Owner: The Shark Guys URL:http://thesharkguys.com Join Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:06:06 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Biting Comedy, by the authors of The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery (Penguin 2008 Site statistics:Click here
Drink & Dial, part deux 2007-10-12 10:25:00 Before he began to resemble a manatee carrying twins, a lean Marlon Brando once remarked ‘What you got’ when asked ‘What are you rebelling against?’Later in his career, when he began rebelling against dynamism and a high fiber diet (he famously bared his fat arse to 100 extras between takes during the filming of the Godfather's wedding scene, causing more than one cast member to upchuck into their tiramisu), he literally became a larger than life icon.Still, he's remembered more for delivering lines that became catchphrases than being unable to refuse an offer of an all-you can-eat buffet.An Atlanta teen, exhibiting some Brando-esque bellicoseness of his own, mouthed off at cops with a ballsy ‘Yeah, what of it?’ when asked if he’d been drinking---an admirable retort if it were not the the end result of having drunk dialed 911. (a parting shot worthy of a free copy of The Shark Book too, incidentally, if its authors weren't the stingiest of buggers). The teen had been Read more:Drink
Who keeps the metric system down? The EU, the EU... 2007-10-08 09:08:00 The metric/imperial debate has largely been decided: most countries of the world with the exception of the US, and, you guessed it, Burma and Liberia, officially use the metric system of weights and measures. Being raised in Canada, where the metric system has been in place since the days of The Great Trudeau, The Shark Book authors grew accustomed to being struck with a meter-stick for misbehaving at school rather than the yard-stick, which was the weapon of preference for the homeroom teachers of their parents’ generation. However, if you were to ask a random person on a Toronto street how much he or she weighed, the response (if you were to get one that didn’t consist of a finger to your eye, or a curt “Drop dead creep”) would probably be in pounds. Somehow, the metric system just isn’t a comfortable fit when discussing weight or the length of certain appendages of import – those spammers sending out emails on how different a gentleman's life might be with 12 inche Read more:keeps
Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids 2007-10-05 08:21:00 Already weary of the human genome and having unraveled the mysteries of restless foot disorder (currently, amputation is the only treatment option other than open-toed sandals), the white coat set have solved another of life’s little inscrutabilities: Astonishingly, adolescents (14 to 18 years of age) who work, are more likely to take up smoking—proof that the savants authoring this study, have all but lost touch with their gangly-limbed cheese burger flipping/call center salad days and become resolutely ensconced in their ivory towers. As we noted in The Shark Book, kids are often forcibly shunted off to children’s camp and coerced into constructing crappy folk art out of elbow macaroni—a prospect bleak enough to send the youth of tomorrow hurling newspapers through your front window or otherwise joining the dismal rigors of the workaday world. The ‘study’ results corroborate prior ones concerning our specialty, heavy boozing, and suggest ‘adolescents seek out the rew Read more:Smoke
Drinking With The Enemy 2007-10-04 08:00:00 There are certain undeniable signs that the holiday season is once again about to round the corner: whisperings of the next video-game system to end all video-game systems that is to be launched just in time to put mom and pop in the poorhouse for the New Year, but s'alright because at least pale, weak little Johnny will have excellent hand-eye coordination skills; suicide rates starting to soar* and, of course, alcohol consumption among everyday folk rivaling that on a pirate ship after a good plunder. We devoted an entire chapter in The Shark Book to this topic -- “Festive Cheers: Hooch on the Holidays”, which contained, among other family-album favorites, a tale of a drunken Santa (for a full movie-length treatment of this particular theme, we highly recommend Bad Santa) who, after drinking boxed wine all day between consultations with the tots, crashed through his department store’s main display window. Law-enforcement officials repeatedly try in vain to come up with Read more:Drinking
, Enemy
Insatiable Lover of Loverboy 2007-10-03 08:16:00 If the 80s taught us anything, it’s that if we lived to be 147, the benefits of trickle down economics would trickle down to us and that the Zeitgeist was reflected in former ballplayers becoming nannies on network television. What it didn’t teach us, apparently, was rudimentary chemistry—you know, acids and bases and a way to mix cocaine with baking soda that would make it more accessible to the masses— and more able to dull the senses to the point where you’d realize that bands with a keyboard and two guitars really sucked.Such a band was the horrible Canadian outfit Loverboy, who brought us ‘Turn me Loose’ and ‘(Everybody’s) Workin’ for the Weekend’, a band so doomed to obscurity that even their ‘where are they now?' file has been misplaced by an preoccupied secretary. An unnamed rest stop diner source informed us that the band is still touring, and had recently induced tinnitus in several dozen tin ears at the Kansas State Fair, where a 44-year old drunk wo
EMT Phone Home 2007-10-01 11:00:00 Call it a wish for the party never to end or a less noble desire to pull some unsuspecting sleeping sober person into your drunken, maniacal world, but, for whatever reason, picking up the phone at 3am while so drunk you stink of it often seems like a good idea at the time. The urge to drink and dial, apparently, affects folks in all professions including those who should -- even when they spend an evening up-turning tequilas and slowly building up a pile of lime rinds around them -- know better.An off-duty (in every sense of that term) emergency medical technician in Staten Island broke one of the main rules surrounding her very profession – one that every parent who does not fetch their child’s lunch from the couch cushions knows: do not crank call 911 emergency services.The lady in question did just this, calling in a phony assault complaint against the bartender who took her keys in order to prevent her from giving lessons in interpretative driving on Staten Island’s roads. U
Duck, duck, gross! 2007-09-28 12:21:00 “You hand in your ticket, and go watch the geek, who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak, and says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak?’And you say, ‘Impossible’ as he hands you a bone." Bob Dylan “Ballad of a Thin Man” One of our favourite sections of The Shark Book comprised tales involving alcohol and animals (in the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom rather than the John Belushi/ National Lampoon sense of the word) – a sure bet when it comes to hilarity as anyone who has ever been bored with nothing but a house-pet and a 24 to entertain themselves with will know. This section entitled “You Animal” chronicles animals with alcoholic tendencies – among them “Bongo”, the NYC chimp who raided his family’s liquor cabinet and went on a wild, destructive bender that ended in the biting of an interfering human’s toe – and also daring drunks who challenged mother nature while drunk and found out that mother nature can be, well, a mother.
Blowing his stack 2007-09-27 08:00:00 The term "chimney sweep” conjures up, for us at least, thoughts of Dickensian pickpockets with toothless grins at the age of eight and quips at the ready working in an environment rife with epidemic poisonings and all of the adults off on freewheeling sexual escapades that predated penicillin. Chimney sweeps in these times were unfortunate children (note the accompanying graphic, presumably the showpiece of Royal Daulton’s “Celebrating Child Slavery Through the Ages” specialty collection) popped into chimneys by exploitive employers who figured, rightly, that their small sizes would be ideal for giving the insides of chimneys a good scrub. What’s more malnutrition in those days was far more successful at keeping the kids trim than modern-day physical education classes. By the time more civilized labour standards become fashionable and laws concerning child labour were enacted, grownups began taking over the work – their size disadvantage overcome by a big long brush that es
Welcome to TheSharkBook.Com! 2007-09-25 13:13:00 Welcome to the official blog for “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery” (to be known henceforth as “The Shark Book” in the interest of preserving keystrokes and somehow helping the environment). Along with providing all the latest information on various goings-on related to The Shark Book, this blog will also be where we will post updates about the authors – articles, appearances, arrest warrants, and of course news on the next book. Stories that did not make the final version of the book for various reasons – considerations of good taste (I believe only one failed to rise over that decidedly low bar), length concerns, or because we had one-too-many stories involving a circus animal getting its own back from a drunken trainer etc – will occasionally be posted here.We will also be continuing in our Shark-like tradition of pointing to and commenting heavily on various news stories of folks compromised by the drink, or, well, any oth Read more:Welcome
Middle Class Values Boozing 2007-10-17 10:48:00 Some wag once remarked, “I’d smoke while I sleep, if I could only find someone to hold my cigarette’. Express such a sentiment these days and you'll get not only a raising of a fire marshal’s scorched eyebrow but a wag of the finger by the growing glee club of killjoys hell-bent on having you mirror their chaste, dull lives. Now while your rejoinder might include a different finger, you can’t help but notice flipping through the channels that the phrase ‘hazardous to your health’ is increasingly cropping up in the evening news—likely referencing some snack or indulgence you’ve been shoving into your gullet for years that will be soon be handled solely with tongs and a biohazard suit-- and'llshave more months off your life than that cul de sac condo with a power lines panorama. A health agency in the UK who we’ve chosen not to name here, not because we think it’s bad form to take swipes at some do-gooder NPO, but because its acronym wasn’t nearly catchy enough Read more:Values
And now, a word from our sponsors... 2007-10-16 08:06:00 As the observant among you will have already noticed, we here at TheSharkBook.com have elected to include Google ads to go with our drunken chronicles. Consider it the cyber-equivalent of that guy at a spoken-word performance who comes around at the end with a hat, forcing you to feign distraction so that you can hold on to your small change and lower-denomination currency and thus be able to tip that attractive bartender consistently throughout the night. Google’s AdSense works on some sort of mysterious computer-language-based voodoo that we don’t have a clue about, however it seems to base what ads are displayed on the text that appears on a given page. Thus, when we posted a blog in tribute to the drinking prowess of a certain young prince among drinkers (we will withhold his name for fear of those irrelevant ads popping up again), all sorts of advertisements began to pop up that were somehow based on his name and title – gossip sites, genealogy services offering to tra
The Hurricane, and the Man the Authorities Came to Blame 2007-10-15 09:34:00 Carny folk like the guy pictured here (from whom we feel no need whatsoever to dissociate ourselves, as anyone who goes to work with white knee-length socks and a personal fan is unlikely to consult legal advice on matters relating to libel) like firemen, police officers, bus drivers and rodeo clowns, are placed in positions of trust, and are counted upon daily to take good care to properly bolt down the Vomit Coasters and tilt-a-whirls of this world (keen-eyed readers will note an unprecedented, back to back referencing of tilt-a-whirls, in our estimation, a blogosphere first).While we appreciate that the repeated exposure to objects going around and around in circles represents a rather obvious metaphor for the cards you've been dealt by the great blackjack dealer in the sky (an allegory Pat Sajak would flatly deny), that's no reason whatsoever to be asked to 'step, right up, don't be shy' to a Breathalyzer like the operator of a 'the Hurricane' ride was at a South Carolina c Read more:Blame
Boozers Beat Back Thugs from Bar 2007-10-13 10:19:00 With Marion Jones and company using more chemicals than your average factory farm, and the reputation of the Olympic Games more soiled than a pair of underpants after a ride on the tilt-a-whirl— your average sports fan clearly has to look further afield than the Citius, Altius, Fortius set for a sofa-sprawling and cheese doodle vicarious existence. In The Shark Book, we chronicled sporting endeavors that were truly heroic, such as a member of the Russian Airforce who made a drunken wager that his head could withstand the force of a brick—in exchange for, off all things, a ‘box of vodka’ and when said brick could not be found, tested his cranium’s density (as if such proof was really required) by smashing successive beer bottles against it. Suffice it to say, physics won out (but only after a protracted battle, and 23 bottles shattered against the man's skull by 'friends'), leaving the party guests to utter ‘oh, my, it’s getting late’, vamoosing before the cops could Read more:Thugs
Scooter Lippy: Gettin' Unlucky in Kentucky 2007-10-20 08:42:00 Unless you’re Italian, romancing a woman on the French Riviera, a woman, or in the best-case daydream scenario, all of the above, it’s hard to pull off "scooter cool". If you dug out a Ouija board to buzz Jimmy Dean, he’d refer you to George Clooney’s personal stylist so that you could be slapped bitchily upside the noggin for the mere suggestion of such a thing.Scooters, often called "Vespas" by people whose self-loathing is so profound they can’t come to terms with the fact they’re driving scooters, are quite possibly the most uncool conveyance this side of a Segway scooter helmed by a black-stockinged, sandal-wearer whose comb-over isn’t even messed up by the lack of a breeze kicked up by his lame ride.A Kentucky
man piloting a scooter, likely worried that he’d have to suffer justifiable raillery from his buddies, did his very best approximation of cool—licking his fingers and pulling out a wad of cash and counting it—undoubtedly among the coolest of maneuvers, e
After my smile, crocodile? 2007-10-19 10:33:00 Excessive alcohol in one’s system can, like the very best cocaine, result in a sense of fearlessness and a Friday night that is a damn sight more entertaining than it would have otherwise been. However, it can also prove dangerous if this lack of fear results in you, say, saying making an ass of yourself at a charity luncheon that was supposed to be alcohol free, or, in the case of the Aussie guy whose horrific drunken night out is currently making the rounds, having a crocodile chomp down on your face. News sources did not mention if the man had been tilting a few at the travel agent’s office; his motivations are unclear for having chosen to spend part of his camping his holiday in Cow Bay, in Northern Australia, along a strip of beach later described by a local doctor as “crocodile highway”. This is not the kind of place where you’d want to be out backstroking in the moonlight since, as far as crocodiles are concerned, the night time is indeed the right time for munching on
That's not Alright, Mama 2007-10-18 23:01:00 The following story proves that a maternal bond...er... can’t always be... posted.Allow us to explain.A precocious young’un in Hilltown, Pennsylvania, precocious not because he could solve cubic polynomials in his head or compose didactic sonnets but because he drove drunk at a middle-aged level-- was nabbed by cops engaging in the type of driving that would even cause road rage on the bumper car circuit. The cops, sensing that the 16-year old had recently gotten his swerve on, administered a breathalyzer to the toasted young helmsman in the wee hours of the morning. Registering top marks on the device, the fuzz contacted the ruffian’s mom to come and pick up the blasted DUI valedictorian.His mom, who we’ll call ‘stupid’ here to protect her identity, herself engaging in the ‘how the hell else am I supposed to get there, walk?’ school of drunk driving, failed the field sobriety tests at the police station upon arrival. Mama was promptly arrested on DUI charges as well. Read more:Alright
Are we There Yet? Yep. Shortest DUI trek ever. 2007-10-24 06:00:00 The automobile has been singled out as a major contributor to obesity in Western nations, mostly by tweedy intellectual blowhards rich enough to live exactly where they want – within an argyle-sweatered walk to the organic squash market and work – who feel the need to criticize folks who’d rather not add the misery of a long bus ride to the day’s complaints.In Ontario, Canada, where a government monopoly on the sale of beer and liquor puts a quest for a case on a winter’s weekend somewhere near the level of one of the early polar expeditions for those without a car, a service called “Dial-a-bottle” has stepped in, offering delivery of all of the essentials – beer, cigarettes and condoms – to your front door for a nominal fee.Such services, however, are also popular in places where liquor stores are on every corner block (in less toney neighborhoods generally) and fetching one’s hooch would involve only a short stumble down the road. In these cases, unless one is dis
All the beer you can drink! (Or so you'd think...) 2007-10-22 10:21:00 It’s something that every blurry-eyed soak with the wherewithal to dream wishes for: the day somebody says he will pick up every bar tab that comes before him till the day he drops dead. Paying for one’s beer-guzzling habit is undoubtedly the least appealing aspect of heavy drinking (next to the dry heaves) and the wish to drink as much as possible on as little money as possible explains why when it comes to mass producing beer, there are no standards too low if a cheap price-tag can be slapped on at the end. (This fact also explains why people say they love their home-brewed beer even when they didn’t have a clue what they were doing when they made it and resent having to drink such cheap slop). Croucher Brewery Company in New Zealand recently drew international headlines and more free publicity than it could have hoped for* when it offered a “lifetime supply” of beer to the person who returned a laptop that someone had spirited off its premises (Full story here). The la Read more:think
The lush, the fish and the flush 2007-10-29 08:30:00 For people who live in apartment buildings where successive years of poodle crap in the elevators and the enduring smell of cat piss in closed spaces with poor air circulation has resulted in a ban on all four-legged pets, the choice for animal companionship most typically falls between a fish and a bird (or a snake if you’re a lone male with a love of tattoos and skateboarding videos). The latter option poses a problem for those in high-rise buildings – your balcony giving the creature a head start when it chooses to fly the coop while you’re vacuuming excrement out of its cage – and, besides, despite what that wily pet store owner might have had you believe, your average cockatoo can’t be counted on to sing a few verses of “Margaritaville” to entertain dinner guests upon a snap of the fingers. And if you’re in a house when Polly croaks its last tune, it will likely be dug out of the yard by the neighbour’s cat if the thing is too big to sink down the commode.Fish ma Read more:flush
Hey teacher, leave us kids alone! 2007-10-26 08:00:00 When preparing The Shark Book, we took great care to ensure that every continent was represented except for Antarctica (although we now have our eyes on a few climate-change researchers who know how to party for the sequel). Yes, we traversed great distances via keyboard tapping and mouse clicks to bring together a collection of drunks with a truly international flavor (much like Ibiza, one would assume). Our book featured soccer referees getting wildly drunk and directing traffic on a busy Jerusalem street, a shit-faced German who offered his friend’s identification to arresting DUI officers, forgetting one key detail—his friend had a glass eye—a tough sell to even the dimmest of cops, and a Maltese man so blotto on cheap whiskey that his flight had to be diverted because he would not be stilled in his quest to break into the cockpit so that he could tell the captain he "loved him".We may be accused of a lot of things (libel, extremely poor taste, bad judgment, and offering our Read more:alone
Dead drunk, but not A dead drunk 2007-10-31 08:00:00 They say you cannot put a price on freedom, but that is hooey. Freedom, the best kind too, freedom from work, costs a mere $US19.95 via the Excused Absence Network. The network has isolated a distinct need - that of goldbrickers and hungover partiers to shirk a day's office duties while not losing pay or stepping into pink-slip lane - and has filled it admirably. For this meager fee you can purchase fake doctor's notes, as well as funeral programs, which will come in handy if you've already tested the limits of your boss' credulity by both the sheer number of aunts you have (if you're not in a predominantly Catholic country) and how they seem to drop dead close to a long weekend. Halloween this year falls inconveniently right in the middle of the week, making a service such as this one quite handy for those who don't want to worry about a next-day hangover when they don their Eyes Wide Shut masks and hit the nightclubs to grope random strangers and enjoy the only day of Read more:drunk
Drinking and driving in the deathmobile 2007-11-05 08:00:00 Unless you’re a signatory to some government/Nasa Area 51 non-disclosure pact, or otherwise other-stratosphere rich, it’s unlikely that your desire to have your ashes fired off into space along with the charred remains of your lifetime accumulation of Star Wars memorabilia will be accommodated. As such, your final ride on this earth, or to put it another way, God’s checkered flag coming down on the victory lap of your life, will be in a hearse – and hopefully not the late model, back-firing jalopy pictured here. [Editor’s Note: This would of course precede, depending on your particular religious beliefs, you being shot up to heaven via some kind of seraphic service elevator.]Hearses were originally horse-drawn and lest you think the word itself was derived from a slurred, drunken elocution of "horse"—unfortunately, it wasn’t. (The origin of "hearse" isn’t that compelling and for a dreary explanation click here, or feel free to circulate our more interesting derivation). Read more:Drinking
Transformer actor Shia's not so 'Sunni' Disposition 2007-11-09 08:00:00 As our devoted readership may have noticed during down time between scheduled Thorazine dosages, we Shark Guys are very reluctant to comment on celebrity transgressions -- mainly because we hope to one day run in those circles and don't want future champagne and orange juice breakfasts ruined by tension resulting from a post here -- but since neither of us had heard of Shia LaBeouf (which sounds like a 'Bichon Frise' that would leave tiny clumps of poop in some of the finer manicured parkettes in Manhattan's Upper East Side, or a lip-synching drag act in the outer suburbs of Marseilles) we figured he/she/it was fair game.Due to the fact that we're a good 2o or so years removed from sitting cross-legged on the living room floor and having our GI Joes violate Geneva Conventions with our sisters' Army Brat edition Barbies, neither of us had seen the Transformer
s movie, but upon cross-referencing of numerous Google sources it appears he was in it.Since neither of us wakes up during d Read more:Sunni
Make it a double – she's drinking for two 2007-11-16 08:00:00 Authors of a recent study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health offered some good news to pregnant women who may want to continue on in the lifestyle that got them in that condition in the first place when they said that it might be ok for expectant mothers to binge drink on occasion without harming their unborn. This goes against orthodox thinking on the subject and will come as a surprise to those who have lost major points with the missus when suggesting during a lull in Lamaze class that everybody repair to the local bar because “this is all just a big money-grab anyway”. But before you and your mates and a yummy mummy of your acquaintance toast the baby by gently tapping the outside of the womb with your can of Michelob Light and rubbing it for luck, keep in mind that the study was limited to the effects of the occasional binge enjoyed by someone who was not a chronic alcoholic. A number of studies have linked heavy drinking during pregnancy to stunte Read more:double
Full of (Red) Bull 2007-11-14 08:00:00 We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district. Okay, let’s rephrase that so it appears less sordid. We first took notice of Red Bull in a Thai red-light district where a bloody kick-boxing card was being held. Better. Alright, never mind. We were in attendance, VIP section, when the ref was conveniently looking the other way and one of the combatants took one for the team, right smack in the Red Bull logo where one hopes the Muay Thai tomato can in question was sporting a protective cup. (Said logo was placed nearer to home base than it is in the accompanying photo).Speaking of cups, and in tribute of segues that hit you like a Muay Thai roundhouse to the head, we Shark Guys drink our coffee black -- you know, like real men. None of this foam that looks like it would line the mouth of that German Shepherd that guards the lumberyard. As coffee purists we’d never really taken notice of any other caffeinated beverages like Red Bull and generally steered clear of those
From the Sharkbook archives: 'Sh*t-eating grins' 2007-11-19 08:30:00 As we mentioned in our initial blog, certain stories that we collected for "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death (and other true tales of drunken debauchery)" did not make the final cut due to length concerns, or, in the case of this particular story, because of an overall consensus between the writers and Penguin Canada that it was just too disgusting.However, in the interests of completeness -- the star of this one deserves a spot among the world's most notable drunks, even if his story is far more nauseating
than the others -- we have decided to post the unpublished parts of the book here on occasion.We included many stories of drunks trying to beat the law, however few of our protagonists took matters as far as the gentleman in this following story, and hopefully very few have since.Coprophagia, the consumption of faeces, from the Greek copro (faeces) and phagy (eat) is practiced by several animals due to limitations of their digestive systems or diets. The makers of Binaca breath
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