Update: The Fourth Annual Modern Drunkard Convention is on. Go here for details:
http://convention.drunkard.com
"In a world where there is a law against people ever showing their emotions, or ever releasing themselves from the grayness of their days, a drink is not a social tool. It is a thing you need in order to live." --Jimmy Breslin
While there is a veritable roar of voices insisting that we drink (thanks largely to the alcohol industry), there is hardly a whisper telling us how to drink.
I'm not speaking of the the mere act of putting glass to mouth, but the deep layers of etiquette and expertise gathered over thousands of years of dedicated effort. While there was a time when all one needed to do was turn to the established movers and shakers (Churchill, Gleason, Best, Reed, The Rat Pack, Bogart, et al) for cues on how to behave while boozing, the reigning cultural icons are largely silent on the subject. Today's celebrities undoubtedly still drink, and probably a lot, but you'd have to hold a gun to their publicist's head before they'd admit it, much less show you how it's done.
It's easy to blame the Love Generation, of course. Our fathers eschewed the lesson of our grandfathers, they chose to drop out of society rather than drop into their local bar. In the space of a single generation, thousands of years of knackered knowledge vanished.
Which is a pity, because now that the kids have found their way back to the bar, they've forgotten how the hell to behave.
Hence this magazine. Modern Drunkard Magazine is the definitive yet humorous guide to drinking in the new century, a rallying cry for a large--and largely scattered--tribe. It is the embodiment of the inevitable backlash against the army of self-appointed nannies who believe any manner of fun shouldn'tinterrupt the long, grey lockstep toward the prison of death. They've coddled and browbeat society into believing everything must be done in exact moderation (and that extends to joy), under penalty of social ostracism. That anything that makes us feel good must naturally be bad.
The further irony being, since adults who drink are well in the majority, we are in effect ostracizing ourselves. The Modern Drunkard will relieve that misplaced guilt, will communicate the notion our grandfathers held to be true: It's perfectly fine and normal to want to get outside one's head, to take a vacation from oneself. And in an era with terror at the doorstep and anxiety at an all time high, we need a vacation more than ever.
the bar, they've forgotten how the hell to behave.
www.drunkard.com
