Parents, if you stay awake at night worrying that one day when your kids go to college they might try to throw a ping-pong ball into a cup of beer, you can rest easy, as long as the college is in Suffolk County:

A Long Island lawmaker hopes to curb underage drinking by banning the sale of booze-themed board games, like beer pong, to minors.

It would be against the law to sell beer-pong sets to minors under the measure proposed by Suffolk County legislator Tom Cilmi.

“I am not one who would typically advocate for regulation of our free market, but this is simply common sense,” said Cilmi. “Our children’s lives are at risk.” [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, on the law
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10. Your co-workers have posted the video of your office Christmas party meltdown on YouTube

9. You’re the Balloon Boy’s dad

8. Your company is transferring you to its office in Kabul

7. For the Rose Bowl, you put your life’s savings on Oregon

6. Airport security thought your colostomy bag was an explosive device

5. All you got for Christmas was new underwear…Well, new to you!

4. For Christmas, your wife gave you a vasectomy gift card

3. You began the year in the emergency room having a champagne cork removed from your ass

2. Your first name is ‘Tiger’

1. You just woke up from your New Year’s Eve party
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, drugs & alcohol
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I worked as a bouncer/bartender for many years while I was in college.  As the New Year’s parties get kicked off on Thursday evening, here are a couple of things to think about when you run into the guy at the bar wearing the funky colored shirt with “crew” or “security” written on the back.

[Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol
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10. The only noisemaker involves the host and a can of beans

9. All Macarena, all the time!

8. When you come through the front door, you spot a large table and a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle

7. The only toast all evening involves actual bread

6. It breaks up at 11:45

5. Everyone is speaking Klingon

4. The “champagne” is really just ginger ale and Mentos

3. It’s just you and three Zhu Zhu Hamsters

2. It’s February 12th

1. You’re still waiting for your ball to drop

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, drugs & alcohol, ends & odd
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Dear Ruby,
I am in my 50s and the kids have moved out. The wife and I were thinking it would be fun to smoke a joint. I’m all for it, but she says that pot nowadays is like ten times stronger than it was when we were kids and we’ll freak out or overdose or something. But I think she still wants to do it.

Do you think this is a good idea or should we just stick to beer and Captain Morgan?

2nd Adolescence

[Read more →]

Tags: advice, drugs & alcohol
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Novelist Dan Fante has paid his dues; he has overcome alcoholism, scores of crummy jobs, and the desperate fate accorded so many sons of famous fathers. But after nearly 20 years of writing fiction, 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Dan. His new novel 86’d will be published by Harper Perennial on September 22, 2009, and his three previous Bruno Dante novels will be rereleased on December 1 of the same year. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, drugs & alcohol
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Ahhh, ‘tis almost St. Patty’s Day, and ‘tis almost time for us Irish to further perpetuate the Irish stereotype of drinkin’, singin’, laughin’, and then fightin’. As the ides of March come creeping closer, we Irish get all the more excited about putting our livers to the test on the 17th.  [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, race & culture
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I consider myself a very nice guy. I’ve helped old ladies cross the street. I’ve tried to get connections to hook friends up with jobs. I’ve even given stranded motorists a little cash without asking for anything in return.

But I try to avoid giving drunken strangers rides home. A couple of weekends ago, I got cornered into it. 

Around 3 AM, I was hanging out at a fine establishment when an inebriated gentleman told me his friends had ditched him and he needed a ride back to his home in Stamford, about 10 minutes away. I happen to live in Stamford, but I felt uncomfortable putting some random dude in my car. He could have a knife, a gun, anything! So I told him I was going in the other direction, and he ignored my sensible suggestion of calling a taxi.

About a half hour later, I took off from the bar solo, having driven myself. I was on the road leading away from the bar when I received a phone call from my friend. We’ll call him “Q.” Here’s how the brief discussion went down… [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, ends & odd
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I was writing a novel about insanity, among other things, when Mooger went crazy for the second time. I wasn’t there the first time he went crazy. I’d already graduated and moved out of the fraternity house in Coral Gables and back to New York. But I’d heard about it.

As the story goes, he was partying at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and, being Mooger, had grabbed a cup of beer that was sitting on a car. It wasn’t his beer. That wasn’t the sort of thing to deter Mooger. He drank it. [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, reflections & recollections by Scott Stein
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So if you’re good and drunk and fall in front of a moving subway train, and the train driver doesn’t recognize you as a person lying there on the track and doesn’t stop in time to keep from running your ass over, you are 35% to blame. Poor you. You only get $2.3 million dollars. No, you weren’t pushed. No, it wasn’t slippery. You were just really drunk and, oops, you fell on the train tracks. But it isn’t your fault, at least not 65% of it. Because drivers “are trained to be able to look out for people on the tracks … and people are known to be intoxicated by night,” your lawyer said. And the jury agreed. He might be the greatest lawyer ever.

Tags: drugs & alcohol, on the law
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He cheated. Alex Rodriguez cheated. He may claim ignorance, but honestly, does that really matter? If a guy gets a blow job at a strip club and later tells his wife that he didn’t really think he was cheating — there is no doubt that he was, in fact, still cheating. The question is, if you were that guy, if you did something wrong (really wrong to some people, and so-so wrong to others), how would you handle the situation? Maybe you aren’t that dumb. Maybe you know better and would never be in this predicament. Maybe you never did anything illegal or stupid your entire life (even when you were 20). There are probably very few of you out there. In any case, what happens next?

Does your wife forgive your indiscretion? Do you start marriage counseling to “figure out” (as if you didn’t already know) why you strayed? Do you tell yourself it’s not like you were falling in love with someone else, you were just getting off every once in a while? What if you went back and got that blow-job twice a month for six months but then your wife found your credit card receipts? You have to fess up now, but how do you gain her trust again? Some women would write you off but others would work through it with you. The fans of New York are a tough bunch. The baseball writers are even tougher. They both expect more.

So what happens now? Do we string Alex up or let him play out the next nine years for the Yankees (or whatever his remaining overpriced contract is for) and see what he can do? Bill Clinton did not have “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky either. Do we forgive A-Rod and see if he can play worth his pay?

I am certainly not an expert on baseball but I know there were high expectations for Alex. He was going to “save” the game from all of this steroid use. He was going to break Barry Bonds’s tainted home run record and bring respectability back to the game. Oh well… being a fan is difficult sometimes. Alex isn’t the savior. Can we move on?

Tags: drugs & alcohol, sports
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You don’t actually need to cancel your trip to Amsterdam (if you’re one of the few that can still afford to travel); just don’t go thinking there’ll be cannabis-filled brownies at every turn. The city of Amsterdam is closing down 43 “coffee” shops that currently operate near schools with kids older than twelve — by order of the Dutch government. Have no fear though — 185 shops will remain open. Plus, now you’ll have more time for the Van Gogh Museum and the fabulous photography exhibits at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. This may well make the journey a little more interesting for Americans who’ll now be forced to walk a tad farther to find what they are looking for.

Hat Tip to Newser

Tags: drugs & alcohol
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I had to get a root canal yesterday. I know what you’re thinking — “Lucky!”

I know, I know. Don’t be jealous. Root canals are a special treat. For this particular dental experience, I decided to go to a dentist who specializes in sedation dentistry. It was either that or just let the tooth rot out of my head. Honestly. I can no longer bring myself to volunteer for the waking torture of dental work. Not going to do it. Please just knock me out. [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, health & medical
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Talk about unlucky. A man stole a pickup truck outside of a concert near Dallas and then drove right past the owner of the truck — a police officer who was directing traffic at the event. The cop recognized the vehicle as his own and, after an ill-advised getaway attempt, the thief was apprehended. As someone who’s had his car stolen, I would certainly understand a little police brutality in this case.

That’s just dumb luck, while this is just dumb: This guy drove a stolen SUV to court on the day the jury was deciding “whether to convict him in a separate auto theft case.” But this guy was actually pretty smart — he robbed a bank and made his getaway in style when he hopped into a waiting black limousine. At least he got away.

Not this guy, who was “charged with driving while intoxicated twice in the same day in upstate New York” — first he stopped at state police headquarters, while intoxicated, to ask for directions. Then, still drunk, he returned to take his car from the police parking lot instead of “sleeping it off,” as the troopers had instructed. He was arrested a short time later. He’s clearly too dumb to have a car.

Not to be outdone in dumbness, “[t]hree Oklahoma City men were arrested after playing ‘chicken’ with a police car.” Good thing they weren’t playing with this guy: “A policeman chosen officer of the year in Council Bluffs, Iowa, has been charged with drunken driving.”

Tags: drugs & alcohol, on the law
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The pill didn’t make one taller. That wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t a case of medical science tampering with God’s design, or biological engineering in an effort to transform the human race into a different, better species — a taller one. No, all the oblong, indigo “Gargantuanx” did, miracle of miracles, was create the illusion in the mind of the consumer that he was taller. That’s all.

The pill didn’t take immediate effect. For about 10 minutes you felt nothing. Then you were taller. That is, you believed you were. [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, drugs & alcohol
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What’s with trains lately?

First we have the very serious, terrible story of the California train crash that, last I saw, killed 26 people. The engineer apparently ran a red light and is reported to have sent a text message just before the crash. Human error was named the cause of the crash. Maybe we’ll never know precisely what role texting played in that error, but texting while driving a train is far beyond stupid.

Also in train news, on a lighter note because no one died, in this case alcohol was a factor. I know, shocking. Stupidity was a factor, too. How can you be this dumb and live to be 34?

And the trains keep on coming. No one died, but alcohol was a factor here, too. And cigarettes. If you think it’s more careless and drunk than stupid, you’re wrong. It’s stupid.

In non-train stupidity, alcohol was also a factor here. Falling asleep in a store you’re trying to rob is stupid.

But let’s not blame alcohol for every minor indiscretion. Crack deserves some credit, too.

Tags: drugs & alcohol, ends & odd
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I enjoy watching the Triple Crown races each year, and have been a fan, at least through association, since I was a kid. Weekdays my dad would come home from work, paper folded under his arm, and when I leafed through I would notice that the horse/betting section was always torn out. On weekends I was occasionally dragged to the track, but mostly I saw the insides of local OTB’s. (I suspect my dad still makes occasional visits for nostalgia, if nothing else.)

So I follow the big horses and races when they are in season, and I am familiar with names like Secretariat and Seattle Slew because of my dad. And having watched a handful of near-Triple Crown winners in the last five years, I was particularly excited by the prospect of Big Brown being the first in my adult lifetime.

We now know that that didn’t happen (though we’re not sure exactly why), [Read more →]

Tags: drugs & alcohol, sports
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