"Drink this, not that!" -That's what she said.

"Drink this, not that!" -That's what she said.

Back in college, I was a regular listener to the Tony Kornheiser show on ESPN radio. I was obsessed with it. Back then, Mr. Tony was a breath of fresh air among the smoggy airwaves filled with the typical local sports talk morons taking calls. Those calls always went something like this:

"Jeff in a car, what's going on, buddy?"
"Hey, long time listener, first time caller."
"Great, thanks for the call, what's on your mind, Jeff?"
"Uh hey, I just wanted to say that I'm a big Michigan fan, but I just think our offense needs to be less predictable. I mean, I want to see more double reverses out there. And flea flickers, you know, to keep them off balance. Also, I think they need to do a better job of establishing the run, you know, like Bo would have done. And on defense, I think we need to blitz more. We need to get a lot more pressure on the quarterback. And we also need to stop giving up so many big plays. We need to be a lot more aggressive on defense and not make ourselves so vulnerable to the big plays down the field. Anyway, I'll hang up and listen. Go Blue!"
"Thanks for the call Jeff."

The other national shows, especially the Jim Rome show, were probably even worse. Somehow Rome became a major sports talk radio host by doing the following:
- addressing his regular listeners as "clones", as when given the chance to call in, they spoke with the Jim Rome "in-your-face SoCal tough guy" voice
- referring to opinions as "takes", most often of the "HUGE" variety
- speaking to each one of his guests like they closed down a strip club together the previous night
- Include at least ten minutes of dead air in each hour of programming

Tony's show was completely different from every other sports talk radio program. His shows featured extensive non-sports portions. Athletes were very rarely guests on the show. The only on-air calls taken were to the point and demanded real wit.

While the show was going on, it was clear that there were multiple tv's on somewhere in the studio. We would get updates during the show about what Padma was cooking, who was on "The View", and what was featured on the "Today Show". Sound boring and stupid? Fuck you, it somehow wasn't!

When I had to wake up early in those days, I would get myself together in the morning with the Today Show on in the background so that I could become familiar with the hosts that Tony would make reference to. The ESPN Tony Kornheiser show is no longer on the air (maybe it's on the DC station still, but I no longer listen), but I continue to watch the Today Show. I admit that it is a total bullshit program that features about 15% of programming that is information that I really want to know. The rest of the time is spent talking about new books with new theories on the death of Princess Diana, Brittany Spears updates, and Al Roker making terrible puns while talking to screaming dullard families holding stupid signs or wearing hokey tee-shirts while on vacation in NYC. Before a commercial, they will sometimes mention a segment coming up later that actually sounds interesting. Unfortunately, unless you are for some reason both unemployed and up early - or a stay-at-home mom or dad - you have to leave before getting to watch it.

Last week the segment that they would mention that I wanted to see but knew I couldn't was about the caloric content (how many fucking calories there are) in beverages. This interested me because
(a) I drink. A LOT.
(b) I exercise A LOT, so that my imaginary girlfriends will appreciate my physique.
(3) I sometimes wonder if cutting back on drinking would make my workouts more effective.

As I have stated many times, the purpose of working out is to look good without your pants on. Drinking is more complicated as it serves many important purposes for many people, such as
- helps you relax and forget that you're a big fat pussy with a shit-life that you will never actually make hard changes to
- makes you do regrettable things for the amusement of yourself and/or others
- helps establish a clear line of communication between your brain and you genitals
- promotes enjoyment while inhibiting all memory of watching sporting events
- enhances loneliness
- destroys discretion in evaluating attractiveness
- provides a great excuse for actions that you want to do but would be considered a psycho for doing while sober

The list goes on and on. It's damn important. So I went online to the Today Show site to see about this whole caloric aspect of alcoholic beverages. Now here's what's going to happen here, OK? I'm going to list the beverage's name, then write the shit they say about it, and give the a-hole Today Show guest's suggested alternative. I will then write my own "HUGE take" on the beverages being compared. Here's the Today Show report, complete with the video from the show.

- Kids' Juice: I'm all grown up, so fuck this. I did have a peanut butter and jelly for lunch though, so maybe I should say something about juice. Hmm... Nope.

- Lunchbox Drinks: When I was in high school, I used to go out to a coffee shop to smoke cigarettes and bullshit with my friends. There was a big fat gay man who once got up on poetry reading day and read one of his poems entitled "Fuck me, Dennis Rodman". I don't remember his name, but I remember that he was a graduate student at Notre Dame in a field where I can say with certainty that now he is either a professor in that subject or working in a Barnes and Noble. That guy once horrified my 16 year old mind by telling me how it was possible for one to shove a lunchbox up one's ass. Then he introduced me to a young woman, covered in tattoos, paying for her coffee, who enjoyed this activity with her boyfriend. You want a lunchbox drink now, pal? Didn't think so. They also said something about gerbals. Imagine a lunchbox filled with gerbals being shoved up an ass. :( And that's all I have to say about that.

Beach Booze: Thank the Lord, now we're getting to the stuff that get's you drunk!

Long Island Iced Tea
-700 calories
-40 grams of sugar
-five different liquors

They say: Wah, wah, wah! This is the worst thing you can order at the bar... blah blah, more calories than cheesecake, etc...

Drink this instead: Cosmopolitan.
-150 calories
-12 grams of sugar
-similar buzz and fruity taste as a LIIT

My HUGE take:
So many problems here, where to start... First, these are not beach drinks. The LIIT is designed for poor people to order when they go to the bar so they can get fucked up fast, and on the cheap. I can sort of forgive them for putting the LIIT in this category because there are some nice beaches on Long Island. Robert Moses beach is the shiznit. But Cosmo? Cosmo is girl or gay man all dressed up at a fancy lounge, not sitting around on the beach with your bikini or banana hammock on. More egregious than the classification error is how they say that a Cosmo provides a "similar buzz" to a LIIT. Three Cosmos will make a girl giggle more than normal. Three Long Islands and the same girl will be trying to sneak an unknown male into the ladies' room to give him what she thinks will be a great bj, but will give the guy a hickey on his johnson and then she'll puke her guts out before finishing him off. Of course there's going to be lots of sugar and calories - there's a LOT of alcohol taste to cover up. And who really cares how many calories there are in an LIIT when you're just going to yack it up later?

Classic Cocktail: Yay, this has to be Manhattans vs. gin & tonics, right? WRONG.

Pina Colada
-625 Calories
-75 grams of sugar

They say: Filled with fatty coconut milk and sugary pineapple juice, etc...

Drink this instead: Bloody Mary
-lots of healthy processed and non-processed vegetables
-150 calories
-10 grams of sugar
-Lycopene will make it impossible to ever get cancer, ever.

My HUGE take:
Again, major classification fuck-up. How did they not put Pina Colada in the "beach booze" category? If you order this drink in a non-Island themed bar, you are trying as hard as you can to imagine that you're at an island or island themed bar. You're probably thinking that the Pina Colada will make you feel as free as the time you went home with two guys from the same bar in the same night at Sandals Resort. OK, I love bloody marys (is that the correct plural form? probably not.), but this is not what comes to mind when I think "classic cocktail". This is a drink you order when there is still retched sunlight coming through the crack in the door because with all the vegetables, you feel like you're being good to your body. Real health nut, you. Ugh, why couldn't they put Mojito up against Margarita for the first and Gin and Tonic against whiskey and soda here? On to the next one.

Beer: Sweet, beer! On Saturday I drank a 12'er while watching the first game, then passed out during the second game and woke up at 4AM. I was drinking like 50 miles per hour.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
-6% alcohol
-200 calories
-12 grams carbs

They say: Not much. They allege that Sierra is "full-flavored"

Drink this Instead: Guinness
- 4% alcohol
- 126 calories
- 10 grams carbs

My HUGE take:
It's surprising to find out that Guiness is low in carbs and calories. For non-beer addicts. Beer drunkasaurases have known this for years. And we also know that Pale Ale has 150% the alcohol of Guiness, a key measure which this dickhead continues to ignore. The key piece of information here, man, is that for each percent of alcohol, Guiness has 31.5 calories and Sierra Nevada has 33.3. Is this a big enough difference for anyone to care about? No. Just go out and drink both if you want to. Go out, drink a lot of beer, and then think about all the weight you're losing while you have the beer shits the next day, especially after a couple of cups of...

Coffee: I drink 3-4 cups of coffee six to seven days per week. I love it. At work we have to fucking pay for it ourselves, which is a joke. That's like athletes having to pay for their own steroids.

Large Caffe Latte:
-190 calories
-7 grams fat

They say: "In the hierarchy of espresso drinks, lattes sit squarely at the bottom. "

Drink this instead: Double Espresso Macchiato
-15 calories
-0 fat

My HUGE take: Fucking insane. How do you have a category of drinks named "coffee" and not have regular old coffee as one of the drinks to compare? I've never heard of Macchiato before - it sounds like an Italian Soccer player to me, probably with lots of tattoos above the sleeve line who is highly skilled at hand gesturing to the corrupt referees after a foul. I don't know how to HTML in the accent grave or egue, and I'm not about to learn so that I show the correct pronunciation of "Caffe Latte". I like these once in a while. It delivers so much caffeine that I remember the first time I did cocaine. I felt like my heart was going to explode, not to mention my bowels. Look, maybe I just drink more beer than the average person, but I'm not really worried about the caloric content of coffee drinks, because they are just going to turn your blue eyes brown anyway, resulting in a net loss. But if you aren't a very regular individual, and are worried about the calories in coffeeish drinks, just order COFFEE.

That's enough for today. You better be fucking happy, Joe. Hope you find time to read this, after hanging out at the Marina waiting for joggers with boxer shorts to go flippity-floppity running by your not-even-pretending-not-to-stare ass.