Toga, Toga, Toga !

I enjoy drinking Beer. Let’s face it; I enjoy drinking anything with an alcohol content. But beer is my alcoholic beverage of choice. My friends tell me that I don’t really like Beer because of the fact that I drink the Lite variety out of a can. They go on to say that beer should have flavor and my Lite beer tastes more like water and aluminum.

I do occasionally drink good beers (Ales and Porters) but I find that they fill me too quickly and cause me to belch. Plus after five or six of them I begin to sound like former Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray did after the seventh inning stretch; slurring my words and calling people by the wrong name. After a few more of these good beers my short term memory begins to fade and I have a tendency to repeat what I had said just ten minutes before.


The other day I viewed an interesting photo captioned “College girl turns herself into human beer bong”. Not Exactly! It looks more like doing a body shot or drinking Champagne at the "Y" than a Beer Bong.

I first experienced seeing a beer bong at a tailgate party, before a Jimmy Buffett concert, 17 years ago. I said “Wow, what will they think of next”? I was then informed that the practice of beer bonging had been a popular college campus activity for years. And that it was especially popular with the female students.

For the uninitiated, a beer bong is a device with a funnel attached to plastic tubing. The end of the tube is then placed in your mouth and pinched closed near the top. The funnel is then filled with beer and the pinch on the tube is released so that the beer flows rapidly into your mouth and down your throat.

I’ve never participated in one of these events; however it is fun to watch. Occasionally the participant will have beer shooting out of her nose, or worse yet, she will vomit. Obviously doing a beer bong is not an advisable thing to do after you have just eaten. However, if you are bulimic it serves the purpose well.


When I was a youth, back in the “Toga Party Era”, and before there were beer cans with pop tops, we had a similar drinking event. It was called the Shotgun. We would shake a can of beer; put it as close to our open mouth as possible and then open it with a church key. More of the beer would end up running down our chins than in our mouths. Another favorite was chugging a 60 ounce pitcher of draft beer. This was a timed event and the loser would have to pay for the beer. It's a shameful thing to say but I rarely paid for my pitcher of beer.

The foibles of youth, including my own, never cease to amaze me.

The Beach Bum