Spring Weekend lesson brought to you by Furby: bring a cup (drank)

The slip and slide on Wriston has soapy foam on it: Simple, but now that we know we are definitely rinsing off before class/bringing a towel. The foam party was so two years ago…

Marching bands are sick:  I didn’t think there would be much excitement around opening acts, but getting to the concert early on Friday meant dancing like a maniac for a solid half hour or more. Students got down on the cement with the drummers and pretended they were at Mardi Gras. They made eye contact with the trumpeter and almost got decapitated by the chick with the cymbals… and it was worth every minute. What Cheer? Brigade should come back every year. They are that brassy beat that’s missing from our lives.

[Read more →]

As we speak, Lily Ricci and Vic Bartash, both ’13, are walking on treadmills in the Nelson Fitness Center. They’ve been doing so since 8 a.m. to raise both awareness about lack of accessibility of clean water and money for their brewery startup. Cape Commons Beer Company, Ricci and Bartash’s project, aims to produce great beer while raising money to invest in clean water resources. So far, they have raised over $4,000 in their Indiegogo campaign, but still have a ways to go in the next three weeks to reach the $35,000 dollar goal necessary to get their signature Cape Commons Lager produced commercially.

So, how can you help? Well, Ricci and Bartash are hitting the treadmills to get your attention. Donate $30 while they’re walking (until 8 p.m. tonight), and you’ll score a free Cape Commons Beer tank. You can also comment a song on their LiveStream (link here) and they will dance to it for 30 seconds while on the treadmill. In other words, they are willing to work pretty hard for your money. Oblige them.

What gap?

No, we’re not kidding. The Providence Journal reported that around 1 a.m. on November 9, an allegedly inebriated 22-year-old URI student got stuck in the 8- to 9-inch crack gap between City Sports and FedEx Kinko’s on Thayer Street.

… WTF? Well, just you wait. It gets weirder. She was found trapped horizontally approximately two feet above the ground. That’s some Houdini shit, except for the fact that she couldn’t escape. Acting Battalion Fire Chief Jeffrey Varone reported that she attempted to use the gap as a shortcut when she got caught and started crying for help. A passerby heard her yells and called the police.

So far in my Brown education, there has been a lot of emphasis on analyzing current situations while simultaneously figuring out the circumstances that led to said situations. So the real question is where was she trying to go and why? I speculate her thought process went like this:

[Read more →]

Tonight, hundreds of scantily clad college students will converge on a small waterfront bar. I could use any amount of witticisms to describe this monumental moment, but you know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words — but a GIF is worth a million. Will the sequence below roughly describe your night? One can only hope.

[Read more →]

Just when you thought Spring Weekend couldn’t get any more exciting — BAM! — we’re about to throw another winning element into the mix. First announced last week via Facebook, the Greek Council will be sponsoring a night of getting Fratty in the Ratty this Saturday, to help fill that awkward time between when the concerts end and you haven’t quite rallied to rage (yet again).

For the first time ever (we think), the Ratty will be opened from 9–11 the Saturday night of Spring Weekend to provide the ecstatic drunk masses with free food, non-alcoholic drinks (read: mixers), and a little post-concert pump-up music courtesy of DJ A-BE. No need to worry about being off meal plan — the event will be open to all students and guests, including those RISD hamsters.

The only thing that could make this better would be shotgunning a beer with Gail. Does anyone have a keeeeeey?

Sláinte Mhath! The leprechaun and pot of gold have adorned our masthead, which means it must be St. Natty’s Fratty’s Spatty’s Paddy’s Day!  And this isn’t just any old Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s a Saturday. It’s pretty nice out. Spring break is around the corner. Odds are that some people reading this post are going to drink, and one (or more) of them is going to take his/her anger out on an exit sign.

This, of course, would not be an isolated incident . You’ve all at least witnessed (or have taken part in) the notorious freshman pastime of celebrating newfound freedom by obliterating a public safety device. No matter where you go (at least in Keeney), you probably will find an exit sign in some state of disrepair. Dean Richard Bova, head of ResLife, says “we probably lose 75 or more” exit signs per year, “the bulk of them in Keeney.” Even if there’s no good way to know for certain what the motive was for each incident, let’s just say most well-adjusted human beings don’t run down the hall of Bronson 2nd floor clobbering every single exit sign with a broomstick on a Tuesday morning after drinking 14 cans of Fanta Grape. [Read more →]

Remember that first story you heard about your friend trying Four Loko? He/she bounced off the walls at a party for a few hours and then woke up the next Tuesday two towns over with no pants on, right? Remember when the government took away all the good Four Loko (the caffeinated kind) before you could get at it and replaced it with just some gross overly-sugared malted drink? You might now get to have your revenge.

Agwa.

Honestly, Agwa sounds like just about the most toxic liquid on the planet. According to its web site, it’s a liqueur distilled from the coca leaf with natural energy sources like guarana and ginseng. Now, if you know a little about illicit drug trafficking, you know that this same coca leaf is used to make COCAINE. I don’t know how else to explain this to you: AGWA IS EVERYTHING POWERTHIRST WISHES IT WERE. According to Agwa’s web site, Rudyard Kipling said coca alcohol was made “from the clippings and shavings of angel wings.”

Drink Agwa and you will look and feel like this.

Internetwines.com says Agwa has a “bittersweet peppery taste with an unusual effect.” I honestly don’t know what that means, but it glows green like absinthe and could probably power a Space Shuttle, so I’m excited to hear the first story of crazy escapades ensuing from a few shots of Agwa. At only $30 a handle, it costs as much as 3.5 liters of Karkov. It’s recommended that you drink Agwa with a lime. And a defibrillator. Good luck.

Note: I swear I have not touched Agwa. I cannot comment as to whether or not it’ll turn your urine that same hue of green.

Images via & via.

The label for Chateau Jiahu, one of the Dogfish Head brews available to sample at tonight's event

Who knew, in a world of Natty Light, Budweiser and PBR, that we have actually demonstrated an improvement in the area of beer making… in the last 10,000 years, that is.

Tonight, students, professors and community members alike piled into an auditorium to hear “Uncorking the Past,” a lecture about ancient beverages from the Director of the Penn Museum’s Biomolecular Archaeology Lab, Patrick McGovern, and to await their turn to sample recreations of the ancient brews made by Dogfish Head. When you say “free beer,” people come a’running. Literally every seat was filled.

McGovern’s work uses a combination of archaeology, ancient texts and art, and scientific experimentation to analyze vessels that once held food or drink to determine exactly what ancient peoples were eating and drinking. [Read more →]

Retro-style “Diamonds and Coal” from The Herald’s issue on September 17, 2004:

A diamond: “I have to say that until I started visiting Mr. Frank, I had never had Jägermeister or Grey Goose,” (formerly teetotaling President Ruth) Simmons said. “Since my first visit to him, I have become an avid consumer of both.”

Can’t get enough D&C? Read slightly more current incarnations in today’s Herald, or submit your own at www.DiamondsandCoal.com!

Looking to add a little bit of pizzazz to Obama’s State of the Union address tonight?  Thanks to our friends at NYU Local, we’ve got just the trick: a SOTU drinking game.  It’s pretty simple: take a drink every time that the President says “partisan,” “healthcare,” “economy,” “unemployment,” “coming together,” or “blood libel.”