The "GCLE" and Sports vs. Music

First, I should disclaim that I am not 100% sober as I type this post. I recently returned from an evening of bar bingo ("Clamo", as it's called), and I downed a few Miller Lites while waiting for a rogue thunderstorm to pass such that I could hear what the person next to me was saying. However, I don't think that my ability to blog will be affected by this chain of events; oh no. Instead, I believe that my ability to write is facilitated by small-to-moderate amounts of alcohol consumption, and you, fine reader of this blog, will be the judge of whether or not this is the case.

Second, I am going to define a new, life-altering, self-named statistic that will change the way you concieve your drinking life. You see, I'm sick and tired of college-aged asscocks talking up their night of drinking by saying things like "Yo, BRAH, I had like 18 beers last night! And I got SO WASTED!" when I had 9 beers and essentially drank more than they did, but because they chose Coors Light and I wanted to drink something that actually has alcohol in it, they get to say something more important than I say.

Thus, I've created a term that I affectionally call the GCLE, or the [My Last Name] Coors Light Equivalent. This statistic weights the alcohol content of the beers you've consumed by comparing it to the standard alcohol by volume of a Coors Light (3.1% abv, in case you were curious). In equation form, GCLE = ([alcohol of the beer you've drank]/3.1) * number of beers consumed .

Ex. Juan has consumed 3 bottles of Flying Fish 90 Minute IPA (abv: 9.3%) and 4 bottles of Yuengling (abv: 4.4%). How many GCLE's has Juan consumed?

Answer: (9.3/3.1)*3 + (4.4/3.1)*3 = 9 + 4.25 = 13.25. If Juan were a loser, he could say that he had 7 beers and call it a night, likely sleeping on his side in a pool of his own vomitus. If he were a winner, he would say he had over 13 GCLE's, smack a ho, light a cigar, and eat a giant steak.

In case you were curious, I once had over 30 GCLE's in one night. In reality, I only had about 15 beers, but they were all quite strong. The beauty of this statistic is that, if you like strong, dark beer, you're not constrained by the inherent limitations of the standard beer-counting system. I believe that the GCLE is far superior to any other method of counting beers drunk, and I challenge the scientific community to think of an even better way to calculate this vital, ego-maniacal statistic.

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Third, I am going to ask you a simple question, which was posed to me on the ride home from Highlands, NJ (the iconic setting of the unforgettable Kevin Smith movie "Jersey Girl"). If you had the choice between being able to listen to music for the rest of your life without being able to watch sports, or if you could still be able to watch sports but music were no longer existent to you, which would you pick?

Here's my answer. First, I love sports. When Eli Manning found a wide-open Plaxico Burress in busted coverage to take a 17-14 lead with 1:00 remaining in Super Bowl XLII, I jumped up and down so hard I almost busted a hole in the floor of my girlfriend's living room. I turned 21 the week that the Yankees blew the 2004 ALCS, and because of this I have a raging drinking problem to this day. I think that sports are extremely important, useful as a vehicle for life's frustrations, as a meter upon which to weigh one's success in the world, and as an important way to kick back, relax, and forget one's problems.

However, I'd choose to keep music over sports, if one of the two had to go. I've had times in my life when I was too busy to watch sports; I survived, but only because I had my iPod when I was hard at work. More importantly, music serves to organize the content of my life. When I hear the piano coda to "Layla," for example, I immediately think of the scene from Goodfellas where they find Carbone in the meat truck and his body was frozen so stiff, they had to thaw him out for two days in order to perform an autopsy. And I smile, because I remember that Goodfellas is one of my favorite movies, and I remember the first time I ever watched it (the summer after 8th grade), and I remember about a dozen other things, and it has nothing to do with anything except "Layla." That's my "Layla," and somebody else's conceptualization of the song has to be different from mine, and that's absolutely fine, because we could sit and talk about the song and never need to know what that song does to us, uniquely and inside.

So yeah, sports would have to go. I could listen to "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin a dozen times, wonder where my sports went, and eventually figure something out that would make sense. But if the music were to die? I'd have to drive my Hyundai off the levy... or something.

Stay classy.