You: good-natured University president getting your picture taken with 20 sorority girls on the patio of Taylor’s.

Me: Called you a “lucky dog.” Too bad my camera is broken. Party sometime?

Esquire has included local bar Sam Bond’s Garage in its list of the 100 best bars in America. Sam Bond’s was the only bar from Oregon to make the cut. Here’s what Esquire had to say about the venerable establishment:

As you stretch out on the split-timber benches under the old barn’s bare rafters, you slowly realize you’re in the family room of one of the weirdest neighborhoods in America — a shady, overgrown co-op of artists, ecoanarchists, spirit healers, drug dealers, and permanently circling vagabonds. And the living couldn’t be better: Couples play cribbage on the rough-hewn communal tables, kids loll on the modest stage until the sun goes down, and the strong-limbed waitresses circulate the beers in mason jars and smile, but only if they really mean it. It’s like a frontier dance hall in a mining town where the vein’s gone dry. The dreams are alive, but appealingly bruised.

What, no love for The Old Pad?

…but were in too much agony to ask, can be found at the New Yorker.

In an epic, five-page tour of the world of throbbing temples and “bed spins”, Joan Acocella explores the causes (duh), strange cures (“Pickle juice or a shot of vodka or pickle juice with a shot of vodka.”), and patron saint (St Vivian) of hangovers. Questions you never thought to ask are answered: Why isn’t there good scientific research on hangovers? Because drunk study subjects are hard to control, and rats with “artificially induced hangovers” tend to die at the rate of 9 out of 10. You’ll learn new hangover phrases: Salvadorans wake up “made of rubber,” the French with a “wooden mouth” or a “hair ache.” The Poles, reportedly, experience a “howling of kittens,” while the Danes get “carpenters in the forehead.” There’s even discussion of the morality of finding a cure for hangovers, in which some jackass from Brown University even has the temerity to claim

“Fifteen million people in this country are alcohol-dependent. That’s a staggering number! They need help: not with hangovers but with the cause of hangovers—alcohol addiction.”

Oof. Now I’m getting the “blog spins.”

As you can see, yesterday’s smoke-in was pretty awesome. We also got a nice letter about it, which you can read below the fold. (more…)

Over at The Weekly Standard, Matt Labash spills the beans on how he has survived 12 consecutive White House Correspondants’ Association Dinners. The answer?

I part with these secrets reluctantly, since when I lecture in schools, I like to tell the kids not to drink unless it’s for a very good reason, like making the pain stop. But our twofold approach is simple: (a) Have no shame, and (b) ingest copious amounts of free hooch. Neither is usually a problem for us. We are, after all, journalists.

Cheers to that.

The city of Eugene has fined the Horsehead bar $12,960 dollars for a row of arborvitae in the bar’s outdoor smoking area. The city’s smoking ordinance mandates that at least 75 percent of a smoking area be open to outdoor air, and, according to the city planning commission, that row of plants constituted a wall, violating the ordinance.

The owners of the Horsehead are understandably pissed, especially since they already spent $10,000 tearing down the old fence that used to enclose the area in an attempt to conform to the 2005 smoking ordinance. The new row of arborvitae was supposed to allow air to circulate and give patrons privacy from downtown Eugene’s omnipresent street kids and hobos.

Apparently the city of Eugene has a very loose definition of “wall” because the planning commission also deemed the wrought-iron fence around Jameson’s outdoor area violated the code. Patrons are no longer allowed to smoke there, either.

Just another ridiculous moment in the annals of bureaucracy. For all those interested, there will be a smoke-in on Monday, May 12, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the EMU amphitheater to protest all such asinine ordinances and laws targeting smokers. See you there.

P.S. The R-G story I linked to up top has a picture with the offending “wall” in the background. See for yourself. If that’s a wall, then I’m the bastard child of Elvis and Mother Teresa.

P.P.S. Hey everyone, we’re on Fark. So, uh … go us.

One of the most popular national news stories this morning is about something near and dear to all of our hearts: a man’s love of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Photo by Mary Compton, SouthtownStar via AP

Bill Bramanti is his name, and he, at only 67-years-young, has purchased a custom designed PBR coffin, story courtesy of USA Today.

I plan on doing things the cheap way and having my ashes dumped in the empty 1/2 gal of Patrone that’ll presumably kill me.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, people!

Yesterday OC Ed-in-Chief Ossie and I drove up to Kell’s Irish Pub in Portland to hear Gene Healy of the Cato Institute talk about his new book, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. The good folks at the America’s Future Foundation hosted the event.

Healy is a smart, funny guy, and we enjoyed throwing back some Guinness with him. I haven’t read the book yet, but everything he said last night was spot-on. In short, voters and politicians on both sides of the aisle need to get rid of the idea that the President is the daddy or mommy who will fix all their problems. I did have to disagree with Healy when he started bagging on Teddy Roosevelt, though. Ugly views on manifest destiny aside, Roosevelt was pretty awesome; he gave a 90-minute speech after being shot in the chest. C’mon, Hillary Clinton isn’t even that hardcore in her fantasies.

The ‘Ol Dirty’s front page today has a big spread on all the Earth Day events on campus. Below the fold, however, is a nice little story headlined “Researchers link biofuels to food price increase.” From the opening paragraphs of the article:

A sign outside of the SeQuential Biofuels retail fueling station in south Eugene reads “fight global warming.” But recent studies and media reports have increasingly questioned biofuel’s side in that and another life-and-death planet-scale fight.

As food riots erupt across the globe, researchers and analysts have been scrambling to explain why food prices have exploded in recent months, and the crosshairs are increasingly focused on corn-based ethanol biofuels.

The article goes on to mention the increasing criticism of biofuel production coming from sources such as The Economist (subscription wall), The New York Times and Science. Reason has been all over the subject as well. With all this scrutiny, you would think the government would be less eager to push through new biofuel subsidies and laws. Well …

(more…)

• NORML
• PUMRAA
• Self-Refuting Drug Warriors
• Reefer Madness

I had the pleasure of sitting through a monthly OLCC meeting this morning, and the senior citizen commissioners actually did something, well, respectable for Oregon youth and music business. After rejecting admendements to the minors posting rule in December, which allow venues that could only have 21+ shows to admit minors into shows, the board passed a revised rule change unanimously today.

All of the public testimony was in favor of the amendments, which surprised Commissioner Christine Lewandowski who noted that a MADD representative would generally be at such a hearing in opposition.

The admendment allows Oregon venues that serve alcohol to host all age shows and those that don’t serve alcohol to do so for added income, as long as they set up an approved liquor control plan. The WW’s Local Cut has a story and some video coverage here.

So, Obama thinks poor folks are bitter, but Hillary knows they’re mostly just looking for someone to buy them a shot of mid-shelf booze. That’s why she sprang for a shot of Crown Royal at a media event relaxing evening with close friends at her neighborhood bar (in Indiana). But wait, you say, Crown Royal is Canadian whisky… there’s no “e” before the “y” or anything. While the pundits desperately analyze “the shot heard ’round the world” for implications on Clinton’s NAFTA position, we applaud Clinton for simply making booze an issue in this election. And for providing the evil spirit which is currently possessing our copy of Photoshop with some fresh meat. Cheers!

1. People dressed in garbage.

I saw the garbage monsters walking down 13th today, beatboxing and telling people to recycle.

The Smoke Free Campus Task Force (don’t laugh, it’s paid for) has set up a survey to gauge student, staff and faculty thoughts on making campus smoke-free. From the survey:

The Smoke Free Campus Task Force has been appointed to assess the pros and cons of establishing the University of Oregon as a smoke free campus. To assist in this effort, the task force is asking all faculty, staff, and students to complete a short survey to give feedback about the current campus smoking policy and whether the UO should become a smoke free campus. Establishing campus as smoke free would prohibit smoking anywhere on campus, including all buildings and all campus grounds and properties.

I would advise all freedom-loving students, staff and faculty to fill out the survey … as many times as possible. Also, check out the OC’s response to these efforts from fall term.

Paul Suderman documents the tragic collateral damage in the war on global warming over at Reason. Suderman eloquently recounts the plethora of good reasons to oppose the current generation of biofuels which burn through foodstocks with no benefit to carbon emissions. Moreover, he correctly identifies rising beer prices as the point at which we must all stand astride history and shout “STOP!”