Given the recent dialogue concerning drinking (spawned in part by the Greek-wide ban on alcohol at parties), I’ve done some thinking, which is something that I try to not do too much of. Instead of trying to address all of society’s problems with drinking at one time, I started at the beginning.

The most basic question is “Why do we drink?” Since I don’t care much for other people I switched the question to “Why do I drink?” and ran with it. It turns out I like drinking because drinking is fun. Big surprise, no?

Humor me for a while. I’ve had a hard time finding modern-day examples of people who like drinking and will admit it. On our campus a lot of people like to drink and some people like to drink a lot, but very few people will publicly admit to liking to drink. I had to look back in history to find my role models and it turns out that there were quite a few of them.

Somewhere in the societal void that exists between the end of the 70′s and the beginning of the 80′s one of society’s most revered institutions died a very untimely death. The institution of which I speak is the drinking society. To be fair, people still drink, but it seems to have become un-P.C. to drink for the sake of drinking. Granted, there are many things wrong with alcohol, but there are also many things wrong with recreational drugs, and yet people still continue to use them. OK, bad example.

Since the founding of MADD in 1980, alcohol and the people who love it have been demonized to the point where even convicted bestophiliacs shun our company. Before all this, however, some of America’s greatest men were boozehounds and I’d like to introduce you all to them.

One of my personal heros is notorious boozehound Humphrey Bogart. It has been said that, in addition to being one of the greatest actors to grace the silver screen, he was one of the greatest drinkers to ever step up to a bar. According to him, the whole world was three drinks behind; I tend to agree with him. The drinking intelligentsia who flocked to him were hard-drinking, quick with their wits and some of the most creative people in America at the time. His drinking rarely, if ever, interfered with his professional life; but, then again, his professional life rarely if ever interfered with his drinking.

According to Bogart, the hallmark of a good drinker was “he can get absolutely stiff and the fellow next to him doesn’t know it. You had to handle it, it shouldn’t handle you.” There are more than a few of you out there who could stand to learn something from Bogart, myself included.

One of Bogart’s defining characteristics was the people he surrounded himself with. Sure they drank a lot, but they did it with style. The vast majority of the time they handled their booze just as a good drinker should. Bogart only had one brush with the law, which involved a giant stuffed panda and a gangster, and the case was eventually dropped. They somehow knew where to draw the line between good, old-fashioned drunken fun and actual trouble.

To honor this historic group, which eventually dubbed themselves “The Holmby Hills Ratpack,” I propose a rebirth, nay a full out renaissance, rejuvenation and revival of the drinking club. We won’t gather under any other pretense than of drinking and having fun. “Rats are very well behaved,” Bogart explained, but they were also up “for staying up late and drinking lots of booze.” Ergo, frat boys and drunken freshmen girls need not apply. Teetotalers be warned, my group and I are as quick with our wits as you are to judge, so step away unless you want to get hurt.

In closing, I love getting fan mail and am now accepting applications to our little group. Instead of a r‚sum‚, bring along your favorite bottle of alcohol and over the course of the evening we will learn all about you that we need to know. If we like you, we’ll extend an invitation to repeat the evening.

“I don’t trust a bastard who doesn’t drink,” Bogart was fond of saying. “They’re afraid of revealing their true selves.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.