I do not typically endorse products, mostly because no one is paying me to. (If any eccentric billionaires or benevolent corporations have an offer, you know my contact info!) However, there are some products I enjoy so much that I can, nay must sing their praises on this blog.
It's Memorial Day weekend, the true start of summer. This weekend and those that follow for the next few months will be full of cookouts and sweaty outdoor activities tailor-made for drinking beers. The catch, however, is that on a hot day a beer must not merely taste good, it must also quench the thirst.
Craft beers may be great, but they fail this crucial test. Normally I stan darker beers, but drinking an imperial stout on a 90 degree day just feels flat out gross. Craft brewers have gone all in on IPAs in recent years, whose hoppiness makes my mouth puckery and dry. This is anathema on a hot day. Fruitier beers avoid this problem, but their sugar combined with hot sunshine can make me feel zapped.
On a hot summer day it's best not to get fancy. A can of good old fashioned mass market lager can do the trick. Its watery nature quenches the thirst and goes down easy. The problem is that such beers are often bland, taste like crap, have a weird aftertaste, or lose one street cred. This is why you have to take a step down to the bottom shelf at the liquor store and grab what a friend calls "a shitty local beer." In this dusty area you will not see cans of beer with cute names or animal mascots, but beers that look like they haven't updated their graphic design since the Ford administration.
This is why I love me some 'gansett.
It's got enough flavor that it's not Bud Light piss water, but doesn't have the weird aftertaste of Coors Banquet. They also often sell it with their rad 1975 can design, which makes you look pretty cool while drinking it. Hell, if it's good enough for Captain Quint, it's good enough for me.
So this summer bring some 'gansetts to the cookout and reap the rewards.
I have been having a hard time finding writing inspiration recently, so I've decided to kick off a new series: Commercials from Hell. This is inspired by the amazing website Trailers From Hell, where commenters give glosses on old B movie trailers. This series will involve me writing about old television commercials and ad campaigns.
I have been consuming too many of these ads because late at night I find myself to watching old blocs of commercials on YouTube gleaned from old VHS tapes used to tape things off of TV (remember that?) Nothing puts me back into the past like these ads, since they don't get rerun, unlike the shows. They thus tend to be pretty amazing cultural artifacts of their time.
I want to start with the Night Belongs to Michelob campaign. Michelob is a product without a niche today, but back in the dark ages before craft beer it was Busch's "premium" beer. This meant that it tasted slightly less watery than Budweiser, and cost a little more. As a premium product, Busch would have to have a premium ad campaign. What better way to show class than a commercial with Phil Collins and Genesis!
I am struck by the juxtaposition of the young singles in fashionable yet bourgeois clothes with middle-aged rockers Genesis. Did they think this was going to sell to both age groups? Did the makers of this think that Genesis was super hip? Phil Collins skullet should have disabused the ad execs of that notion. There's also the awful moment where a guy puts a move on a young woman and puts his hands behind her neck, bottle of Michelob in hand.
Despite those off notes, there is an irresistibly noir element to all of this. Neon signs. Steam rising from manholes. Rain slicked streets. The song may be 80s cheese, but there's enough minor key mood that it sort of works with the commercial. When I saw it back in 1987 as an 11 year old, it gave me a bit of a thrill. Is this what being an adult was like? Seductive glances from across the bar, geezer rock, and a Michelob in hand? It was certainly alluring than beer ads with animal mascots and outdoorsy men going fishing. Premium beer indeed.
Michael Lewis' Moneyball might be the most influential book written about baseball, since it popularized many of the baseball management strategies used by the Oakland As. Their great innovation was to win without a lot of money by taking advantage of inefficiencies in the system. By using stats such as on base percentage when scouting players, for example, they could pick up great players for cheap who may have lacked the obvious physical attributes of the more highly prized prospects.
I have my own strategy, which I call Moneybeer, for getting tasty beers at a good price. The beers may not be as delectable as say an Edmund Fitzgerald Porter or Two Hearted Ale (two of my favorites), but for the money they're pretty damn good. They are Scott Hatteberg to craft beers' Mike Trout and Budweiser's Marv Throneberry. Not only are they better tasting than the name brands, they're also usually cheaper, too. Here are some of my candidates for best beer for the money. Old Milwaukee
Old Milwaukee evidently made you a mountain man back in the 80s
I remember back in the 1990s, before the craft beer craze had fully saturated beer culture in America, Consumer Reports did a ranking of beers by blind taste test. (The beers were all relatively mass-produced.) Old Milwaukee won, which surprised me, since I always associated it with those cheesy "it doesn't get any better than this" commercials. But you know what? Yesterday it was hot as balls and I went to a Mets game with a friend. I packed a couple of Old Milwaukee tall boys in my ice chest to drink in the baking parking lot, and I'll be damned if that wasn't one of the best tasting beers I've ever had. There are better beers, but on a hot day few go down so smooth. Pabst Blue Ribbon
Yes, a guy in Illinois made a PBR coffin for himself
This beer's reputation has been ruined by hipsters, but hey, hipsters often have good taste in stuff. It's cheaper than the mass market beers like Bud or Coors, and tastes better. One thing I've never understood is its distribution. So many liquor stores don't have it, and others only have it in thirty pack cubes. The other problem is that it has some kind of strange sugary chemical slurry in it, and I can't have more than two or the back of my throat starts tasting icky. Narragansett Lager
Drinking a Narragansett is like entering a time machine, in more ways than one
This is a recent discovery. Awhile back I was at a work-sponsored happy hour at a bar, and my two drink tickets were good for either a shitty microbrew that smelled like yeast that a colleague gave to me because he couldn't finish it or a can of Narragansett. I went with the latter, and was happily surprised. It's out of Rhode Island, and I'll bet it's only available regionally. I happened to have it in their retro 70s cans (pictured above), which I can't seem to find in my local liquor store. Genesee
Preppies meet an old salt making chowder in the 70s in this Genesee ad
From the forests and rusting factories in upstate New York comes Genesee. The first time I had it was on a total whim. I walked down to one of the local bodegas in my old neighborhood in Newark, and saw 24 ounce cans of Genesee for only a dollar. The cans were white with just a small red label, they looked so cheap and generic that I had to have one out of curiosity's sake. I like Narragansett better, but you really can't beat the price. National Bohemian
Speaking of local beers, when I first went to Baltimore I was confused by seeing this on the taps at bars, and by all the people calling it "Natty Boh," rather than its given name. As my friend Jim once said of it, "I like a good shitty local beer." The aftertaste is a little thin, but I'll drink this over Bud any day. Modelo Especial
Gotta love a beer that uses a garage rock classic in its ad
You've heard of Corona, Tecate, and Dos Equis, but you should be drinking Modelo. Their dark Bohemian version, Negro Modelo, is a higher priced and good, but the straight Modelo is the best Mexican beer for the money. Also a favorite on hot days.
Yuengling
This beer almost doesn't belong here because it is about the same price point as the big three. It is, however, SIGNIFICANTLY better than them. A lot of bars in these parts have it on tap, and if I am looking for something simple and good and cheap, this is what I order. My first experience with Yuengling was visiting a friend in Buffalo nine years ago. We went out to a dive bar with a friendly bartender with a Cheap Trick tattoo who kept lining up the Yuenglings, which I kept knocking down. Too bad this is the last time I've seen this friend. We really ought to catch up. Ballantine Ale
Newark grew on the back of its industries, including brewing. At one point Ballantine Ale was one of the biggest beers in America, and by far its most popular ale (as opposed to lager). Like a lot of other industries in Newark, brewing fell too. (The Passaic River being polluted by Union Carbide's production of Agent Orange didn't help matters.) It's now brewed elsewhere, but is sold around here. It tastes like it's made more cheaply than it used to be, but being an ale, has a nice richness that a lot of cheap lagers lack.
Beers You Might Think Are Moneybeers (but aren't)
There are certain local or cheap beers that we all know are garbage, like Milwaukee's Best or Busch Light or Keystone. However, there are others that are more colorful that people like to think are moneybeers, but are just cheap. Lone Star
I drank my fair share of Lone Star in my days in Texas, but usually only at my local bar, where they were often only $1.25 a bottle. You can't beat those prices. A friend and I joked that Lone Star tasted gritty, like there was a handful of Texas sand in each bottle. We drank it anyway, but Lone Star does not have the requisite quality to make it a moneybeer.
Old Style
"Brewed In God's Country" (more like brewed in the devil's rectum)
Some folks will try to tell you this is a moneybeer, but it tastes like stale goat pee. Can only be justifiably drunk while watching a game at Wrigley Field.
Stroh's
You won't be a stranger to indigestion, that's for sure
Gag-worthy. Tastes like it was fermented in a Detroit pot hole.
Schlitz
The beer is even more offensive than this ad
This once great beer is a crime against beer. I bought a 12 pack in college once because it was only four bucks. There was a reason for that.
The above picture represents one of my Friday afternoon commuting rituals. If I'm not able to do happy hour with some of my colleagues, I brown bag a tallboy can of beer on the train ride home. This is technically against the rules of New Jersey Transit, but only the written rules. It is not in violation of the unwritten rules. As long as I keep it hidden, don't litter or spill, and not bother anyone else, the conductors will turn a blind eye.
Vendors in Penn Station are well aware of this. When you walk down the main concourse, you'll notice various pizzerias and sub sandwich shops, all of which have massive plexiglass, open-topped coolers full of ice and tallboy beer cans. They also have beer taps, and I have seen some people walk away with massive Big Gulp sized containers, sipping their beer through a straw, which I refuse to do. This practice seems much more common among the riders on the Long Island Railroad, make of that what you will.
Not all of these places in the concourse are created equal. Many offer only Yuengling as the sole alternative to Bud Light. A couple of places, however, regularly have craft beer of top quality available. I have no idea what the names of these places are, I just know them by sight and by their location on the concourse. For a short glorious time one of the places was stocked with Bell's beer, a label I consumed with much gusto when I lived in Michigan, and which isn't easy to find in these parts. For a couple of glorious Fridays I ended the working week sipping on a smooth Bell's brown ale, remembering the past and drifting into a zone of mental relaxation.
That's why the conductors will never bust me and the other tired people nursing beers on the train. We tend not to be boisterous (those are the folks getting on the train wrecked after happy hour), but introspective. This also happens to be why I never stick around to take the trains that leave around 7 on a Friday, since they are full of drunk yahoos. I like stepping off the train, feeling refreshed and I little buzzed, ready to greet my wife and kids and enjoy a relaxing weekend together. I hear that a removal of the coolers is in the works. Why can't they just let us worn out commuters enjoy this simple privilege?
Now that it's summertime I've got too much time on my hands to look at old commercials from my youth on YouTube. I find beer commercials especially compelling, since they are selling vice, and in the case of mass produced American beer, vice that tastes like goat pee. It might seem hard to think of drinking an Old Milwaukee as something glamorous, but oh how the beer companies and ad agencies try. I did a similar post awhile back, here's another one.
Busch Beer
"Head for the mountains" indeed. You'll want to run for the hills after tasting Busch's bouquet of wet cardboard and wood chips, a flavor that recalls my college dorm before I was 21 and could acquire quality brew of my own. This commercial also shows how companies were all about rugged outdoorsmen in 80s beer ads. Joe Blow sitting on his couch after a day of mindless labor downing can after can of Busch evidently had dreams of riding the range and roping cattle.
Dave Cowens and Bob Lanier for Miller Lite
In the early days of light beer, brewers worried that the stigma of a "diet" product would make it hard to sell to men concerned about their masculinity. (They should have been concerned about their taste buds, but oh well.) Miller got around that by putting a bunch of ex-jocks in their commercials. Some of the ads back then flummoxed me because these were athletes of the 1960s and 1970s, not of the 80s. I did learn from this commercial's use of silly puns that Bob Lanier had the biggest feet in the NBA.
Classic Rock in Miller Genuine Draft
Beer ads in the late 80s and early 90s tried to sell their swill to young hetero men by promising their product's ability to attract hot babes. In this ad a group of guys happens to be wandering through the Gulf Coast bayou when they see a group of totally hot babes. Unfortunately, the ladies are surrounded by deadly alligators. Never mind, the guys crack open their bottles of MGD, and the swamp freezes, leaving them free to party with some pretty women. Not only is this genre of commercial extremely sexist, showing women as passive objects there for the taking, it also incorporates and bastardizes Mountain's "Mississippi Queen," turning its mighty riff into a commercial jingle.
Budweiser Clydesdales Play Football
Budweiser in the 90s loved using critters to sell ads, presumably to hook in children to the brand. (The Budweiser frogs certainly fit in with that mission.) In this ad the Budweiser clydesdales -the brand's original critters- play a game of football with each other in front of the Rocky Mountains. (There's those mountains again.) It ends with a silly joke and says nothing at all about the beer. I guess Budweiser is just being honest and admitting that its product is nothing they can believably advertise on its own merits.
Coors Light Is "The Right Beer Now"
This right here ladies and gentlemen may perhaps be the most 80s-tastic commercial ever made. Behold neon patterned shorts! Poofy hair reaching to the stars! Horribly over-emotive singing over a lame butt rock song! Gaze upon this if you dare.
It looks like winter has come early this year, if the recent cold temperatures here in New Jersey are any indication. The older I get, the more I dislike winter. I actually really loved it growing up, since it meant building snow forts, sledding, and staying indoors to play Connect Four and Battleship during recess. Nowadays I have a little PTSD from my two winters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where over 100 inches of snow fell both times and the sun came out maybe twice between Halloween and Easter. After living in Michigan I spent three years in Texas, and really got used to not really having winter. That experience has drastically reduced my tolerance for cold and lack of sunshine.
To survive winter with my mental state intact, I've started assembling a winter survival kit of things that will make the next few months bearable. It follows, organized by category.
Food
Certain foods seem to be meant for winter, where they warm both the body and the soul. Oatmeal and grits thus become especially important at breakfast, when my stomach requires something hot. This time of year I make a lot of chili, which always seems to lift my spirits. In recent years I have also delved into the world of root vegetables, whose hearty warmth spreads throughout my limbs whenever I eat them. My favorite is carrot-rutabega mash, but I also like to make parsnips, turnips, and sweet potatoes. Soups and stews beyond chili are necessary for survival, and this time of year my shadow haunts Vietnamese restaurants, where I can savor a big old steaming bowl of pho. There's practically nothing better on a cold dark afternoon, except maybe lamb stew.
Beer
Speaking of lamb stew, dark beers are a winter favorite for me as well. Something about stout and porter especially fit the cold short days and freezing long nights, but I'll grab a bottle of Bell's Brown Ale in a heartbeat. Other favorites for this time of year are the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter by Great Lakes Brewing Company, Yeti Imperial Stout by Great Divide, Samuel Smith's oatmeal stout, and The Kaiser by Avery, which we used to call "the ole ass-kicker" when I lived in Michigan.
Whiskey
I don't really drink a lot of whiskey during most of the year, but I go through quite a bit in winter time. Many a night in a frigid apartment has been soothed by the golden glow of Irish whiskey. While Jameson and Tullamore Dew were my first whiskies, recently I have been delving into bourbon, and the right kind of bourbon can unlock the same glowing fire inside. These days I have become a fan of Old Grand-Dad, which has a wintry flavor (can't quite explain it) that survives mixing and costs only twenty bucks a bottle. It's what I call a switch-hitting bourbon, in that it's good for mixing but rough enough not to make mixing a travesty, and yet smooth and tasty enough to stand on its own.
Music
The right music is absolutely essential for making it through winter. It has to speak to the season's difficulties, and the sad feelings that are more likely to wrap themselves around my mind. I tend to listen to a lot of folk-inflected music, especially Leonard Cohen's first album, Tim Buckley, Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson, and Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan's first album, which is just about as perfect as winter music gets. In addition to this stuff, I also go with The Smiths, Joy Division (super wintry), The Velvet Underground (whose drones are like a space heater for my soul), and early Miles Davis. I have spent many evenings shivering under a blanket listening to 'Round Midnight, which is less an album than a kind of medicated musical balm.
Clothing
Keeping warm is the operating principle behind my winter survival kit, and clothing its most crucial component. I tend to wear a lot of sweaters, the thicker the better. A cable knit sweater my wife got my for my birthday has reminded me why I like that genre of sweater so much for the winter time. Over the years I have also built up a large supply of cardigans, which are an easy thing to grab when you need a little warmth. I also go with lots and lots of flannel, shirts in the day and pajamas at night. At those times when it is necessary to venture outdoors, I always have on a hat (tweed usually) and scarf. Until the last few years I was not a scarf-wearer, but my two winters in Michigan cured me of that shortcoming right quick. Slippers always get lost, so I like to slip on a pair of wool socks, they certainly make walking on the cold tile in the kitchen and bathroom less trying.
Anything in your own winter survival kits that I'm missing here?
One of the best things about YouTube is the ability to look at old television advertisements. Nothing else is as good at really taking me back into the past, since I haven't seen most of these ads since when they were first aired.
As a young lad the foundations for my current love of beer were laid by commercials that made beer drinking seem to be about the coolest thing ever. My attraction to the world of these ads, along with how entranced I was at the smell of hops when my family toured the Coors brewery on a vacation should have been big warning signs for my parents. Without further ado, here are some vintage beer ads with commentary.
A decade before I had a drop of malted barley I had already considered the great taste vs. less filling debate waged in Miller Lite ads. My favorite is a bowling match between the various jocks featuring the one and only Rodney Dangerfield. It's a weird kid who adores a standup comedian whose schtick revolves around feelings of defeat that most people don't understand until they're quite a bit older. I loved this commercial, even if I didn't recognize aging ex-sportsmen like Deacon Jones and Red Auerbach.
Much smoother than Rodney was Billy Dee Williams, especially when he shilled for Colt 45 malt liquor. Few other men could rock one of those ridiculous light-colored 80s sweaters and not look like a dork. (Honestly, in my younger days I drank Old English and Mickey's rather than Colt 45. My grandpa preferred King Cobra, no kidding.) In my childhood I couldn't think of any greater authority on suaveness and success with the ladies than Lando Calarissian. Someday I thought I would woo a young lady by taking her hand, giving it a kiss, and telling her "you truly belong here with us among the clouds." I also actually thought that "malt liquor" meant it was fancier than beer. After all, the badass cans of black and gold King Cobra in my grandpa's fridge looked a lot sleeker and cooler than those lame golden cans of Coors with the waterfall on them. In the mind of a ten year old, a cobra beats a waterfall every time. Now I know that Colt 45 "works every time" in the sense that it is guarnteed to cause a blinding hangover.
Perhaps even more misleading were the ads for Old Milwaukee, a brew I affectionately call "old swill." Their 1980s ads featured manly men conquering the great outdoors together and ending their day by drinking cans of Old Milwaukee that somehow magically appeared on the scene. The tagline was one of the most laughable ever: "It doesn't get any better than this." I beg to differ.
Like tobacco companies, brewers have never been above using animal mascots to pique the interest of children in their products. Before the Budweiser frogs, there was the original: the Hamm's Bear. Damn that's a catchy song. For some reason in this ad, as in others, beer is associated with the great outdoors, perhaps to keep people from the knowledge that their macrobrewed swill is mass produced in a factory. At least the Hamm's Bear is much more wholesome and less annoying than Spuds McKenzie.
Brewers also want to avoid reminding their customers of the negative effects of imbibing. That's why it was a wee bit embarrassing in the late 1980s that Michelob had ads featuring Eric Clapton at the same time he went into rehab for boozing. Perhaps more embarrassing, Michelob also hired Phil Collins and Genesis, not exactly a boost for the ol' hipness factor. That said, the vintage MTV video editing style, poofy hair and t-shirts worn underneath white suite jackets does make this commercial a wonderful 80s time capsule.
