Really, it's not my fault. Through sheer willpower I can pace myself so I'm just mildly drunk when the club closes, or the open bar shuts down.

Last night, though, there were two open bars.

The first -- the one I knew about in advance -- was at the screening of "The Vice Guide to Everything," which premieres on MTV December 6. I downed three or four Dark & Stormys, ably fortifying myself for an hour in a quiet theater. Introducing the screening, though, Vice founder Shane Smith announced the afterparty, and said there'd be "complimentary drinks and co-- . . . . I almost said cocaine."

C'mon, like you'd just go home afterward.

I was absolutely knocked out by the two preview episodes. The show is fascinating, intelligent, and manly, like Spike TV with a brain. Unlike Spike TV, though, the show offers substantially more information than just the odds that you'll be killed by a woman's cleavage. Jackass and Punkd pale in comparison: their stakes are way too low. So Steve-O gets punched in the balls. So Ke$ha gets humiliated. It's definitely not educational, and in fact it's totally erased from my brain the second the screen goes black.

Now imagine Steve-O sneaking into North Korea.

You wonder why we've got thousands of boring news programs (Hi Katie!), yet nobody's thought of doing this. It's 60 Minutes in American Apparel. They confirm our suspicions that organized crime rules Naples, Italy, and its pop music. (Unbelievable, right? I mean, Nicki Minaj is clearly famous because of her talent.) We get visible proof of the craziness of Kim Jong Il, who puts on a stadium show of Olympic caliber, with a cast of 150,000 and an audience of several dozen. We visit a Mexican theme park where you pretend to sneak into the U. S. (Look out for Lou Ferrigno!)

A couple segments veer into Spike TV territory. They imply that DIY strip clubs are a real trend yet show us only one, run by a disabled dude in his mother's basement. A Yemeni skateboarder talks about the dangers of dating women in burqas. (Avoid the ones with really pretty eyes!)

Still, it's entertaining, informative, and consistently outrageous. The segments are over long before they wear out their welcome.

At the afterparty, at trendy Lit nightclub in the East Village, there was no mention of cocaine, but the alcohol overflowed. The crowd was attractive and diverse, like where you had to spin people around a couple times before you could take a stab at gender. Thank God for the facial-hair trend. Downstairs was a live band, and upstairs the DJ played a time line of hard rock, offering golden oldies like X's "Johnny Hit N' Run Pauline" and Plastic Bertram's "Ca Plan Pour Moi." I chatted briefly with Mr. Smith, who's quite charismatic on TV (emphasize the last two words there; still, he explained that he was drunk and had just flown back from Afghanistan) and absolutely adorable cast (and team?) member Ryan Duffy, who introduced himself by name despite the fact I'd just watched him for an hour. He confirmed that his lap dance was "epicly sad" and appreciated my praise for the show.

I stumbled out three hours after my mouth stopped working, and this morning can't put together a thought. As always, Vice has a work of genius on its hands. Its ambitions have thrown it into bold new territory. Once again they've proven that they're the folks to watch, offering the template that the middle-class media needs to follow, and shown that there's a reason why reasonably mature people squeal like Ned Beatty when they spot Vice invitations in their Inbox.