June 03

April 16: Sir Kingsley Amis’s Birthday
It's Sir Kingsley Amis’s Birthday. British author Amis wrote some helluva good books about drinking, including the bestselling novel Lucky Jim, and an excellent trio of booze bibles, namely On Drink, Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass? From the pages of Lucky Jim, here's Kingsley's description of a world-class hangover. "He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”