rocks for soup etc – in the old country so that they could enjoy such shameless luxury now.

7) Pretend you enjoy Irish cuisine: Slap a smile on your face as you labor through a bowl of hearty Irish stew. You may not fully digest it until April Fool’s Day, but today is St. Patrick’s Day and this is the greatest cuisine in the world.

8) Sing something maudlin and depressing at a karaoke joint: A proprietor of a New York bar recently banned the singing of "Danny Boy" at his establishment, saying it was too depressing and wasn't even Irish to begin with (someone in the story linked here referred to it as "The Irish 'Freebird'"). Banning a depressing song is in itself an act that flies in the face of Irish tradition, because most good Irish traditional music consists of either jigs or downright jump-off-a-bridge-after-the-last-verse bummer songs. Danny Boy is the most popular of those and if you can find a karaoke spot that hasn't banned this song or that only permits it once a night, then may we suggest that you let it rip. Barring that, there are countless mournful tunes that you can favor the crowd with after an excess of Guinness. We'll leave you on that note, with the best, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers showing why the Irish do the mournful ballad better than 'em all:



Now go get drunk!

The Hooch-Drinker's Guide to The Galaxy

There are those out there, largely tin-foil-hat-wearing asylum types (Editor’s Note: For more of this sort of thing, we suggest you check out this captivating investigative piece on little Green Men on a Mission entitled “Cattle Mutilations - Senseless Mutilation or High-Tech Examinations?”), who believe that extra-terrestrials have visited Earth – presumably swooping in on our planet to see the sights and probe the orifices of a few yokels before hitting the next stop on a celestial package-tour.

Neither of us would rule out the possibility that life forms from other planets have visited us (heck we’ve partied with some likely suspects), but one wonders why, like the Blessed Virgin who chooses to reveal her face in the more delectable pastries of the faithful, these sightings usually occur under wholly discreditable circumstances. Even the most popular of all flying-saucer myths, the Roswell incident, has been more or less discredited, with all but ardent New Mexico T-shirt sellers likely to tell you that it was really just a weather balloon.

Most UFO sightings do not get nearly the attention of Roswell or inspire as much debate because of one common attribute that its witnesses share: the fact that they were stumbling wild-eyed from a backwoods still at the time of the sighting (or, in more cosmopolitan areas, just plain drunk).

The Daily Mail, covered such an incident in July, where pub-goers assembled outside their local to witness a starry-happening (that was not the unrelated and more common mooning), and, just yesterday, as the world rang in 2008, SignsonSanDiego.com reported that locals there had also seen UFOs.

Three groups of friends, all partying on New Year’s Eve in the San Diego area, saw a combination of flashing orange-yellow lights in the sky about 30 minutes after midnight. One witness sought to curb speculation that his powers of observation had been impaired by the drink – the newspaper’s exact explanation reading, “Keegan said he and his friends had been drinking, ‘but we weren’t drunk being that it was Near [sic] Year’s”, which suggests the opposite is true, or that the reporter might want a bracing cup of coffee before typing her next story.

Another “amateur astronomer” said he and a dozen friends, who were welcoming in ’08 in his backyard, saw nine red dots that traveled across the sky slowly, followed by four red dots. He was quoted as saying, in hippy parlance : “It was really crazy. It wasn't fireworks."

Our guess? Fireworks.

Then again, who are we to question the National UFO Reporting Center, which said on Tuesday, that it had enough “similar reports from across the country [country, mind you, not county] to warrant an investigation”. Other folks celebrating the most firework-happy day of the year also reported seeing strange bright things in the sky in Santa Monica, the San Francisco Bay area and Canada.

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.

Yes Virginia, Santa is sh*t-faced

“T’was the day after Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, for fear of waking papa, the drunken louse.”

We here at TheSharkBook.com having neglected to wish you, our loyal readers, a happy holiday season would like to at least wish you a happy Boxing Day: may the bargains you meet be plentiful, and the exchange policies on some of the crappier gifts you received lenient.

For our final X-mas-related blog of this year, we wanted to touch on a trend that our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), was, to our knowledge, the first to chronicle: the seeming appeal of donning a Santa Claus outfit and making a sorry-ass drunken public nuisance of oneself. (Editor’s Note: For more on this theme we recommend the excellent Billy Bob Thornton film “Bad Santa”, one of the very best boozing comedies ever made).

We covered more than one such case in The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death – the most disgraceful of all likely being a drunken riot that broke out at the finish line of a charity marathon where the participants were dressed as ole Saint Nick himself and some of the more well-oiled elfs had to be beaten and pepper-sprayed into submission.

There seems to be something about donning the garb of Santa Claus – the best collaborative effort between Coca Cola and the Roman Catholic Church since Holy Water Soda – that appeals to drunks, and this year was no exception.

First, in Christchurch New Zealand, where a gang of about 50 drunken Santas broke into a cinema, shoving families aside, tearing down posters and kicking things over while shouting the unorthodox holiday greeting “Ho f*cking ho!”

One woman who was waiting in line to see the movie “Enchanted” with her two ankle-biters in tow was sickened by this less than enchanting display and her kids were puzzled as to why these Santas were acting like their soccer hooligan older brothers: "They asked me, 'are they Santa's helpers gone crazy?' and I said `no, they are just idiots'.

As sorry a scene as that no doubt was, it is outdone in terms of sheer vile mental imagery by the goings-on of one crocked Kris Kringle in Hollywood on Christmas Eve. The man in question parked his car in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater and was shortly thereafter stopped by police and asked to submit to a Breathalyser. What tipped off the flat feet? The 6-foot-4, 280-pound man’s chosen ensemble for the evening: a red Santa hat, blond wig, red lace camisole, purple G-string, black leg warmers (hey, it gets chilly at night!) and black shoes.

The man clocked in at slightly over the legal limit and admitted having had a couple rum and cokes before setting out to give the crowd at Grauman’s a mentally scarring holiday sight. Police impounded the man’s Chevy Impala, but later released him on $5,000 bail. The arresting officer said that “There was no Mel Gibson” treatment for him, which might mean that the man was not given the floor and asked to voice his opinions on the secret Zionist cabal that is taking over the world. "He had to sober up and find his own reindeer,” the officer said.

Yuletide Cheers: How to spot a Christmas drunk – Shark style

Earlier this month, the British Home Office (the government body, not where you say you work in order to keep the tax man’s grubby paws out of your pockets) issued undercover police officers looking to fine bartenders serving the already inebriated – basically every bar patron during the holidays – a field manual telling them how to spot drunks during the holiday season.

The manual, given to 90 police teams countrywide taking part in the pre-Christmas Responsible Sales of Alcohol Campaign (Operation Killjoy by our lights), did British taxpayers proud, coming up with such startling observations as “[drunks tend to be] careless with money”, and they also cuss, bump into one another and, on a related note, engage in inappropriate sexual behavior, as well as slur their speech and have difficulty following any conversation that goes beyond: “Fancy a pint?” “Too right. Your round.”

Newspapers and pub trade publications (slur that three times fast while touching your nose with your big toe), like The Publican, mocked the Home Office’s effort, condemning it as “absolute nonsense”, and suggesting that the government would be better off focusing its efforts on the supermarkets, which are selling beer cheaper than water (a delightful trend for your bargain boozehound that we covered here).

Of course, the Home Office’s report deserved all the derision it received, and if we’ve added to that here then all the better, but being able to spot a true Christmas drunk as opposed to your average red-nosed holiday boozer is nonetheless important, and not just for police – it could save you and your loved ones from injury, or, possibly worse, having to pony up bail money for someone near and dear. In that spirit we present you with:

The Shark Guys’ Tips for Spotting a Christmas Drunk

Times when you can be sure that you are in the presence of an authentic Christmas drunk:

• Ambulances arrive early Christmas morning to attend to some drunk in a Santa suit who slid off an icy roof in an attempt to give Little Johnny an authentic Christmas experience.


• Little Johnny, earlier in the holiday season, gets a contact high from a mall Santa who has been drinking boxed wine all day (See “Mommy, Santa smells funny”, in the “Holiday Cheers” chapter of “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death”, for a story of a mall Santa who did just that, crashed through the store’s front window, and, call it a holiday miracle if you will, still managed to keep his job).
  


• The person in question is spotted peeing Frosty The Snowman to an early grave.


• The serenity of a hymn at your Christmas Eve religious celebration is ruined by the off-key caterwauling of some drunk who’s just woken up and thinks it’s about time that “Waltzing Matilda” be given a proper airing.


• The person in question has rambled outside of your holiday party and is now on your front lawn simulating acts with your plastic reindeer that might forever corrupt poor Rudolph.


• The person in question is Kiefer Sutherland:
  
  

The Grinch that stole Guinness

This, as you may have guessed, is an important time of year for us Shark Guys, as we enter the Christmas drinking season and prepare ourselves for yet more tales of drunken Santas, holiday office party chicanery (For our Holiday Office Party Tips click here), and the related reasons why it is best not to include mistletoe at a party where lower-level managers are known for their "Russian hands and Roman fingers" after too many dips into the spiked punch. (For a fuller treatment on this very theme we recommend that you check out the “Festive Cheers: Hooch on the Holidays” chapter of our “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: and other true tales of drunken debauchery").

What makes the holidays memorable – aside from family tensions reaching the breaking point and the prospect of imminent financial ruin in the New Year – is, of course, booze, and brewers around the world have smiles on their faces at this time of year that have little to do with stirring religious convictions or sentimental remembrances of gassy mall Santas passing out candy canes and charging 10 bucks a pop for photos. The steady flow of brewer’s booze into pubs is one of those systems that we take for granted, but it is crucial to properly enjoying the holidays and meeting its stressors with rosy cheeks and a good disposition.

Recently, a thief in Ireland stole a record haul of booze from the Guinness brewery, thus throwing this delicate and vital link between brewer and boozehound into jeopardy. According to The Irish Times, the thief drove a truck into the Guinness Brewery, hitched it up to a trailer with 450 kegs of beer in tow, and drove off. In addition to 180 kegs of the black gold, the thief also made off with 180 kegs of Budweiser, and 90 kegs of Carlsberg.

It may be argued that the thief did the drinkers of Dublin a favor by limiting the flow of Budweiser into the city, but in the case of the black gold or “a sandwich in a glass”, as it has been known to The Shark Guys during particularly festive times, the theft was just a cruel, Grinch-like blow to the city.

The thief remains at large, and no doubt living large with all that ill-gotten hooch – 40,500 pints or 64,000 euros worth (the math here was easy as we too measure our money out this way) – at hand.

Dead drunk, but not A dead drunk

They say you cannot put a price on freedom, but that is hooey. Freedom, the best kind too, freedom from work, costs a mere $US19.95 via the Excused Absence Network. The network has isolated a distinct need – that of goldbrickers and hungover partiers to shirk a day’s office duties while not losing pay or stepping into pink-slip lane – and has filled it admirably. For this meager fee you can purchase fake doctor’s notes, as well as funeral programs, which will come in handy if you’ve already tested the limits of your boss’ credulity by both the sheer number of aunts you have (if you’re not in a predominantly Catholic country) and how they seem to drop dead close to a long weekend.

Halloween this year falls inconveniently right in the middle of the week, making a service such as this one quite handy for those who don’t want to worry about a next-day hangover when they don their Eyes Wide Shut masks and hit the nightclubs to grope random strangers and enjoy the only day of the year when it is socially acceptable to go outside the way you secretly dress up in front of your bedroom mirror.

In The Shark Book, we covered more than one tale of the Halloween hammered, including a particular favorite of an Aussie who borrowed a friend’s policeman uniform, possibly thinking that the genuine article would up his odds of winning the giant canned ham or whatever the prize was for best costume. When he later was so drunk that he passed out on a suburban street and passersby who spotted him thought that a policeman had been taken out in the line of duty, things got a bit uncomfortable for both the cop and the partier.

And more recently in Hamburg, we came across another story of Halloween gone wrong, when Die Polizei were called to a train by frightened passengers who believed they had come across the victim of a serious assault. According to officials, "The passengers were alarmed as the man appeared to be bleeding from the face and hands [and] could also not talk”. The passengers tried to revive him and failed (not surprising for anyone who has ever tried to wake up a seriously heavy drinker once he's settled into a serious snooze) and judging by the gore concluded that he had been the victim of a terrible assault.

By the time emergency officials arrived, the clamor surrounding the man caused him to wake up and explain to everyone with a drunken slur that he had just come from a Halloween party. First responders removed the man’s make-up to prevent any further misunderstanding. [Full story here]

The Shark Guys

Home Office at it again

There are certain undeniable signs that the holiday season is once again about to round the corner: whisperings of the next video-game system to end all video-game systems that is to be launched just in time to put mom and pop in the poorhouse for the New Year, but s'alright because at least pale, weak little Johnny will have excellent hand-eye coordination skills; suicide rates starting to soar* and, of course, alcohol consumption among everyday folk rivaling that on a pirate ship after a good plunder.

We devoted an entire chapter in The Shark Book to this topic -- “Festive Cheers: Hooch on the Holidays”, which contained, among other family-album favorites, a tale of a drunken Santa (for a full movie-length treatment of this particular theme, we highly recommend Bad Santa) who, after drinking boxed wine all day between consultations with the tots, crashed through his department store’s main display window.

Law-enforcement officials repeatedly try in vain to come up with some way to curb holiday drinking or at least limit its less socially desirable effects, and none of these is more odious than the planting of plainclothes policemen in bars to catch staff members serving drinks to people already over the limit.

According to the bar-licensee trade publication The Morning Advertiser, the British Home Office is gearing up to implement just such a fish-in-the barrel policy this upcoming holiday season. The Home Office plans to target bars that serve drunks (which of course every bar does -- it's called good business Jack!) by stationing two plainclothes officers in establishments targeted for surveillance.

In this regard, may we suggest that during this holiday season bar patrons keep an eye out for any suspicious looking character whose cheeks are not as rosy as your own and who simply refuses to join in the group sing of Abba’s Fernando? First one to correctly point out the plainclothes and loudly declare “Narc!” drinks free all night.

Aside from the obvious concerns of the state sending around babysitters to mind what grown adults are doing when they're not filling out tax forms, British licensees are worried about what definition of drunkenness these cops are going by given that while I may develop a snarl after my fourth pint, the drinker beside me might become wittier and remember long-forgotten limericks, the type that could delight a whole crowd and make someone's day -- the differences in the effects of drunkenness are just that diverse.

The licensing official interviewed by the publication said that “… the main aim is to say to pubs you can’t continue serving people until they are paralytic,” -- a comment rife with ambiguity. If a customer is spread out horizontally on the floor but still has the wherewithal to wiggle a toe or issue a thumbs-up in response to “One more for you Father Feeney?”, then serving that individual would presumably be acceptable in the eyes of this official.

The British Beer & Pub Association is currently protesting the plan, and, for what it's worth (Editor's Note: almost nothing) The Shark Book authors would like to extend their support.

(*An urban legend according to Scopes, which makes sense since given increasing securalization, one would have assumed that non-religious holidays, like Groundhog Day for example, would have seen a similar spike in deaths… hmm… perhaps that reasoning is not sound.)