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Low Rider: Man Arrested for drunk driving a lawn mower
2008-01-18 15:00:00
Hustler, the company that makes lawnmowers, not the magazine known for more beaver shots than Canadian tourism literature, claims its 'Super Z' riding mower is the fastest production zero turn mower on the market.Given that our subscription to Popular Mechanics has expired, we're going to have to take their word for it, not to mention the fact that we both live in high rise apartment buildings and require binoculars to see actual grass.We imagine that you wouldn't necessarily want to go off roadin' with the missus on one of these bad boys, but for a mower it can certainly scorch rubber with nearly 30 horsepower. And with a top speed of 15 miles an hour, it's just powerful enough so that you can drag race a Segway scooter and leave it in the dust too, provided there is a mighty tail wind kicking up.Riding mowers may be getting faster, but manufacturers may want to think twice about making cup holders standard, following the wasted antics of a New Zealand er, who was stopped by p...
More About: Arrested , Driving , Drunk , Drunk Driving

Drink and exercise your way to a longer life: study.
2008-01-16 15:00:00
Like a bird feeding its young, news media regurgitate press releases before flying off to crap on other stories (such as wild parties thrown by Aussie teens that necessite a police helicopter response). We Shark Guys, however, offer the kind of sober analysis typically seen just prior to pitchers of stale beer arriving at your table.So, instead of focusing on that story, or some drunk who stumbled his way onto the property of English footballer Michael Owen and was chased by security personnel all over the finely manicured manor grounds of his 17th century estate, we decided to spotlight physical activity of a different sort.If the only exercise you get in a week is the mad dash to your PC when you?re instant messaged, you?re going to want to stamp out that cigarette (preferably on your tongue, just like in the movies), crack open a window a touch, breathe deep and take note as Danish researchers recently asked, ?If you don't want to exercise too much, can you trade it for one to t...
More About: Life , Drink , Australia , Study , Exercise

Drunk bus fight, Toronto, or next stop Haymaker Street
2008-01-14 15:00:00
We Shark Guys hold two Canadian passports, which we?d be more than willing to part with if the right offer came along. Of course we kid and proudly fly the flag wherever we go, expressing our patriotism through the most underhanded of means?on the backpacks of our seeing stars and stripes comrades to the south to tourist hot-spots around the globe.In addition to these important documents, (for which official photos now require that the applicant no longer smile, somewhat undermining our outwardly friendly and polite, if dull global image) we also hold two bus passes. Though only one of us resides in Toronto year round, (while the other stops by occasionally for an orthotic in-sole fitting, or to load up on airport souvenirs), we're both familiar with hopping a turnsti, er, paying full fare and experiencing those heady subterranean smells or brushing elbows with the great unwashed on a bus.The Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, which as youngsters we dubbed ?Take the Car?, is res...
More About: Fight , Street , Drunk , Stop

Hair of the Dog: Drunk pooch stumbles into vet's office
2008-01-11 15:00:00
Thus far, the beastly behavior we?ve chronicled here has been solely that of the human variety. However, in The Shark Book we actually devoted an entire chapter, ?Crapulent Critters? to our cousins lower down on the food chain, who took to the booze with a particularly anthropomorphic vigor. From an unscrupulous Royal footman who got the Queen?s Royal corgis hopped up on gin and whiskey (one of whom later met a grisly fate: mauled to death by Princess Anne's bull terrier--the corgi, not the footman, we should specify, given HRM's nasty streak), to Swedish elk trashing a retirement home drunk on fermented apples and a pet parrot tossed from a bar for taking sips of customers? pints, we?ve certainly seen our share of fauna that?ve dulled their senses with the drink. In a small North Austrian town, a concerned dog owner--a hunter-- arrived at the vet with a Labrador, ?Dingo?. [Editor's note: Given that the country in question, is in fact Austria and not Australia, we insist that you...
More About: Office , Hair , Drunk

Woman, 110, credits her longevity to whiskey...For a taste of her whiskey,
2008-01-09 15:00:00
The life of London's Minnie Smith's has spanned the Spanish American War to the recent Vegas debut of the world's largest TV and New Hampshire primaries. In order to experience such a rich lifetime's worth of accumulated experience you'd have to either switch to a Soylent green exclusive diet, sleep upside down or develop a time machine. Naturally, anyone traveling back in time will have to sign a release form guaranteeing they won't pervert the natural course of history and disrupt the future development of a time machine by say, telling Kennedy to duck or thwarting the Titanic ice-berg collision. The latter, for example, would excise the calamitous event from history books, add a few hundred souls who otherwise wouldn't have been conceived (if this vessel's a rockin', don't bother knockin') and remove any and all future references to the Titanic from the obits of very old people.Minnie Smith, it should be said, is not dead yet, but 110 years young--her namesake on the t...
More About: Longevity , Woman , Taste , Credits

I shall be telling this with a sigh, Somewhere ages and ages hence: Robert
2008-01-07 15:00:00
We've been known to spritz all over the blogosphere like an aerosol can and on occasion, our dedicated readership gets to inhale vapors of a more "culturally uplifting" variety, if you will?different from what they may choke on recreationally or use to tag the side of a bus. The shrewder among you may have noticed our novelty bobble-head nod to simile and metaphor in the opening paragraph, a tribute of sorts, to the theme of this posting: not opening night at the ballpark, but verse. For some, poetry is the ABCB rhyme scheme in a bathroom stall, the gentleman from Nantucket, a wedding toast limerick that embarrassed the family of the bride, or some throwaway snippet of pop music (for example, an ABBA disco rhyme scheme courtesy of ABBA). If you turned on the radio in the 70s for instance, or came upon a classic rock station whose play list had atrophied like gray matter in a police precinct, you'd have heard what is quite possibly the worst verse ever set to music in the English l...
More About: Robert , Sigh , Ages

Eyes Well Damned: George MacDonald Fraser (1925-2008)
2008-01-04 15:00:00
Pardon a break from regularly-scheduled SharkBook.Com chicaneryOne of the reasons that Chris and I decided that writing a book together might not be such a bad idea and why the experience was, well, a hell of a lot of fun (and why the next one will also be a tandem effort), is that while we each had our own reading interests, the list of our favourite books was quite similar: ?The Ginger Man?, by JP Donleavy, (top on my list) , ?Confederacy of Dunces,? by John Kennedy Toole, and the works of Charles Bukowski, and Mordecai Richler.These writers never tried to come across as precious with what they wrote, and the stories they told were never hampered by artifice ? among their works you won't find a single humorless 800-page family-saga bummer of a book. They wrote against and in the face of political correctness, puritanism, and pretence and their books found a home with audiences who welcomed this blast of frank talk on their bookshelves. Indeed, they were writing for readers who'v...
More About: Eyes , George , 2008

The Hooch-Drinker's Guide to The Galaxy
2008-01-02 15:00:00
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 ...
More About: Guide , Galaxy

Happy New Year from the Shark Guys! Tips on First Night Boozing from everyb
2007-12-31 15:00:00
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 PostAccording 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,...
More About: Tips , Night , Happy New Year

Beer prices up! German consumption falls! Stay calm folks
2007-12-28 15:00:00
In our spare time, the odd hour of sobriety as well as professionally, we're not only "festive boozing consultants" (with carefully hand-crafted-in-the-garage business cards to prove it) but self appointed industry analysts taking the sector's pulse and checking for slow, shallow breathing of the type the gentlemen pictured here might experience if they kept up this activity for a protracted period.With the buzz from 2007 wearing off and the promise of a brighter and more prosperous 08 (our jobs have yet to be outsourced to humorists in India) we Shark Guys were ready to stagger into the New Year without tripping and falling on the panic button. However we?ve just smashed the protective glass case and wrapped a towel around a hand to stop the bleeding. This is the same hand that would?ve ordinarily been extended? palm out, to demand a traffic cop-like halt to a disturbing trend post haste, or slapped down in a Jeopardy-style buzz-in: "What is beer?: the correct response to the clu...
More About: German , Beer , Stay , Consumption , Falls

Yes Virginia, Santa is sh*t-faced
2007-12-26 15:00:00
?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 be...
More About: Virginia

Prison Chocolate Ban No Laugh Riot
2007-12-24 15:00:00
We were initially delighted when the phrase "Swedish prison" came across the news wires, given the vast storehouse of research material at our disposal? shop keeps who archive a Smithsonian-like collection of similarly themed films, as well as a steady inventory of single cigarettes so we could get a sense of what prison life is all about without all those communal shower come ons. Unfortunately, without a working knowledge of the Nordic language, and the Ikea warehouse not returning our harassing phone calls (not to mention being indisposed to Googling the phrase ?Swedish prison? for fear of incurring some librarian's bifocaled stink-eye) we were unable to figure out exactly what kind of penal institution ?Brinkebergsanstalten? is, the mouthful of a prison at the center of the following story. So, with no English language reports specifying the gender of those incarcerated, we decided to eschew modern crime statistics and 200 years' worth of temple-probing criminology and assume ...
More About: Chocolate , Prison , Laugh

Drunk 'Grim Reaper' Arrested: Death Warmed Over Slightly
2007-12-21 15:00:00
Unfortunately, the online Christmas shopping season has come and gone so you might be forced to defer your philanthropy in the form of some promissory gift note indicating that "the George Foreman grill is on its way, I swear". Sadly, at this late juncture, no warp-speed-porn downloading internet service provider or benevolent FedEx guy is going to save your yuletide bacon and ensure your gift arrives in its intended hands by the 25th. At best, you?re resigned to rummaging through the garage for a suitable gift that hasn't been soiled by raccoons or packing a can of bear repellent for a last ditch trip to a big box outlet. Of course, there are those people for whom a holiday gift is a priority hovering slightly above poinsettias for an off-hours plumber, and for whom you can shop worry-free as your paths aren?t likely to cross until well after the Christmas eggnog spills have been mopped up. For these folk and loved ones alike--whose stockings once hung by the chimney with care, an...
More About: Arrested , Drunk , Death , Grim Reaper , Reaper

Drunken games with reindeer
2007-12-19 13:00:00
Every year around this time, as we celebrate the birth of Santa Claus (or was it that little blond elf who partnered up with Rudolph in the movie? hmm? too much egg nog), there are always reports of people getting drunk and taking their yuletide frustrations out on the most glaring and garish targets within their blurry sights ? the holiday decorations that festoon towns.Sometimes, these acts are as blasphemous as replacing a nativity Jesus with ?Stewie? from "The Family Guy", while in other cases the vandalism takes the form of vigilante justice, such as when someone kicks out blinding holiday floodlights strong enough to have seen action during Pink Floyd?s "Another Brick in The Wall" tour. (It is also quite tempting to throw a rock on behalf of Al Gore whenever one comes across a holiday display sucking up the wattage like that in the above pic).In Sunderland, England, city officials put up an illuminated decorative reindeer (pictured here) outside of the ?Jolly Sailor? pub, poss...
More About: Games

For a taste of your whiskey...the kids aren't going to college
2007-12-18 15:01:00
For small-ticket items like umbrellas, polyester money-belts emptied of cash or novelty hats, bargain hunters and holiday-shopping cheapskates can save a few sheckels when shopping for those who have nothing by hitting their local public transit auction.If you?d like to get your greasy mitts on bigger-ticket items with the serial numbers filed off, you can always hit a police auction and take your pick of the repository of stuff confiscated from local riffraff?a station wagon with the tires shot out, an outboard used for immigration excursions into the Florida panhandle? before your friendly neighborhood beat cop has a chance to sell it back to them.For bona fide high rollers who would like to squander their riches on things like a a thong that once flossed the arse of Demi Moore or a bottle of Elvis' halitosis breath, there are auction houses like Sothebey?s and Christie?s where there?s also a lucrative market for those heirlooms that mysteriously came into your family?s possessio...
More About: Kids , College , The Kids , Taste

Judgement at Nuremberg: Dump that vodka!
2007-12-14 13:00:00
We live in a post 9/11 era and will continue to do so barring the apocalypse or a patent on a time machine. Ne?er-do-well terrorists with frequent-flyer miles (entry into the mile-high club being forsaken in this life for an attractive consolation prize in the next) have caused security at airports to tighten like the circle of police officers around a public demonstration for the poor. Restrictions on liquids being brought on board airplanes mean that one can no longer stroll on board with booze, cologne, hair gel and all the other accouterments a gentleman needs to have on hand to be able to properly flirt with flight attendants once in the air. In Nuremberg Germany, a man getting ready to board a plane to his hometown of Dresden on the final leg of a return trip from a holiday in Egypt was told that he would have to either pour out the two bottles of vodka he had in tow or pay a fee to have the bag containing them checked in with the rest of his luggage. Now, vodka is the ...
More About: Vodka , Judgement

The Top 10 Drinking & Driving Songs of All Time!
2007-12-12 15:00:00
The Shark Guys Present: The Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs of All Time !It's that time of year again, and red and green abounds in Christmas displays and decorations (blue and yellow to our color-blind friends). If you like to get a little tight come the holiday season and are considering hitting the road in search of yuletide cheer, you could risk forgetting the vital significance of those colors at intersections, so it's for the best if, when that obnoxious do-gooder who attends every office party tells you that you've had too much to drink and that you're in no condition to drive, you scorn his offer of a ride home, curse him for a meddlesome ninny and call a cab instead. No amount of minty fresh Scope kept in your glove compartment or complaints to an arresting highway officer that you are heavily medicated and having one of your "spells" is likely to keep you from a Christmas Eve in the drunk tank that would not be nearly as romantic, or as free from dangerous lunatics...

How to spot a Christmas drunk ? Shark style
2007-12-10 15:00:00
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),...
More About: Style , Spot , Drunk , Shark

Cups that runneth over: The portable beer-pong table
2007-12-07 13:00:00
According to the press release, "Bing Bong Inc. has paved the way for the entire beer pong industry" (our italics) with their "beer pong" accouterments.If you're unfamiliar with beer pong, consider this a public service announcement (or, to put it another way, one of the few instances we're ever 'pro Bono'--har, har, har).Before shunting your son, and especially your daughter (see pictures below) off to some third-tier state college where, influenced by this game and others excuses to get college-age women drunk, the only Varsity Letter they're likely to achieve is an "F", here are the rules. (At this point we should mention that we don't think we're taking liberties with standard procedure if you substitute the eponymous 'beer' with any other alcoholic beverage or recreational drug of your choice as regional differences are likely to come into play).Two teams take turns shooting ping-pong balls into a triangle of cups at their opponent's end of the table. When a ball land...
More About: Pong , Portable , Beer , Table , Cups

"I just joined AA. I still drink -- I just use a different name."
2007-12-05 15:00:00
Controlled drinking may seem like an oxymoron not to mention a highly theoretical construct to us Shark Guys, however it?s beginning to hold more sway with folks who didn't use Psych 101 as a place to sleep off that Sunday hangover. The concept of controlled drinking, or what we sometimes engage in at lunch, has apparently emerged as a welcome and acceptable treatment alternative to the buzz kill offered by the folks at Alcoholics Anonymous?total abstinence.Not abstaining at all, a concept we?ve kept an adamantine grasp on like that frayed rope your sadistic gym teacher had you climb in elementary school, might just be the best method of success. And this isn't us flapping our parched lips, but that's according to Dr. Michael Levy, author of "Take Control of Your Drink ing...And You May Not Need to Quit", a tome that will be a welcome gift to sling under the tree of a loved one, while chapters are read aloud with a belt of eggnog.While the more attainable objective of being able ...

The Grinch that stole Guinness
2007-12-03 16:00:00
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 sentim...
More About: Guinness

Keeping up with the Jets set
2007-11-30 13:00:00
Considering all of the potential exposés that it could have chosen to break ? like once and for all bringing those blasted all-nude RV and boat shows into the open ? it seems strange that the New York Times would instead choose to shake the earth by revealing that men who attend NFL games like to get drunk and hoot at women. That same conclusion, no doubt drawn before the reporter strapped on his visor and went to work, could have been borne out with far less effort by just popping over to the house of any Sunday football loving Joe Lunchbox with a case of beer and a copy of Lusty Luanne?s Lunar Calendar 2007/2008 in tow. A Times reporter did go to a New York Jets game a little over a week ago and when it came to half-time and most of the crowd had gathered on the pedestrian ramps of Giants Stadium?s Gate D, cruelly ignoring the lifetime achievement award or some-such being given to one ?Curtis Martin?, he went to see what all the fuss was about. He found hundreds of men gathered on...
More About: The Jets

Paging Dr Drunk!
2007-11-28 13:00:00
Boozing, when done well, is the welcome opposite of work. Very little effort should go into a good booze-up; the drinker?s main concern should be remaining smilingly ruddy-faced while pouring the nectar down his or her gob and thinking capital thoughts. There are, however, certain minor exertions that interfere with the complete rest that is the drinker?s due when tippling, and it is here that technology has stepped in admirably to help out. There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy ?orders up another.?) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we...
More About: Drunk

Flex your Molson muscles!
2007-11-26 13:00:00
University administrators, you know, the guys who kept you out of the top three colleges of your choice, relegating you to an institution unfit to grace the bumper of your parents? Volvo, are slamming a new ad campaign by Canada?s foremost purveyor of bland suds, Molson Beer.In a Globe & Mail report, critics blasted the brewer's latest marketing initiative as at least as tasteless as the product itself, saying that it is "harmful for students seeking jobs if a potential employer discovered their raucous partying poses on Facebook." Now, as we?ve documented in the Sh*t Faced Femmes of Facebook, the boundaries separating the public and private are often as blurred as your vision after you?ve drank 11 or so cans of Molson's "finest", as people are rarely red-faced when posting compromising pictures online.The Molson campaign asks college students to post such pictures so that the "top party school in Canada" can be crowned. We Shark Guys, several years removed from dancing a two-...
More About: Flex

Drunks for Thanksgiving-Day Weekend
2007-11-23 15:00:00
Both of the Shark Book authors hail from Canada, a country where Thanksgiving is celebrated a month earlier than it is in the US (the sincere thanks being given around Canadian dinner tables at that time of year usually has to do with it not yet being winter). However, we don?t see a problem with breaking out another turkey ? one that has hopefully been pumped up with steroids to delectably plump, juicy proportions ? a month later and celebrating the holiday once again in solidarity with our neighbours to the South. Also, phoning in sick to work and taking an undue Thanksgiving-weekend rest is quite appealing. In the turkey-time tryptophan and bourbon-inspired mood of the season, we have decided to step back from our regular efforts of focusing on drunk-related news and tales of world-class drunks to focus on two smaller stories from our drunk police blotter that, if you ever thought otherwise, confirm the link between dedicated boozing efforts and the increased likelihood that ...
More About: Weekend , Thanksgiving Day