Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

Take in and pass along these dozen tips for being a better drinker Melbourne Function Venue

We need to find equipoise when it comes to drinking. Our brain is the tool of choice. If we can think right, we can drink right. And so this is a spirit guide to spirits. If it sometimes sounds like no fun, hey, deal with it, my brother. Friends don’t let friends do alcohol wrong. But just swirl these drinking rules around in your head, like brandy in a snifter, and they may help you safely glean all the gusto from your glass. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

RULE No. 7: Never Measure Masculinity in a Shot Glass — Function Venue Melbourne

The list of good ideas inside the male head is legion—Liberty, Justice, and the Threesome, to name just a few. But there’s a real dud rattling around in there, too—the one that equates drinking with strength, and capacity with manliness. This is an ancient lie promoted in men’s toughness cliches. He’s a “two-fisted” drinker. He can “hold his liquor.” If a guy’s a “straight shooter,” he’ll “belly up to the bar.” We confuse drinking with boldness, forthrightness, authentic maleness. And that’s why frat packs from Purdue to Princeton mistake a keg for a raft across the river to manhood. Some die midstream. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

You can’t prove anything by shotgunning a six-pack or bolting shots in advance of last call. Vodka is not a whetstone on which to sharpen your sword, the Rafa to your Roger, a rival who needs a good whuppin’. Accept no challenges. Lose the drinking game. Don’t become a legend. Men don’t drink fast. Boys do. Speaking of which . . .

RULE No. 8: Buy Drinks, Don’t Sell Them — Function Venue Melbourne

A man never encourages a pal to drink. Sure, he’ll offer to spring for another round, but he never exhorts anybody to hit it harder and never implies that reluctance to keep it rolling somehow demotes a man to a mouse. Remember: Plenty of our best never touch a drop. Abe Lincoln man enough for you? How about Muhammad Ali? Warren Buffett? John D. Rockefeller? Gandhi? Some men drink. Others don’t. You got a problem with that? Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

RULE No. 9: Drink Along Only When You Think Alone — Function Venue Melbourne

Our mothers urge caution about drinking alone, arguing that the joys of alcohol are, at their best, communal. We hear you, Mom. And we even promise that there will be no solo drinking, and that includes the sofa and even a single episode of Two and a Half Men. But we need a conditional waiver: There are two circumstances when a man might be enhanced by a private moment with a nice fat glass of Montrachet. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

The first is when he’s taken a hit. Whether it’s a glancing blow (getting schooled in the low post by a doughy bond trader) or a haymaker (a diagnosis or heartbreak upside the head), our conversations with ourselves can be sharpened by a sip-slow-and-savor strategy. Joseph Conrad wrote that men are drawn to the sea because it gives them a chance to feel their strength. The same is true of alcohol. It helps us tune in to our determination. So whether you need to make a new success plan or survive some no-joke surgery, a drop or two can do wonders for manly contemplation. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

The other drink-alone moment is after a victory. Hey, you finished birdie, par, birdie to claim the claret jug. Or was it the club match-play crown? Or you timed that currency play to a sweet second, and now your mortgage is a memory. A good man appreciates his achievements as surely as he’s humbled by his flaws. A toast to oneself is often worth proposing. And speaking of . . .

RULE No. 10: Master the Toast — Function Venue Melbourne

The Irish have an affirmation often offered as if in toast: “God love you, boyo” goes the pat on the back. It’s wonderfully ambidextrous. God love you, of course, for your gifts—your wit, your good nature, the fact that you’ll stand a man to a pint as soon as look at him. But God love you as well because you’re going to need the Good Lord’s tender mercies, what with all your foolish notions and your many frailties. God love you, boyo, both because you’re so blessed and because you’re so benighted. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

The next time you’re called on to propose a toast, to raise a glass in honor of young love, a fresh start, or a life well lived, remember to allude to both our limitations and our ambitions. Your goal isn’t just—or even mainly—to celebrate the bride and groom, but rather to inspire the whole room. The mandate is to make all present feel as if they’re part of something bigger than themselves, something grand and good, something with wings. Toast tip: Mix vivid concrete words, words like beagle and bageland crosscut saw, with schmaltzy, vague romantic ones like faith andardor and abiding love. That duality, blending the stuff we juggle with the transcendence for which we long, is the diction of praise and elation.

We are made of the earth and of the air. So are beer and wine and whiskey.

RULE No. 11: Respect the Sacramental Wine — Function Venue Melbourne

It’s no accident that alcohol is front and center in lots of religious rites. In the Roman Catholic Eucharist, wine symbolizes the transit from brutal violence to redemptive hope. Our taste for faith meets the same need as our taste for fume blanc—our longing for linkage. The word “religion” is derived from the Latin religare, meaning “to tie or fasten.” (Care to tieone on?) And just as we sing those hymns in search of common ground, we share a drink to find a way across the space between us. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

If we had any interest in exalting drinking, we’d describe it as a hope that a barely-there buzz might silence the judgments in our heads and help us open our hearts to the rest of God’s children. “You shall not withhold yourself,” theologian Martin Buber suggested, is the secret to a full life. A man could do worse for a motto; a drink just might help him live up to it.

RULE No. 12: Pass These Rules on to Your Children — Function Venue Melbourne

It’s 1 a.m. when a 45-year-old father is awakened by the return of teenagers who are making more noise than sober people make. Three boys. One son and two friends greet the man—let’s call him O’Neill—happily. That is to say, drunkenly. The youngest has a vodka bottle in his hand. He’s 17 but could pass for 12. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

He has no idea that he’s in danger. O’Neill calls the kid’s house, and 5 minutes later the boy staggers through the shafts of headlights toward his father’s car. From the driveway, the other father, standing inside his open door, waves—part apology, part thanks, part solidarity, part SOS. Neither man speaks. No need. Both know that there’s a teaching responsibility somewhere in all this, and that they’ve failed, up until now, to meet it.

SOME MIGHT BE DAUNTED by the complexity of a drinking life. Not us. The razor’s edge is our home field. All great male traits require us to walk the ridgeline between too little and too much. Lust is a blessing, unless it’s heedless; ambition an engine, unless it’s blind. A pound of pride is a spine, but a ton is a prison. Our taste for alcohol is just such a high narrow trail. Walked nimbly, it can lead us to elating angles of repose. But if we’re careless, it’s a long way down to the canyon floor. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II

A winemaker works toward the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity in his vintages. And our kind of man seeks balance in every area of his life. In a diet, balance is longevity. In a portfolio, it’s prosperity. In a jump shot, it’s nylon. Poise gives a fellow power. Calibration is a kind of cool.

Winston Churchill, a prodigious drinker and a 12-cylinder man, once claimed that he took more from alcohol than alcohol took from him. You’d have to inhabit his head to know the truth. But in any case, the Great Lion’s boast isn’t even close to good enough for you. Your assignment is to arrive at the final inning with a shutout intact, having enjoyed all the pleasures of a ballpark beer without enduring any of alcohol’s denigrations.

Respect your neurons. Drink smartly. Drink with serenity and joy and discipline and restraint and self-command. Function Venue Melbourne The 12 Rules of Drinking Part II