Before he made Seven Devils, Pars made another alcohol tale called A Tale About His Majesty (Priit Pärn even worked on it). The story takes place inside the body of an alcoholic where a team of workers (á là the “What Happens During Ejaculation” scene in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex) attempts to deal with the man’s generous helping of booze while out on the town with a lady. This heavily moralistic tale traces the decline of the man as he continues to consume heavy amounts of alcohol. It’s one of those good scare films for teenagers, but probably not enough to convince a veteran guzzler.

What can I say about the stick figure film I Think I Was An Alcoholic? It’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen about an alcoholic becoming a quadriplegic.

Next to Callahan’s film, Paul Fierlinger’s And Then I’ll Stop, is probably the most known of alcohol related animation films. Using the interviews with rehab patients, each story takes us through the habits, downfall and subsequent acknowledgment and recovery of each addict. Fierlinger gives each voice their own drawing style ranging from dark, grey sketches to Steinberg influenced geometric drawings. Accompanying the story is a haunting, minimalist track. The power of the film lies with the combination of Fierlinger's strong graphics, the soundtrack and the frank, unsentimental stories of these real people. There is not a drop of sentimentality in this film. The films’ biggest twist comes at the end when we are introduced to a new character, Paul. It turns out that during the making of the film Fierlinger himself quit drinking.

A New, Strange Road
I guess it’s like what I said about death. It ain’t goin' anywhere so why try to ignore it. Just accept it as part of life. I know some milquetoast ex-boozers who won’t go near bars or can’t stand to be around other people drinking. That doesn’t bother me at all. Alcohol is ubiquitous, I can’t run from it so instead I just try to face it head on and embrace the tales of those who’ve been drunk by it.

Sobriety is a strange road…but I must say…it’s been pretty dandy overall. I’ve lost weight, I don’t wake up with a stinging headache…those late afternoon drink cravings are behind me…I don’t get thrown out of bars anymore…I don’t jump sound men at concerts because the band sucks. I don’t puke. I don’t stick my tongue down stranger’s throats…I don’t have blackouts…I don’t do as many stupid things anymore…and it's a great feeling to say, “I’ll meet you at 9 a.m.,” and actually be there. Hell...it’s a great fucking feeling just to wake up in the morning.

But ya know I also don’t want to transform into some self-righteous, all hail the big book, recovery salesman. I had a lot of good times with alcohol, especially at festivals. Problem was that I tried to bring my festival drinking fountain home. Not a good move. And I admit I found it really hard to socialize in Ottawa this year. Alcohol can be a great social tool and there’s no better example than when you go to a festival. It loosens up inhibitions and helps people step outside themselves for a few hours so they can better engage in some chitchat with others. I think that’s a damn fine thing. I have a lot of good drinking memories…but the problem is that I also have too many memories I don’t recall. Too many nights where you keep drinking and drinking until you’ve gone from stepping outside yourself to losing yourself altogether. Too many nights of not giving a shit what I was drinking as long as it got me where I needed to go. And on many times, I drank into blackness. There is nothing more frightening than a blackout, until the next one.

During Ottawa '02 there were a few encounters with people who said they liked the Pimp columns (yeah…a few slobber jockeys cornered AWN publisher, Dan Sarto and demanded to know how he could justify printing such “hateful and racist” material as the Pimp. Strangely these crusading backboned bastions of morality didn’t mention their objections to me the entire week.), but the sweetest, most chillaxin’ words emanated from those mouths that expressed surprise at how different I seemed from the Pimp they envisioned (hey…don’t feel bad...even some of my friends now think I wanna talk about Greeks, titties, Kant, and Jimmy Neutron too). That be snug on the ears mon chums…(and PART of the reason why you see this new Pimp logo). Naturally there is a large chunk of me in the Pimp. How could there not be? But it’s just one snot from the mucus, one shake from the spurt stick. That being said…before I quit drinking I was certainly closer to the Pimp’s temperament. As some of ‘you’ know, one of the biggest worries alcoholics have is that we’ll become a mediocre herbal tea drinking Enya lovin’ slug; all that hipness and superior intelligence we firmly possessed as alcoholics will follow the Canadian Club down the drain. But hey, a raging, bloated, lecherous, bombastic puke stained drunk ain’t exactly a rare bird. And whatever unvarnished ire I inherited before has simply become more polished (or at least gets read twice now before being sent to the editor). Beyond that, nothing’s changed, I still use writing as a vehicle to try and sort through all the confusion, ugliness, ignorance, anger, beauty and horniness, that feeds this Stuff within which you and me, being we, piss, shit and breathe.

Chris Robinson is but a man. His hobbies include squirrel taunting, goat thumping, meat dancing and elderly peeping. You can find the results at http://asifa.net/robinson