THANK YOU JEEBUS

Six more groceries to sell beer

If you live in Pennsylvania, you know how much of a giant pain in the ass it is to get some hooch. Simply pinning down the location of a beer store in some neighborhoods is a difficult and daunting task. After fruitless searches for a case of delicious Iron City, if you're like me, you end up giving up and going to the nearest bar and spending too much money on a few six packs.

Then we have liquor. People that work in Pennsylvania liquor stores are literally agents of the Evil One. If you're walking out of there with anything more than a bottle of robust red, they're going to look at you like you're Billy Joel about to crash your car into a house. That's bullshit. If I want to drink a bottle of gin that comes in a plastic half-gallon bottle, that's my alcohol problem, not yours, man.

And sadly, we Pennsylvanians have not been offered an alternative. The Liquor Control Board, or as they're known in these parts, The Fun Police, holds the monopoly on wines and spirits, and you have be a licensed beer distributor to sell cases of beer.

So, even though Giant Eagle can be kind of crappy at times, it's still good news to know that they're getting aggressive with this Puritan booze law in the state. I don't care if the people who originally populated Pennsylvania did so because they were too tight-assed to stick around Europe and its hedonistic ways - I want beer, motherfucker!

Now yinz know what to get us for Christmas

From some random website we accidentally stumbled upon during our hourly Facebook creep:

"Whether you prefer chardonnay or merlot, this is the wine glass you need. You can savor the flavor all night long as this glass can hold up to a full bottle of your favorite fruit of the vine. It's just the thing for a cozy night in."

Now why didn't we think of that? It's not like we don't drink a bottle (or 6) in one sitting, anyways.

Yes

Notwithstanding our glorious sports teams and our one embarrassing one, the first thing that comes to mind when you think Pittsburgh is beer. A working class city with a football problem like the 'Burgh has always had a good, dedicated booze-swilling following for local brews like Rolling Rock (RIP), Penn Pilsner and "Ahrn" City.

Alongside and usually hand-in-hand with beer is another thing that Pittsburgh loves - its music. There is a profoundly dedicated following for local acts like the Clarks, Joe Grushecky and the crown jewel of Pittsburgh rock, Donnie Iris.

The thick-framed glasses-wearing Beaver native has been rocking for decades. Donnie is to Pittsburgh rock and roll what Reggie Jackson's home run against the light tower in the '71 All-Star game is to baseball: monumental. Even Donnie's name is Pittsburgh.

So when you combine the two, you get probably the most Pittsburgh thing known to man.

And, according to the Trib, it is going to be on sale soon.

I am physically preparing my body to be ready to take cases of this at a time upon its release. King Cool beer from the King of Cool himself. This is epic.

Mmm...Beer...Manna from Heaven

Holy Jesus we have a lot of posts about booze right now.

Your daily reminder to go get wasted

In the past we have told you, dear reader(s?) that if you get hammalammed, you are doing a great service to your brain and its battle with dementia.

Today, we bring the you the good news that you're less likely to die from brain trauma following a head injury if you have booze in your system.

Experts cautioned people should not interpret the findings as an excuse to drink more alcohol.

The amount of alcohol consumed appears to be important - too little and there is no effect, too much and the beneficial effects are lost, studies on animals suggest.

Experts believe the right dose of alcohol, however, stops the cascade of swelling, inflammation and further destruction of brain cells, known as secondary brain injury.

Okay, we get it, you're not supposed to get completely annihilated in hopes that when you fall down the stairs later you won't die, but still - if the amount of alcohol in your blood stream is important, and alcohol's effect on each person is unique, we're going to experiment with this one. What do we have to lose? It's not like we're going to work tomorrow anyway.

How to beat dementia: get blackout drunk

If you're reading this blog, you've probably been shitfaced before, because only like six people read this and they're all our friends - so we know that you're a booze hound. Nothing wrong with that.

But you may not know that all those nights that you woke up only to find out from a friend passed out on the floor near you that you made some bad decisions, those were actually nights you were strengthening your mind against dementia.

Data compiled from 15 international studies, including responses from more than 10,000 people, found that drinkers, not teetotallers, are better off when it comes to developing diseases affecting cognitive function.

Those aged 60 and older who consumed between one and 28 alcoholic drinks each week, were almost 30 per cent less likely to have Alzheimer's later on in life, the data found.

Light and moderate drinkers were also 25 per cent less likely to contract vascular dementia, and 26 per cent less likely to suffer from any form of dementia.

The odds improved even more when comparing just drinkers with non-drinkers and ignoring exactly how much people consumed.

If a study comes out in a few weeks linking 3AM drunken breakfast buffets from Eat 'N Park to low blood pressure, fewer gray hairs and an increased libido, we are sooooo aging well.

Things not to do wasted

Operate a drawbridge.

The tugboat driver told police that he radioed ahead to have the bridge raised, but received no response from the operator. The driver said he then blew his horn and rang a bell when he arrived at the bridge, but still received no response.

Kyes said officers traveled to the bridge for a well-being check and found Robert E. Finn, 49, “in a state of intoxication,” at his monitoring station. Finn, who is an employee of the Boston Department of Public Works, was taken into protective custody and replaced by another bridge operator, Kyes said.

And we thought our DPW here in the 'Burgh was bad; I mean what's a couple tree branches getting sawed off and falling onto my 1989 Volvo station wagon when people are drunkenly forgetting to operate a drawbridge?

Best thing to blame Swine Flu on ever

Getting trashed and trying to operate a vehicle.

Deborah Karen Graham sought clemency for the charge in the southern city of Queenstown (New Zealand), saying the three glasses of wine she had consumed were more potent because she was recovering from the swine flu virus.

I think I blamed SARS for a bottle of whiskey my parents found under my bed in high school, so I actually sympathize with this woman.

Tangled up in Blues

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and are tired of spending the days in a blurred turmoil of whiskey, wine, beer, cheap cigarettes and shame (we sure as hell aren't), swing on down to Hartwood Acres for the 15th Annual Pittsburgh Blues Festival.

Check out the bands and events at the Blues Festival's website here, or you can go to the PG's fantastic Blues Blog to scope it out. It is a perennial fact that you will find a virtually unknown blues band and become obsessed with them; or maybe that's just me.

Well, there's good news and bad news, folks...

We were way too into what was going on in Pittsburgh, then Detriot, then Pittsburgh, then Detriot and then what was going on back in Pittsburgh to know that this went down Friday.

The good : the glass-lined breweries of Old Latrobe, PA will once again be filled with delicious, PA-brewed beer.

The bad: Iron City, or as it is pronounced here, Ahrn-City, will no longer be brewed in Pittsburgh.

The reason: immense unsettled debt that was accrued after the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, poorly managed but faithfully purchased and consumed for years, owed the city, county and urban development authority millions and millions of, well, "dawwers."

The silver lining of this is that it's going to Latrobe. This will sew up the hearts of everyone in Westmoreland County who lost faith in God, the economy and the time-honored tradition of getting shithoused on locally-brewed beer when Rolling Rock, the pride and joy of Pittsburgh's hilly neighbor, was bought out by an evil global conglomerate and then sold from said evil conglomerate to another, Anheuser-Bush, which recently merged with the aforementioned global beverage conglomorate. Are you confused?

Of course, the not-so-silver lining of this is a glaring example of how a company can squander public investment. This better not happen with GM, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, Fanny May, Freddy Mac, Wells Fargo and everyone else receiving a bailout. Because that would royally suck.

Either way, we're looking forward to buying our first case of the Western PA hybrid beer. Let's hope the glass-lined tanks remove a little bit of the, how can I euphemize this, edge off the beer. Maybe we'll actually drink IC when that happens, rather than opting straight to IC Light like we currently do.