King 5's War on Fun

I’m not sure how many people read Rick Pierce’s blog. It’s pretty funny, though comparisons to “Nick Burns: Your Company’s Computer Guy” are totally without merit. 

Anyway, he’s got a link up to a King 5 news report on alcohol energy drinks, apparently spawned from a conversation on our own forum about a Centralia girl who may or may not have had one before trying to go to a dance (for the seventh year in a row no one asked me, so I missed it). 

The King 5 report is a joke. “Oh my God, kids are drinking alcoholic energy drinks!” is the basic message.

It’s hard to believe there’s nothing better to cover than the fact that you can buy caffeine and booze in the same container. 

Keep in mind this is nothing new. Sparks, the original caffeinated malt liquor, has been on sale since I was 19 (when I saw some older kids drinking it). There’s been a slew of rip-offs over the years, including Tilt and the deliberately named Rock Star 21. Today you can even find schnapps with bite. 

The point of King 5’s piece was that adults can’t tell the difference between regular energy drinks and booze-infused party fuel, even though when cashiers ring up the purchase the “Check ID” light comes on. And even though the cans with alcohol have the percentage of alcohol in fairly large letters, as a warning for cashiers and a selling point. 

It seems like King 5 was just fishing for a story and came up with something that should have been aired, say, five years ago. It’s sort of like me fishing for a blog topic and coming up with this brief vehicle for introducing a few links I found while researching the topic. 

P.S. I wanted to add a link to a YouTube video I found during my research, but it was determined to be distasteful. Two white guys sit at a table, drink some Sparks, throw a deck of cards in the air and start jiving to an 80s dance beat (FOLLOW MEEEEEE, FOLLOW ME).