The frontman for Gym Class Heroes has recently undergone a rapid detox program. Getting straightened out is cool, but it depresses me to read about creative geniuses that mess around with drugs. Travis McCoy came clean on his blog after getting clean. He expresses some feelings of guilt with regard to glorifying drugs in his music.

Travis, I don’t mean to diss you with my post title, I’m trying to say that you are at a starting point, as in Zero to Sixty. I like your music, and I am an old guy (38). I was song-tagged with Cupid’s Chokehold for days and it somehow was reborn as parody…

“Oh Man, this sh** is gettin’ SO old,
I’m feeling like Cupid kicked me in the cake hole,
I’m gonna have to take a break from solid food,
it turned out that my girlfriend was a dude”

Anyway, be strong.

I was reminded of this video while reading a post about etiquette on a wedding ideas blog called Wedding Idea Source. The post advises against drinking too much at wedding receptions.

The lady singing the duet in this video is Kathleen Edwards. I had an awkward moment standing beside her down at the Khyber many years ago. She’s the kind of woman that attracts me against my better judgement. The manager had been comping all the performers with Jagermeister shots from his fancy new sub zero dispenser and she was quite tipsy. When we made eye contact I got the impression that she was worried that I would say something lame and that she was too impaired to be gracious in that way that minor celebrities usually are when dealing with that crap. I said nothing and I felt appreciated for my silence.

As Canada remembers its war dead today, Canadian soldiers are in Afghanistan, where poppies grow. 90% of the World’s heroin comes from this country. The Taliban get an estimated $10 million dollars a year in protection money from drug lords. It is a logical assumption that the drug lords do not want stability, because the drug trade could not possibly flourish as it is now if there were conditions that allowed for the rule of law to prevail.

Please do not use illegal drugs. When you do, you are supporting terrorism. In North America, where cocaine is the hard drug of choice, users have in the past been unwittingly supporting covert operations by the CIA that resulted in untold suffering in Central America. Even though marijuana has less adverse effects on users and is often grown in stable developed countries, the illegal nature of the supply chain means that users are connecting them selves to violent crime in a tangential way. Activists that promote the legalization of marijuana should STOP using before they start advocating and only start partaking of the relatively innocuous drug when it is made legal and there is an ethical supply chain.

I objectively recognize that my moderate addiction to coffee is a big problem. 1-3 cups of strong coffee could very well be beneficial to my health. I generally do not have sugar in my coffee.

I sometimes get emotional about the fact that I have an addiction to a substance and and I will plan to quit. If I take any steps to quit, they are always short lived. Coffee is a part of my life in a cultural and social way. Oh, and it tastes really good. I quit eating donuts and I haven’t looked back.

What better way to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace than by purchasing a video game that is so graphically violent that the UK banned it outright?

In a video game review that uses the word Christmas in its title, the pasty-faced writers have the following to say about Manhunt II:

…you will be shocked, you will be amazed, you will want this game.

I have two things to say about this thing. Nobody should ban it. Nobody should buy it.

In the following video, a man who is favor of banning violent video games accuses the industry run rating agency of fraud. He says that the rating of this game was changed from Adults Only to Mature so that kids could buy it. The movie industry is rated by an outside body. I think it is time for a change in the video game industry. I am suspicious about the UK ban, I think that Rockstar may have welcomed this as free publicity for the much larger American market.

The fact that alcohol is legal and socially acceptable does not make much difference as far its potential effect on your life, your work and your family. An alcoholic IS a drug addict. There is alcohol rehab in Malibu that offers individuated treatment programs unlike the one-size-fits-all stints available at many other rehabs. Cliffside Malibu is there for people who want to overcome this killer disease.

The trouble with many alcoholics it that first step. Admitting that you have a problem is so easy to avoid. You are a social drinker, you just like to party, you can quit any time, you just need a couple to help you relax…

If you have had any adverse life experience that is related to your drinking, than you have to seriously consider the fact that you may have a drinking problem.

If you are looking for a rehab, you have either reached this important step of recognizing your problem…or your family has…or maybe a judge…

I think a residential program has a lot to recommend it. They are usually situated a fair distance from temptation. A rehab like Cliffside Malibu offers a lot of comfort. It has lots of leisure and activity options. I can also understand the advantage of the customized approach that strives to meet the needs of individual visitors. Relapse is a big problem with recovered alcoholics, becasue their drug of choice is so readily available. The likelihood of you going to your nephews wedding and having your cousin offer you a drag off of his crack pipe at the reception is fairly remote, but there is probably going to be wine at the table. Not drinking has to become a way of life.

The business model of BritneySpears.com has always been to have a ‘New Official Site Coming Soon’ hanging on the landing page with links for people to visit the pay to join fan club or the store with her fragrances and a DVD.

Since the crazy really got going, she has also put a few personal messages on the landing page.

The current page has an apology by way of a dubious excuse for the rag she flew into with the umbrella way back in February. It would seem that there hasn’t been much going on in her life since then. The part where she says I take all my roles very seriously makes me kinda sad. She seems to be in the same role that Elvis and Janis and Kurt took so seriously.

It seems pretty weird to think that Gimme More is analogous to How Great Tho Art.

Her Fan Club seems to be gone.

International gossip sites are combining two things that Britney Spears is reported to have done in front of her young children. We are supposed to be shocked and appalled by both things.

First, her former bodyguard is saying that Britney Spears used recreational drugs in the presence of her children. I agree that this is wrong and shameful. Some child psychologists suggest that you refrain from even talking about past use of drugs and alcohol with your kids. I debated this with my wife once. On one side, it seems like a lie of omission to not talk about your past experiences. The argument is that, even if you frame your past mistakes as a cautionary tale, they still serves as a bad example to some kids.

The other issue was that Britney had a habit of walking around naked in front of her kids. To quote Britney’s former colleague Christina Aguilera…”WHAT?”

I take issue with anyone who takes issue with being naked in your home in front of immediate family members who don’t object. I don’t see any great social value to prudishness. You do not need to use shame in order to be sure that your children will stay in line with societal norms in regard to wearing clothes.

I was going to make some kind of outlandish connection between Mary Kate Olsen’s childhood addiction to coffee and her edgy disconcerting strangeness…then I remembered that Shakira has also been a big coffee consumer ever since her childhood. I like her. Maybe Colombian coffee is better for you than whatever they left on the burner off camera at the set of Full House.

Here is a serious report about kids and caffeine .

I almost have the appearance of a secret agenda in my last few posts. My light-hearted jibe at Britney Spears is tempered with the fact that I am really concerned about her and her apparent problems with drugs and alcohol. The accident that I investigated on September 11th, 2001 was rumored to have involved drug use. Everyone in the know hedged about that because they didn’t want to get anybody fired. I kept my suspicions about that off the record as well.

I think it’s worth pointing out that an impaired ability to do your job, whether it involves walking around in the path of heavy equipment or lip-syncing on an awards show, can have lasting consequences. They die hard fans of Britney Spears have been known to put up retrospective videos on YouTube that are edited to display the raw talent that she has, or at least did have. I won’t dispute that, but I think you can convincingly make an Elvis analogy at this point.

I would like to see her take drug rehabilitation seriously. She is young enough and famous enough to step out of the limelight and learn some life skills while she gets straight and clean and sober. I used to attend an evangelical church and the pastor would talk about the churches with the comfortable pews. I am starting to suspect that a lot of Rehab centers in Malibu are like the Rehab version of a church with comfortable pews. The Watershed is viable and affordable solution to these places. Personally, I think that the experience of rehabilitation is like learning to read. Teaching and learning are separate actions. A good rehab program still can’t reach everybody. Some people who spend time in a rehab program that lacks substance and structure will still find that part of themselves that has what it takes to beat addiction.