I remember reading this in the Onion once: “The quality of wine is inversely proportional to the ferocity of the animal on the label.” Sadly for South Africa, we have many animal labels. Producers, it seems, think that they can bottle any crap and then throw on a cutesy label and all is forgiven.
Go home, United Nations. You are drunk. At least now you know why nothing gets agreed upon there At the General Assembly budget committee meeting on Monday, United States Ambassador for Management and Reform at the United Nations, Joseph Torsella gave his colleagues a slap on the wrist for always showing up to negotiations drunk. Joseph “The […]
Welcome to Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal. It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Parents whisk their children to and from bouts of social soccer in the park. Some of them might stop off somewhere for a Cornetto. Maybe not. Others might be enjoying an alcohol-induced coma in the comfort of their running Audi A3 at the traffic lights. Wait, […]
The God of wine – Bacchus – called me on New Year’s Day for a talking to atop the rather benign Bottellery Hills. He gave me six commandments to give to you. So listen carefully, young and old.
The latest inductee to the 2oceansvibe Boss Hall Of Fame is none other than a beer downing boss, but, the boss might not want to replicate his achievement with the “world’s strongest beer”.
You may have heard of the pornstar martini cocktail – it’s all the rage in Cape Town at the moment. A bar in the UK added a new twist to the popular drink, adding liquid nitrogen to give it that cool, smoky effect, falling down the rim of the glass. This proved problematic to a UK teen who ended up in hospital as a result.
This year’s We Love Real Beer Craft Festival will be the fourth time the festival has been run, and as always, in the spirit of the ‘small guy’, things look to be bigger than ever on the independently brewed beer front.
Pics of Harry Potter star, Daniel Radcliffe, have gone viral after being posted on Facebook following “one almighty session” in Ireland in the early hours of Monday morning. Serendipitously bumping into members of a winning Gaelic football team on the streets of Dublin, Radcliffe’s evening took a turn for the blurry.
This may well be the greatest video ever taken in the Western Cape. Behold the naked half-man-half-seal making his way across the rocks outside Polana restaurant in Kalk Bay, into the water. This fellow might possibly have been doing a little boozin’ that day. Anyone know who he is?
That’s right, beautiful angels – Wednesday night is all about you at the Mount Nelson Planet Bar. The guys should probably be there too, if they know what’s good for them. But they won’t be getting a complimentary gin cocktail when they arrive – that’s just for the girls. What’s more, this vibe is carrying […]
Branding! It’s good for you. Jump Studios, a London-based architecture firm, recently finished up the interior on a submarine for Guinness’ deep-sea bar, which plunged to the depths of the Baltic on its maiden voyage. The sub was commissioned to celebrate Guinness’ 250th anniversary. Take a look at the thing after the jump.
The Department of Health has released the results of a study completed earlier this year that paints a grim picture of both Cape Town and the Western Cape’s rampant use and abuse of alcohol. Long story short, the study concludes that Cape Town is South Africa’s drunkest city, and the Western Cape its booziest province. Er, yay?
English heavy metal band Motörhead has launched a line of bottled alcoholic beverages, because that’s just what you do when you’re a band of a certain age. There’s Motörhead Vodka which, sure, heavy metal, makes sense, and they’ve also released Motörhead Shiraz. Because I guess that’s heavy metal too.
It’s always nice when researchers employing a loosely scientific method produce results you were more or less expecting. Folks at the University of Portsmouth have determined that loud music makes people want to drink alcohol in greater quantities and at a much faster rate because the music makes it taste sweeter. Science!
A couple of “Natty Light” enthusiasts approached the brewer, Natural Ice with the idea to make the mediocre frat-house beer slightly more remarkable by making it the first to be sent into space. Their spacecraft’ was a styrofoam cooler, a GPS tracking device, and an HD camera, launched into space with a weather balloon last week.
Diane Taylor is a 92 year-old great-grandmother from the UK. Like any other woman of her age and stature, she went down to her local convenience store to buy a bottle of whisky. The shop however refused to sell her any alcohol because she had no ID with her to prove that she is over 18.
Let’s face it, as necessary as they are, some awareness campaigns are pretty lame. Especially when they are conceptualised by ad agencies who are out of touch with the audience they are trying to speak to. But not this quality, yet very funny New Zealand commercial. It urges blokes to be “legends” by not letting their friends drink and then drive.
If people keep telling you that drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism, then you either need to drink less, or find a way to make sure that there are people to drink with all the time. The geniuses behind the social network app ‘Let’s Drink Tonight’ figured the latter choice made more sense too.
How’s this? Amy Winehouse’s family believes that a seizure related to abstinence from drinking is actually what killed her. The family says the singer quit alcohol cold turkey three weeks before she died. They think her tiny frame could not handle the shock of withdrawal, leading to her untimely death.
In the US, you can drive a car, go to war and get married, divorced and re-married before you can legally have a beer, at the age of 21. But there may be some merit in that. Two in three South Africans polled on the issue think so, anyway.
You guys remember that shipwreck they found last year in the Baltic, with the 168 odd ancient-but-preserved bottles of champagne? Well I do. And they did. And now two of those fancy old champagne bottles are going on auction because why not?
Man, Budweiser really wants you to drink their beer. I’m not going to, but I appreciate the effort they’re putting into the European re-branding initiative – like with this 7-meter Astroturf pool table, with built in fridge, that they put together for playing ‘poolball’ on. Take a look! It’s pretty rad.
A new study has found that drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better. In a nutshell, when we drink alcohol (or take certain other drugs) our subconscious is learning to consume more. But it also becomes more receptive to forming subconscious memories and habits with respect to food, music, and even people or social situations. I’ll toast to that!
It’s that time of year again kids – that’s right, the WHO has released their saucy ‘Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2011’ – which means we get to find out if SA’s still a rock-out party country, or if we’ve gotten all lame and started taking our liver problems seriously.
Awesome: The Vietnamese recently celebrated a lunar New Year. Not so awesome: The power went out. Awesome: Some friends improvised by pulling an actual car into the house and letting it run in order to jam some tunes. Not so awesome: No one thought to open a window.
I’m not sure how to feel about this. Scottish Spirits is testing out canned whiskey in South America on the grounds that outdoor drinkers would rather not have to lug a bottle of the stuff around. You also look like less of an insane drunk if you’re taking sips from a can instead of swigs from a bottle of scotch, so there’s that.
Some weeks ago, Finnish divers discovered several crates of two-centuries-old champagne and beer from a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea for nearly two centuries. They then drank some of it because, hey, why not. And, because sharing is nice, Finnish authorities sponsored a public opening and tasting of the champagne last Friday.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: drunk Facebooking ruins lives.
Thankfully the good people at Webroot Software have seen the urgent need to curb this scourge of humanity.
The thing about the future that excites me the most, besides the talking monkeys and the sexy robots, is the cure for the hangover. Some mornings I wake up and I just want to pry out my liver with a spoon and get myself a new one – and thanks to the researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, that dream is a possibility.
There are some products that offer depressing insight into the kind of marketplace we’re living in today. Sandwiches that use chicken for bread; drinks that give teenagers heart attacks; fixie bikes. But every now and then a product comes along that tells you it’s all going to be okay – and this, friends, is that product.