Life's Pleasures Quote by Dean Martin

Dean Martin takes a public-safety slogan and sands it down into a punchline, the way a great lounge performer can turn civic duty into bedroom banter. "If you drink don't drive" arrives with the stiff, officious cadence of a PSA. Then the tag - "Don't even putt" - swerves into absurd specificity, shrinking the moral panic of drunk driving to the miniature seriousness of a golf green. The joke isn’t just that putting is harmless; it’s that American masculinity treats even leisure like a competitive arena where control matters. Martin’s comic move is to say: if you’re impaired, your dignity will still crash, even at two miles per hour.

The intent is to deflate without denying. He nods at responsibility, but refuses to become preachy. That balance is the signature of a mid-century entertainer whose brand was effortless cool: a man often presented with a drink in hand, operating inside a culture that glamorized cocktails while quietly accumulating the wreckage of addiction and road fatalities. The subtext is a kind of negotiated compliance: yes, be sensible, but let’s keep it fun, keep it suave, keep it in character.

It also works because it plays on Martin’s persona - the tipsy, velvet-voiced rake - while subtly undercutting it. The line admits that alcohol doesn’t just endanger others; it makes you look ridiculous at the smallest tasks. That’s the real threat in a Rat Pack universe: not death, but the loss of cool.