A Cure for Hangovers?

Hard liquor has taken a nose-dive in sales recently. And if the club scene is a barometer, beer and wine might be the next to crash. It’s becoming more and more common for clubbies to consume so-called “smart drinks” made from vitamins, amino acids and oxygen, plus lots of hype.

The Miss Kitty Koncession girls who stroll the clubs sell them powdered in packets to be mixed with water or fruit juice. There’s even talk of a one-night Nutrient Cafe club being held next month if warehouse space can be found.

The upside of all this late-night healthiness is the absence of hangovers; the downside is, in the words of one imbiber, “the stuff tastes like really, really bad Tang.”

Tabloid Central

Fans of the National Enquirer, rejoice. If you’ve misplaced that important expose on Bigfoot or Delta Burke, now there is a place to find it again--Los Angeles Central Library. Your Buzz staff was surprised to discover that the library’s periodicals section not only stocks the last six months of the Enquirer, but also subscribes to the supermarket tabloids the Star and the Weekly World News.

Among library patrons, “the Enquirer is the most popular of the tabloids,” said a librarian, “but none of them are as popular as the regular out-of-town newspapers.” For our money, this week’s best tabloid buy is the Weekly World News, which scooped its competitors with the story of a housewife the newspaper says was buried in a Tupperware coffin.

Essentials

What you need to maneuver the L.A. scene:

“Pearls are almost always appropriate,” writes the etiquette columnist Miss Manners. One wonders what Miss Manners would say if confronted with the latest trend at L.A.’s hottest dance clubs--pearls for men. At clubs such as Arena and Catch One, dance-floor devotees have been spotted topping off their T-shirts and combat boots with pearl necklaces. Since the ‘70s are back in a major way, the inspiration here seems to be less Barbara Bush than Tim Curry in “The Rocky Picture Horror Show.”