Alphecca

Magazine Celebrates Drunkeness

First a couple tired old jokes:

You know, I used to have a problem with alcohol, but now I really like the stuff...

You know you've had too much to drink when you go to brush something off your shoulder and it's the floor...

But seriously, folks, a guy has actually started a magazine glorifying being soused. From the LA Times:

It's barely 3 p.m., and Frank Kelly Rich, who edits the bimonthly homage to getting soused, is draining his gin and tonic and eyeing a whiskey bottle on the top shelf. Moments later, he's drinking that as well.

A huge bar dominates the office, the fridge is stocked with beer and the handful of employees is invited to drink. Smoking is OK too.

As the booze flows, Rich, 41, extols the virtues of alcohol, calling it a boon to mankind while claiming that drunks are an "oppressed minority."

Nothing can knock him off message.

What about cirrhosis of the liver? "There's a tidal wave of new evidence that drinking is actually good for you," he insists.

What of alcohol's effect on families? "I think drinking is conducive to a happy family life," he counters.

Rich lights a cigarette and smiles as the ice melts in his cocktail. His downtown Denver office is decorated with posters of Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason and other famous tipplers of yesteryear.

"The most accomplished people have been drinkers. Hemingway was a great literary drunk, and I think a lot of teetotalers would trade their lives for his in a second," he said. "Alcohol is the great socializer. Can you imagine a world without it? Well, I guess you can — it's called the Middle East."

Modern Drunkard is an irreverent, 50,000-circulation glossy magazine full of pinup girls and macho men alongside articles on drinking, getting drunk and hiding a hangover from "the Man," i.e., the boss. It also includes serious examinations of liquor, biographies of history's great drunks and selected odes to the drinking life. The magazine sells for $4.50 in bookstores across the U.S. and Europe, and free copies are available in many bars.

A recent issue included the feature "You know you're a drunkard when … (you fall down a well and send Lassie to the liquor store)"; a dictionary of bar slang: "pal tax n. — the act of covertly ordering a drink on a friend's tab"; and a story titled "Booze is My Copilot," on how drinking cured one man's fear of flying.

Rich revels in the retrograde excess of his magazine. The way he sees it, reality is so awful, why not get drunk?

"People always say, 'If you drink, your problems will still be there in the morning,' " he said. "That's like telling a guy going to the Bahamas that in a week, he'll be right back where he started. Well, for a week, he'll be gone."
[...]
Rich freely admits he's an alcoholic and frequently blacks out. Regular exercise and vitamins, he said, keep him fit.

"I drink about eight drinks a day and maybe 30 on a heavy day," he said cheerfully. "But as long as I remain healthy and happy, I have no intention of slowing down. I mean, when you have something good going, you stick with it, right?"

I'll admit I like to pound-down a few on a Friday night as much as the next person but if I ever get like this guy I'm gonna give away my guns and check into the nearest AA.

It's a free country and he can publish whatever he wants. It's probably a rather humerous magazine, too. I can see the novelty appeal of it. But alcohol IS a destructive force in our society and it has caused much misery for so many spouses, employers, and auto-victims.

I am relatively certain that most crimes, including wife-battering, murder, and rape (never mind drunk driving) have been committed under an alcoholic (or other drug-induced) haze. Having a few drinks now and then, especially if you're not driving, is fine. It's fun. I just wish there was less of it (including in myself) and while we grin at such a magazine concept, it's also with a tinge of being repelled at such a celebration.

I am NOT in favor of prohibition and I am against the long, wasteful and futile "war on drugs". But that doesn't mean I can't find a magazine such as Modern Drunkard one of the last things we need lying around the news stand. I almost wish it had a minimum age requirement (such as skin-magazines used to have) so kids aren't encouraged to purchase it and think that having up to 30 drinks a day and blacking-out is a desirable lifestyle that will help them get ahead...

So this is a weird post. I started out laughing about the story and telling jokes, but as I wrote it, the grimness of it sunk in. What did the late Patrick Moynahan call it, "defining deviancy downward"?