All the Kids Want Something to Do

WE HUMANS SURE do love our drugs. And every once in a while someone comes up with a new and better way to ingest them. (Take the beer bong.) Now, for those of us who just want to stay drunk and oblivious while the GOP's here, there's a new way to go about it.

As you probably know already, the city's first AWOL machine arrived last week at Trust Lounge. "AWOL" stands for "Alcohol Without Liquid," and claims to be just that-the machine dispenses a booze mist, which you, the customer, then huff. Twenty minutes of huffing, we're told, and you'll get the equivalent of one shot in your system.

The manufacturer makes all sorts of fantastic claims for the machine-that you'll get a euphoric high but with a lower blood alcohol level; that it's low-carb and low-calorie; and best of all, that you'll have no hangover the next morning, because the alcohol has been mixed with oxygen. Plus, you'll feel tipsy almost immediately, because the booze is entering your bloodstream faster than it would if you drank it in the traditional way.

Whether the much-hyped devices are legal or not (they probably aren't) is neither here nor there. It just sounds really, really stupid. Another prefabricated fad inflicted on the hipsters, a gigglefest for amateurs, a simple twist on the long-dead "oxygen bar" idea, with the same longevity, most likely. The suckers'll buy into it for a little bit, though, because they always do.

More to the point, as we learned in middle school, if you sit down and huff most anything for 20 minutes, you're going to end up with a low-carb buzz.