The Black Hole...tips on preparing for the inevitable.

That’s right cadet, tonight as you burst through the airlock of your favorite saloon with visions of happy hour buzzing in your head, you will be transformed from a mere pie-eyed pilot to a stewed and sotted superstar! Eschewing your usual rapier wit, you will instead unsheathe a glowing light saber of god-like prose that would make Shakespeare blush and snap his unworthy quill in half. With each gin and tonic, boiler maker and syrupy mudslide thrown shamelessly down your golden gullet you will grow in power and grace like an Egyptian man-god. Women will swoon at your every mumbled utterance and compete viscously for just one bloodshot wink from your swarthy cosmonaut brow. The bartender, with tears of admiration in his eyes, will thrust fresh libations into your hand long before you hear the sad sound of a straw searching for the perspiration of vodka tinted ice cubes at the bottom of the glass.

Yes, tonight is sure to be your finest hour, but beware; the controls of a soused shuttle can be tricky. As you travel high above the hooch horizon, you will undoubtedly put a little too much canned heat into the turbo thrusters and before you know it your red-nosed rocket will be spiraling wildly off course, out of radio communication and into the warm embrace of nihility.

It is the great irony of human existence that a true drunkard at the height of his glory is doomed to never recall his greatest achievements. To make matters worse, jealousy breeds contempt in the hearts of lesser men. They will slander you and your grand exploits by falsifying some sort of defamatory tale of how you played the same Lynyrd Skynyrd song on the jukebox twenty seven times in a row, or loudly insisted that the bar-back was actually Herve Villechaize in disguise and that he is not in fact dead, but merely hiding out from the mob in a witness protection program. I mean just look at him man!

So what can be done to stop this tragedy? Alas there is no avoiding it. With each satisfying gulp of firewater, the great void opens its memory enveloping maw an inch wider and before you know it, you will be sliding off of that nagahide stool and into oblivion.

However, all is not lost. As the great Groucho Marx once said “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but as the bible says, Love thy enemy!” In that spirit we must accept this treachery from our beloved brother booze. That doesn’t mean we have to stumble out blindly into the night however. Here are a few tips to prepare for your nightly journey into The Black Hole…

The Flight Suit:

An important first step before an evening in the abyss is choosing the proper attire. Say for example it’s snowing outside, your first impulse may be to pull on your designer down jacket and angora scarf, and scamper happily on down to the pub. That’s a fine idea, assuming that you own a down jacket and angora scarf factory and can just pick up a new set tomorrow. Try to resist the temptation to wear your Sunday best (even if you're drinking on a Sunday). Jesus wore a loin cloth when he drank wine because it was both comfortable and practical. Plus if he decided to trade it with a homeless guy at the bus station at 3am for a swig of Night Train, he was only out a couple yards of muslin and not the only pair of slacks he had for work in the morning.

Instead, consider a series of disposable layers. If you start out with the assumption that you will be waking up somewhere tomorrow in nothing but a tutu, a trucker hat and some imaginative new body piercing, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find you are still squeezed into your little brother’s flood-water corduroys and REO Speedwagon t-shirt.

Navigational Components:

So now that you are all suited up, I suppose you think that you are ready to boldly go where many inebriates have gone before eh? Whoa, ease off on the throttle there fly boy. You’ll still need to make sure you have the proper accessories for your journey into the unknown.

First, since they have not yet invented a machine that distributes free cocktails to charming, apple cheeked, revelers such as yourself, you’ll need some monetary resources. Your best bet is to carry cash in small denominations. Choose a designated pocket for the greenbacks and keep your ID in the other. Keep it simple and consistent.

Avoid dependence on unnecessary bric-a-brac like wallets, fanny packs, humility and self respect. If you can help it, try not to bring a credit card of any kind. You will most likely open a tab and next thing you know you'll have bought seventeen drinks for that guy Ernie who really understands the conclusive parallel you’ve just discovered between Three’s Company and Romeo and Juliet.

Next, a cell phone can be a bit of a Catch 22. Sure you may muster the clarity to dial a cab company and get yourself home at the end of the night. Also it could come in handy when you show up at a random acquaintance’s house at 4:30 in the morning and for some reason they won’t answer the door. Just keep calling, they’ll pick up eventually.

An experienced adventurer in the black tar pits of the mind will tell you that it is wise to weigh these pros against the obvious cons involved. The largest drawback to being connected to the world when you are no longer on it is of course the dreaded and infamous drunk dialing through your phone list.

On a normal bender it is always embarrassing to call up your ex in the middle of the night and tell her how much better she was in bed than your current girlfriend, then ask her if she would like to come down to the bar and…well you know, make out a little for old time’s sake. The danger is that while in the clutches of The Black Hole the fallout from this transgression will be exponentially increased when you accidentally call your current girlfriend with the same speech.

The Homing Beacon:

You may well end up shivering in the bus stop outside of the bar or wake up in a strange bed with Bernice, the fifty year old dive-bar-denizen who always offers to read your palm in exchange for shots of butterscotch schnapps. These are the risks we must take, however believe it or not you can leave a maraschino cherry and cocktail olive trail back to your drool encrusted captain’s chair. Here are a couple of ideas.

Drink close to the space station. You can’t go wrong with the local watering hole and even in your most blurry state of madness, you’ll probably be able to navigate a course to your home planet if it’s within walking distance.

Bring a buddy. No matter how hammered Han Solo got at the Cantina, he always had good ol’ Chewie waiting in the wings to drive him home. A teetotaler friend would be ideal for this task, but unfortunately you don’t have any of those, so instead call up one of your moderate drinking pals for a night out. You know, the kind of guy who says “I’ll just nurse this cosmo. You go ahead and have fun”. The big risk with this plan of action is that once you blackout it is likely that you'll call your friend a sissy and force him to pound ten successive tequila shots to prove he’s a man, then you’re back to square one.

As a back up plan, during your first few drinks let it drop in casual conversation where you live or at least a landmark in your neighborhood. This way, when you get scooped off of the bar stool and poured into a cab after last call, you’ll be able to honestly tell the cops you are watering your plants when they bust you for peeing on the bushes outside of your house.

The Captain’s Log:

Whose number is that in your pocket? Is it the hot new bartender or that shell-shocked Vietnam vet at the end of the bar who kept cracking walnuts open with bare hands? Why is it that when you go to check out that new tavern down the street they stop you at the door and tell you that you owe them $300 and a new condom machine for the bathroom? Well, sadly these instances are at the root of the nefarious machinations of The Black Hole. While there’s not much you can do about it, here are a couple of (admittedly futile) tips to try to spark your memory.

First consider creating some physical evidence. Bring along a digital camera with a date and time stamp option and take periodic pictures of yourself and your surroundings throughout the night. Upon reviewing the slides the next day, you can trick your wine soaked grey matter into recalling at least some key moments, then hopefully you can slowly fill in the rest. For example if at 11:34pm there’s a shot of you arm wrestling a midget at the bar and the next picture was taken at 1:17am and has you breaking into the monkey cage at the zoo; there’s good chance that you lost the arm wrestling competition and that there was some sort of monkey related bet involved. The big risk here is that you will most likely either lose your camera along the way or trade it for the backwash in someone’s Michelob after they cut you off for shoving all of the bar peanuts down your pants.

A more low-tech and perhaps more accurate solution is The Oral Tradition. This is another great use of that moderate drinking, wet sponge of a friend you have. Simply drag him along for the adventure and then the next morning as you lay on the floor with six aspirin and a bloody mary, he can regale you with the cringe inducing details of the night before. This is assuming of course that he will talk you again after you snuck into the bathroom with his camera phone and took forty-seven different pictures of your poop.

Acceptance:

Now you are almost ready for your mission. All of these tips are meant to ease the discomfort of this unavoidable occurrence, but the best preparation you can have is purely in the mind. Condition yourself for this solemn duty. Know that you will be sucked into The Black Hole tonight, there’s no doubt about that. You knew that this would be your fate when you joined the academy with that first sip of your dad’s Heineken. Do not walk with shame into the unknown; wear your self-inflicted amnesia as a badge of pride. This is your destiny!

Countdown commencing, set your course for the obsidian horizon, flip the controls to auto-pilot and raise a glass to the blissful ignorance of booze drenched nirvana.

Good luck, we’re all counting on you.