(Photo by James Fischer)

Some friends and I were at a bowling alley in Los Angeles a few years ago. We wanted a drink and went to the bar. I feel like I am understating when I say that this bowling alley bar was the saddest place I ever entered. I am not sure I can do the utter and complete melancholy of this room justice. I will try.

The red velvety-pimp décor of the bar dated back to the 1970s. The furniture, floor and signs – all of which I’m pretty sure were made of vinyl – had never been updated or dusted. It was the type of room in which a drug dealer would feel comfortable selling cocaine to the young star of the local high school basketball team.

The five or six people who were sitting at the bar looked like they had just had their souls crushed. Their faces were a mixture of despair and apathy. It was as if they had just witnessed something awful, but had not yet processed their emotions and maybe never would. I know this look because it is the look on the face of every Cleveland Browns fan around 4:30 on Sunday afternoons in the fall.
  
The bartender – she had the cold, lifeless eyes of a great white shark. I could tell she was going through the motions, hating life, praying every day for a car accident on the way to work. Then she would take the settlement money, travel Europe for a summer and maybe go to community college, anything so that she would never have to return to that bowling alley bar, to the soul-sucking reality that occupied the space between the Galaga machine and the men’s room, to her personal hell on earth.

The beer was cheap, so it was not all bad.
 
My experience that night got me thinking. Is this the saddest place in which I have ever had a drink? I do not mean saddest place like the back of my buddy’s car, in the park, with no girls around, wondering what is inside the Burger King bag on his dirty floor that is making the bag shake sporadically. I mean sad like, “What are the saddest places – in public – where people gather to drink legally?” Below you will find my answers. Feel free to add your own.

First up, the honorable mentions: strip club bar, bar in a Chinese restaurant, pool hall bar, casino bar, chain hotel bar and theme park bar. More often than not the people in these places just look depressed. But they have less reason to be depressed than people in a …

5. Mall bar
Mall bars are sad for many reasons. First of all, there’s the location. Twenty yards from your bar stool, mocking you with its joy and innocence, you can probably find a candy store or a toy store or a Build-A-Bear. If you’re any type of man, you have to think to yourself, “Would Sinatra have ordered a drink in a gin joint that faced a Build-A-Bear?” You know the answer.

(Above: Typical view from the inside of a mall bar. Photo by Jim Moore.)

Even worse, mall bars remind you how much your hometown sucks. You don’t even have a real bar in your town. You have to go to the mall bar. Nothing cool happens at mall bars. At a real bar, fights break out. At a real bar, people hook up. At a real bar, everything doesn’t smell like Panda Express. The best night ever at a mall bar probably would involve some type of drunken escapade with the mall Santa. That’s the good-times ceiling on a mall bar – Santa getting wasted and making dry love to the Golden Tee machine.
 
4. The neighborhood sports bar that time forgot
Thanks to ESPN and satellite television, back in the 1980s neighborhood sports bars sprang up across the country as quickly as comedy clubs. Much like those comedy clubs, the sports bar scene fizzled out when cable made quality home entertainment cheap and plentiful. Comedy clubs never mounted a comeback. But a second generation of sports bars – most of them the size of a Best Buy – have succeeded where the first wave failed. The era of the small neighborhood sports bar is dead – almost. In every town, there is one sports bar owner who refuses to give up the dream. He owns the neighborhood sports bar time forgot. The pennants and team photos on the walls are from the late 1980s. Some of the neon beer signage advertises beer that is no longer available. The bar has three levels of sunken floors, pretty much guaranteeing that at some point you will break your ankle. The only piece of technology in the building that dates past Dec. 31, 1989 is the flat-screen television. That includes the condom machine in the bathroom and its Miami Vice-brand prophylactics, which I just made up, but if real would contain the slogan, “Got a Crockett in your pocket?” The bar is known for being cheap and almost always open. In an ironic twist, the rummy daytime regulars do not give a shit about sports.
 
3. Airport bar

(Above: The airport bar - so welcoming, so happy, so filled with various animal skin patterns. Photo by Burns.)

The airport bar is the mall bar’s cousin. It is a victim of its environment. Airport bars tend to blend into the rest of the airport. Over at the bar you might see a guy drinking his third scotch in an hour. Ten feet away where the bar randomly “ends,” little kids run around and play. The juxtaposition is heartbreaking. Enjoy childhood, Jacob, because this will be you in 40 years, drunk, alone, away from your family, nothing to comfort you but three fingers of single-malt scotch while you wait in vain for a plane that won’t actually arrive from Chicago until tomorrow morning. Run, Jacob. Run as far as your little legs will carry you. Also, airport bars are horribly lit. Why are they so bright? Bars are dark for a reason. Dark is soothing. Dark is sexy. Dark hides ugly. Neon lighting provides none of those benefits. Even worse, if there was ever a bar in which you did NOT want to see what the other patrons look like, it is an airport bar, with its mix of its road-weary middle-aged consultants from Boston and hammered cougars on their way to Miami. The other big downer is the reason people go there. One of the main reasons people drink at an airport bar is to get so loaded they fall asleep quickly on the plane. I understand that, but it does not make for a festive atmosphere. If you see someone at an airport bar smiling, probably they were remembering a time when they were at another bar.

2. Chain restaurant bars
People do not go to Applebee’s or T.G.I Friday’s to drink. They end up there. There is a big difference between going somewhere and ending up somewhere. You go to a bar because you are meeting friends there or you know there will be sexy people there or because the people there know you. You end up at a bar when you have run out of friends to meet at bars, you do not care if anyone around you is sexy and you do not have anyplace better to go. It is a matter of intent. I like Applebee’s and T.G.I. Friday’s as restaurants. You can get a decent meal at an affordable price anywhere in the country. That is a valuable service. But when I walk by the bar area of these restaurants, I get mixed feelings. On one hand I am looking at a group of people whose presence is saying, “I want to get out of the house. I want to have a drink. I want to live, even just a little.” On the other hand, their presence also is saying, “There is nowhere better to go.” They did not go there. They ended up there. Still not sold on the go there/end up there dichotomy? Here is a quick list of places that people go to: movie theaters, restaurants, concerts. Here is a quick list of places that people end up at: hospitals, jails, cemeteries.
 
1. Bowling alley bar

(Above: A bowling alley. It probably has a bar. The bar probably serves sadness on tap. Photo by Dave_Mcmt.)

I am sure the bowling alley bar is a fun place to hang on league night or during a company outing. I just never have been inside one when people were having a good time. On a weekend night, when bowling alleys are populated by teenagers, twenty-somethings and families, the bowling alley bar is a wasteland of tortured souls. The average bowling alley bar is populated with people whose lives are filled with 7-10 splits. Circumstance has removed the bowling ball from their hands and they have been asked to convert life’s spares with a Peanut M&M. Maybe this is why they drink at the bowling alley. Perhaps there is comfort in shared futility, in knowing that bowling and life deal out more 115s than 300s. The gutter - in all of its forms - is quite visible from the stool of a bowling alley bar. On the plus side, the beer – I remind you – is cheap, and there is little chance that you will wander off at the end of the evening and construct a grotesque five-headed Build-A-Bear.

I cannot end without adding one more thought.

All of the sad places that I have listed here are potentially great places to drink if you are with the right people. My brother Dan has a theory that when you are in a group setting, watching awful television is more fun than watching smart television because you can make jokes and rip on awful television. His theory also works for bars. You can get a solid hour of entertainment alone from a pre-1984 jukebox or from interior decorating that appears to have occurred by accident. Bottom line: You can make a sad bar the best bar ever. It just takes the right people, the right frame of mind and about 17 pitchers of beer.

(Photo by scragz/Flickr) 

I am a proponent of lowering the drinking age and have been for a long time. I was probably 16 the first time I thought, “They should really lower the drinking age – as soon as possible. This afternoon would be ideal.”
 
Were those the foolish thoughts of a selfish teenager? Or were they the intelligent thoughts of a teen aware of the effect binge-drinking was having on his generation? I like to think they were a little bit of both, even though that would be not true.

My cause now has a proper champion. This summer more than 100 university presidents and chancellors signed their names to a public statement that says the 21 year-old drinking age is not working. They say it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on campus. The group calls itself the Amethyst Initiative, which is not what I would have named it, but I doubt The Washington Post would take the group seriously if it called itself, “The Everyone Just Cool Out and Booze-It-Up Responsibly Coalition.”

(Above: The first annual meeting of The Everyone Just Cool Out and Booze-It-Up Responsibly Coalition. philipshannon/Flickr.)

The Amethyst Initiative is led by John McCardell, whom foxnews.com writer Radley Balko describes as “the soft-spoken former president of Middlebury in Vermont.” McCardell is our Blutarsky to the federal government’s Dean Wormer, and he appears to be the right man for the job because he is, in a word, sobering. He’s the kind of man who looks good in grey.

(This guy, on the other hand, merits consideration the Spirit Award, but it’s doubtful that lawmakers would take him as seriously as Old Man McCardell.)
 
In 2004 McCardell wrote a powerful Op-Ed in The New York Times that said “the 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law.”

McCardell continued, “State legislators, many of whom will admit the law is bad, are held hostage by the denial of federal highway funds if they reduce the drinking age. Our latter-day prohibitionists have driven drinking behind closed doors and underground. This is the hard lesson of prohibition that each generation must relearn. No college president will say that drinking has become less of a problem in the years since the age was raised. Would we expect a student who has been denied access to oil paint to graduate with an ability to paint a portrait in oil? Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open.”
 
I have been drinking alcohol legally for 11 years. On paper, it does not appear that I have a dog in this fight. But I do.

I’m tired of people who drink like assholes.

Much like Kegmeister General McCardell, I believe that drinking like an asshole – that is to say, repeatedly drinking to the detriment of oneself and others – is learned behavior. (Not all of the time - but in a large number of cases.) If you’re 16 and you’re drinking at a party with no adult supervision, odds are you or one of your friends is going to act like an asshole. Without seasoned drinkers around to veto your idiocy with a timely, “Don’t be an asshole,” this asinine behavior is repeated, copied and reinforced – for years. Anyone who goes to bars often enough sees the end results.

(Above: The end results. Bistrosavage/Flickr.)

Teenagers are socialized by their peers. None of my friends in high school sipped an aperitif while discussing the issues of the day before a delightful repast of Burger King. We drink fast and hard – the better to catch a quick buzz and avoid being busted. This is not the proper role of alcohol among civilized people.

The proper role of alcohol is to lower one’s inhibitions so that social gatherings are more enjoyable. Alcohol is a social lubricant. According to my Caveman Theory, which will be the subject of an upcoming column, human beings spent thousands of years suspicious of other human beings – for fear that outsiders might kill them or steal their valuable pelts. As a result, there is a natural tendency to eye newcomers with apprehension. Alcohol can lessen our anxiety in social situations and allow us to be open to meeting new people. It also can help us enjoy spending time with people we already know. The proper role of alcohol is to un-pucker the human sphincter – symbolically, of course.

A 16-year-old drinking in the back of a Buick LeSabre does not learn this valuable fact.

According to the Amethyst Initiative, the word amethyst comes from the ancient Greek words meaning “not” (a-) and “intoxicated” (methustos). According to mythology, Amethyst was a young girl who incurred the wrath of the god of wine, Dionysus, after he became intoxicated with red wine. (Who didn’t see that coming?) Amethyst asked the goddess Diana for help. Diana turned the girl into a white stone. (Some help.) Upon discovering what had happened Dionysus wept (he was probably drunk again), and as his tears fell into his goblet the wine spilled over the white rock, turning it purple.

The purple gemstone amethyst was widely believed to be an antidote to the negative effects of intoxication. (This was before Chaser.) In Greece, drinking vessels often were made of amethyst and used during feasts to ward off drunkenness, promote moderation and keep whiney Greek chicks from being turned to stone.

The ancient Greeks were smart. They crafted their beer mugs out of a material that reminded them, “Don’t drink like an asshole.”

American teens don’t have that type of guidance when it matters most – in the moment.

(Above: The ancient Greek way of saying, “You go sober up now, pal.” tourist_on_earth/Flickr.)

We learned how to drive from our mothers, fathers and older siblings. We learned how to read from our teachers. We learned about sex from a 55-year-old health teacher/defensive coordinator. But we never learned how to drink properly from people who do. We were left to our own devices. It was like handing a loaded gun to a guy who doesn’t know what a loaded gun does, but enjoys aiming things at people. Bad things were bound to happen. They did.

I will never begrudge an honest man’s – or business’s – attempt to make money. The world turns on a dollar – as it should. Because businesses advertise to increase sales, I have never taken issue with television commercials, billboards, product placements, etc. The reason we have so many great Internet sites, magazines, newspapers and television networks to enjoy is that businesses are willing to advertise on them. The system works for me because I like variety. I have never complained about this. Until now.

For the first time in my life, I object to product placement. It happened last week while I was reading my July 2008 copy of Playboy. The first photo of Miss July Laura Croft (this link contains nude photos Croft, but not the ones used in the actual magazine) features her at a party on a yacht, wearing a bikini, holding a Corona while talking to a hunky blonde guy who also is holding a Corona. I don’t want to accuse Playboy of airbrushing its photos, but those are the most delicious Coronas I have ever seen. It’s not exactly the best-tasting beer in the world, but I kind of want one right now.

Advertising, you siren.

The opposite page features a shot of Croft from the chest up with no nudity. It is stunning and easily the best photo in the magazine. (Sorry, James Woods.)

Turn the page. There’s a half-page photo of Croft sprawled out all alone on the back of the yacht. Now I have questions. What happened to the party? Did Admiral Poon order everyone off the ship? How did Croft’s bikini end up beside her? Why is she holding her Corona like a Geisha serving a powerful Japanese businessman? Would the businessman demand a lime wedge in his Corona? Who left that full Corona grenade on the rail behind her? How did Corona beat Miller - a brewer that sends scores of hot women into bars to increase men’s awareness of light beer - to the pages of Playboy? Is Corona out-Millering Miller? When was the last time I thought this much about Corona? I wonder what Jimmy Buffett is doing right now.

(Above: This is probably what Jimmy Buffett is doing right now.) 

On the bottom half of the page Croft has flipped over on her back. Her beer is now on the rail next to the full beer behind her so there are two Coronas in the background. At this point my eyes are only following the Coronas. How did they get there? Why would she walk her beer all the way across the boat when there is a drink holder two feet from her behind? What’s with all the grenades? Will I see those beers again?

I am not disappointed. There they are. The next page is a full shot of Croft kneeling with her bikini top in her hand. To her right are those same two unfinished Coronas, which are really starting to bother me because she and Admiral Poon have had plenty of time to drink them. Any sense of advertising subtlety – or pornographic reality – has been completely obliterated. I want to focus on the nudity, but all I can think about is how those Coronas were really shoehorned into this shoot.

Turn the page. Croft is no longer on the yacht. In a half-page shot she is bent over a breakfast table with her pajama bottoms pulled down and her chin in her palm. I know this is probably going to sound crazy, but it looks to me like she is thinking about Corona. The beer is not in the shot, but her face says, “I know it’s 8 AM and we should really be eating these sexy berries and drinking this sexy milk, but how about you grab me a Corona and we see where the morning takes us?” This is truly a breakthrough in product placement – product placement with no product.

Moving on. On the bottom half of the page Croft is doing things to herself on the breakfast table that were never intended by the breakfast table maker, unless Bob Guccione now manufactures breakfast tables. I glanced at the mirror next to my desk and – I am not kidding – the look on my face now says that I’m thinking about a Corona. The beer is not in my office, or on the page, but my face says, “I know I am supposed to be writing a column, but how about I grab a Corona from the fridge and see where the morning takes me?” The product placement is no longer subliminal. It is liminal.

(Above: I’m talking about the man in the mirror.)

The next page is a full-page shot of Croft leaning against a rock in a waterfall. The implication is clear. If you start your morning off with a Corona (not pictured) you will be in Hawaii that afternoon with a naked Playmate in a waterfall. Croft is wearing a yellow top that is soaked and falling off her body. In my mind she now looks like a delicious bottle of Corona. I either want to drink her or make sweet, sweet love to a six-pack. I have completely lost track of what sexually arouses me at this point.
 
Finally, I come to the centerfold. Croft is back on the boat, breasts exposed from her open wetsuit, no bottoms. She is dripping wet. There is no Corona in sight. Finally, some real porn that a real guy like me can enjoy. Then I look at the Playmate Data Sheet, which is always a must-read. When asked to list the five things she always has in her fridge, her first response is “beer.” I don’t think we have to guess what type of beer. We know it’s a certain light Mexican beer whose hop compounds degrade in the sunlight, which forces drinkers to mask the skunky odor with a wedge of lime.

The other four things that are always in her fridge are hummus, ranch dressing, hamster food and hot pickled okra. Looking back, I am glad that it was Corona that wound up in the shoot. I am not sure what the sight of bottle after bottle of hot pickled okra would have done to my now-fragile sexuality. Same for hamster food.

I realize Playboy needs revenue. The company, which is usually immune to financial tumult, lost money in the first quarter of 2008. My advice to Playboy is that – and I can’t believe I am about to write this – to succeed as an adult magazine it must maintain the integrity of its nudity. Everyday guys and lesbians don’t want to see Playmates with name-brand products people trust. That’s fine on “30 Rock.” I am never taken out of the moment when Liz Lemon drinks a Snapple. In Playboy, such a move does take you out of the moment. Hence, my newly-gnarled sexuality.

I think companies should be free to use product placement in any manner they desire. I object to product placement when it shatters the moment artistically.

All of which goes to show you the power of advertising – it even has the ability to distract men from breasts.

Every week I bookmark dozens of articles that I consider column-worthy. From those bookmarks I narrow my choices down to one topic. You have seen the end results in columns such as The War on Drugs is Being Fought in Your Toilet, Deloitte & Touche & Women, and Robots Cannot Love.

Obviously, I can’t use every article. And obviously I don’t want to waste the time I spend researching either. So this week I thought I’d share ten of the hundreds of stories that I have bookmarked since July that will never be featured as columns.

We’ll call it the First Ever Joe Donatelli Aborted Column Spectacular.

No, wait, the word aborted is kind of grim. It makes me think of military air strikes that were called off at the last moment. And that’s just sad. Poor little air strikes never had a chance.

We’ll call it the First Ever Joe Donatelli Cavalcade of Dead Baby Columns.

In an article entitled Binge Drinkers Prefer Beer, Bloomberg News reports that three quarters of binge drinkers prefer beer over other types of alcohol. I thought this made sense. It’s hard to binge on vodka. You’ll – what’s the word? – die.

Another beer-related story that I found on FOXnews.com brought my long-awaited dream of a merger between Keystone Ice and Gold’s Gym one step closer to reality. Spanish researchers have found that Beer After Exercise May Be Better Than Water. Don’t laugh at this. Spanish-funded research is the reason America was discovered. When the Spanish research something, you can bet that it will eventually establish a constitutional rule of law based on individual rights, carry the world economically and produce the only movies worth watching. Jogging and drinking will put a man on Mars by 2050. Trust me.

Sometimes I see articles that work well in combination together. Here are two fun ones. A story on the Voice of America web site says that Older Americans Are Staying Sexually Active. The story claims that 26 percent of people between the ages of 75 and 85 are having sex. Then I found a USA Today blog that says A Seventh of Elderly Americans Suffer From Dementia. Now I have to wonder, what percentage of that 26 percent that is claiming to have sex is also suffering from dementia? It’s not sex if you’re walking around the Benetton with no pants on, grandpa. It may be a fucking good time. It may be something we should all do at least once in our lives. But it’s not sex.

Here’s a story that comes out at least once every six months. In an article entitled Film Smoking Sways Teens, Study Shows, The Hollywood Reporter reports on a new study that claims to link smoking on film and teenage tobacco use. No way. If this was true, film would influence other social behaviors as well. As a child I watched American Ninja at least a dozen times, and at no point did I ever wait silently in a ceiling rafter only to descend upon my enemy, slit his throat, throw a smoke bomb and disappear into a cool mountain mist in further search of the man who murdered my sensei. Did I want to? Yes. Did I act on this impulse? No.

(Above: Private Joe Armstrong kicked ass so I didn’t have to.)

Sometimes I grab a story just for the headline. I can’t resist any article with a title like Pac-Man Finds Next Level Of Fear Research. The Nobel Prize for Totally Fucked Up Research goes to the Wellcome Trust centre for neuroimaging at the University College London, which modified a version of Pac-Man to deliver electric shocks to people to see how they react to danger.

Two questions:

1. Do you think the Wellcome Trust centre is located in London’s historic Thannk Yoou District?

2. Why Pac-Man?

Pac-Man is one of the only nonviolent video games that people love. If the Wellcome Trust centre wanted to instill fear in people – and I think it’s hilarious that anything called the Wellcome Trust centre wants to instill fear in people – it should have forced players to spend more than five minutes playing E.T. on the Atari 2600. I would claw a man’s skin inside out and build a ladder with his blood-wet bones to get the hell away from playing E.T. on the Atari 2600. If you played this game, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Here are two more stories that belong together. In a story called A First For The FCC: Fining Fake News, prwatch.org reports that the Federal Communications Commission is fining broadcasters that air video news releases without disclosing that they’re not actually news. Meanwhile FEMA held a ‘News Conference’ during the recent wildfires in California in which FEMA staffers posed as real reporters. So … will the FCC be fining FEMA? Also, can someone please tend to the lump of grey matter that now rests in front of my laptop? I was just thinking about how these are the same people who are responsible for the fact that I have to pay $12 a month to hear Howard Stern and my head exploded. Please put whatever is left of my brain back on top of my neck. Thank you.

I love this story – Pentagon Confirms It Sought to Build a Gay Bomb. It’s true. It was tested once, on Feb. 5, 2006 in Pittsburgh, Pa., on the day the Steelers won Super Bowl XL. It was a complete success.

And finally, according Great Britain’s Telegraph, Italy’s Biggest Business Is The Mafia. Some countries should just be forced to start over. Here are five signs your country has failed completely and needs to file for the U.N. equivalent of Chapter 11:

1. You were on the losing side of more than three wars in the last 100 years.
2. You have failed to mass-produce a decent automobile.
3. You can’t break double digit medals at the Summer Olympics.
4. There are more people of your nation’s descent in New York City than in your capital.
5. The Bill Gates of your country started his career by leaning against a street corner lamppost flipping a coin.

That last one could go on for a whole column. Let’s have some fun with this. Send me your qualifications for when a country should be forced to start over. If I use them, I will give you credit in the column. Best entry wins a special prize to be determined. If we can come up with about 20 I’ll write a whole column about it.

If you don’t, you will have killed a dead baby.

To read Joe’s previous column The Best Holiday click here.

Many of my friends are having babies. This, of course, is unfortunate. I’m happy for them, sure. But let’s be honest. Do we really need more people? Aren’t there already enough? Isn’t all this procreation putting an incredible strain on our national resources? What if we run out of bauxite?

My protests, which I utter under my breath and out of earshot, always fall on deaf ears that are not listening. As such, I have resigned myself to the fact that my friends who once celebrated Easter by throwing a watermelon out of a second-story dorm window are now, or soon will be, responsible for fragile human lives.

Yes, the same people who once considered the margarita a vital food group now have important decisions to make. Should they burn the college photo album or hide it? Remove the “Natural Light Forever” tattoo or have an artist turn it into the more baby-friendly “Natal LiFer”? Go to homecoming or attend daughter’s first birthday party?

Perhaps the most difficult decision of all: Should they give their child a normal, traditional name or follow through on their junior-year promise to name their firstborn kid Kegerator Powerchugger?

Tough call.

My friend Sara and her sister Laura are currently in the process of naming Laura’s baby. In spite of months of effort, the sisters have discovered that the baby-naming game can be a snake pit filled with fire-breathing sharks that can fly.

“It’s the parents’ first permanent decision,” Laura said. “You can buy furniture together and if you don’t like it, it can be replaced. You can buy a house and if it doesn’t suit your needs five years down the line, you move. You can alter almost any decision you come to together, but a kid’s name is NOT an easy thing to change.

If you changed it at age 5, they’d be all sorts of confused.”

According to Laura, the plethora of options has parents all sorts of confused too.

At the turn of the last century, all male children in the United States were named Frank or Joe. Anyone not named Frank or Joe was sent to Canada, and rightfully so. Now there are so many names to choose from, it’s like every American kid is a Canadian.

According to www.babycenter.com, the 10 most popular names for boys in 2003 were Jacob, Aidan, Ethan, Matthew, Nicholas, Joshua, Ryan, Michael, Zachary and Tyler. For girls: Emily, Emma, Madison, Hannah, Hailey, Sarah, Kaitlyn, Isabella, Olivia and Abigail.

These are hardly Biblical classics - except for Tyler, the patron saint of Pabst beer and kicking butt at darts.

This month’s “Playboy” - a magazine from which I get an estimated 97 percent of my parenting news - says that 298 girls were named Armani in 2000. The magazine also listed seven Courvoisiers, six Timberlands, five Celicas and one Xerox. I’m assuming that Xerox was the second in a set of twins, but I could be way off.

What’s more, actress Gwyneth Paltrow and rocker Chris Martin recently upped the ante by naming their daughter Apple. It’s no rapper-endorsed cognac, but it’s a nice name. Personally, it makes me think of apples.

Bottom line: Being a parent in today’s world, even when you’re not quite a parent yet because the baby hasn’t been born, isn’t easy. To my friends and all others who will soon be parents, I offer this advice - be original. The world doesn’t need another Jacob or Emily.

I recommend Bauxite if it’s a boy. Kegerator Powerchugger if it’s a girl.

(Originally published 5/19/04.)

Click here to read the previous column “French, Russians and Canadians Proved Wrong: You Can Be Happy.”

If you have a comment, e-mail me at joedonatellicolumn@gmail.com.