The Cocktails 'MLK Jr. Would Be Proud Of' and a Man Who Drove Around Wearing Nothing but Swiss Cheese

Before we begin, let's make something clear: There's no good excuse for shooting someone. You can make a case for, say, fighting a war against soldiers who are also shooting back at you. But even then, unless you're participating in a war against someone whose name starts with H and rhymes with Titler, I can't completely condone it. And sure, if some terrible villain broke into your home and was violent towards your family, using deadly force as a last resort to stop that of course makes sense. (Although, if you were that tough, you'd always have two deadly weapons “on hand,” if you know what I mean.) But beyond those two examples, it's nearly impossible to come up with a legitimate reason. So, in short: Shooting people is not good. That said, this story out of Florida (of course) where a man was shot dead in a theater during a screening of Lone Survivor (again, of course) because he was texting during the movie… it's tragic and terrible, unnecessary and horrific. Especially during any movie with Marky Mark in it, which generally doesn't need 100 percent of a viewer's attention. But, I get it. I don't condone it, and I'd never try to make light of someone's death. But I do get it. And if you don't feel the same way, you're a goddamn liar.

The Doomsday Clock is weird. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's more background. But in short, every year, reps from a scientist-laden nuclear watchdog group get together, open up the newspaper, debate about how close the world is to nuclear destruction, come to a consensus, and probably end the night with plenty of blow and daisy-chaining every which way, the seriousness of tongue lap force determined by how close we are to The End. And when they announce their answer to the press, it's all very artsy. They have a big clock, and the closer it gets to midnight, the “closer” we get to the end of Dr. Strangelove. (The closest the clock ever got was two minutes to midnight, during the Cuban Missile Crisis; furthest was seven, when the U.S. and Russia signed a pact to get rid of their nukes.) This week, the science-folk moved the clock from “five until midnight” to… “five until midnight.” No change. Their reasoning: Nothing terrible happened, but nothing really that good. There were no big man-made disasters, hooray! But, the cleanup from Fukushima's still going on, China, India and Pakistan have too many nukes, and tech is moving faster than we can control it. In fact, here's a hot tip: Copy and paste their worries over the past few years, and use them as comment fodder when that annoying optimist co-worker goes on about how “blessed” they are on Facebook.

It's not fair to say that all of the people working in public relations “are evil” or “have rotten souls” or “make Satan blush” or “reek of dog snot” or “deserve to have their various orifices filled with flaming hot pokers whilst being forced to watch the entire series run of Mr. Belvedere.” That's just going overboard. They're not all like that. PR folks are, generally speaking, just highly-paid spammers who you can avoid with a well-defined email filter. Nothing more than a nuisance. But, when one of them goes and does something perfect, utterly perfect, like using Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as an excuse to pimp out cocktail recipes that “MLK Jr. Would Be Proud Of,” well, you start thinking that, if it's not “all” PR people, then maybe it's “most.”

You know when it gets late at a house party—after the drinks are done flowing, causing the crowd to dwindle to single digits—and it gets to that point when everyone starts revealing tales from their sexual history, and inevitability someone asks about the “craziest” place everyone's had sex? That shit's always a bore. The same old answers. “Plane bathroom,” “train station,” “after-hours at work.” When the party starts getting really interesting is when some depraved soul asks about the craziest thing everyone has ever masturbated with. That's where you separate the true sexual demons from prudes still using their “hands” to get off, like goddamned cavepersons. For instance, this guy who's been driving around Philly, window rolled down, pants-less with a block of Swiss cheese on his lap, pulling over and women if they'd, perhaps, want to wrap a slice of cheese around his—oh, let's call it a “rind”—and jerk him off. This dude. Whatever stories he has about going solo are way more fascinating than that time you got laid at the office Christmas party.

Are you on Instagram? Do you have a lot of friends, or family, or admirable celebrity types who reside in the city of Los Angeles? Does your feed, every evening right around 5 PM PST, take a break from its constant flow of dogs (occasionally, in hats) and babies (always in hats) and poorly-worded graffiti and terribly-lit selfies and #tbt's of your friends in their cute adolescence (and disappointingly never, never in their pubescent awkward years), and instead becomes basically a digital flip-book of that night's sunset? And the incredible #nofiltered colors coming through your phone make you want to remove your boot and throw it through the nearest window to allow your profane curses towards nature to be heard? And then, when LA has its tri- or quad-annual Giant Hilly Fire, wherein the entire city seems to be going up in apocalyptic flames, even then the city looks pretty goddamn beautiful. And so you buy gas masks and sunscreen, make an eye doctor's appointment to get your corrective lenses in tip-top working shape, and immediately book a flight because you have to see that shit for yourself? No? Just me?