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Poor Brittany(s).

Well, Wash­ing­ton, you must be ver­rrry pleased with your­selves. In the words of a head­line my friend Adri­anne likes to quote, You’re snow king! And you can’t han­dle it. Although God knows why not. I know this is an unusual event, mete­o­ro­log­i­cally speak­ing, but it’s cer­tainly not unprece­dented. As long as I’ve been read­ing news­pa­pers, you can count on the east­ern seaboard to be buried at least once every two years or so, and you’d think you’d have it fig­ured out by now.

As a Mid­west­erner, I think it’s amus­ing that every storm on the east coast is cov­ered like an attack by al-Qaeda. You read the NYT roundup, and they men­tion how “60 mil­lion peo­ple” were affected by the storm — or, as the NYT likes to call on its col­lege edu­ca­tion from time to time, that many peo­ple had “Whittier’s snow­bound Amer­i­can land­scape recre­ated” for their edi­fi­ca­tion. (The web story con­tains a link to the poem. Thanks, Eng­lish majors!) The unspo­ken sub­or­di­nate clause, “…30 mil­lion of them jour­nal­ists.”

I’m just grous­ing here. Detroit got less snow over the week­end than Colum­bus, Ohio, which is where we were on Sat­ur­day. We’ll catch up, we always do, but by the win­ter sol­stice, I’m yearn­ing for the blan­ket of white to reflect what lit­tle light there is.

If I’m talk­ing weather on a Mon­day, it’s a bad Mon­day. In the great tra­di­tions of Short Atten­tion Span The­ater, let’s make this an all-bloggage day.

Stay­ing offline most of the week­end was the best thing I’ve done in a while. I should do more of it. You sign back on after a day away, and dis­cover Brit­tany Mur­phy died, and your first thought is “drugs,” your sec­ond “anorexia,” and your third, “It’s sort of embar­rass­ing that I even know who Brit­tany Mur­phy is,” although I always thought her work as Luanne Plat­ter was her best.

In three min­utes, Michigan’s attor­ney gen­eral is going to out­line a law­suit he plans to file, designed to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. Kind of funny, when you think about it. Sue the bas­tards!

You are com­manded to lis­ten to the podcast/webstream of “This Amer­i­can Life” from this past week­end, which was about the drink­ing cul­ture on the cam­pus of Penn State Uni­ver­sity, only of course it wasn’t just about Penn State, but col­lege in gen­eral. You are espe­cially com­manded to do so if you have a kid in col­lege, or headed that way. It was, how you say, grim. Lis­ten­ing to the stu­dents speak of the rit­u­als of col­lege drink­ing — the tail­gat­ing, the pregame, the brand names, the “fracket” — I was reminded of rit­u­als at another well-known Amer­i­can cen­ter of binge drink­ing, the Indian reser­va­tion. The stu­dents aren’t yet con­sum­ing hair spray cock­tails, but that’s the next log­i­cal step after Red Bull and Vladimir vodka, in my opin­ion.

I kept ask­ing myself if I was in any posi­tion to talk. I drank in col­lege. Almost every­one did. I some­times overindulged. Almost every­one did. I did it often enough that in sober moments I reflected on how for­tu­nate I was to live on a small, walking-centered cam­pus, rather than one that required a car. I asked myself if I would stand on the steps of a fra­ter­nity house, dressed in a tiny cock­tail dress and tow­er­ing stilet­tos, shiv­er­ing in my fracket (defined as a cheap, crummy jacket you wear to frat par­ties, because you know it’s going to get vomit on it by night’s end, and you don’t mind los­ing it), hop­ing my tits or legs or pout or what­ever will stir the door­man enough to grant me entrance to the party, because that’s where you go to get ham­mered, and that’s what a girl has to wear to get in — if I would have done this at the age of 19, and I think the answer is no. I didn’t know any­one at Ohio Uni­ver­sity who had to go to the E.R. from drink­ing, a com­mon event in State Col­lege, Pa. Barf­ing? Sure. Hos­pi­tal admis­sions with a BAC of .25, the aver­age among hos­pi­tal vis­its? No. And O.U. was a party school right down to its bones.

Sad, sad lis­ten­ing. And I don’t know what’s to be done.

But I do know what’s to be done today, and that’s work-work-work. So I’m outta here.

Posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 10:25 am in Current events, Popculch. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


62 responses to
“Poor Brittany(s).”

  1. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 21st, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Moe, does a carp have stand­ing?

    ;-)

    The drink­ing age has to go back to 18 so we can have a ratio­nal con­ver­sa­tion about how to man­age young adult drink­ing. But this 21 thing is riddle-icu-lous. I would assume any­one who says that “absti­nence based edu­ca­tion” is a fraud will agree that pre­tend­ing that youth will wait until they’ve turned 21 to ingest alco­hol is self-delusion of the most mon­u­men­tal sort.

  2. KLG said on December 21st, 2009 at 10:59 am

    I drank in col­lege, too. Some­times a bit too much, like on my 19th birth­day when I think I emp­tied a keg at the Sig Ep House all by myself. But all of my drink­ing was in pub­lic and legal, except for the pub­lic intox­i­ca­tion part, I sup­pose. But back then in my large state uni­ver­sity, walking-friendly, small col­lege town you would have to be naked and direct­ing traf­fic in the mid­dle of the street to get arrested for pub­lic drunk­en­ness. And even then a cop was liable to ask if any­one knew the jack­ass with­out his clothes and was will­ing to take him home. Which is why the drink­ing age should be 18 or out of high school. Oh, there were plenty of drunks back in the day. I knew one who often com­plained about hav­ing too much blood in his alco­hol stream and fin­ished his first year with a GPA of 0.33. Haven’t seen him since, but he prob­a­bly owns a Toy­ota deal­er­ship now. But no one ever went to the hos­pi­tal with alco­hol poi­son­ing or died from chug­ging a pint of bour­bon, as did an 18-year-old at the highly selec­tive uni­ver­sity I worked at pre­vi­ously. If you are buy­ing it by the drink in pub­lic that just can’t hap­pen…

  3. moe99 said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Jeff tmmo, glad to see the meds are work­ing!

    Whether carp have stand­ing, all I can say is that you can tune piano, but you can’t tunafish…..

  4. Colleen said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:08 am

    I went to col­lege on a “dry” cam­pus, that was party school supreme. I saw a cou­ple peo­ple go tot he hos­pi­tal dur­ing my 4 years. I never drank….I just didn’t and still really don’t. I think we’re just so nuts in this coun­try about booze….there’s no idea about respon­si­ble use, it’s either tee­to­taler or boozer.

  5. Dexter said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:09 am

    (Sorry, this would not post early this morn­ing on the last thread)
    MichaelG…you should have seen the TWA 707 that took us from Travis AFB to Anchor­age, Yokota AFB near Tokyo , and on to Ton Son Nhut, Saigon. It had this car­pet that was worn com­pletely through with huge bare spots and threads going every­where. It was dirty and decrepit, and it stunk so bad the steward,who was a very old man , walked down the aisles every cou­ple hours sprin­kling Aqua Velva afer-shave on the rot­ten car­pet, and when I asked him why, he sim­ply said, “…makes the air­plane smell bet­ter.” There were also two female flight atten­dants and both of them could have given Irene Ryan a chal­lenge had they shown up for cast­ing call for Granny Clam­pett.
    ~~~~~~~~~
    I just watched “Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut” for the first time. Robert Osborne said it is now a Christ­mas clas­sic, but I had never heard of it. I watched it mostly because I love the Bar­bara Stan­wyck movies from the 1940s. I hap­pen to think she was a great actor, and thanks to TCM I have seen most of her films. When I was a kid I never even knew she had made any movies; I don’t think she was too big on the first old movies they showed on TV. I grew up know­ing Lau­rel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stew­art, Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road movies, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bog­art, Judy Gar­land, and even older films star­ring Mar­lene Diet­rich and Greta Garbo, but I don’t ever recall see­ing a Stan­wyck film shown on TV mati­nees or late night movies in the pre-cable tv era.

  6. Jolene said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:24 am

    We East Coast types may be a lit­tle dra­matic about the weather, but, hey, would you rather hear more about what’s hap­pen­ing in Con­gress? When you’re a bureau­crat, you take your excite­ment where you can.

    And, to be fair, this was a LOT of snow on a week­end when a LOT of peo­ple wanted to be mov­ing around. Some links to details at the bot­tom of the pre­vi­ous thread.

  7. John said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:28 am

    Bar­bara Stan­wyck-”The Big Val­ley”, also star­ring a very young Lee Majors (pre-$6M Man days).

    Bar­bara was a knock-out even as a sea­soned actress.

  8. MichaelG said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:34 am

    For once I’m in full agree­ment with MMJ­eff. A drink­ing age of 21 years is just stu­pid. Absti­nence and pro­hi­bi­tion don’t work. Never have, never will. I remem­ber guys com­ing back from a year of com­bat in Viet­nam who couldn’t legally buy a drink. Colleen is also right. A com­bi­na­tion of stu­pid laws and mis­be­got­ten right­eous reli­gios­ity have given rise to the sit­u­a­tion she describes.

  9. LAMary said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Cheese­cake update: it didn’t hap­pen this week­end. Three things got in the way. I still felt pretty crappy. I still went to my boss’s Christ­mas party. While I was at the Christ­mas party, my sons ate the gra­ham crack­ers and half the cream cheese.
    Brit­tany Mur­phy will always be Luann Plat­ter to me as well. I’m bet­ting on drugs, myself. Look­ing really skinny is not uncom­mon for peo­ple with seri­ous drug prob­lems and I sus­pect she’s had a seri­ous drug prob­lem for a while. As in heroin.

  10. A. Riley said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:38 am

    Re East Coast­ers not know­ing how to deal with win­ter: Years ago I was vis­it­ing Boston in early Decem­ber and turned on the local news­cast. The weath­er­man was com­pletely freak­ing out–Armageddon was upon us and we were all going to freeze to death tonight. Holy crap, I thought, how cold is it going to get? Twenty degrees Fahren­heit. Twenty. This Chicagoan says that’s actu­ally pretty aver­age, so you deal. Ama­teurs.

    TV weather fore­cast­ers — I swear. My dar­ling Tom Skilling of WGN-TV likes to try to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. One sum­mer he was pre­dict­ing thun­der­storms overnight and said in his best voice-o’-doom that tor­na­does that come out of the dark are ter­ri­fy­ing. Thanks, Tom! I’ll sleep beau­ti­fully tonight now!!

  11. Sue said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:43 am

    The prob­lem with the “they’re going to drink any­way” argu­ment is the social cir­cles involved. You have to assume that any drinkers will be drink­ing or sup­ply­ing to what­ever the under­age group turns out to be. There­fore, a 21-year-old will usu­ally sup­ply to peo­ple not much younger than 19, and often in a set­ting with more peo­ple his/her age than younger (a col­lege cam­pus or apart­ment). An 18 or 19 year old will prob­a­bly be sup­ply­ing to his younger sib­lings and high school friends, in a set­ting where there are a lot more younger kids around (high school activ­i­ties and home-minus-parents).
    Low­er­ing the drink­ing age to 18 puts 14-year-old chil­dren in jeop­ardy. That’s the bot­tom line.

  12. Bruce Fields said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am

    I didn’t drink at all until my last day of col­lege. I’d turned in my big final project, classes were done, it was a lovely day, my neigh­bor offered me a beer, and I thought: oh, I give up, I should try this once.

  13. Lex said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:56 am

    I agree in prin­ci­ple with Sue, com­ing of age as I did when “age” was 18 (for beer & wine, any­way, here in NC). What dis­turbs me is not so much that col­lege kids are drink­ing ille­gally, although that’s dis­turb­ing; it’s that high-school kids (and younger) appear to have no more trou­ble get­ting booze now than I did in the 1970s.

    No law mat­ters if it’s not enforced. That’s the first step. But ulti­mately, we’re going to have to get over our schiz­o­phrenic atti­tudes about alco­hol just as we must get over them about sex. The mixed mes­sages kids get aren’t work­ing in either case.

  14. Deborah said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Greet­ings from Abiquiu, this inter­net thingy works. Good news, now I’m going out hik­ing instead of being stuck on this com­puter.

    As for drink­ing, in Abiquiu it doesn’t take much to give me a buzz, because of the alti­tude. Kids here must get the same result from a lot less of the basic ingre­di­ent.

    I agree with Sue about low­er­ing the age, it will just keep get­ting lower and lower. I think the 21 year age limit stops some of it. Maybe it saves a few lives.

  15. paddyo' said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    I lived in DC for six years in the 1980s, and the mere hint of oncom­ing snow (like, say, 1-2 inches) in the fore­cast was enough to empty the gro­cery shelves of bread, water and toi­let paper, so it’s not sur­pris­ing to me that the entire fed­eral gov­ern­ment there (minus “essential/emergency staff”) gets a snow day today . . . that’s day TWO AFTER the storm.

    I L’d-OL read­ing the NYT’s top-of-the-Arts page story this a.m. about how snow helped keep the open­ing week­end num­bers down for James Cameron’s son-of-Titanic megagoogle-blockbuster, “Avatar.” What made me laugh was the quote from the stu­dio big­wig who said that despite the down num­bers ($73 mil­lion domes­tic but $159 mil­lion abroad), “We believe, espe­cially given that women world­wide responded so strongly, that this is just the start.” Hey, what film dis­tri­b­u­tion suit wouldn’t pass up the golden oppor­tu­nity to buzz-quote about how this ain’t just for 12- to 24-year-old boys, right? I’d like to read what THAT’s based on (noth­ing in the NYT piece to ques­tion the quote, BTW).

    As for col­lege drunk­ing, the pour will be with us always. We all drank in my early-’70s days (daze?) at a state school in Nevada, but I don’t recall we did so with the expressed pur­pose of get­ting smashed. And being in a casino town (Reno), the access to alco­hol was easy and cheap. The favorite of my crowd (the cam­pus news­pa­per gang) was Jim Kelly’s Nugget, a hole-in-the-wall store­front casino where “well” drinks at the bar were 75 cents.

    The frat­boys did have their “Spodie-Odie” (spelling?) bath­tub punch bac­cha­nals, and the unau­tho­rized cam­pus drink­ing club, the Sun­down­ers, staged ini­ti­a­tions in which “pledges” stag­gered around on and off cam­pus, each with a live chicken under his arm. They had to pan­han­dle drinks “for my chicken.”

    That spec­ta­cle finally became offi­cially unfunny after a Sun­downer ini­ti­ate died of alco­hol poi­son­ing.

  16. Holly said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    Any­one who wants alco­hol is going to fined some­one to sneak it to them. At my job, we have some peo­ple who are not to have booze. It is either for a med­ical rea­son or they have a prob­lem. These peo­ple can always find some­one who will get them a drink. When we have party’s for the res­i­dents, I have to play cop. I don’t feel it should be up to me to stop them from drink­ing. It would be eas­ier on me if they just stopped serv­ing alco­hol.

  17. brian stouder said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Two items:

    First – grant me a Monday/holiday-week mul­li­gan in advance, but where is the other Brit­tany that the plural head­line implies?

    Sec­ond, some­body men­tioned how well Bar­bara Stan­wyck was put together, regard­less of her age in her var­i­ous movies and tv shows. In yesterday’s thread, I’d men­tioned that the young folks and I watched The Wiz­ard of Oz – and Chloe (the 5 year old) was very taken with the whole thing (that’s my girl!); and Pam googled up some enter­tain­ing Oz trivia, includ­ing this nugget: Bil­lie Burke, who played the alto­gether enchant­ing Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, was born in the year….1885!! She was 54 when they made the movie, and her beauty is time­less.

    PS- Mary, I didn’t do the cheese­cake yet either, but I’ma gonna!

  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    MichaelG, the bot­tle stands by you; a glass of wine with you, sir — to the King!

    (Yes, i’m watch­ing “Mas­ter & Com­man­der”)

  19. MichaelG said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    “They’ll drink at 18″ is not an argu­ment, it’s a fact. I don’t know how we made the leap from drink­ing legally at 18 to 18 year olds pass­ing alco­hol on to 14 year olds. I’m not buy­ing it. Also at some point par­ents are going to have raise their own kids and be respon­si­ble for how they behave instead of pass­ing it off to the g’ment. It might save a life. All kinds of things might save a life. Doesn’t make them good ideas.

  20. moe99 said on December 21st, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    A high school friend of mine started a newslet­ter back in the early 90′s after her 14 year old became an alco­holic. And CA was a 21 state at the time, so you really can’t say that the age limit had any­thing to do with it.

    Basi­cally, par­ents need to stay involved with their kids when they hit ado­les­cence, despite the crap they’re going to get for it, and model decent drink­ing behav­ior them­selves. Regard­less of the drink­ing age.

  21. coozledad said on December 21st, 2009 at 1:00 pm

    Brian: Bil­lie Burke had the same aris­to­cratic Amer­i­can accent as Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay, or she was affect­ing one for the film. You don’t hear that man­ner of speech any­more. Same goes for what Hol­ly­wood thinks is a gen­eral south­ern accent-if they did a lit­tle more home­work they’d know that those genteel-isms are vir­tu­ally dead, except in the very lim­ited bat­shit social cir­cles where they’re coached.
    Are there any col­leges that have refused to allow that “Greek Sys­tem” retar­da­tion to set root? I have to admit I found the spec­ta­cle of tobacco farmer’s alco­hol bloated off­spring stand­ing out­side the frathouse in their under­wear on a fif­teen degree morn­ing a small mea­sure of social jus­tice, but the war­bling of “Together For­ever” from the soror­ity houses at 3AM served no pur­pose, instruc­tive or oth­er­wise.

  22. KLG said on December 21st, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    “Kids” of drink­ing age who pro­vide alco­hol to minors have not been “raised right” as they say around here. Period. That this some­times hap­pens is not an excuse for a drink­ing age of 21. If you are old enough to sign a con­tract, get drafted and then get your ass shot off in a war, you are old enough to drink legally. Until recently in my benighted home state, you were eli­gi­ble to be exe­cuted for a crime com­mit­ted 5 years before you were eli­gi­ble to buy a beer. That’s just nuts. Not to gen­er­al­ize too much, but many par­ents my age are sim­ply hav­ing a hard time with the knowl­edge that their chil­dren (18-22) are now doing what they did way back in the 1970s and 1980s. All you can do is pro­vide a good exam­ple, teach them well, and wish them well…

  23. ROgirl said on December 21st, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    Hol­ly­wood used to have that inde­ter­mi­nate “mid-Atlantic” accent that sounded upper class and slightly British, kind of like Franklin Roo­sevelt. George Plimp­ton may have been the last per­son in exis­tence to really speak like that.

  24. MichaelG said on December 21st, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    My glass is rose, Jeff, but not rosé. Maybe a nice zin.

  25. LAMary said on December 21st, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Com­ing from a long line of alco­holics, I don’t drink. I did in col­lege and for a few years after, and I was way too good at it. I haven’t seen any signs of my kids drink­ing and drugs scare me more. I don’t think drugs are more dan­ger­ous inher­ently, but they are ille­gal so there’s a lot of periph­eral stuff that goes on with drug acqui­si­tion and usage. In gen­eral, I tell my kids that noth­ing you can drink snort or smoke will make your life bet­ter for very long, and can cer­tainly make your life worse for a very long.

  26. brian stouder said on December 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    and speak­ing of being “unplugged” (and/or plug­ging back in), I noticed that the pro­pri­etress started a new Face­book page, devoted to Fort Wayne’s for­merly plucky after­noon news­pa­per. Last week, I was ready to unplug my Face­book account; some spam video sud­denly appeared on there, as if I had ‘posted’ it, which caused me much vex­a­tion.

    Any­way – do you know what hap­pens when you click “deac­ti­vate” on Face­book? Imme­di­ately, large pho­tos of your Friended friends appear, with text that says some­thing like “Billy (or who­ever) will really miss you! Are you SURE you want to do this?” etc etc; made me laugh out loud – so I let the thing con­tinue to exist….for now.

  27. Dexter said on December 21st, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    I spent my college-age years in the US Army. I ran into a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion there: a lot of my bud­dies smoked weed, and exhib­ited total dis­dain for “juicers”, clearly con­sid­er­ing them­selves far supe­rior.
    I don’t remem­ber the time sequence, but it seems this “us ver­sus them” thing faded away or else I just moved away from the anti-alcohol dop­ers, anyway…later on , as we dis­cussed here last month, cheap wines like Rip­ple, Annie Green Springs, and Boone’s Farm were per­fect chasers to cool a harsh throat.
    Col­lege drink­ing is here to stay. Talk to our university-bound stu­dents about the evils of drink­ing? Good luck. I do know just a lit­tle (I am NOT being face­tious) about the reper­cus­sions of over-indulging. The rule is that if one has a drink­ing prob­lem or just the play­ful, par­ty­ing nature which includes alco­hol drink­ing, and it seems to extend out and cause trou­ble in their lives, they will have to drink them­selves into trou­ble or a real­iza­tion that they have a prob­lem and must stop. If they rec­og­nize it and say “so what?” they will end up dead or in jail or in a nut­house or in an apart­ment with booze in a glass and talk­ing to their cat. Oh…next week marks 17 years since my melt­down and begin­ning of recov­ery.
    I’ll just pour a lit­tle Sprite into my cham­pagne glass for the wed­ding toast in a cou­ple weeks as my daugh­ter takes her wed­ding vows. I still would not take a drink for a mil­lion bucks.

  28. LAMary said on December 21st, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Jolene, some of the west coast types get far more dra­matic about the weather. If it rains here, we get bul­letins on the local news…STORM WATCH ’09! Really. Not just if there’s a del­uge. Any rain at all.

  29. Jolene said on December 21st, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    I just heard a guy on TV say­ing that Saturday’s snow cost the Sal­va­tion Army a mil­lion dol­lars in dona­tions. Now there’s a big weather effect.

  30. nancy said on December 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm

    It dri­ves me crazy when writ­ers ref­er­ence Madonna’s faux-English accent, when it isn’t Eng­lish at all. Rather, it’s that Hol­ly­wood grande-lady dic­tion they used to teach the star­lets from Hobo­ken or wher­ever. Bil­lie Burke is a per­fect exam­ple of it being used in situ.

    You can’t dis­count the ambi­ent drink­ing cul­ture when you talk about col­lege overindul­gence. Sue has ref­er­enced the Mil­wau­kee Journal-Sentinel’s ongo­ing project on the Wis­con­sin booze cul­ture, a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the prob­lem there. I’ve heard many peo­ple who came here from Europe — auto indus­try trans­plants, mostly — express their baf­fle­ment with how much kids here pur­sue black­out drunk­en­ness, when alco­hol is rou­tinely served to chil­dren in France and Ger­many with no appar­ent ill effects. (Binge­ing in Eng­land is another story.)

    Fol­low that link to the hair­spray cock­tail story, really a white paper of sorts on hair­spray abuse among Navajo Indi­ans. It is hair-curling. I remem­ber read­ing about this a few years back, when sev­eral south­west­ern news­pa­pers under­took mul­ti­part series on Indian drink­ing. Every strat­egy to dis­cour­age it was a fail­ure. After much lob­by­ing, one town stopped Sun­day liquor sales, which led to a run on Final Net in the drug­stores.

    The TAL piece that started all this was depress­ing too, point­ing out that the only col­lege that’s made a dent in the prob­lem is the U. of Nebraska, and the way they’ve done it is by essen­tially giv­ing the police the longest leash imag­in­able to bust, roust, harass and oth­er­wise make under­age and over-limit drink­ing more trou­ble than it’s worth. Hav­ing just come from my weekly round of cop-shop calls, that’s one strat­egy I just can’t get behind.

  31. Joe Kobiela said on December 21st, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    There was a great lit­tle movie star­ing Chevy Chase called under the rain­bow it had to do with spies and such but some how had the lit­tle peo­ple from the Wiz­ard Oz wrapped up in it.
    As far as drink­ing goes been there done that got the t-shirt. Told my girls before they went to col­lege. When you see those kids hav­ing so much fun on Sat night.Wake them up on Sun­day morn­ing and see how much fun it is then. Jen could tell you sto­ries about the woman’s bath­rooms at I.U.
    Any way I heard they actu­ally were talk­ing about rais­ing the drink­ing age in Ken­tucky to 23, try­ing to keep it out of the High Schools I guess.
    Pilot Joe

  32. Connie said on December 21st, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    Totally unre­lated: the col­lege in my Dutch home town has no inter­est in tak­ing advan­tage of the fact that the writer of “Milk”, is in town work­ing on his next project. Great story: http://​www​.thedai​ly​beast​.com/​b​l​o​g​s​-​a​n​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​0​9​-​1​2​-​2​0​/​m​i​l​k​-​s​c​r​e​e​n​w​r​i​t​e​r​-​b​a​t​t​l​e​s​-​g​a​y​-​b​a​s​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​l​l​e​g​e​/full/

    And in another very odd note, one of my local friends, moved here not too long ago from Fort Wayne, went to a party in Fort Wayne this week­end, ran into her friend Alec, a com­men­tor here, and some­how they fig­ured out they both knew me. One of those too wierd small world things.

    My kid is home, I’ve got the rest of the week off, tree is sort of up, but barely dec­o­rated. I am still work­ing on get­ting all the china back into the var­ied fur­nish­ings in the newly car­peted din­ing room. Then maybe cook­ies. And Flint for two days, then Hol­land for one. (Flint is look­ing for a Library Direc­tor, but no thank you.)

    PS, I was legal at 18 for my col­lege years, the Boones Farm straw­berry was a high school thing.

  33. Rana said on December 21st, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    There was cer­tainly drink­ing and alco­hol at my col­lege, and there were cer­tainly a few occa­sions when I ended up wobbly-drunk. But this sort of vomit-in-the-bushes bing­ing was not the sort of thing that was com­mon – and we were a school that would pro­duce a free-to-all-comers “sunny day keg” when there was a break in the weather.

    What I think kept us in check was that we were expected to be respon­si­ble in our drink­ing – and for each other – regard­less of whether or not we were legal. The Honor Code was a real thing in our lives, and doing some­thing like vom­it­ing on your roommate’s bed while drunk was grounds for an “Honor Case” to be filed against you and you could be expelled. We were treated like we were adults who were capa­ble of reg­u­lat­ing our­selves, and for the most part, we did.

    The other thing that put a huge crimp on that getting-wasted-every-night cul­ture described in that pro­gram for us was our work­load. A dri­ven lot we were, and the pro­fes­sors cheer­fully loaded us up with as much work we could han­dle… and then a bit more. So the kind of peo­ple who would indulge in such ways tended to flunk out their first semes­ter, and the cam­pus cul­ture was such that such nitwits were viewed with scorn.

    We had other ways of rebelling and caus­ing trou­ble, but for the vast major­ity of us, blitz­ing our­selves uncon­scious with bad cheap beer wasn’t nor­mal or desir­able.

  34. ROgirl said on December 21st, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    All this drink­ing. What hap­pened to pot smok­ing?

    I did my share of drink­ing in col­lege, not in copi­ous quan­ti­ties, but pot was also part of the social life of the cam­pus. Then again, I wasn’t part of the frat/sorority scene.

  35. Dexter said on December 21st, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Some­time in the 1950s the tone that actors and news broad­cast­ers and tele­cast­ers spoke in changed. I believe the tone of the every­day American’s speech changed, also. I guess I am specif­i­cally tar­get­ing the “vanilla mid­west­ern accent” that news depart­ments at TV net­works always shoot for.
    Some­times it is sub­tle and some­times very evi­dent. My dad was in the US Navy dur­ing WWII and he made a record­ing which I lis­tened to 50 years later, and his voice inflec­tions were much dif­fer­ent later on in life. I can’t really describe it, but since I am an old movies junkie I surely can spot it.
    Maybe the best exam­ple I can offer is a record­ing of John Cameron Swayze .
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​o​U​o​5​q​x​-​6​F​n​A​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated
    Dou­glas Edwards spoke with the same sort of tim­bre of voice, but he spoke much slower. Com­pare this voice in the link with today’s Brian Williams of NBC. Totally dif­fer­ent.
    My dad was born in Indi­ana in 1915 and he sounded a lot like Pres­i­dent Harry S Tru­man as related to speak­ing pat­terns.

  36. alex said on December 21st, 2009 at 6:22 pm

    I remem­ber read­ing a Gore Vidal essay about old Hol­ly­wood in which I seem to recall him say­ing that the dic­tion coaches of the sil­ver screen era spe­cial­ized in teach­ing the “Dutchess County” dialect.

  37. coozledad said on December 21st, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    RO Girl: There were peo­ple who pur­sued pot smok­ing as a com­pet­i­tive sport at the school I attended. It wasn’t enough to zone out, there was a game called “bong 98″ involv­ing a stan­dard deck of cards and black lung. There are only two instances I can remem­ber enjoy­ing pot. Once, when I had some cooked into brown­ies (all of the eupho­ria, none of the paranoia),and once when I smoked some with my wife. The remain­der of my drug expe­ri­ences were like that old Jack Nichol­son movie “Psych-Out” with more ter­ri­fy­ing spe­cial effects and dou­bly wooden act­ing.

  38. moe99 said on December 21st, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    My col­lege alma mater did not and does not have the Greek sys­tem. I think soror­i­ties and fra­ter­ni­ties are unnec­es­sary for small lib­eral arts col­leges. That being said, when I went to col­lege was the time when the Greek sys­tem was in decline. None of the 5 of us kids ever joined up, much to the cha­grin of my par­ents (Tri Delt and Beta Theta Pi) Miami Uni­ver­sity in Oxford OH is the birth­place of a num­ber of fra­ter­ni­ties, iirc.

  39. Deborah said on December 21st, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    Back from hikes in the pinon scented air in New Mex­ico. I think alco­hol con­sump­tion of teens is related to how they were raised, and teens will­ing to be the sup­plier for younger teens is also related to how they are/were raised. But teens who really want it will find a way to get it. As a teen I never had alco­hol, in col­lege I indulged rarely, maybe twice in my whole col­lege career, and then in mod­er­a­tion, once I overindulged and the thought of it kept me from repeat­ing. When I became a full fledged adult I didn’t really like the taste until I started trav­el­ing inter­na­tion­ally to France and Italy and sure enough came to enjoy wine. Now I can’t imag­ine a good meal with­out it, and split­ting a bot­tle with my hus­band is the rule, because keep­ing a good bot­tle of wine in the fridge for the next night is gross. Over the years it just hap­pened bit by bit, I can’t imag­ine how it comes so nat­u­rally so quickly to teens and col­lege agers.

  40. Jullie Robinson said on December 21st, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    I do have a kid in col­lege but he’s smart enough to never drive home after­wards. His crowd just crashes on the floor.

    Agreed on the drink­ing age–I was over drink­ing by the time I hit 21. Tried it, had some fun, but it wasn’t very impor­tant to me. I know it becomes way too impor­tant for too many, which is why we never drank when we felt like we needed a drink.

    But who cares? I’m in Florida, it’s warm, and I just fin­ished some ambrosial can­teloupe. There’s much I despise about the place but the fresh pro­duce is mar­velous.

  41. alex said on December 21st, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    Par­ents end up get­ting arrested and pub­licly shamed for pro­vid­ing alco­hol these days, but when I was a kid it was con­sid­ered the respon­si­ble thing to do, pro­vided they chap­er­oned the party and didn’t let any­one leave. Frankly, I’d be more con­cerned about let­ting kids visit a house­hold where the par­ents keep firearms.

  42. Dexter said on December 21st, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    JulieR­obin­son: You trig­ger an old mem­ory. When I was a kid study­ing 5th grade US geog­ra­phy, I vowed some­day to pick an orange from a Florida tree and eat it.
    I some­how avoided Florida until I was a fam­ily man in my thir­ties, but I remem­ber my first Florida orange, in Naples, in my wife’s aunt’s back yard, picked from a tree in a small grove. I started pinch-peeling it and I got a stream of high-pressure juice right in the old eye­ball. After rins­ing out my glazzie I fin­ished peel­ing the orange and I looked like a baby with­out a bib…juice all down my shirt…fresh Florida oranges ain’t the same as Kroger-bought oranges.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I also want to thank who­ever it was that intro­duced nnc-ers to roasted Brus­sel sprouts. For decades I have been boil­ing them, unaware that they are so dog­gone much bet­ter when roasted with a lit­tle olive oil and black pep­per until they are almost black all over. I had them twice in the past week and I will prob­a­bly never boil another sprout. I had pan-fried beef liver and onions with them Sat­ur­day night. My wife was at a wed­ding shower in the cap­i­tal city…she hates liver and sprouts.

  43. brian stouder said on December 21st, 2009 at 8:19 pm

    Word, Alex.

    Julie – Florida in Decem­ber; bravo!

    We did Florida in Feb­ru­ary 2004, which was mar­velous. Florida strikes me as the clas­sic “Nice place to visit; wouldn’t wanna live there” kind of place. Leav­ing aside hur­ri­canes, any place that doesn’t get really damned cold for a few months a year tends to have really really big bugs. (and I really, really don’t like great big bugs)

    Edit: Dex­ter, gotta agree with your wife about the liver; but brus­sel sprouts are mar­velous lit­tle fellers, as is aspara­gus. And indeed – as a kiddo I never liked spinach – but I love that stuff in its fresh form, on sal­ads and so on

  44. Jolene said on December 21st, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    Brian, my father used to say that the ND weather kept the riffraff out. And, as a farmer, he also appre­ci­ated its bug-killing effects.

  45. Dexter said on December 21st, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    whoa! check out the big brain, er, bug on Brian!
    http://​www​.amcostar​ica​.com/​b​i​g​b​u​g​0​6​0​2​05.jpg

  46. brian stouder said on December 21st, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    Dex­ter – superb photo! I’m sure she’s the bees knees to another buggy; I just don’t go for ‘em.

    At the zoo, when they do the touchy-feeley thing, I’ll do that. Last sum­mer the young folks and I touched a mil­li­pede (or what­ever); a non­de­script darkly col­ored bug shaped like an AmTrak train with (seem­ingly) hun­dreds of legs; also a good natured taran­tula (must have been Charlotte’s shirt-sleeve cousin from the Ama­zon).

    But I wouldn’t want to find one of these crea­tures on the hall­way wall at 2 in the morn­ing

  47. Bruce Fields said on December 21st, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    “I’ve heard many peo­ple who came here from Europe — auto indus­try trans­plants, mostly — express their baf­fle­ment with how much kids here pur­sue black­out drunk­en­ness, when alco­hol is rou­tinely served to chil­dren in France and Ger­many with no appar­ent ill effects.”

    I’d encour­age com­par­ing that to actual sta­tis­tics about lev­els of alco­holism and binge drink­ing. (Not that I’m any expert. But some googling sug­gests that France and Ger­many do have their prob­lems….)

    (Per­son­ally I’m sym­pa­thetic to the idea of a lower drink­ing age, but can also believe it would have down­sides.)

  48. Jen said on December 21st, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    Yeah, I heard enough hor­ror sto­ries about overindulging in alco­hol from my dad that I never had any desire to do it myself. That, and see­ing so many peo­ple puk­ing in and around the bath­rooms at IU on Thurs­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights after drink­ing. My favorite story was a friend of mine who lived on the hon­ors floor of our dorm fresh­man year. He found his RA passed out naked on the bath­room floor one Sat­ur­day night. Luck­ily, some­body was nice enough to cover him up with a blan­ket even­tu­ally.

    I drank, and still do drink, but I hate puk­ing, feel­ing nau­se­ated, hav­ing a headache, etc., so I am almost obses­sively care­ful about not drink­ing too much. The only time I really got more than a lit­tle tipsy was play­ing Sink the Biz at Nick’s in Bloom­ing­ton once, but I knew it might hap­pen so I had my sis­ter come pick me up and take me back to my apart­ment.

    I think years of good com­mon sense teach­ing from my par­ents helped my sis­ter and me nav­i­gate the alco­hol cul­ture of IU intel­li­gently.

  49. nancy said on December 21st, 2009 at 10:11 pm

    Agreed, Bruce, there’s no Eden where alco­hol is con­cerned. And as I men­tioned, else­where in Europe they have the same prob­lems we do. But I have to won­der whether this weird binary, zero-tolerance thing we do with kids — not a drop before 21, 21 shots on your birth­day — isn’t the foun­da­tion of much of this insan­ity.

  50. jcburns

    jcburns said on December 21st, 2009 at 10:21 pm

    Yeah, I think one shot per year of your exis­tence would be a bet­ter way to ramp up. (Let me see, what am I up to now…whoah!!)

  51. beb said on December 21st, 2009 at 10:54 pm

    I have to agree with Jeff back the first com­ment. Mak­ing kids wait until they’re 21 only encour­age them to drink to excess to make up for lost time. I think drop­ping the age limit to 16 is a good idea because then a kid’s first drunk will be done while they’re liv­ing at home and when they will have to deal with their par­ents.

    I also don’t think that over 21 peo­ple are sup­ply­ing that much booze to minors. Sure some hap­pens but I sus­pect a lot of it is minors steal­ing booze from their par­ents.

    That said I am both­ered that there seems to be a cul­ture of extreme drink­ing that has noth­ing to do with when peo­ple start drink­ing.

  52. Rana said on December 21st, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    I drank, and still do drink, but I hate puk­ing, feel­ing nau­se­ated, hav­ing a headache, etc., so I am almost obses­sively care­ful about not drink­ing too much.

    Yes. I think a lot of what kept me away from the alco­hol (a good thing, given some pos­si­ble ten­den­cies toward alco­holism on my mother’s side of the fam­ily) is that I never got that much plea­sure from drink­ing alco­hol, let alone being drunk.

    Most of it isn’t that tasty, and I’m that unlucky soul who gets the hang­over while I’m imbib­ing, instead of the next day. If I want to get drunk it needs to be strong and it needs to be sweet – which is a com­bi­na­tion that’s eas­i­est enough to avoid in most casual drink­ing sit­u­a­tions. But mostly I don’t want to get drunk. It makes me moody and depressed more often than not.

  53. Dave said on December 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am

    Wash­ing­ton did get a lot of snow, my son and daughter-in-law live in Alexan­dria and the DIL, who has lived in the DC area her entire life, said she didn’t remem­ber ever get­ting more snow than they did this week­end.

    I spent some time on North Court Street in Athens and envi­rons, no real hor­ror sto­ries to tell, which is good. Today, I still like a cou­ple of beers occa­sion­ally but that’s it. The last time I had a hang­over was when my youngest sis­ter wed and that was sheer mis­ery for much too long. That’s been 25 years ago and I’ve not done THAT since.

    Since my MIL lives in FLA, we go there reg­u­larly and plan to go again the last two weeks of Jan­u­ary, FLA is best appre­ci­ated then.

  54. jcburns

    jcburns said on December 22nd, 2009 at 6:14 am

    I think there’s some­thing about the brick-paved streets of Athens (those which are left) that pro­mote post-imbibing con­vivial com­mu­nal stum­bling about. We have one brick-paved street about six blocks from here, and when I wan­der down it toward Pied­mont Park I have Athens uptown flash­backs.

  55. Dorothy said on December 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 am

    Accord­ing to imdb​.com, Bil­lie Burke was born in Wash­ing­ton D.C. but trav­eled to Europe with her par­ents – her dad was a pro­fes­sional clown. They set­tled in Lon­don, and when she was 18 she moved back to the states, New York specif­i­cally. I don’t think she was affect­ing any accent – since she grew up in Lon­don I’m sure that’s where she acquired her man­ner of speech.

    I was amazed to read that she was 54 when she did the part of Glinda the Good Witch. And one of the young ladies I know from the­ater here in Ohio told me she is related to Bil­lie Burke. I’ll have to ask her next time I see her exactly how she’s related. http://​www​.imdb​.com/​n​a​m​e​/​n​m​0​0​0​0​9​92/bio

  56. Julie Robinson said on December 22nd, 2009 at 9:29 am

    Not just big bugs in FL, but lots and lots of lit­tle bugs too, and a ten­dency to leave their rot­ting lit­tle car­casses all over the place.

    I spent spring and sum­mer of 2008 here and would NEVER want to repeat that. Sheer mis­ery of heat and humid­ity*. But today I am going swim­ming out­doors and hav­ing fresh sweet corn and straw­ber­ries for lunch. Real, field-ripened straw­ber­ries. I’m sali­vat­ing.

    *Most of the gov­ern­ment down here func­tions like a third world coun­try. It’s not hard to under­stand the deba­cle of the elec­tion that put W. in the White House.

  57. Jessica said on December 22nd, 2009 at 9:30 am

    I’ve lived in DC a long time, and we don’t get 20 inches plus very often. Peo­ple actu­ally did bet­ter this time than the pre­vi­ous big snow in Feb 2003 – which came close to 30 inches and took days to dig out of. And they did bet­ter than they often do in the small­ish snows that gen­er­ate so much hys­te­ria.

    But come on! No mat­ter where you live and how used to it you are, 20 inches in 30 hours is a lot of snow.

  58. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 am

    Yes, Jes­sica – no two ways about it, that is indeed a lot of snow, which will become a lot of slush, and then a lot of water (big fun in a river town, what with sand­bag­ging and all the rest) – so the process con­tin­ues for you DCers.

    I still haven’t fig­ured out the plural ‘Brit­tany’ in the head­line; but then again, it’s a good day when I find both my car keys and cell phone in the morn­ing

  59. Deborah said on December 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 am

    Happy first day of win­ter, or was that yes­ter­day? Over­cast here in Abiquiu, snow is expected. I hope it is just a light dust­ing, I have to drive to Santa Fe tomor­row.

    I grew up in Miami, FL and boy do I remem­ber the bugs. Huge. And the fly­ing pal­metto bugs were the worst, you never knew which way they were going and inevitably they’d end up land­ing on your hair. Gross. I have a project in Miami now and will be trav­el­ing there in Feb, look­ing for­ward to that, might make a long week­end out of it if I can man­age. I also had to go in August which was no fun at all.

  60. LAMary said on December 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am

    http://​jezebel​.com/​5​4​3​1​3​6​0​/​c​a​t​-​b​e​a​t​s​-​d​o​w​n​-​d​o​g​-​w​h​i​l​e​-​r​i​d​i​n​g​-​a​-​roomba

  61. Dave said on December 22nd, 2009 at 11:10 am

    DIL missed the 2003 DC storm, she was in Spain as an exchange stu­dent, that’s where she and my son met, in Sevilla, Spain, as exchange stu­dents.

  62. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 am

    I just spoke to a fel­low in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, and he told me they have the 20+ inches of snow -

    and the fore­cast for Christ­mas is 40+ degrees plus rain rain rain.

    This could become bib­li­cal

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