END OF [SUMMER] DAYS

So the US celebrated Labor Day yesterday to officially put the bullet in another summer and New Orleans almost ceased to exist (if you missed it, don't worry, it'll happen next year, and the year after and the year after...). France doesn't have a holiday to celebrate this; but that doesn't stop one from drinking on 1pm on Monday afternoon.

Generally the end of summer sucks. Back to work, more traffic and less "Meh, it Wednesday afternoon, fuck this I'm going to the beach." However, the death of summer this year does not upset me. Why? One reason: students, particularly of the female persuasion. I don't know why I'm only really noticing it this year (probably just a normal step on the dirty-old-man road), but holy shit, the students all came back to town and although it takes twice as long to do my food shopping, it's twice as nice. Only 20-year olds can pull off the slinky tank-top and sweatpants and make it better looking than a tailored mini-skirt.

One downside of the end of summer; now the War for the White House is kicking into high gear. I try to ignore it, but from what I can understand John McCain impregnated his VP's teenage daughter. That seems strange, but you know what they say, life is stranger than fiction. And the Onion is reporting that McShame is losing his grip on the "Grizzled Ornery Old Man" demographic to Joad Cressbeckler


Old, Grizzled Third Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

"Cressbeckler seen as more decrepit than McCain"
"Cressbeckler's views on steam power, "Orientals" attractive to many McCain Supporters."

from the crawl: "Election analysts formalize the use of the term "Rural Voters" as replacement for "Ignorant Hick Voters"

TEENAGE DRINKY DRINKY

There's been a lot of talk about college presidents lobbying to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 in the U.S. to allegedly cut down on college binge drinking, which is naturally making M.A.D.D. mad. This wouldn't change things much for me, since I'm (barely) over 21 and I already drink with teenagers all the time at numerous stops along Nyack's "Underage Railroad" (a brilliant phrase coined by Kris). In fact, I will be doing some hard-hitting undercover investigative reporting on this very topic after work today.

I'm not sure this will really help, because although drinking is a huge part of the culture, most of the problems stem from driving. So here's my counterproposal: lower the drinking age to 18, raise the driving age to 22, and make alcohol/beer advertisements on television illegal. Also, liquor stores should scan every ID to ensure that those under 21 can only buy 1 case of beer or 1 bottle of hard alcohol a day. Colleges and universities should also offer transportation in the form of some sort of . . . light rail?

However, the best thing about this debate is the multitude of pictures of drunken debauchery that are being included with the articles on the internet. Here's a breakdown of each site and what visual they chose:

Over The Limit: hot chick face down in toilet

ABC NEWS: shirtless guys doing keg stands on beach

WSJ BLOG: "unidentified man pours beer from a Jack Daniel's bottle into a beer bong before a football game in Madison, WI" (WTF? A Jack Daniel's bottle?)

Ontario Now: a rare shot of an inebriated Lindsay Lohan in the wild

Gothamist: FRANK THE TANK!

Gothamist FTW!