The king of beers will be renamed “America” over the summer to foster a mood of . . . I don’t know. Drunken patriotism. To properly drink it, one must stand up and remove his cap lest he be branded a terrorist. Should you get pulled over by a cop after imbibing in the jingoistic brew, simply tell the frowning officer that you have a belly full of ice cold America! He’ll salute you and send you on your way. Go to bed, son. I’ve never seen you this patriotic.

Cross here. Or don’t.

Did I wake up drunk this morning? Or did I just read that in Lewiston, they’ll be replacing some city crosswalks with hot dog-shaped lines in order to “test more whimsical pedestrian crossings.” It’s got to be the drunk thing. The average person can’t figure out how to use a crosswalk when it consists only of two parallel lines. Now they’re supposed to make sense of random deli meat in the roadway? The city is trolling us. When you consider the inexplicable bicycle lanes on top of this hot dog madness, I’m pretty sure that it all spells out some cryptic message if viewed from above. “Ha ha!” is what it likely says. “Got you! You should see your face!” We’ll all enjoy that during our balloon rides in late summer.

I’m sorry. I already started writing the ticket.

In the spirit of “whimsy” that the city seems to be embracing, how about replacing all those downtown parking meters with giant lollipops or something?

North Woods Lawless

A Portland newspaper has accused the Maine Warden Service of showing off for the cameras, saying they used shady practices that bordered on entrapment during an undercover investigation in the Allagash. The warden service, meanwhile, issued a blistering response saying, in essence, “Nuh uh.” I’m not sure where the truth lies, but it made for one riveting read: a tale involving poaching, purloined peaches and cool cases of fizzy America drunk on the back roads of the Maine wilderness.

He said what?

Gov. Paul LePage, meanwhile, jumped into the North Woods fray, expressing dismay over the practices of the Warden Service and, in the same breath, lambasting the newspaper for revealing those practices. Before anyone could react to that apparent hypocrisy, the governor went on to take credit for the cancellation of an Animal Planet reality show. He’s going to be vice president, you know.

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