This is Adam Smith, "also known as Steve Zacharanda," in Chicago on Election Night. He is a reporter for the Birmingham Mail, a newspaper in the UK. He's just been approached by a friendly Dutch person with a video camera. He seems to be filing a story, and he's definitely been drinking. Please watch his hilarious reportorial style—"I'm just a little bit pissed.... Thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, baby!"—after the jump. Click to view As the Telegraph reports:

Dear, sweet, precious, life-sustaining alcohol has starred in more movies and TV shows than any actor or actress could ever hope to star in. And tonight let us give the nectar of the gods its due. What's your favorite hooch scene? As ever, I'll humbly recommend one after the jump.

"Trinity Church, which became an emotional refuge amid the fallout at ground zero, is offering services to its neighbors during a time of crisis: free spiritual and psychological counseling for workers who have been affected by the current Wall Street financial turmoil." Oh ha, it's the 9/11 of bankers getting fired! Will the free spiritual counseling encourages downtown assholes to renounce materialism or something? (Is that likely from the this particular church?) More: "And because they are typically measured by the size of their paychecks - bonuses, in particular - their self-worth is deeply threatened when the money evaporates." Words fail! Anyway. Free counseling! As usual, self-medication is by necessity self-financed. So far that's not stopping anyone!

"An even bigger clash involved a proposed city ordinance backed by Stambaugh to close the town bars at 2 a.m. instead of 5. Stambaugh says he believed this would help curb late-night drunken driving at a time when, according to Stein, the former mayor, 'people were driving out from Anchorage to the valley for more alcohol and crashing.' But Palin, as a council member, had voted against the measure-making her the favored candidate among bar owners, one of whom held a fund-raiser for her." [Newsweek, Photo]

By the end of September, Amazon.com will begin selling wine, the director of Napa Valley Vintners told the Wall Street Journal. Online wine stores are possible now in part because of a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that knocked down New York and Michigan laws prohibiting it. Hooray legislating from the bench!Now those of us who wear sweaters and wish we could read only by candlelight will be able to annoy our friends even more trying to pretend we know something about the red grape juice we're drinking and that's making me talk too damn much again and somebody just kicked me under the table. In related dinner party fodder news, Amazon plans to sell the biographies of first ladies-in-waiting Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama on the its e-reader the Kindle before they're sold in hard-copy anywhere else. Which makes sense, if only because there's not enough time to rush out these opportunistic political potboilers in paper form. (Photo by paul goyette)

Click to viewThe mysterious Young Manhattanite writes: For months now I have been looking for a classic clip of Larry King drunk on his radio show that I heard way back in the dawn of the public Internet when my friend downloaded it from a newsgroup. It's NOWHERE online now. My friend finally found the cassette tape he transfered it to back then (yes, a cassette tape!) and redigitized it. After some digging, it appears this recording was made between 1987 and 1994 when his radio and tv shows overlapped. This witching hour call-in segment was called Open Phone America. According to Wikipedia, the phones would open up at 3 a.m. for callers to discuss any topic they pleased with Larry. Give it a good listen. Really picks up halfway through. Update: Transcript below!

Booze: it really sells itself. But you can always buy more booze, and liquor companies have been honing their sales pitches for decades. Below, seven ads for-bluntly-cheap rotgut booze, from the 1940s and 50s. Maybe this stuff was classy way back then? Gay undertones, exotic racism, sexism, and international flair are all in there! I think you'll prefer this brand of rotgut to booze costing "up to $1.00 more," assuming you're a white man!

How much did President Bush drink? When did he quit? Did he quit? And what else did he do? There are absolutely no definitive answers to any of those questions, and most of the witnesses and parties involved are suspect or worse. Still, with the publication of former press secretary Scott McClellan's book, complete with re-airing of those old cocaine rumors, it might be fun to investigate the out-going president's drug history, as found both in the public record and the fever dreams of conspiracy artists.

Just why is everything so lovely and happy and just plain yay! when we get snoggled on super-magical fun juice? Science knows! "Jodi Gilman and her colleagues at the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland, used MRI to observe the brain activity of 12 healthy "social drinkers" both when sober and after they had been given alcohol intravenously and their blood alcohol levels had reached nearly 0.8 grams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood - the legal limit for driving in the UK and the US. In both conditions they were shown pictures of either frightened or neutral faces."

Vacationing in the Hamptons is all about listening to James Taylor while you fight back bitter tears and drinking a swimming pool's worth of gin. But you can't drink all the time, right? Surely not during that private time when you shuffle into your clam-diggers and knit cardigan and firmly affix your wig? Oh, wait. You can drink then, too. It's called having a "dresser".

While you were wondering when Eliot Spitzer would resign last Tuesday night, Gawker videographer Alex Goldberg attended two parties, where he captured intoxicated flocks of hipsters in their natural elements: dancing, in Batman sweatshirts and fanny-packs, at Beauty Bar and Happy Endings. Star tattoos! Old-timey hats! Old-timey facial hair! The goddamn robot! All the reasons the terrorists hate us and some they haven't yet thought of are in the attached clip.

COMPARED with an array of beverages, sports drinks are "wildly skewed to non-bloggers," said David Lockwood, a director of research at Mintel International, a market research group. Part of the reason, he said, is that bloggers tend to avoid the lack of mind- or personality-altering affects.

We all know those distinguished students of Ivy League colleges aren't having any sex, just writing about it constantly, but are they partying? Yes. Yes they are, according to this chart created by Dartblog. At least they are at Dartmouth, which is miles ahead of the other schools in terms of alcohol infractions per thousand students. Which actually probably means that the Dartmouth administration is just way, way more dickish about it than the rest of the graphed colleges. [Dartblog via IvyGate]

We've laughed it off for months now but maybe Mayor Bloomberg is idiotic enough to run for president. How else to explain the formerly bland technorat's suddenly strained attempt to transform himself into similarly rich and short crank Ross Perot? Asked about Bush's economic stimulus plan (he is going to send us all checks!!!), Bloomberg said it was "like giving a drink to an alcoholic." He meant because Congress is addicted to spending, but the analogy seems to actually say that Americans are addicted to having money. Or maybe he is actually just saying that Americans will actually spend their entire stimulus checks on booze? Some of them will, sure. But some of them will spend it on drugs! Besides, Americans aren't addicted to cash. We're addicted to running up debt! [NYSun]

Why won't THE MSM leave Choire Sicha's liquor store ALONE! [Radar]

"It's easy to reduce all of what is wrong with American journalism to the near industrywide ban on booze in the newsroom. So I will." [Slate; Illustration via HuffPo]

Newsweek invited third-generation etiquette expert Lizzie Post to help Holiday get-togetherers and get-togetherees avoid awkward moments with teetotalers at their Christmas parties. Post offered six tips that we loved so much, we repurposed them in a humorous fashion!

George Dickel, the other distillery that makes "Tennessee Whisky", stopped brewing their precious nectar from 1999 through 2003 to reduce inventory after they ramped up production in the 90s to compete with Jack Daniel's. Despite the fact that Dickel is way better, it didn't work. And now, because sippin' whiskey must age, they have nearly none available for this holiday season. Thankfully the shortage mostly affects their No. 8 so you can still sip yourself to pleasant oblivion on the superior, higher-proof No. 12 while dealing with your family next week. Or, you know, just drink bourbon.

Whiskey Maker Short After Shutting Down Production [AP via WSMV]

We're thankful for once again living in a city where a guy can order all the top-shelf booze he wants on the internet. Thank Our Heavenly Father for entire winters spent drowning in Old Overholt without ever leaving the house.

In vino veritas, the college kids say. But Auren Hoffman doesn't think there's much truth in wine. The entrepreneur rails against the practice of collecting and drinking wine in a recent blog post, going so far to call it — well, we'll just let him speak for himself: