Fear and Loathing at the Book Reading

From Maxim 59, “Shun drinking at the reception or book reading”:

Event planners tasked with filling their receptions and book readings with crowds of eager attendees—and who need to do so without access to a Famous Person to appear as the headliner—have evolved one surefire method of ensuring success:

Offer an open bar, and stock it with pretty much anything. Wine remains a perpetual favorite at intellectual events. Whether cheap vino in a box, chemically indistinguishable from engine cleaner, or the good stuff from some quasi-mythic vineyard where each grape is ritually massaged and crushed beneath the delicate feet of virgins—people will line up to drink it down. And hopefully stick around for whomever speaks that night.

However, heavy drinking at the reception or reading can sometimes prove disastrous. A few too many glasses of wine, and the most reserved attendees start believing they’re the second coming of Richard Pryor: they launch into a joke, except they keep backtracking to the part when the horse first walks in the bar, and ten minutes later they’re still babbling to a group of listeners nearly willing to chew off their own arms to escape, coyote-style.

Don’t be that sort of event drinker.