The driver may be drunk, but it's the cop whose speech is slurred.

Oregon court throws out the charges:

"Global spritz mania means that tourists demand the drinks even in formerly spritzless regions like Sicily..."

"... which is a bit like expecting a Creole restaurant in the French Quarter to make you a Rochester garbage plate. In Venice, where the spritz was invented and long seen as a working-class drink, it has been repositioned as a glamorous society accouterment. This historical revisionism irks some locals. 'It was drunk by gondoliers and prostitutes,' said Marco Salvadori, a Venice native who made drinks at Harry’s Bar for years. Mr. Salvadori is pro-spritz, but remembers when Harry’s and other elite bars and hotels would not deign to make them. They’ve since surrendered...."

From "What the Bartender Really Thinks About Your Spritz/You might expect the fizzy summer drinks to be a downer for the people who make them by the hundreds. But think again" (NYT gift link).

Are tourists hoping to emulate the social elite of the places they visit? Take Venice. I'd imagine the vibe of the old gondoliers and prostitutes would suit them just as well. I don't know. I don't travel too much, but when I do, I don't indulge in fantasies of oneness with the locals. So much mental work involved in that, and what does it get you? Or do you think that if you drink the right drink the fantasy will open itself up to you. But it's not the right drink, the article tells you. The bartender is laughing at you (but happy to take your money for a drink made in 2 seconds). Well, then, everyone wins. Everyone is happy, more than happy, including me, standoffish me, just writing a post about tourists who order spritzes in Sicily and Venice. 

"Is this piece seriously arguing that we should continue to consume (another!) known carcinogen so that people can have low-paying jobs?"

Says the top-rated comment on the NYT article "What Else Do We Lose When People Give Up Booze? Yes, there are many benefits of cutting back. But bars are closing. Jobs are going away. And a way of being together can feel harder to find" (gift link).

Related news: "More Americans now use weed every day than drink or smoke cigarettes" (NY Post).

How to eat like Babe Ruth.

"Maybe such freaks should come to power — those who aren’t afraid of anything, who just do things — at least there are visible changes."

Said Svetlana Popova-Znamenskaya, who "stayed in Vologda to establish an architecture practice where she restores wooden houses and builds furniture" and has "a showroom with a specialty coffee shop opposite the local Kremlin and the new monument to Ivan the Terrible."

Quoted in "He Shut Liquor Stores and Banned Abortion, All for the Glory of Russia/A firebrand governor aims to transform his region into a laboratory for the Kremlin’s reactionary ideals" (NYT)(gift like).

"He" = Georgy Y. Filimonov, "the governor of the northern region of Vologda," who has "vigorously embraced the sort of 'traditional Russian values' espoused by the Kremlin, asserting Vologda as an undistilled bastion of 'Russianness.'"

And here's a quote from Misha Priyemyshev, "a designer who worked on branding for the city before Mr. Filimonov’s arrival": "Everything is very slow here, like in a true swamp. That swamp has a lot of power — the more you move in it, the more it sucks you in."

"I felt like the whole time [the jury] saw right through what the defense was trying to do, how they tried to defame my character..."

"... things they brought up that had nothing do with the case. They were just trying to criminalize, bully me and make me look like a bad human being."

Said Diana Sanders, quoted in "Woman Who Took 15 Tequila Shots on Carnival Cruise Gets $300,000 in Damages/The woman, who fell and injured herself, said in a lawsuit that bartenders had been negligent for serving her while she was visibly intoxicated" (NYT).

Before you judge, consider that Sanders had paid extra for what Carnival called the “Cheers!” drink package, which pays for as many as 15 alcoholic drinks per day. Sanders was drinking up the amount she'd paid for, and Carnival had structured its commerce in a way that created that incentive. The cruise ship business — what can you say? It's tawdry, isn't it?

"I believe that I was born an addict and that I'm hardwired to drink and drug myself to death."

"And in order to overcome that kind of biological drive, you need a spiritual fire."

RFK Jr: “I believe that I was born an addict and that I'm hardwired to drink and drug myself to death.”

“And in order to overcome that kind of biological drive, you need a spiritual fire.”@CPAC pic.twitter.com/nD3TdFTkUP

— MAHA Action (@MAHA_Action) March 28, 2026

“When it came time for us to ask for a urinalysis test, he refused, and so he’s been charged with DUI, with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test in the crash."

Said Sheriff John Budensiek, quoted in "Tiger Woods’ mugshot released after his arrest/Golf player charged with driving under the influence after a crash near his home in Florida. Police said he appeared to be on 'some type of medication or drug'" (London Times).

That also shows Woods's mugshot from his 2017 arrest "after he was found asleep in his car blocking a stationary line of traffic with his engine running."

This time around, we're told, "Woods was not injured but was 'lethargic' on the scene and was alone in the car before he crawled out of the passenger door." And: "Under Florida law, he had to remain in jail for at least eight hours before being released on bond." That's harsh for such an eminent man. 8 hours!

Why does he go out driving alone? It must be very important to him to keep taking an obvious and known risk. Those who are failing to stop him share responsibility.

"Holy f---, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f---ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?"

So wrote Graham Platner, the man who's leading in the polls to become the Democratic Party candidate to run against Susan Collins for the Senate seat for Maine.

I'm reading "Janet Mills and Graham Platner battle for female voters in Maine's key Senate race" (NBC News).

Platner’s online Reddit posts, which resurfaced last fall, included a slew of controversial comments, including calling himself a communist; saying white, rural Americans were racist and stupid; and writing that “all” police officers are “bastards” after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in 2020.

"The idea is that our ancestors evolved to associate the scent of alcohol with ripe, energy-rich fruit."

"In ancestral forests, faint whiffs of fermentation would have been a useful signal of easy calories. A taste for ethanol, at low concentrations, would therefore have given these early primates an evolutionary advantage. If the hypothesis is true, this helps explain our own fondness for the stuff. During years where fermented fruit is abundant, the chimpanzees of Ngogo, in the north of the national park, spend more time travelling to distant areas of their home territories than usual. It is tempting to think that the booze is making them more adventurous. However, Maro believes it is more to do with the sugar providing a burst of energy...."

From "Wild chimpanzees 'would fail human sobriety tests'/Chimps love naturally fermented fruit — so much so, they register alcohol levels that would get a human banned from operating heavy machinery" (London Times).

Extremely humbled.

For the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth.…

— Kash Patel (@Kash_Patel) February 23, 2026

Background: "FBI Director Kash Patel defends partying with U.S. Olympic ice hockey team/Videos of Patel celebrating in Italy went viral Sunday night, prompting criticism and questions about his judgment during a critical time for the FBI" (WaPo)(gift link).

The video:

A source sent me this video of FBI Director Kash Patel partying with the US Men's Olympic Hockey team. pic.twitter.com/egjmdhOAF6

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) February 22, 2026

Meanwhile: "U.S. women’s hockey team declines Trump’s State of the Union invitation/The players 'were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgement,' according to a team statement that cited previously scheduled commitments" (WaPo).

That's putting it very politely.

This is also polite, articulate silence:

"What's the original version of the adage 'Friends don't let friends [blank]'? Is it about drunk driving? is it 'vote Republican'? What's the first one and where did it go from there?"

Just a random A.I. prompt of mine. That came up this morning.

Yesterday's equivalent was: "What was that hippie poster that was mostly text and included something like and if we find each other it will be beautiful?"

On Thursday, my idle musings got me to: "What is the old waltz most associated with ice skating?"

Without A.I., things like this would float along, fermenting, festering, and maybe one day you'd happen to run into the answer and think aha! I've been wondering about that for the longest time. Now, you can get the answer immediately, and it doesn't amount to much other than that I've destroyed the groundwork for what might have been a delightful aha moment somewhere done the road.

"No, she meant that I’m — you see, I don’t drink alcohol. So everybody knows that — but I’ve often said..."

"... that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic. I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality. I’ve said that many times about myself. I’m fortunate I’m not a drinker. If I did, I could very well, because I’ve said that — what’s the word? Not possessive — possessive and addictive type personality. Oh, I’ve said it many times, many times before."

Said Trump, responding to the report in Vanity Fair that his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had said he has an "alcoholic’s personality," quoted in "Trump brushes off Wiles' 'alcoholic’s personality' nick as allies torch Vanity Fair piece/Cabinet members and Trump himself have dismissed the unflattering quotes, claiming they were taken out of context" (Fox News).

I wonder why he said "possessive" — twice — before changing to "addictive." I think the word he was looking for was "obsessive." 

I like that he's supporting her, and it's probably in his interest to support her and provide explanation that makes her remark into something almost positive, rather than part of a dark and devastating bombshell that Vanity Fair must have thought it had put together.

What is the "alcoholic's personality" anyway? Is that just folk belief or is it supported by respectable research? Perhaps it doesn't matter as much as what Susie Wiles was attempting to describe seeing in Trump. She had an alcoholic father, and presumably something makes her see Trump as that father figure, and Trump initially included her in his inner circle because of her famous father. That's a very specific and personal story that stands apart from whatever this concept of "alcoholic's personality" is taken to mean by the general public that harbors folk beliefs and little familiarity with the scholarly literature.

"I saw people who were downcast, who can take no more, who are at the end of their tether. Even a revolt is beyond them."

Said Joël Boueilh, chairman of the winemaking co-operative federation, commenting on protesters who want the French government to help the wine industry.

Quoted in "French wine industry is withering on the vine as drinkers go dry/A collapse in demand — particularly for the heavy reds produced across southern France — coupled with climate change means the end of a way of life for many" (London Times).

Boueilh adds: "France was the land of the good life where people spent a lot of time drinking and eating. But today society is changing. People may have a drink in a bar but they don’t open a bottle of wine when they sit down to eat at the table."

Is it necessarily a loss in devotion to "the good life" or did people change their conception of the good? But he didn't say "good," did he? He would have said "douceur": "« La France était le pays de la douceur de vivre, celui où l’on prenait son temps pour manger et boire ensemble autour d’une table. »

There might be other ways of being "good," but are there other ways of being "sweet"? And more important, there is a tradition of experiencing the sweetness in a particular way, with a bottle of wine on the table at meals. 

Ah! That's for France to decide! Boueilh represents the wine industry. Of course, he's going to dramatize the centrality of wine. If I buy into that, I'm just an American accepting the most easily available stereotype.

That is, it's the stuff that belongs in the new Dictionary of Received Ideas: The French: They think the good life is sitting around drinking wine all day. 

ADDED: I wanted more depth of meaning for the word "douceur," and got excellent help from Grok. 

"rage bait" — "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive."

It's the Oxford University Press "Word of the Year" (the NYT reports).

The runners up were "biohack" and "aura farming."

I've never used (or quoted) the phrase "rage bait" or "aura farming."

I did quote "biohack" once. The context was the use of an IV to fend off a hangover. I commented: "Drinking is funny until it's not. Does this IV bag extend the funny phase or expedite the tragic? The need to say things like 'self-care,' 'virtuous aftercare,' and 'biohack' sounds desperate, but that can be part of the funny, especially for the drunkards."

"She works as a cocktail waitress, a go-go dancer, a racetrack stable hand and, for a long stint in Phoenix, a sex worker..."

"... sometimes out of a trailer. Drink and drugs soften life’s jagged edges and get her through the day: 'I found the perfect formula to work on was a mixture of Spañada wine, Cold Duck and Squirt poured over crushed ice. That and bennies, or as Jenny called them, whaaat crawses. The drink, though quite potent, went down like cherry soda, and when coupled with the speed, produced a loose capable vigor just made to order for the job. During a normal day I would make about three trips across the lot through the quivering airwaves to the Circle K in my pink halter to hoard ingredients for the precious punch.'"

From "Her Father Wrote ‘On the Road.’ She Lived Her Own Version. Jan Kerouac’s 1981 novel 'Baby Driver' chronicles a fearless and windblown life entirely distinct from her famous parent’s" (NYT).

That's a review, by Dwight Garner, of "Baby Driver" — which is getting reissued.

"There’s coffee stations, then you’ve got smoothie and juice stations. You’ve got the wine bars and the beer bars. You even have kegerators..."

"... in people’s offices, then you’ve got seltzer stations, and you’ve got the juice boxes and stuff for kids," said Wendy Trunz who "recently helped her 24-year-old niece, Noelle Mosby, organize supplies for making sparkling waters — syrups, coconut cream, flavored teas, a soda maker — on a tray in her kitchen. 'I’m just not much of an alcohol drinker,' said Ms. Mosby, who is studying Ayurvedic medicine in Asheville, N.C. 'But I do like my sugary drinks.'"

From "Coffee in the Closet, Diet Coke on Tap/Customized drink stations are appearing all over the home, from the kitchen to the bedroom" (NYT).

The article begins with a profile of a TikTok "influencer," a mother of 10, who has "a five-gallon water dispenser for hot and cold filtered water; two coffee-making stations; a wine fridge in the master bedroom for bottled water, protein drinks and her husband’s Red Bulls; a hot cocoa and toppings bar... two countertop nugget ice makers; and...

"Get out, drink more, and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off."

Earlier in that "Real Time" interview, not on that clip, Scott Galloway said, "We've unwittingly built an economy dependent on our ability to evolve a new species of asocial, asexual men. And what you have is Big Tech is trying to sequester people — especially young people, especially young men — from the most important thing in their life and that is relationships."

AND: Here's the "Overtime" part. Galloway brings out beers for the boys:

This topic reminds me of some thing I've quoted before — from Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" — about the playwright Henrik Ibsen:

"It might seem strange that a gigantic, staggeringly good new Cecily Brown work has emerged in a former flophouse where Jack Kerouac hacked out his scrolls..."

"... on the same block as Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios—though it’s been established that Hendrix is very much a Cecily Brown muse. The work usually comes to, say, Paula Cooper Gallery, where there’s a long line of buyers, collectors who otherwise have to shell out millions for her paintings at auction. And yet Brown herself could not be more pleased. She’s a scholar of the restaurant mural: paintings that enhance the space without completely overwhelming it, and seem like they’ve been there forever. Her favorites: the Maxfield Parrish at the St. Regis’s King Cole Bar, where Dalí and Duchamp used to carouse. The Howard Chandler Christy series in the restaurant at Hotel des Artistes, where Norman Rockwell lived. And, of course, the murals of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel...."

From "Cecily Brown on the 'Unsexy' Art Market and Her New Restaurant Mural: 'It Can’t be Moved. It’s Not for Sale'/Chez Nous at the Marlton Hotel has a new mural by one of the world’s great painters—whose works sell for millions at auction—and it’s already in a league with the famous wall paintings at Bemelmans Bar" (Vanity Fair)(click through to see the busy, cheerful mural).

The article has a link on Jack Kerouac that goes to another Vanity Fair article, one that begins with this Jack Kerouac quote: "As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk."

Was Jack talking about rooms like that fancy-schmancy Chez Nous at the Marlton Hotel? And was he really an indoorsy guy? Challenged, I sought out the context of that quote, which appears on a lot of "famous quotes" page. But it's in something from 1960 called "The Vanishing American Hobo." No hobos Chez Nous, I suppose. Here's Jack:

There's something strange going on, you cant even be alone any more in the primitive wilderness... there's always a helicopter comes and snoops around, you need camouflage. -- Then they begin to demand that you observe strange aircraft for Civil Defense as though you knew the difference between regular strange aircraft and any kind of strange aircraft. -- As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk and give up your hoboing and your camping ambitions because there aint a sheriff or fire warden in any of the new fifty states who will let you cook a little meal over some burning sticks in the tule brake or the hidden valley or anyplace any more because he has nothing to do but pick on what he sees out there on the landscape moving independently of the gasoline power army police station. -- I have no ax to grind: I'm simply going to another world.

Ray Rademacher, a fellow staying at the Mission in the Bowery, said recently, "I wish things was like they was when my father was known as Johnny the Walker of the White Mountains. -- He once straightened out a young boy's bones after an accident, for a meal, and left. The French people around there called him 'Le Passant' (He who passes through.)

The hobos of America who can still travel in a healthy way are still in good shape, they can go hide in cemeteries and drink wine under cemetery groves of trees and micturate and sleep on cardboards and smash bottles on the tombstones and not care and not be scared of the dead but serious and humorous in the cop-avoiding night and even amused and leave litters of their picnic between the grizzled slabs of Imagined Death, cussing what they think are real days, but Oh the poor bum of the skid row! There he sleeps in the doorway, back to wall, head down, with his right hand palm-up as if to receive from the night, the other hand hanging, strong, firm, like Joe Louis hands, pathetic, made tragic by unavoidable circumstance -- the hand like a beggar's upheld with the fingers forming a suggestion of what he deserves and desires to receive, shaping the alms, thumb almost touching finger tips, as though on the tip of the tongue he's about to say in sleep and with that gesture what he couldnt say awake: "Why have you taken this away from me, that I cant draw my breath in the peace and sweetness of my own bed but here in these dull and nameless rags on this humbling stoop I have to sit waiting for the wheels of the city to roll," and further, "I dont want to show my hand but in sleep I'm helpless to straighten it, yet take this opportunity to see my plea, I'm alone, I'm sick, I'm dying -- see my hand up-tipped, learn the secret of my human heart, give me the thing, give me your hand, take me to the emerald mountains beyond the city, take me to the safe place, be kind, be nice, smile -- I'm too tired now of everything else, I've had enough, I give up, I quit, I want to go home, take me home O brother in the night -- take me home, lock me in safe, take me to where all is peace and amity, to the family of life, my mother, my father, my sister, my wife and you my brother and you my friend -- but no hope, no hope, no hope, I wake up and I'd give a million dollars to be in my own bed -- O Lord save me --" In evil roads behind gas tanks where murderous dogs snarl from behind wire fences cruisers suddenly leap out like getaway cars but from a crime more secret, more baneful than words can tell.

The woods are full of wardens.

"One night, on the way back from buying Betty Crocker brownie mix on Columbus, I actually found a beautiful young man, in front of our apartment, on the floor, passed out drunk."

"I dragged him inside, which was hard, because he was six feet tall. His name turned out to be Duncan, and soon we were living in weird hotels together and staying in all day, except for going down to the deli for bologna with green olives in it. Like me, he got some money from home— his came from North Carolina. Tennessee Williams called a couple of times, and then Duncan’s voice would get more Southern, would become a real drawl. I think I was jealous of Tennessee Williams. At night, we lived in bars until closing time (Sorabaja, on the Upper East Side; the White Horse; Chumley’s—watching Zoot Sims put dimes in the jukebox), and in the beginning I had little fantasies of marrying him. I pretty much gave up on that when I finally had to put him in Gracie Square Hospital because he thought God was talking to him in the Wellington Hotel. It seemed I was developing a sort of ruthless, practical side. I was sad when I had him committed; we had been like 'Les Enfants Terribles' together."

I'm still reading "How I Became a Single Woman" by Alison Rose. Remember? I blogged her obituary 2 days ago, here. 

I love the writing. Each paragraph is self-contained, like a blog post, that is... like a post on the greatest blog ever written. Quite condensed and spiffy!

You have to have these experiences to tell these stories... or I suppose you could write like that in fiction. You come home to find a drunk passed out in front of your apartment door and you drag him inside... because he's beautiful. And you're beautiful too, of course, so you live like Les Enfants Terribles until you need to drag him elsewhere, to the mental hospital. 

"Les Enfants Terribles" — Wikipedia says — "is a 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau [about]... two siblings... who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up, an isolation which is shattered by the stresses of their adolescence."

As for Zoot Sims....