10 Best Works of Art About Booze

After cramming hard for an Anglo Saxon exam (and writing a paper on how all humans in the literature do is drink, and not eat. No, seriously, the words for friend are all "man who shares beer" and "wine-giver") I realized that so much important bits of human culture are based around booze. Which brings me to:

1) Cezanne Paintings- A lot of Cezanne paintings are still lifes (lives?) of bread, cheese, and wine, usually with some kind of fruit. I'm really hard-pressed to pick just one, but they're there. You have to believe me!

2) Sideways-This recent movie starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church (and, weirdly enough, not my dad and Owen Wilson) about a man's midlife crisis in NoCal Wine Country is more a love story about wine than anything else. I actually learned oenophilia from this movie, but still hated it for its protagonists' close resemblance to my dad.

3) "Litany" by Billy Collins- This is one of my favorite poems, and it starts with: "You are the bread and the knife/ the crystal goblet and the wine." before going on a game-like ramble, transforming himself and his addressee into different things in an unknown pattern. He finally returns in his last lines to "But don't worry. You are still the bread the knife/You will always be the bread and the knife,/ the crystal goblet, and, somehow, the wine."

4) "Whiskey, You're The Devil" by the Clancy Brothers- A damned good Irish folk song, done up by the (quaint-sounding) masters of Irish folk songs from the '40s. These dudes are a staple of Saint Patrick's Day in my house, and it was hard to pick just one of their boozin' songs.

5) "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"- The quote I was thinking of was: "a loaf of bread, a jar of wine, and thou..." which gets obscenely overquoted, but still. It's got all the essentials in there.

6) The Ode to Ninkasi- This is a paean to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, one of the oldest recorded written documents in human history. The full text is all about the sacred lake of booze.

7) "Red Red Wine"- UB40- A really typically eighties white-boy reggae tune, and a classic.

8) "Gotta Have You"- the Weepies- This love song makes me cry, and also mentions both whiskey and wine, making it a top on this list.

9) "Tequila"- by the Champs -Another classic boozin' song. "Tequila" is the only word said after the iconic riff.

10) "Too Drunk to Fuck"- Dead Kennedys- I think this song is the result of all the earlier works. Also, too great to pass up. Sixteen beers, huh? Nice.

I'd talk longer, but the weather outside is frightful, and the fire is so delightful.
DG, out like the power.