Happy 4th of July! The Shark Guys' Top 10 Shopping Guide for the Patriot Who Has Everything

We are both Canadian, as those who are close to us and those who update our driver's licenses every 10 years know (these two groups are, for now, mutually exclusive... but we're working on buttering up a few of the people who give the eyesight test).

However, we have enjoyed numerous benders throughout the United States, most memorably in New Orleans, Nashville and New York City (Doc Holliday's currently has a plaque by our barstools which we visit on occasion to spit shine), California, and a fair number of ports of call in between. The vast majority of the stories in our book, "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery" took place in the USA and, while that might not be something that McCain or Obama would mention in patriotic speeches while campaigning, it is something that we greatly appreciate.

As such, we'd like to extend our wishes for a happy fourth of July to our American friends, and, going that one step further, we'd also like to offer a gift of sorts on this auspicious day, a Shark Guys look at The Top 10 Fourth of July party gear. It may be too late for this merch to brighten up this Fourth of July, but as with Christmas lights on the house in June, it's never too early to get ready for an upcoming holiday even if it's months off. So here it is...

The Shark Guys guide to Fourth of July Party Gear!

1) Stars and Stripes Guitar-Shaped Belt-Buckle and Bottle Opener: This product, which can be yours for the low-low price of $15.99, is quite possibly the greatest patriotic item in the history of mankind. Are we exaggerating? Short answer: No. This is for the patriotic citizen who is looking to spend his Independence Day kicking ass and chewing bubblegum, but who suddenly finds himself lacking completely in bubble gum. Not only is this item rock n' roll by its very shape -- tell us you don't think of Jimi Hendrix's version of the Star Spangled Banner when you clock your eyes on to that -- but it's also an extremely versatile product. First it will help hold up your pants, and if you're going to be cutting loose on the dance floor this Independence Day, that's a mighty important thing. Two, you can open your beers on it. What's more, you can make friends, and possibly win a future wife, by letting others open their beers on your belt. Of course, any bar where belt-buckles like this are the norm might be the kind of place where a broken nose and a fist-fight are part of the floor show. That is where it's third use comes in: as a weapon. What better way to celebrate your country's birthday then by leaving the impression of Ole' Glory on some idiot's forehead?

2) American Flag-themed rolling papers: While marijuana is still illegal under US federal law, several states have decriminalized in it. In California, you can get a medical permit to access enough of the stuff to make Snoop Dogg want to throw up from the smell. Celebrate the great freedoms in the US that only promise to get greater as the decriminalization of pot continues by sparking up an Independence Day joint that is the size of Shaq's middle finger using these appropriately-themed rolling papers.

3) Budweiser American Eagle Beer-tap Handle: Frank Zappa once said "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

America's beer (for now, until the takeover deal with Belgian mega-brewer Inbev goes through), and a surprisingly popular choice in Ireland where there is better beer (like Beamish) on offer, is Budweiser. We cannot trash talk this brew too too much as we have our own similarly shite beers in Canada, thank you Messers Molson and Labatt. This ornamental beer tap however can be put on any sort of brew and you can put a piece of masking tape over the Budweiser name. Drinking draft beer is about the most pleasantly patriotic thing we can think of doing, and what better way to do that then by tapping the symbol of American freedom, and the motif for many a bad tattoo, the bald eagle.

4) Story of the American Revolution Beer Stein: You've sat through hours of history class in school and made a concerted effort to forget what you were learning the moment it hit your ears. You watched the HBO John Adams miniseries and enjoyed it, but couldn't reconcile one of your founding fathers being played by that guy from Sideways who slurped wine out of a McDonald's super-sized cup. So how do you keep up with a conversation on patriotism and the American tradition on this auspicious day? By guzzling beer from one of these handsomely decorated beer steins. Running along the sides of the beer steins are four of the most important battles of the revolutionary war -- the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Princeton, the Battles of Saratoga and the Siege of Yorktown. Remembering these four names and remarking, "Ah, it really gets to you when you think of the fine men who fought at [insert name of battle depending on position of stein at the time of utterance]." If you're drinking with fellow patriots, and you are drinking in public (the latter unlikely unless you are the kind of guy who brings his own stein to the bar, in which case we salute you) someone may even buy you a round.

5) US Military Pool Cue Set: Americans may not have invented the game of billiards, but they have certainly produced some of its finest champions, invariably dubbed 'Fats' and they most definitely have made the best movies on the sport -- we're talking "The Hustler", not its inferior sequel which Martin Scorsese made to pay off creditors. The cues can be purchased separately and there is one each for the Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, and the U.S. Flag. This is the ideal way to support the troops on Independence Day, acknowledge the sacrifices made by past generations so that you could enjoy your present freedoms, and win 10 bucks by hustling some rube who thinks you can't play worth a damn.

6) Stars and Stripes Nunchucks: If you party the way you should be partying on Independence Day, chances are the neighbors are going to get upset. Raising a ruckus and getting all the neighborhood dogs howling in unison is what freedom is all about. The perfect gift for the Independence Day partier who lives on the wrong side of the tracks, these slick-looking nun chucks will most certainly club the nearest beat cop investigating a disturbance into quick submission. They have "don't tread on me" written all over them. It is recommended when rapping someone across the knees with these babies that you say something along the lines of "And that, came from the good ole' U, S, of A".


7) Old Glory Surgical Cap: While in revolutionary times, it's unlikely to have been donned while lopping off a gangrenous limb, you can perform impromptu living room gallbladder removals or, if you're actually a saw bones, atrial septal defect repair in the more sanitary confines of a surgical suite, while winking at the surgical nurses who'd no doubt delight in your youthful exuberance.



8) Stars & Stripes Guitar Pick Earrings. Have you ever been at a party where you're asked to rock out on someone's axe, and you demur with a 'uh, I don't have a pick?' (or even a Mexican peso, famously played by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top) Well, now you don't have to empty out lint-riddled pockets with your very own, guitar pick earrings. Also works well with Hendrix, playing-guitar-behind-your-head impressions [for a quick tutorial, check out this portly fellow]



9) Red, White and Blue Cat Collar: Make Fluffy easier to find if she makes a mad dash for freedom.





10) A Hat That Will Give you a Standing Ovation: This item speaks for itself, as does the pained expression on the model's face, who looks like she's being asked to 'pull my finger' rather than the string that makes the hands clap.

HAPPY FOURTH AMERICA!

Da Nose Knows! The Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All Time (Part Two)

As we noted in Part One of our Top Cocaine Songs of All Time list, North American productivity would roughly equal that of South Korea if the economy comprised a completely coked out workforce.

The link between nose candy and enhanced productivity was also noted by rock stars of the 1970s, who quite correctly observed that there were only so many hours in the day for bedding groupies, sleeping off an all-nighter, and still managing to stand upright for a few hours while in a recording studio (pianists were exempt from this and could stretch out on their benches during long guitar solos).

With hourly rates for such facilities often costing in the neighborhood of a small to mid-sized sedan and producers with extraordinarily busy schedules (in that there were only so many hours in the day to bed the groupies rock stars passed over), it became imperative for these bands to maximize the time spent in a recording studio so that the 45 consecutive minutes of strumming that F chord just right with a conga back beat could be captured for posterity.

With such a hectic schedule, it's no wonder why many rock stars of the 70s (and right up to the present day), spent their on and off hours planting their kissers in powder. Notably, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith became known as "The Toxic Twins", not because they were born in Buffalo's Love Canal area, but because their proboscis suctioning rivaled that of your average centrally installed vacuum. [For those curious about just how bad a performer can stink when he straightens out, click here for a sober Mr Tyler yelping his way like a Russian sled dog, through 'Amazing Grace' at a Detroit church].

Candy Cane became the key that unlocked creativity's gates, which some musicians found slammed shut as soon as they went straight, most notably, everyone we've mentioned here. Now, we bring you, the Top Five Cocaine Songs of All Time -- tunes that celebrate the white stuff not referenced on the Weather Channel, and promote the kind of lifestyle that ensured Studio 54 was never late with its rent check.

5) "Casey Jones" and "Truckin", by the Grateful Dead: These Dead songs casually mention cocaine use as part of the average work day for those in two occupations -- a train conductor and a trucker -- and we're hoping this was more fantasy than fiction. Truckers are already not the kind of people that most like to share the road with -- their egos being inflated in proportion to their rigs and requiring no further boost from chemicals. Cocaine use might, however, explain, how train conductors can crash something that sets out on a predetermined track.The Dead themselves were no strangers to being intoxicated in transit, having landed themselves on our equally controversial list "The Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs of All Time" with their line "She takes the wheel when I'm seein' double, pays my ticket, when I speed'. The 'livin' on reds, vitamin C and cocaine" lifestyle is unlikely to feature prominently in the health and wellness section of your local bookstore alongside "You: On a Diet", or "Train your Brain to Think like a Thin Person".

“Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones is ready, watch your speed.”

"Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine
All a friend can say is ain't it a shame?"



4) "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'", "Sister Morphine", and "Moonlight Mile", (basically the entire "Sticky Fingers" album) by the Rolling Stones: Pound for pound, or more accurately, ounce for ounce, "Sticky Fingers" is one of the most drug-addled albums ever released, with nearly half of the songs on it in some way referencing drugs either obliquely, or quite explicitly with heroin in Dead Flowers, morphine in Sister Morphine, or singing the praises of a nighttime bump in Moonlight Mile. Sticky Fingers, along with Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night" are among the most depressing albums of the 1970s, and together make the Tom Waits song catalog sound like the collected works of the Village People by comparison.

"Yeah, you got satin shoes
Yeah, you got plastic boots
Ya'll got cocaine eyes
Yeah, you got speed-freak jive"

"Sweet cousin cocaine, lay your cool cool hand on my head
Ah, come on, sister morphine, you better make up my bed"

"When the wind blows and the rain feels cold with a head full of snow, with a head full of snow"

3) Cocaine Blues (traditional, composed by Reverend Gary Davis, as performed by Bob Dylan): There are numerous songs out there that go by the name "Cocaine Blues" or a variation thereof, presumably because there was no shortage of real-life material on which to base such ditties. We're slotting two of the more prominent in our third and second spots. The first is a "traditional" song, which means that it's public domain and can therefore be burned, photocopied, recorded, dubbed over, mixed with farm animal sounds, and played over and over again on the street corner to the annoyance of everyone within 100 yards (public noise ordinances notwithstanding) -- all with copyright-infringement impunity. The Reverend Gary Davis, who, unlike Brother Horton Heat earlier in the list, actually was an ordained minister, laid down the definitive version of this one, and a young Bob Dylan added it to his repertoire. This version takes us through some of the less pleasant aspects of cocaine use -- hence the "blues" part -- including:

Any pretense to romance going out the window:

You take Sally, an’ I’ll take Sue,
Ain't nah difference between the two.
Cocaine all around my brain.

Unpleasant physical effects:

Hey baby, you better come here quick,
This old cocaine ‘bout to make me sick.
Cocaine all around my brain.

And one quite bizarre veterinary notion:

Cocaine's for horses and it's not for men,
Doctor said it kill you, but he didn’t say when.
Cocaine all around my brain.

2) Cocaine Blues, (traditional, as performed by Johnny Cash): The second of our public domain songs (go ahead and record this one on YouTube using a butt kazoo and a ukulele for all the record companies care) was first known by the far more ominous sounding name "Transfusion Blues", but popularized as Cocaine Blues by none other than the Man in Black (especially after Labor Day) Johnny Cash. This was one of the songs that Cash sang at Folsom Prison that no doubt had the guards ruining underwear while wondering whether they would soon have a riot on their hands. This super-charged song tells the story of Willie Lee, a "hack", which we presume means either a prison guard or cop, as a reporter for a schlock newspaper wouldn't be as cool, who takes a shot of cocaine and shoots his cheating woman down. He then flees to Mexico, but is apprehended, put before a jury of "12 honest men" and sentenced to "99 years in the Folsom Pen". By the end the convicted prisoner advises his fellows to stay off the cocaine, not to murder, mind you, but to avoid the cocaine; he seems ok about the murdering your wife part.

The judge he smiled as he picked up his pen
99 years in the Folsom pen
99 years underneath that ground
I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down
Come on you've gotta listen unto me
lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be

1) "Cocaine", by J.J. Cale: Don't be fooled by Clapton's fatigued version, this gem penned by J.J. Cale (a man to whom Slow Hand arguably owes his entire career) is in our estimation, the definitive blizzard ditty. Clapton is quoted on Wikipedia as having once said that “Cocaine” is actually an anti-cocaine song. If you study it or look at it with a little bit of thought... from a distance... or as it goes by… it just sounds like a song about cocaine. But in actual fact, it is quite cleverly anti-cocaine.” Being that Clapton didn't write this song, this opinion is about as valuable as the answer you'd get if you asked the Byrds what they were thinking when they came up with "Mr. Tambourine Man". Defending his position, Clapton mentions the lyric, "If you wanna get down, down on the ground; cocaine" to demonstrate that the song is anti-coke. He doesn't mention though that every other lyric in the song could feature in the text of a Colombian drug-runner's spring/fall catalogue:

If you want to hang out, you've got to take her out, cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine
If you got bad news, you want to kick them blues, cocaine
When your day is done and you got to run, cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine
If your thing is gone and you want to ride on, cocaine
Dont forget this fact, you cant get it back, cocaine
She dont lie, she dont lie, she don't lie, cocaine

Honorable and Dishonorable Mentions:

As always with these lists, there were more contenders than there were places in the Top 10. Here we've selected some other songs that could just as easily have made it up with their nostril-thrilling brethren above. Since there are Kid Rock fans out there, and quite possibly a fan of the Libertines might still be drawing air, we will let you determine which of these deserves an honorable or dishonorable badge. Click on the title of the song for the YouTube link:

Never Change by Jay-Z

We run streets like drunks run street lights
We collidin' with life as we speak
We knee-deep in coke, we keep deep in ice
We flood streets with dope, we keep weed to smoke

Snowblind by Black Sabbath

What you get and what you see Things that don’t come easily Feeling happy in my vein Icicles within my brain (cocaine)

Cocaine by The Game

I got the cane and the O’s, dawg
I’m gangsta like Hennesy and Alizay, thug passion
Ride or die ‘til they kill me and put me in thug’s mansion

No Thing on Me (Cocaine Song) by Curtis Mayfield:

Twinkling twinkling grains
They do all sorts of things
While your inner mind is pleased
Your conscience is only teased...

What a Waster by The Libertines

So tell me, where does all the money go? Where does all the money go?
Straight, straight up her nose

Picture, Kid Rock:

Been fuellin' up on cocaine and whiskey
Wish I had a good girl to miss me

CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE TOP 10 COCAINE SONGS OF ALL TIME

Da Nose Knows! The Top 10 Cocaine Songs of all Time! (Part One)

Given the theme of our book, "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery" (also newly available at Barnes and Noble, Tower Books, and other fine retailers), we here at the SharkGuys.com have focused most of our postings on that most legal of intoxicants, booze.

But does that mean that we are against other substances that are capable of lifting one from this mundane world into a place that is much improved by chemicals, or that we would cast aspersions on those who enjoy the pleasures of say mescaline, or a bite at the ole gypsum weed (you can remember the effects of the latter using this handy mnemonic device courtesy of Wikipedia: "blind as a bat, mad as a hatter, red as a beet, hot as hell, dry as a bone, the bowel and bladder lose their tone, and the heart runs alone")? Of course not.

And what do you do after a night on the lager when you feel as if one more beer will leave you putting on a colorful display of emotion over the nearest gutter? Well, if you are in a place that has the right level of sleaze, you can simply wink to some likely individual and enjoy a line off the back of your house key in some dank alley. Spirits lifted, the night can go on.

Cocaine of course has had a significant impact on popular music. While booze is far more likely to result in sloppy work and an unsightly beer gut in middle age, coke leaves you wired enough to ensure that you will produce a whole lot of something, and thus ups the odds that you will actually produce something good.

Keith Richards may have fallen out of a tree in Fiji while out of his gourd on other than vitamin supplements, but he is what rock n' roll is all about: debauchery. And, while a sober Eric Clapton was quoted as saying, "I hate listening to my old records, which I did stoned or drunk,"he’s alone in that camp as most fans of his music hate listening to anything that he’s done straight.

Keith Richards entire career, Neil Young’s coked out performance at “The Last Waltz”, Stevie Nicks having built up such a tolerance to cocaine that she had to have it blown up her rectum to get a high (this never happened, apparently, but is nonetheless one of the more entertaining urban legends), cocaine use is an integral part of the rock-star lifestyle. It’s what young boys dream about: One day, if I practice enough and work on perfecting my skills as a singer-songwriter, I too will be able to snort cocaine off of the breasts of a vacant-eyed stripper whose name I’ll forget before I’m back on the tour bus and liquidating a savings account by mobile phone to settle debts with unsavory characters.

Here we have compiled a list of the Top 10 Cocaine Songs of all time -- songs about, influenced by, and more than likely written on clouds of Peruvian marching powder:

10) "Bales of Cocaine", by The Reverend Horton Heat: In this one, the good Reverend regales us with the modern day parable of a farmer out in his field pulling corn and carrots "when two low-flying aeroplanes, 'bout a hundred feet high/dropped a bunch o' bales o' somethin', some hit me in the eye". The farmer cuts the bales open and notices a mysterious powder inside. Being a rube, for whom presumably white lightnin' is still the biggest thrill in town, he has no idea what it is and brings it to his "Crazy Brother Joe": "He sniffed it up and kicked his heels, said, 'Horton, that's some blow!'" Our lucky farming friend then heads into Dallas, becomes a millionaire by selling his find, ditches his farm in Texas and buys another in Peru. Think of it like the Bill Paxton movie "A Simple Plan", only a whole lot happier and without Billy Bob Thornton in the role of a mouth-breather. We can safely assume that at some later point in this farmer's life the drug dealers whose fortune he stole would have tracked him down and introduced him to the latest in Columbian necktie attire, however, for taking a different angle on the cocaine song and for its appreciation of the entrepreneurial spirit, we salute the Reverend Horton Heat and include "Bales of Cocaine" on our Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All Time list:

Bales of cocaine, fallin' from low-flyin' plane
I don't know who done dropped 'em, but I thank 'em just the same
Bales of cocaine, fallin' like a foreign rain
My life changed completely by the low-flyin' planes

9) "Lit up" by Buckcherry: This is a song that needs to wipe its nose before returning to the dinner table. With two founding members who met in a tattoo parlor and bonded over their mutual love of AC/DC, Buckcherry exemplifies the type of hard rockin' lifestyle that has enriched many a well-connected roadie. A song meant more for the mosh-pit than for lyrical analysis, this one is interesting though for the number of places in which the narrator gets "lit up". They include: a plane, his couch, his bed, on a train and backstage somewhere with a groupie knocking, "Crack the door for the curious girl cuz she's waitin' she's been waitin'..." And fulfilling the age-old maxim that all bands who look like this will eventually do something that reminds one of Spinal Tap, we get a replay of the classic, "It goes up to 11" bit of dialogue in the following bit of verse: "I'm in touch love, from this crutch/Well you're on ten but buddy I'm on eleven".

"I'm on a plane With cocaine And yes I'm all lit up again"

8) "My Michelle" by Guns 'n' Roses: "I don't do cocaine anymore. Well, only occasionally," GNR guitarist Slash, 1992. Long before the band broke up and Axl Rose set about attempting to strangle whatever bit of fan support they had with the "Chinese Democracy" debacle, the Gunners were at the forefront of cocaine-fueled hard rock with Appetite For Destruction, and "My Michelle" was one of their best. The Michelle in the song actually existed. She knew the band and asked Axl to pen a tune for her. She did not get "Sweet Child Of Mine" treatment. This one tells a story of a hard-living woman whose "daddy works in porno/Now that mommy's not around/She used to love her heroin/but now she's in the ground." The song and the real-life story both have a happy ending, as, according to Slash's biography (which would no doubt require a snort of something illicit to get through), Michelle has since moved across the country and cleaned up her act.

"So you stay out late at night And you do your coke for free Drivin' your friends crazy With your life's insanity"

7) "That Smell" by Lynyrd Skynyrd: Though better known for penning that motet Sweet Home Alabama, heard if a case of Amstel Light, a $150 Yamaha guitar, a group of white people, or a campfire are within a 100-yard radius, Skynyrd is also known for this thoroughly unpleasantly titled opus: 'What's that smell?' being one of the worst questions you can ever hear uttered, along with 'Is anyone here a vegetarian?' A well-worn refrain when it comes to the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, members of the band were killed by over-consumption, but in this case, it was of fuel, at least according to the National Transportation Safety Board, who determined this caused their plane to take a nosedive into a Mississippi forest. This song references an earlier and less-killing crash involving guitarist Gary Rossington, whiskey, coke and an oak tree that would just not get out of the way.

"Whiskey bottles, and brand new cars
Oak tree you're in my way
There's too much coke and too much smoke
Look what's going on inside you

6) "Life in the Fast Lane", by The Eagles
With an obstructed view concert ticket to one of their performances costing in the range of your average eight-ball, The Eagles certainly know a thing or two about life in the fast lane, a song inspired by a road trip Glenn Frey took with a dealer named 'The Count'. In 'Hotel California', (a song so ubiquitous you can be wandering the rugged mountains of northern Laos and hear a villager who's otherwise had no contact with modernity, humming a few bars) there were 'mirrors were on the ceiling', and in this song, their paean to hard-living, they served a dual purpose other than a means to admire your feather mullet and creepy mustache.

"They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills
There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face"

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO -- THE TOP FIVE COCAINE SONGS OF ALL TIME!

Crocodile Tears in your Beer: Aussie barflies get visit from baby croc

Those of us who grew up watching professional wrestling had, at one point or another, to come to terms with the fact that the stereotypes represented in the rasslin’ ring were a few metal folding-chair head-shots apart from reality. So when the wrestling world told us that Australia was comprised of a mix of people that were halfway between Outback Jack – a “Let’s capitalize on Crocodile Dundee’s popularity” 80s wrestler who lost more matches than he was in – and the Bushwackers, two toothless stereotypes, who marched around the ring, swinging their arms above their heads (see below -- it's a bit like power-walking, but with a lot more arm-swinging and cretinous head bobbing) in a fashion not encountered since one of us observed it replicated by a very drunk English football fan on the streets of Amsterdam.

(The Bushwackers, it should be noted for the sake of people who would lose sleep tonight if this correction were not made, were actually from New Zealand. The best way to upset a Kiwi? Tell them, “I love New Zealand. They filmed the Lord of the Rings movies there. It really is the most scenic part of Australia.” Australia is to New Zealand as the United States is to Canada and such jibes do not go down well as an American telling a Canadian in a foreign land, “Ah, what a relief to hear an American accent.”)

But surely this was all stuff and nonsense and actual life in Australia does not bear any actual resemblance to a bunch of people living out in the bush and making lasting friendships with the koala bears? Well, actually, no, the Bushwackers or their like might actually have been holding fort in the bar where the following took place.

Drinkers were enjoying an afternoon’s tipple at the Noonamah Tavern, located 25 miles (40 km) from the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, basically a point on the map marked with the label “Middle of Nowhere.”, when a baby salt-water crocodile, or “salty” in the local parlance, walked into a bar. No it wasn’t accompanied by a nun and a circus dwarf. Rather than being frightened by the site of this creature, that likes to when it’s full grown sink its chompers into anything from water buffaloes to humans, the drinkers taped its jaws shut and brought it inside for a photos.

The woman who tends bar said that having the wild kingdom stroll in for a jar of the good stuff wasn’t an unusual occurrence. “We've had a lot of horses pop up. We've had cane toads, which are yukky," she said. "We have had a big buffalo come in, wander around. There's a photo of him with a beer."

Since the creature is at home in saltwater and would have had to travel pretty far to reach the pub from such a habitat, the bartender reckons it was either dropped off there accidentally by a fisherman or as a practical joke. Regardless, the carousing croc escaped his brush with bush-country pub life and is now among his fellows at a local crocodile farm. (Full story here). (For more on crocs and the boozers who love them, check out this story from our archives).

Belgian Beer Bonanza! Cantillon Brewery Tour, Brussels

It's impossible to forget the first time your taste-buds are left smarting from a slap of Belgian beer.

Like most, I was weaned on traditional lager or pilsener, the kind of stuff 'Johnny Sixpack' might pick up in his, well, pick-up.

To make watching sporting events palatable, such as our failing local hockey team's perpetual first round exit from the playoffs, or as an adjunct to a post-work barbecue in someone's suburban backyard, our greatest concern was a six-pack that wouldn't tax the wallet---and would leave us comfortably under the $10-dollar mark to to grab a bag of Doritos and pay for the last bus of the night without having to scramble for change.

If any of these bargain garage sale suds strayed too far from having what we came later to realize was a distinctly "beer" finish, it wasn't uncommon to hear "it's got a bitter aftertaste" bellyaching. This was odd, given that whenever anyone would inhale a candy bar, you'd never hear a "isn't that a sweet aftertaste?"

Belgian beer, as I came to learn, not only has aftertaste, but a heady "before" and "during" taste as well, and furthermore, some types weren't bitter at all.

Like the first time I guzzled a Guinness and realized it wasn't a facsimile of orange juice, like a Corona, or the first time I took a belt of whiskey left out in the bedroom of an older acquaintance whose jail-bait sis was hosting a party for precocious 9th grade tipplers, I realized it was a flavor distinctly unlike I'd ever encountered.

Most people's experience with Belgian beer comes via Stella Artois, which goes to show just how damn spoiled the Belgians are as that is the worst beer they make.

However, their other, more interesting beers trace their origins back to monasteries from the Middle Ages, and the product was so damn good many a monk broke their vow of silence to say as much. Unlike a lager, where the yeast ferments at the bottom at cooler temperatures, or an ale, the opposite, where the bits of goodness rise to the top, Belgian 'Lambic' beers do so spontaneously within the bottle itself.

This is admittedly a bit weird, and leaves the drinker wondering if the little bits floating around in the bottom of the bottle aren't the result of the local bog water source, rather than natural springs. It's also closed with a cork, so that you couldn't give it to the guy who got straight A's in shop class to remove the cap with his teeth.

Lambic beers are also laid down like fine wine to age, and sparkle as well. One of the sub-types (Kriek) is given a second fermentation with sour cherries, and another (Gueuze), is sometimes called Brussels Champagne.

For a country with a population only slightly higher than that of New York City, Belgium has 125 breweries, and an eye-popping 1000 + brands. Having been recently wowed by fruit beers, not for sissies as it turns out as they often pack a 10 and 12% alcohol punch, I figured I'd make a beer pilgrimage to the land that makes, and it pains me to say this with a mother and grandparents who hail from Germany, the world's finest beer.

I visited the Cantillon brewery, and if anyone is interested reading more about the brewing process, you can do so here, as this is not the forum to bore you with minutiae.

-- Chris

For more Shark Guy travels, check out what happened to Ireland's supply of a certain stout called Beamish when Noel visited the Emerald Isle by clicking here.