Before I go off half-cocked (and I don’t mean like the complaints I get at home), in the interest of full 
disclosure I have to admit that I’m old, I’m tired, I’m occasionally irregular and I’m worn out from having to occasionally outrun hordes of syphilitic cavemen as I walked to school 231 miles each way – up hill. Consequently some of the hatred I spew towards youthful behavior may be somewhat misdirected. But that aside, listen up you little punk bastards!
What in the Hell is so appealing about going on Spring break to some place like Mexico, the Caribbean or even South Florida, drinking to excess…and projectile vomiting while searching for a Pantone color wheel to identify the shade of green you’ve become? Every time I watch a news clip of college-, and even high-school-age kids frolicking at a 100◦ beach while developing Stage 3 skin cancer, circling the Planet Mars on the Jägermeister Shuttle and throwing up chunks from last year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest and 
yet they’re laughing and having the time of their lives I wonder if this is the apocalypse that John Connor tried to warn us of.
What is the attraction of loading up on so much booze that you’re using your 
new Tommy Bahama shirt as a canvas that will serve as a new addition to the Museum of Natural Vomiting? And there are those who happily do this on camera for the entire world to see – or at least for those who still may watch the nightly news on a network station. Oh how proud their parents would be if only they could see little Cyrus or Beautiful Cissy with a necklace of half-digested chili that begins in their offspring’s tonsils.
Except for the obvious wealthy parent just where are these kids getting the money to blow on these drinkathons? I thought the economy was so bad that families were forced to pull in the reins and there was no money for discretionary drinking trips. Every time I see ads for those Girls Gone Wild videos I keep thinking of that movie from the Mesozoic Era, Where the Boys Are. The closest the young people in that movie go to over-indulging was to chug some fermented apple cider. The only sex they had was with themselves.
If people in the videos are any indication of what the future leaders of this country will be then I suggest we all start learning Farsi. Given enough Stoli, English as a language is on the way out. When Nikita Kruschev 
was premier of the former Soviet Union he once boasted that he would take over America without ever firing a shot. What he failed to say is that the assumed takeover would involve pouring a lot of shots.
I’m sure not advocating temperance. Sitting around with a bunch of your compatriots knocking back shots of tequila is just as satisfying, fun and bonding as the circle jerks that were so prevalent in my era. It’s just that with the sole emphasis on how many brain cells that can be destroyed by a battery of 101-proof ammunition, trying to relate what a good time you had in Mexico may be harder to recall than how sick you were the entire time you were where you were.
If you want to get drink to such an extent that you erase your memory then for Christ’s sake don’t spend the money to do it in a foreign country. If nothing else, go see Midnight Express and I guarantee you you’ll call your travel agent and cancel your trip. Stay in your room, post some cardboard cutouts of your best friends around a table and drink yourself blind. You can do a lot more traveling with your head in a familiar porcelain bus than you can flying for five hours and being 
someplace where the only language spoken is barf.
On a similar subject, since when did bars become “clubs?” One doesn’t go out anymore and hit some bars…they “go clubbing.” It wasn’t that long ago that being in a club meant wearing a funny hat, volunteering to stand on street corners and sell peanuts or candy to raise money for charitable causes and singing religious and patriotic songs. When I was old enough to drink legally in my beloved home town of Valparaiso, Indiana, I never considered I was a member of any prestigious “club” whenever I’d walk in to Shoey’s Bar, or The Ten Pin Tap. Even Norm and Cliffy never considered Cheers to be their “club room.”
Stop trying to make things what they aren’t. If you’re that ashamed of them don’t try to spruce up the image with some fru fru name. Garbage men are not “sanitation engineers;” janitors are not “custodians;” and taverns are not “clubs.” What’s the old Groucho Marx line about “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member?” Just remember…a bar will take anybody…a club won’t.
Al also doesn’t like kids standing in his yard and will often beat them with a stick if they do. You can read his column here every Monday.
