Drunk of the Day: Super (Drunk) Mario

This ones for all y’all Nintendo nerds. And gutter bums. Holla!

Guac Party

Oh, lookie here! For this week’s issue of Time Out New York, I penned a piece on all the amazing taco and torta joints opening up in Coney Island. It’s hungry, hungry, yum, yum, good times. Read it up. Whee!

Drunk of the Day: The Source of My Happiness

From the dinosaur-esque picture in the background to the thumbs up to the T-shirt, this picture makes me happier than ever beer any could. Wait—that’s a lie.

Dollar Grub: Brighton Beach

Have you ever tried to slice an apple in half with a plastic knife? It ain’t easy, chickadees. Anyway, lookie here! It’s my latest installment of Dollar Grub: Brighton Beach edition. I look like an utter fool and nearly toss my cookies and pickles on the Cyclone. Then again, when do I not look like a fool?

Drunk of the Day: Psycho Eyes

I do not think this man has eyelids. His guitar-playing friend is equally frightened. Lock up your daughters!

Drunk of the Day: Please Buy Him Pants

Now I’m officially blind.

Hello, Mr. Dinosaur

Hello, bored summertime readers. I’ve written yet another iteration of our Mongol Rally journey from last summer. That is, when we drove a broken-down car from London to Mongolia. And didn’t die. Much. You can read exploits of our team, Mr. Dinosaur, here. Scroll down to page 26: “Have Engine, Will Travel.” It’s a PDF, so be prepared for download goodness.

Drunk of the Day: A Whole Mess of Wrong

I love, love, love the sexy butt poster next to the pile of stuffed animals. And the beer cans next to the stuffed animals. Why so many stuffed animals? Why?!

Gut Instinct: Stressing the Point

It’s a steamy, armpit-soaking afternoon in sandy Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where a booze-store salesgirl with skin like scuffed loafers is asking an awfully frightening question:

“Would you like to try Bud Light Lime?” she inquires, her smile brighter than bleached bones. She stands in front of a skyscraper of Bud Light Lime cases, as tall and misguided as the Tower of Babel. “It’s as crisp, delicious and low-calorie as Bud Light but with the flavor of natural limes!”

“Is that a good thing?” I ask. Though I’m vacationing at a pal’s beach-accessible bungalow, Connecticut is a long way from the lime-squeezed pleasures of Acapulco.

“Try it!” Orange Skin encourages.

“But…”

“Try it,” she repeats, pouring a thimbleful of fizzy blonde liquid.

As a child I never took candy from strangers, but I did devour supermarket samples as eagerly as religious zealots accepting a crunchy Christ wafer. Saturday-morning grocery-store excursions were a culinary Christmas: Like jolly St. Nick’s, doughy women distributed cups of salty Chex Mix, Jimmy Dean sausage circles impaled on toothpicks and mini, melting scoops of Breyers chocolate ice cream.

“Like another sample, sweetie?” they’d ask.

With widened eyes and quickened heart—a response repeated upon glimpsing my first breasts during Just One of the Guys’ prom scene—I mouthed, “Yes.”

“Now tell your mommy how much you want her to buy this,” they’d say, loading my greedy mitts with freebies, filling my stomach with misplaced longing.

“I’ll give it a shot,” I tell Orange Skin, no less susceptible to free’s power at 29 than at age 10. I seize the Bud and sip. The carbonation tickles my taste buds and my throat. It’s effervescent water—the Bud Light I know and loathe—chased by a cloying citrus current, which smothers my tongue like a pillow-armed serial killer. The flavor’s the bastardized offspring of lowbrow Americana and an all-inclusive Caribbean cruise. If spittoons still existed, I would’ve filled one with disgust at such blatant pandering.

See, mega-brewers are catering to America’s growing Latino contingent. To worm into their wallets, conglomerates have unveiled brewskis like the Miller Chill (flavored with lime and salt) and the Chelada (Budweiser, Clamato, salt and lime). The latter tastes like a carbonated Bloody Mary and, it pains me to declare, is hardly un-horrible. Compared to turpentine.

Then again, microbrew mavens aren’t the target drunkard. Besides the Latino set, lime suds are marketed to folks who despise beer’s flavor (and perhaps lack the fingers to squeeze fruit) but enjoy transforming into slurring, self-important train wrecks. Instead of blindly craving doctored beer, ask why the beer requires a citrus injection. Would you dare drop fruit into an inky Guinness or cool Brooklyn Lager? Lime masks inferior flavor. Unadulterated Corona—as a lager, it’s no classier than Natural Light—is a skunky catastrophe.

“What do you think of the Bud Light Lime?” Orange Skin asks. She grins again, a response likely as autonomic as breathing.

“If the world ever ran out of floor cleansers, this would make an excellent alternative,” my Midwestern manners will not let me reply. Instead, I blurt, “Wow, it almost tastes like real lime. Almost.”

Her peepers light up like a pinball machine. She smells sale. Or my lack of deodorant. “You can get a cold six-pack in that last aisle,” she says, pointing toward a fridge. “Or a 12-pack.”

“Thank you,” I say, pushing my cart away.

“You’re going the wrong way,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say, pushing my shopping cart toward the refrigerated aisle. I open the cooler and remove a growler of Southampton, Massachusetts’ strong, aromatic Opa-Opa Buckwheat IPA. I snag a 22-ounce bottle of Massachusetts’ Berkshire Brewing Company’s chocolaty “Shabadoo” Black and Tan. Connecticut’s crisp, summer-quenching Cottrell Old Yankee Ale hits my cart next, joined by Thomas Hookers’ generously bitter Hop Meadow IPA.

“Now that,” says the cashier boy, as I unload my cart, “is a seriously delicious haul of beer.”

I beam with pride and envision the weekend. The brew will vanish, as will my anxiety. I’ll relax and act like a human being. I’ll refrain from elbowing subway passengers, screaming at taxi drivers and sighing audibly while waiting at the bank.

“Did you get the Bud Light Lime?” Orange Skin asks, as I cart my liquid Quaaludes outside to the awaiting car.

“Of course,” I lie, growing calmer with each passing step.

Drunk of the Day: I’m Licked

So that’s what it’s like to be a human lollipop.

Drunk of the Day: Rock the Boat

Love, love, love the shirt. And the devil signs, tossed to some out-of-frame hell merchant.

Drunk of the Day: Why Your Friends Should Never Own Cameras

Oh, lord, what has this man done to get photographed holding beer and whiskey, while his too-short shorts display a predilection for tightie-whities? Oh, yeah: He got drunk.