INEXPLICABLE OBJECT OF THE WEEK
Week of 9/24/00:
WEEK 128
Cheap Beer
Meet Millie, the corporate mascot for Miller High Life.
She's a frat boy's dream girl.
Not only is she a two-fisted beer drinker, her squinty eyes indicate that she's entered that rarest of states, triple vision. That she's dressed like an insane gaucho is probably due to the beer, also.
Note that the glass seems to have a cloud of noxious vapor rising from it.
But, hey, it's High Life. If you've ever tried to drink that stuff, you'd understand.
High Life's slogan is "The Champagne of Beers." Which begs the question...if Swiller Lowlife really is the Champagne of Beers, then what's the Beer of Champagnes? I'm guessing it'd be further from the Moet White Star end of the spectrum than it'd be nearer the $3 a bottle Andre Cold Duck.
Good beer needs slogans no more than Porsche needs radio ads screaming "No Money Down!" But for some reason, cheap beer needs to pretend that it's not being bought as a cheap drunk. If truth in advertising was required, Natural Ice wouldn't say it was "Ice Brewed For A Naturally Smooth Taste," it'd say "DUDE! You'll Get Totally Cocked On This Shit!"
Some slogans seem purposely vague, like Schaefer's: "America's Oldest Lager." And, umm, America's Oldest Medical Technique is, what, leeches?
Schmidt's is "Brewed in the Tradition of Schmidt's Brewery for 125 Years." So I guess they still use child labor & not pasteurization. It could be traditional to flick cigarette butts into the brew at Schmidt's for all I know.
The award for vaguest slogan goes to Schlitz (do all vaguely-sloganed beers begin with "Sch"?): "Just a Kiss of the Hops." That's Zen Master level inscrutable. I always thought that the inspiration of the "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" quote was the Zen guy finishing a 12-pack, & forgetting where his other hand was.
Other favorites: Piels (the beer named after what it does to the lining of your stomach): "A Century of Excellence." Sadly, the century started in 1850, & it's been a half-century of utter mediocrity since it ended.
Keystone: "Specially Lined Can." Yeah, Keystone ate right through the old unlined ones. Look, this is like saying it's delivered in really nice trucks; you're not planning on drinking the truck, are you?
Olympia: "It's In the Water." Hey, it's a slogan that could used as advertisement for beer, or a newspaper story about living downstream from the paper mill, or a horror movie (Jaws 19: This Time the Shark's Drunk).
I've received some new info on Olympia, from Turner Morgan, who went to college in the Olympia area:
It's bottled in neighboring Tumwater. Tumwater. It's in the water.The beer's water has Tums in it? Talk about skipping a step.
Logical next step: Olympia Immodium.
Milwaukee's Best: "Carefully Brewed for a Clean, Smooth Taste."
"Yeah, we used to have it Brewed Wackily by Kolonel Koo-Koo the Klown & his Circus of Performing Monkeys, but they burned the factory down."
Not all stupid slogans are on cheap beer; Dos Equis costs twice as much as the above rotgut, & it warns: "Worth the Experience." Umm, yeah, and Suffering Builds Character. I'm sure getting your leg sawed off is Worth the Experience if you've got gangrene...
Hey, if that crap's Milwaukee's Best, what's Milwaukee's second best? Paint thinner?
Inexplicable Link of the Week
The Falcon is the Wesley Willis of the Web, and currently in the "Guiness" Book for most web sites, 40,000 of them. I haven't checked the truth of that claim, but given that he's a Navy SEAL, ordained minister, computer programmer, rapper (spelt "raper"), museum manager, AND owner of a comic book store ("HA HA I'm a grown-up now! I OWN a comic book store" he says on one of the pages), all at the age of 25, I
guess it'd be odd for him to *not* be in the Guinness Book.If you cut&paste the links on the page, they ACTUALLY WORK.
Such as this (Hi, Mom!) or this disaster.
Thanks to Gordon Kennedy for the link!
©2000 Bill Young