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Michael - 2005-11-21 10:07:47
"I don't think it was the filmmaker's intention, but all that Budweiser that Johnny kept pounding down just made me want to go drink Budweisers."
It was probably Anhauser-Busch's intention when they bought the product placement.
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Michael - 2005-11-21 11:17:04
Make that "Anheiser-Busch", not "Anhauser-Busch." Shows you how long it's been since I've gagged down an American "premium beer." Technically, that stuff's not even beer: it's got corn and rice in it, which aren't beer ingredients in any civilized brewery. Movie product placements can be wickedly effective, though, practically a form of low-grade hypnotism. I remember watching a DVD of the David Johansen version of "Car 54, Where Are You?" several years ago with a friend who couldn't wait to run up the street for a couple of Nathan's hot dogs afterward. The whole movie is like an elaborate Nathan's commercial (I kind of liked the opening song, "In the Shadow of the BQE," though, or at least the idea of it).
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Paula - 2005-11-21 11:48:33
To be honest, I can't remember if the beer he chugs throughout the film is actually Bud...
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2fs - 2005-11-21 11:59:04
If you insist, it's actually "Anheuser-Busch"... But you're right: it's not really beer anyway.
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Paula - 2005-11-21 12:21:53
I am a low-brow (not to be confused with a Lowenbrau) when it comes to beer. Seriously, if there's no other choice, I have no problem chugging down the Bud, the PBR, the Rollin' Rock.
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Michael - 2005-11-21 12:57:34
I can gag down Budweiser in an absolute pinch (a fiercely hot day in the middle of nowhere with nothing else whatsoever to drink, including animal urine) and I've performed a real mind-over-matter stunt by training myself to slam down Pabst with the worst of them at Doc Holliday's on Avenue A, but Rolling Rock is just too punishing, even at 3AM on a very bad night. There was a theatre in Hell's Kitchen a few years ago called Ars Nova (Sarah Silverman and Janeane Garofalo used to appear there) that for some reason only served Rolling Rock (well, obviously they'd been bribed by Rolling Rock in much the same way that Murphy's Stout has bribed most of the bars in the Uppper East Side not to sell Guinness). Trying to get down a Rolling Rock at Ars Nova is as close to hell as I ever want to get in this world, even though the shows on stage were fantastic and you'd think that would've been enough to take my mind off the kerosene-like substance I was grimly choking back (sometimes back and forth). As for my correcting the spelling of "Anheuser" incorrectly, I evidently have a mental block against that corporation. I've enjoyed the original Czech Budweiser in Prague, and that's a hell of a good beer. One of the brewmasters sold the formula to Anheuser-Busch and they started churning out the nightmare-bizarro version of the brew that Americans have routinely poisoned their souls with ever since. If you look around, though, you can occasionally find the real Czech Budweiser over here, and it's a revelation (even when it's been smuggled across the Atlantic on slave galleys and lost its freshness).
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Editrix - 2005-11-21 14:06:52
Zoe is a cutie-patootie! I love the onesie -- I got one in blue for my friends' baby Kiyo.
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Paula - 2005-11-21 14:30:01
Yeah, I've sent pretty much every baby in my life (and they are legion) a cool onesie from Trendy Tadpole. I think the novelty factor has worn off. I may have to start buying them savings bonds.
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Flasshe - 2005-11-21 15:26:47
Zoe is really cute! Quite a niece you've got there.
I used to be a beer snob. Now I'm old and it's any old hop in a storm. And the lighter it is, the more I can drink, so that's a plus. I still will not touch PBR though.
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Paula - 2005-11-21 15:46:09
Technically, Zoe is my ex-niece-in-law, but since, like Danny Kaye, I have been officially recognized as the Ambassador to the World's Children, every baby is my niece or nephew.
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Michael - 2005-11-21 16:01:57
Can't blame you one bit about eschewing Pabst, Flasshe. It was pure self-sacrificial heroism for me to get myself more or less accustomed to it at the honky-tonks (I only drink it in a very few bars, partly because they don't change the lines on their Guinness). And if I (somehow, I wonder how) forget to drink my water at the end of the evening, god help me the next morning. Those cans should come with a skull and crossbones on the label. All American beers should for that matter, for terrible flavor if nothing else, even the microbrews (yes, including Sam Adams). I believe that my problem with American microbrews is that they all seem to me to be patterned on the Belgian model, and I don't care for Belgian beers. (Either that or no American water is worth a damn for brewing beer, which doesn't seem quite possible.) So I go Irish, Czech, German, or Mexican (in Mexico where it's fresh, Bohemia is impossible to beat: that's the best advice anyone's ever likely to hear from me).
Wonder how I'd look in one of them onesies?
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Paula - 2005-11-21 16:05:27
Irish, Czech, German, or Mexican
Interesting...Which Mexican imports would you recommend? (I assume you mean that imported Bohemia isn't very good? Or that it doesn't get imported?)
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Michael - 2005-11-21 17:03:13
Bohemia gets imported, but as a general rule, the better the beer, the less well it travels (although Guinness has sort of gotten around this, or claims to have). Bohemia's north of the border incarnation is but a dim shadow of the blazing fresh glory found in Mexico. I first came upon Bohemia one morning in a Tijuana cantina when I realized that almost everyone was belting back a Bohemia with breakfast, a brand I was unfamiliar with at the time (this was a hell of a long time ago). I tried one and immediately understood, and have never looked back. When in Mexico, don't even consider drinking anything else if Bohemia's available. As for the others, I like Superior and that popular old standby Dos Equis (in the brown bottle, not the green-bottled lager) and the ubiquitous Negra Modelo is never exactly a mistake, although I probably seldom drank it in Mexico. Corona is best avoided like the urine it so closely resembles in every way. Supposedly it was initially invented for export to the California surfer community and it more or less tastes like it, if you ask me (it's the Mexican version of Coors, in other words). In some of the Yucatan, Bohemia can sometimes be hard to find where there are tourists because Americans are trained to gravitate toward tasteless lagers, so I sometimes find myself looking around (always very much worth the search, though). For some reason, Superior is often the only good beer available in that area, but it's very good when it's fresh and not bad up here in New York, at least the last time I tried it.
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Flasshe - 2005-11-21 17:46:44
Once when I stayed at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico, the free beer was Corona. Aaargh! Sinful!
I don't think I've ever tried the native versions of Bohemia or Negra Modelo, but their imported versions are decent enough and are the only Mexican imports I drink these days. Oh, and the brown Dos Equis (on tap).
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Sharps - 2005-11-21 21:54:14
In my experience, the best beer to order in a bar is whatever is brewed nearest-by, on tap. So around here I go for Brooklyn Lager, when I was working in PA it was Yeungling, etc.
From the look of the label, I'm pretty sure the beer they were putting away by the case in Walk the Line was Schlitz.
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Sharps - 2005-11-21 22:00:16
I used to visit Mexico frequently, and I would always order Sol or Pacifica. The best beer experience I ever had was the Heineken and Amstel they serve on tap in Amsterdam. They taste absolutely nothing like their imported versions.
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Michael - 2005-11-22 10:57:47
I used to hate Heineken so much as a result of valiantly attempting to imbibe the very less-than-fresh version here in America (I can only drink two bottles before giving up) that I actually didn't drink it on my first visit to Amsterdam. Even in the Red Light District's infamous Bananenbar (the bartendresses do everything you can think of with bananas except put them into drinks), where all the Heineken you can throw down is part of the deal, I skipped the Heineken. Next time I found myself in that peculiar dive, though, I relented and decided to sample some since it was free of additional charge and I found myself getting quite thirsty as I observed the staff's imaginative gyrations. I was simply astonished that evening by how superb Heineken can be. I don't think the beer itself is actually different, I think it's purely a matter of the freshness (although I could be wrong about that). As for Amstel, I like it even on this side of the Atlantic, and Amstel rountinely saves many a bar and catered experience in places where it's the only decent beer served. Amstel performs a valuable public service by dint of its presence in venues where other drinkable beer is somehow always excluded.
The business of ordering the beer brewed nearest to where you are is a good philosophy that works for me when I'm not in America, but as I noted before, I find all American beer execrable, unfortunately. In Germany or the Czech Republic, it's the best way to go, though. Next time I'm in Munich, I'm going to rent a room across the street from the Salvatorkeller and seriously get down with some Paulaner Salvator. My own best beer drinking experience by far was at the Guinness brewery in Dublin. At the end of their little tour, you receive a couple of tickets for half-pints in their bar (which exists only for those taking the tour and probably for company parties as far as I can tell). Obliging teetolers on the premises typically give their tickets to rabid enthusiasts like myself. The Guinness is at its absolute freshest and is totally unlike the Guinness served anywhere else as a result, and that's as close as I'll come to heaven on earth (the precise opposite of my experience at the Ars Nova Theatre that I mentioned in an earlier post on this page).
Schlitz. That was probably exactly what Johnny Cash actually drank during those years. It was much better than Budweiser or Miller until 1973, and was #2 or #3 and coming up very fast in market share as people caught on to how much better it was. Then in '73 the owners, rolling in money, got greedy and sped up the brewing process, putting out "green" beer (figuratively green, not literally). They figured nobody could tell the difference. Every Schlitz drinker of that era vividly remembers where they were when they had that first awful swallow of the new Schlitz, which tasted like a mixture of noxious chemicals and sewage. Schlitz immediately fell completely off the radar screen, ranking so low in sales that it practically disappeared, and it never recovered.
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Michael - 2005-11-22 11:54:10
I wonder what would happen if any of the "premium beer" companies would do the opposite of what Schlitz did in '73, and consciously upgrade the quality of their beer even a little bit? It wouldn't take much to have the best-tasting (or least bad-tasting) readily available commercial grade "premium" American beer, and look at the way some elements of the mercilessly savaged American populace actually seems to like even Sam Adams and somehow think that's a good beer. How hard would it be for Miller or Budweiser or somebody to upgrade their product a little bit instead of relentlessly concentrating all their resources on advertising? That could start a revolution in American marketing: actual quality instead of nonsense and the shoddiest merchandise that can possibly be gotten by with.
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2fs - 2005-11-22 12:45:04
Unlike you, Michael, I like a lot small American breweries...even though I can't abide the making-love-in-a-canoe swill put out by Anh*ser-Busch etc. But I think those megabreweries are trying to put out higher-quality beer: I can't think of the names, but both Bud and Miller have supposed high-end beers out. I haven't tried them, though, figuring that they're just another Michelob or whatever (marginally better than their mainstream product, but grossly inferior to imports or microbrews). Why bother, when there's good beer to be had? Then you have the strategy of Coors...which is to put out a (reasonably decent - but I've boycotted it since I found out Coors brewed it, for political reasons) beer like Blue Moon and hope people don't know it's brewed by Coors...
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Michael - 2005-11-22 14:18:35
I've been onsite at many of the more popular American microbreweries, including Sierra Nevada in Chico, California, and that one around the corner from the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco (not to mention Brooklyn Brewery, located very near to where I used to live), and I just can't drink any of their products, even though nobody loves beer more than me, as you may have guessed from my rather ludicrous loquacity on the subject. I literally had to leave the San Francisco beer on the bar and immediately go find a Guinness as a flavor antidote, while I could barely gag down Sierra Nevada's "stout" (but none of their others). Again, though, I think they're all mysteriously patterned on the Belgian model, and while many people revere Belgian beer above all others (and it is hands down the most expensive by powers of magnitude), I simply can't drink it. You're right that the "premium beer" purveyors all have what passes for a higher grade of beer on the market, but from what little I've experienced of them, they're just more of the same, complete with corn and rice as fillers. They've quite rightly decided that if Americans ever become accustomed to decent beer and properly cultivate their palates, the current incarnations of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors would become obsolete and dismissed as undrinkable. And they want to keep selling that noxious swill and making those ridiculous profits. As we noted earlier, it almost amounts to a hoax, since that stuff isn't even real beer.
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