Nasty bar fight last night. I was having a nice dinner with my wife, when this troglidytic group of thugs came in and started picking a fight with me. I ignored them, until one of them winked at my wife (he may have had something in his eye; hard to say). I couldn't tolerate that, so I stood up and faced the thug nearest me. I swung on him with all of my 185 pounds. My fist went up to my wrist in his stomach. He flopped to the floor vomiting his lungs out, his face turning gradually purple.
Another thug (called "Rainey," from what I could gather) came to help him, so I palmed my short nosed .32 and laid it across his cheek with a crack that split the flesh open. He dropped back into a chair with his mouth hanging, drooling blood and saliva over his chin. I stood there smiling, but nothing was funny. I said, "Rainey, I've had some punks tougher than you'll ever be on the end of a gun and I pulled the trigger just to watch their expressions change." He was scared, but he tried to bluff it out anyway. He said, "Why don'tcha try it now? Go ahead, why don'tcha try it?" He started to laugh at me when I pulled the trigger of the .32 and shot him in the thigh. He said, "Damn!" under his breath and grabbed his leg. I raised the muzzle of the gun until he was looking right into the little round hole that was his ticket to hell. "Dare me some more, Rainey."
After that the rest of the thugs left us alone, and I was able to finish my 26-ounce mug in peace.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody got it on video. If they did, please note that my memory might be a little blurred on what actually happened, but I know for a fact that a bar three miles from my location last night has a tough reputation, and when I got home I wrestled with the kids.
Special thanks to Mrs. Clinton and the great Mickey Spillane for assistance with the narrative.
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Prepare to celebrate: April 7, 2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the prohibition of Prohibition.
Unfortunately, April 7th is a Monday, so you may want to do a two-week commemoration, starting today.
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Oh, that sound like so much fun! Beer pong with root beer in Utah.
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Maybe they're sucking on these while they play: Absinthe lollipops. I suspect anything boring goes better with one of these juvenile sticks.
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Great headline from FARK earlier this week: Pregnant woman arrested after drinking eight beers, which to her credit is four less than it took to get her pregnant.
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The PedalPub. Pretty cool, but not quite wet enough for my tastes (see FAQ for more details).
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Yesterday, I gave you a Bible-search site. Today, I give you a drink search-site. The Caribbean Catholic sounds pretty good, if you like to get drunk and fat at the same time. I couldn't find any drinks with "Baptist" in the name, but I found the Mormon Surprise.
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Barber in Michigan gives customers a beer while they get a haircut. Fascist authorities tell him to stop. He has taken his case to Lansing for review.
I'm highly interested in this case. I do a fair amount of liquor work in my practice. The law provides that a person cannot accept any consideration for alcohol, unless the person has a liquor license.** "Consideration" is a legal term that basically means something tendered for something else. If a widget cost $5.00, the consideration is $5.00. It's a common-sensical "this for that" analysis.
But the Liquor Control Commission doesn't apply a common sense standard. They say, "If you receive money at an event that has alcohol, you need a license." It's a distorted view of "consideration," but it fits their goal to reduce drinking any way they can.
It came up at my local Chamber of Commerce. It regularly holds cocktail parties. It costs $3.00 to get in. For $3.00 you get food. There's also a cash bar. The parties are held at a licensed establishment. A few years ago, a member wanted to hold the party at its place of business. We said, "You can't sell the alcohol." They said they were going to have free beer and wine. I said "great," the LCC said "no." They explained: "If it costs customers $3.00 to get in, they're paying for the beer." I said, "No, you flunked first-year contract in law school. They're paying $3.00 to get in, whether they're drinking or not. We charge loyal AA members $3.00 and we charge the local lush $3.00. Nothing extra is being paid for the beer." It didn't matter to the LCC.
I normally tell clients to ignore the LCC "interpretation" (which is nothing less than the creation of a new law, a power that normally rests with the legislature), but at their own peril. They can know they're morally and legally right, but as far as proving it in court, that could be expensive.
Let's hope the Michigan AG gets it right, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
(**The article says, "State law prohibits businesses where people consume alcohol when paying for other services." I haven't seen that law and I'm not going to spend the time researching it. I suspect the newspaper hasn't summarized the law quite right, but if it has, this case may not be "on point" with my Chamber of Commerce situation.)
