COMING OF AGE in Nowhere, Ontario, my weekends were my own. While rumors circulated of the occasional bush party, or evenings spent standing in a semicircle in a local park, drinking rye whiskey out of a recycled water bottle, I regarded these adolescent excursions in underage drinking with a certain anxiety. Instead, I resolved to get hammered alone, and on camera, in an effort to understand my subjective experience from a more objective, and sober, remove. Shot on my father’s camcorder, “Drunk Avec Moi” captured me, seated in a chair in my parents’ basement, glugging down successive tumblers of purloined vodka cut with pulp-free Tropicana orange juice.
Rewatching it in the clearheaded light of day, I observed the effects of alcohol on myself. While I sat there, slumped, enjoying a movie on video cassette (Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, if memory serves) I became, in turn, more excitable, more annoying, and, finally, sleepier. I showed the tape to my buddy, and we immediately filmed a sequel. “Drunk Avec Toi” was mostly lots of us yelling and laughing. It climaxed with footage of the pair of us, blasted, dancing like bozos to an MP3.
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