DRUNKEN JOURNALIST R.I.P.: Andrew Sullivan has a wonderful link today to an obit for British journalist Graham Mason, who died recently at the age of 59. Not to make light of alcoholism, but this guy sounds like someone I would have loved to get smashed with:

Graham Edward Mason was born on July 19 1942 in Cape Town, South Africa. He had been conceived on a sand dune, and to this, as a devotee of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, he sometimes attributed his abrasive character...Mason was a fearsome sight at his most drunkenly irascible. Seated at the bar, his thin shanks wrapped around the legs of a high stool, he would swivel his reptilian stare round behind him to any unfortunate stranger attempting to be served, and snap: "Who the f-- are you?" Sometimes this prompted a reaction, and on one occasion a powerful blow to the head sent Mason flying, with his stool, across the carpet. Painfully clawing himself upright, he set the stool in its place, reseated himself and, twisting his head round again, growled: "Don't you ever do that again."

Just go read the whole thing. It's wonderful.