Drop the wine cooler, Grandma, or go to jail
GREG BEAN Coda
In the end, it looks like stupidity won over common sense at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.

Since July, almost 500 of the dumbest people on the East Coast have managed to get themselves arrested for underage drinking and various other liquor-related offenses at the venue, and dozens have been treated at local hospitals for illnesses caused by excessive boozing.

At the two concerts prior to the recent Ozzfest, nearly 150 people were arrested and another 80 were busted at Ozzfest for various alcohol-related infractions. Two men, one from Forked River and one from Coram, N.Y., passed out at the concert and later went into cardiac arrest and died at Bayshore Community Hospital, Holmdel.

That brings the summer total to 490 arrests at the PNC Bank Arts Center since the crackdown on underage drinking began in July, almost 300 of them this month alone.

And of course, there are the two deaths.

In response, a very frustrated New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which owns the arts center and leases it to the operator, Live Nation, finally lowered the boom and said that because of the open defiance of many concertgoers - most of them under 21 - it would ban alcohol consumption in the parking lot before concerts altogether. Now, even if you're of legal drinking age, you'll be arrested if you pop a beer at your tailgate party. Not a single wine cooler, Grandma, or you'll wind up in the pokey.

For those of us who have enjoyed a tailgate party from time to time, and never drank enough to require hospitalization, that's a sad state of affairs. A bunch of morons have not only ruined it for those who obey the law and drink responsibly, but they have undoubtedly put the business of the arts center itself at risk. There's no way to estimate the impact the no-alcohol policy will have on future ticket sales, but everyone knows that because tailgate parties are an integral part of the concert experience for some fans, it will have a detrimental effect.

Can you imagine how many Grateful Dead fans will turn up for a concert at the PNC once they learn they can't drink a beer at the tailgate party beforehand?

Or a Willie Nelson concert?

Heck, if nobody is allowed to have a good time beforehand, even Willie himself might decide to give the PNC a miss.

And forget Jimmy Buffett without the margaritas.

The really unbelievable element of this whole conbobberation is that only a person with the intelligence quotient of a common garden slug should have been surprised that the cops were cracking down at the PNC, and that the odds of getting arrested this summer are about a thousand times greater than normal.

These lawbreakers knew that greatly increased numbers of state police officers were patrolling the parking lots with the specific mission of arresting underage drinkers, and they broke the law anyway. Not only that, but they flaunted their law breaking and metaphorically stuck their booze-addled tongues out at the officers, defying them to make an arrest. Or several hundred arrests, as it has turned out.

That, gentle readers, is the definition of stupidity.

As nearly every newspaper and media outlet covering the area reported earlier this summer, local politicians like Assemblywoman Amy Handlin (R-Monmouth and Middlesex) and Holmdel Mayor Serena DiMaso decided when 10 underage drinkers were sent to the hospital after a Gwen Stefani concert that something had to be done. They basically shamed the state police into showing up in force before the next concert and told anyone who would listen that arrests were going to be made.

Even so, police made 53 arrests at the next concert, 49 of them for underage drinking. At the concert after that, they made about 50 more, 12 of them drinkers under 18 (the youngest was 14).

At that point, and after promises were made by law enforcement that they would continue the crackdown all summer, or as long as it takes, you would have thought people might have gotten the message.

These rocket scientists didn't figure it out, though, and after almost 400 more arrests in a month, the Turnpike Authority said fuggedaboudit and announced a universal ban on drinking in the parking lot.

Now there are signs on the Garden State Parkway warning people about the ban, and there'll be more signs at the PNC - not to mention all the extra cops wandering around the place - which means that anyone who gets arrested there from now on will have the equivalent of a death wish. They'll actually want to get arrested.

The police will surely accommodate them, but as I said last month and still believe, it's too bad we can't fine them an extra $500 for the crime of public stupidity.

• • •

Speaking of stupidity, did you read about the South Carolina parts supplier who was arrested for charging the Pentagon almost a million dollars to ship two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas?

That, in itself, is an amazingly brazen crime, but the stupid part is that somebody in the government actually paid the bill. The same parts supplier also charged, and was paid, $455,009 to ship two machine screws to Iraq and almost $300,000 to ship another washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

I don't know about you, but I think if our federal government is going to pay that much for washers and screws, the state of New Jersey ought to quit worrying about its budget deficit, buy a couple of boxes of washers and screws from Home Depot, and go into the defense contracting business.

If the feds will pay almost a million bucks for two washers, think how much they'd pay for a whole box full?

I don't have a calculator handy, but I'll bet it would be a lot. Maybe even enough that we could quit talking about leasing the Turnpike.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of

Greater Media Newspapers. You can

reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.