If You Don't Like the Weather, Wait Ten Minutes

. . . and then you'll hate it even more.

 

April showers
bring May flowers.

April snow
is just stupid.
 
  

A Humble Request from the Nervous Guy in the Car in Front of You

Hi there.

I know plenty of people who tend to talk with their hands. I don’t do it myself, but it doesn’t bother me; I see it all the time. In fact, the future Mrs. Some Guy does it pretty often, and it can be really entertaining and even (in her case, at least) awfully endearing.

However, if you can’t help but talk with your hands while you’re on your cell phone, maybe you shouldn’t use your phone while you’re driving. Because from what I can tell from my nervous glances into my rear-view mirror, the only thing keeping you in your lane is the good work done by the dude who must have aligned your tires not too long ago. For future reference, “hands-free” refers to a kind of cell phone you can buy, not to your steering wheel. Thank you for your time, and best of luck sorting things out, soon or someday, with your insurance company.

Some Guy's Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 5

Day 5: They speak of my drinking, but never think of my thirst. (Scottish proverb)

 

The familiar word claymore comes from the decidedly less-familiar Scottish Gaelic word claidheamh-mòr, which translates (from what I’ve read, anyway; my Gaelic is rusty at best) as “really big sword.” Wielded with both hands by fierce men without pants and often exceeding five feet in length—still talking about the literal sword here, you perverts—the claidheamh-mor for centuries was used to casually and cleanly split human heads in two. 
 

Since the Second World War, the word claymore has probably been more recognizable as the name of an American anti-personnel mine (invented, interestingly, by a Norman A. MacLeod—a name that suggests Scottish heritage, and possibly even a secret life as an immortal swordsman from the Dark Ages). The Claymore mine raised the ante on its ancient counterpart by unleashing destruction not just within its immediate vicinity but up to a range of some one hundred yards.

 

The claymore, in both its medieval and its modern iterations, has spread pain and destruction not only in the country (or countries) of its birth but also worldwide, and bears the blame for the creation of tens if not hundreds of thousands of sobbing widows and orphans.

By an odd coincidence, today’s selection from the Beer Mystery Case is Claymore Scotch Ale, Great Divide Brewing Company, Denver, Colorado.
 

 

One of the first things I noticed about this beer after fifteen or sixteen hours of staring at the label was that, despite its name, Claymore Scotch Ale is not brewed anywhere near Scotland. Denver, Colorado, is in fact quite far from Scotland, separated from it by (among other things) an ocean, island nations populated by leprechauns and/or volcanoes, several American states, and the flattest and least exciting parts of Colorado. That’s a long way for a beer to travel; even the European Swallow is not known to migrate so far (and of course the African Swallow is non-migratory).

 

That said, though, while it may not be brewed in Scotland, it seems safe to assume that Claymore Scotch Ale is nevertheless at least based on some sort of ancient Scottish recipe, one designed to terrify and humiliate the English in medieval drinking contests and later smuggled across the Atlantic hidden in some sort of newly-invented engine part, or possibly a coconut.
 

The beer that resulted from that long trek, Claymore Scotch Ale, has a burned, ashy smell, as if it had been brewed in an old fireplace. And it’s very dark, not in that “dark beer” sort of way but in that “absorbs all light within its event horizon” sort of way. The first sip, however, proves to be surprisingly painless, far less harsh than I anticipated. However, the label’s descriptions of the beer as “hardy” and “wee heavy” show a touch of subtle understatement not expected from the average bit of beer advertising. 
 

What the Great Divide Brewing Company’s marketing department probably should have put on the label was that—if you’ll pardon the crude expression—Claymore Scotch Ale will put hair on your balls.¹ And if you don’t have balls when you start drinking a glass of Claymore, you will by the time you’re done. 
 

God help you if you drink two.

 
The first few sips left a noticeable and not-altogether-pleasant aftertaste, but by the end of my second glass, that aftertaste has developed into something far more palatable, sweeter and with the barest suggestion of chocolate. Also, I’m suddenly aware that I can no longer feel my feet.
 
Scotland has given the world the steam engine, the flush toilet, the telephone (which was invented in America, but by a Scot), several good films starring Sean Connery² and Brian Cox, and “Auld Lang Syne.” On the other hand, not everything to come out of Scotland was genius; they’re also responsible for the kilt—known to Scottish Buddhists as trou wu trou³—and the caber toss, which, while not stupid, crazy, or cruel, still ranks right up there with chess boxing as one of the weirdest sports on Earth.

 

It’s hard to say whether Claymore Scotch Ale belongs in the genius category or the kilt-wearing/caber-tossing category⁴—possibly because I’ve had two of them on top of an early-afternoon black-and-tan, so clearly my judgment of good ideas vs. stupid ones is more than a little suspect. I’m happy to report, though, that this is a pretty damned good beer, and if I survive the hangover with my vision intact, I’ll probably find my way to the liquor store sooner or later for a couple more Claymores.
 

Some Guy’s rating for Claymore Scotch Ale: four thumbs up, two tossed cabers, and one crippling, eyeball-bruising headache.⁵

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES

1. If you won’t pardon the expression, please stop reading before you get to this point of the review.

2. Also The Avengers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

3. Translated roughly as “pants without pants.”

4. Please keep in mind, angry Scottish and Scottish-American readers, that I’m not actually disparaging kilt-wearing, caber-tossing, or being Scottish. I’m merely suggesting that they’re not quite as brilliant, all things considered, as the steam engine or the flush toilet. Disagree with me all you want, but please, put down the giant tree.

5. I can’t help but notice that I have few, if any, pictures of actual Scots in this column. As much as that sucks for Scotland, and probably for my credibility, I suppose it’s appropriate for a review of a Scotch ale brewed some 4,400 miles from Scotland. And it’s probably no weirder than the fact that in Highlander, the 100%-Scottish Sean Connery plays a Spaniard, and the Scottish character (Duncan MacLeod) is played by a Frenchman. Although if this is the weirdest thing you can find in a movie about a 400-year-old Scotsman wielding a samurai sword in a worldwide fight for survival against other immortals who die only when their heads are chopped off, then you may be paying attention to the wrong parts of the movie.

The Great One: Even Better Than You Think

The 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs have begun, and life couldn’t be better for all of the United States of America’s sixteen hockey fans. Underdogs are winning games on the road; stupid, pointless fighting is pretty much nonexistent (and even the less stupid with-a-good-reason kind of fighting is down quite a bit); goaltenders have stepped up their games;¹ and matchups that may have been mundane a month ago are now fraught with tension and energy. So to celebrate the happiest time of the hockey fan’s year, and in keeping with the Bowling in the Dark spirit of talking about people and events long after they’ve happened and/or were relevant, today’s topic is a guy who hasn’t played hockey for a decade: Wayne Gretzky.

While it can conceivably be argued that somebody else is the best hockey player ever—a credible case could probably made for Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard, or Mario Lemieux—Wayne Gretzky is unquestionably the game’s greatest scorer, and long after his retirement remains one of the game’s most recognizable and revered stars. He retired with sixty-one regular-season, playoff, and All-Star Game records, and in the ten years since then, he’s lost only two of them, and even gained one.²

That said, though, what the casual hockey fan (or non-hockey fan) probably doesn’t fully appreciate is how absurdly far ahead of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors Wayne Gretzky is.

Gretzky finished his career with 2,857 regular-season points, on 894 goals and 1,963 assists. In second place is Mark Messier with 1,887 points (694 goals / 1193 assists) and in third is Gordie Howe with 1,850 (801 goals / 1049 assists). Assuming my math holds up, this means that Gretzky has 51.4% more points than the second-highest scorer in the history of the league.

To help put that in perspective, I’ve frittered away part of my afternoon putting together a comparison of notable achievements from other sports with which the American public and our vast army of readers are probably more familiar, in the hopes of showing just how extraordinary this is.

Please keep in mind that I'm not trying to argue that scoring a goal (or getting an assist) is more or less difficult than hitting a home run, rushing for a yard (or 3.8, or five), or getting one of those basket thingies in basketball.³ And I'm definitely not saying that they’re exactly comparable to one another in their value to a specific game or importance to a career. This is just a simple food-for thought comparison based on the ideas that (1) one’s greatness is best judged in comparison to one’s peers and (2) Wayne Gretzky is a badass.

Pete Rose, Major League baseball’s all-time hits leader, had 4,256 base hits (roughly 4,255 of them singles); second place belongs to Ty Cobb (4,189) and third to Hank Aaron (3,771).⁴ Rose leads Cobb by 1.59%. To become the Wayne Gretzky of baseball (the base-hit version)—that is, to lead Rose by that same 51.4% margin Gretzky owns in hockey scoring—a guy would have to end his career with 6,444 hits. If he averaged 262 hits per year—tying the current major-league record, every single year—he’d have to do so for right around 24.5 years. That’s staggering.

Same sport, different statistic: Barry Bonds hit 762* home runs in his career; Hank Aaron comes in second at a wholly legitimate 755, with Babe Ruth in third at 714 home runs. The difference between the top two is about 0.92%. The Wayne Gretzky of baseball (home run version) would have to hit 1,153 home runs to have 51.4% more than Bonds (or 1,143 to be ahead of Aaron, if that’s the way you choose to look at it). If he hit 73 home runs per season—tying Bonds’ single-season record* every year—this would take him just under 16 years.

Moving along to football: Emmitt Smith ended his career with 18,355 rushing yards; Walter Payton is second with 16,726 yards,⁵ and in third place is Barry Sanders with 15,269. So the difference between the top two is about 9.7%. A 51.4% statistical lead here means a guy would have to rush for 27,790 yards in his career; given how old Emmitt looked at the end of his career, it's hard to imagine that this is remotely possible without some sort of robotic implants. Tying the NFL-record of 2,105 yards in a season every year would get you to 27,790 yards in just over thirteen years—not an impossibly long career for an NFL running back, but far beyond the league average. And also one has to take into account the “tying the record every single year” thing, which, by all estimates, is pretty difficult.

Switching to a sport about which I know very little: Michael Jordan leads the NBA in career points per game, at 30.12; Wilt Chamberlain is second at 30.07, for a measly difference of 0.16%. (LeBron James is third, at 27.83 ppg.) The Wayne Gretzky of basketball—assuming he wasn’t actually a 5'11" Canadian with little upper-body strength and undetermined off-ice coordination—would have to average right around 45.6 points for his career.

To look at it in a perhaps more applicable way (because scoring 46 points in one’s first game and then retiring would result in that average, but wouldn’t really count), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar leads the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 38,387 points. Karl Malone, with 36,928 points, is just under 4% behind him; Michael Jordan is in third with 32,292 points over fifteen seasons. To create a 51.4% difference between himself and a second-place Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Wayne Gretzky of basketball would need to score 58,118 points. Over a fifteen-year career, that’s an absurd 47.3 points per game; if he settles for matching Jordan’s record of 30.12 points per game, it’d take him until halfway through his twenty-fourth season to reach that total, assuming he never missed a game.

There’s no way I’m going to just come out and say that Wayne Gretzky is the greatest athlete ever, although I think it goes without saying that he deserves to be included in the conversation.⁶ ESPN, in its ranking of the greatest North American athletes of the twentieth century, put Gretzky fifth, behind Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Jim Brown. I won’t necessarily argue against any of those guys in particular, although I will suggest that ESPN’s judgment is a bit suspect; first, they’re barely willing to acknowledge that the NHL exists; and second, for some reason saw fit to rank a freaking horse at #35.⁷

I will, say, though, that Wayne Gretzky stands head and shoulders above his fellow hockey players to an astounding degree that, to my knowledge, no other athlete ever has—and, in my opinion, no athlete ever will. Which is why he’s the greatest athlete ever, ahead of Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and several athletes of other random species.⁹

NOTES

1. San Jose/Colorado and Detroit/Phoenix games excepted, apparently.

2. At retirement, Gretkzy’s average of 1.92 points per game was second only to Mario Lemieux’s; after Lemieux’s second return to the NHL, his average dropped to a still-mind-boggling1.88 points per game.

3. Although getting a basket thingy is obviously pretty easy (for a basketball player, that is); goaltending, the backbone of any good hockey team, is illegal in basketball. How odd.

4. It should be noted that of these three, Hank Aaron is far and away the statistical leader in “not being a dick.”

5. And one fewer Super Bowl touchdowns than William “The Refrigerator” Perry. It’s been twenty-five years, but I still think that’s bullshit.

6. Or at least it would have gone without saying, if I hadn’t just gone and said it.

7. If you’re going to include horses in the rankings, I’m pretty sure your top 100 athletes would all be horses. And if we’re going to be ridiculous, why stop at horses? Flipper was a hell of a swimmer, put his ass on the list.⁸

8. Assuming dolphins actually have asses.
9. I don’t know if I actually believe this; I'm mostly just bored and trying to start an argument.

Sorry, But It's Baseball Season Again.....

Ah, baseball....

The sounds, the smells, the green grass under the clear blue skies. The boys of summer are back, so sit back with a cold one and a dog and enjoy the greatest game there is.

And start talking about cheating all over again.

It is shocking - SHOCKING! - that baseball players would cheat, right? But apparently, they do. What I have been struggling with is what makes A.J. Piernyskslksdfykjsdfski (yes, he is not worthy of correct spelling - or perhaps I am too lazy. You choose.), the veteran catcher for the Chicago White Sox, NOT worthy of lots of public scorn and from-the-author's-high-horse pieces about the fabric of the game being torn apart.

The Squid Bandit is no friend of Barry Bonds. It needs to be said (by me anyways), however, that there is more direct evidence that cheating helped increase A.J. Pierzynski's on base percentage than cheating increased Barry Bonds' on base percentage. Can my readers help me with reconciling the disparate treatment of the two players?

By all accounts both guys are grade A jerks. Both cheated. For one we can measure exactly how it helped, yet the other is more vilified. I can even make a reasonable argument that lying about being hit is the greater evil over taking steroids. So again, why less outcry over one and not the other?

Baseball is great. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The cheating, the hypocrisy, the media ridiculosity (yes, I just made up that word). The American Pastime.

The Denver Broncos: We Don’t Rebuild, We Unload

It’s hard to believe that a mere eighteen months ago, I was looking forward to the Denver Broncos’ coming season. Granted, not everything was rosy—their defense was near the bottom of the league in points allowed, yard allowed, turnovers, and touchdowns given up to one-legged schoolgirls; owner Pat Bowlen had fired Mike Shanahan, the coach who had led the team to its only two Super Bowl wins; and the team lacked a running back durable enough to accumulate 400 rushing yards.

But there was reason to not just hope but even be downright giddy: the offense, despite the absurd rash of injuries at running back, was loaded. Jay Cutler—mobile, intelligent, and strong-armed—had passed for 25 touchdowns and a team-record 4,526 yards. Left tackle Ryan Clady was already, as a rookie, arguably the best offensive lineman in the game. In tight end Tony Scheffler and wide receivers Eddie Royal and Brandon Marshall, the team had possibly the most talented receiving corps in its history (sorry, fans of Vance Johnson, Mark Jackson, and what’s-his-name). And Tatum Bell’s late-season success at tailback suggests that if a cell-phone salesman could put up decent yardage behind the experienced and skilled offensive line, a genuine NFL-caliber running back could have made the Denver offense the best in the league.

In short, all the Broncos really had to do after the 2008 season was draft or sign a top-tier running back and rebuild their struggling defense—not simple tasks, of course, but certainly doable ones, given that all the team had to do with the remainder of the offense was keep it together. Just leave it alone.

Now, two depressing offseasons later, with the petulant and immature but gifted Cutler having been traded to Chicago in an embarrassing PR debacle that left pretty much every grown man involved looking like a big fat baby, Ryan Clady is protecting the weaker-armed and hilariously less mobile Kyle Orton. Tony Scheffler, now minus not only a good friend but also a QB who’d likely have thrown him 50 to 80 passes every year, has seemingly struggled to get along with his new coach, as indicated by his diminished involvement in the offense—which struggled as well, in part because of Scheffler’s position in the doghouse instead of in the middle of the action.

And on the morning of Wednesday, April 14, 2010, Broncos fans awoke to learn that Brandon Marshall— “The Beast”—the most talented (if, admittedly, most frustrating) receiver in the team’s history (sorry, Rod Smith and Shannon Sharpe) is gone. For three years, Marshall has stomped mercilessly through opposing secondaries as easily as you might smash through your crying little sister’s stuffed-animal tea party, and now he’s been traded to the Miami Dolphins for two draft picks. Not actual NFL players, mind you—not guys with track records in the league, guys who had shown they can succeed at the professional level—but draft picks.

I understand that draft picks often are used on good players, but they’re also often used on, say, Todd Marinovich or Ryan Leaf. The Broncos have swapped a dominant, exciting player—the kind that, assuming he’d gotten his head screwed on straight, could have been a fundamental part of a record-breaking offense for a decade—for two players that (1) the team may have not even identified yet, who (2) may or may not amount to anything even if they (3) still are available when it’s time to draft them, (4) end up signing with the Broncos, (5) actually make the team, (6) are good enough to touch the field sooner or later, and (7) don’t get traded away to make somebody else’s team much, much better after they piss off the coach for the first time.

The only good news I can see here—other than an exciting jump in activity on Facebook’s “Fire Josh McDaniels” page—is that eventually, if we’re lucky, the Denver Broncos will run out of either bullets or feet in which it can shoot itself. I just hope there’s something left of the team when that happens.

“Decadent” is the New “Yummy”

It’s not particularly healthy to get worked up about the real or perceived downfall of American society, and we try to avoid it whenever we can . . . although we succeed less often than we’d like, and end up wasting a lot of time worrying and complaining about it.

Occasionally we’ll get upset about politics, religion, literacy, or some other similar Big Important Thing about which most people have strong, heartfelt, and fantastically uninformed opinions that usually involve accusing you of being some sort of jackbooted religious hypocrite or an America-hating fascist socialist, depending on how exactly you choose to disagree with them. Usually, though, we tend to dwell on punctuation mistakes, bad grammar, and poor word choices, like when people write “could of” when what they really mean is ”could’ve.”¹

Or to give a better example: not too long ago, before it was co-opted by marketing departments and turned into ridiculous marketing catch-phrase, the word decadent actually had a real meaning. It wasn’t a particularly positive one, either. According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, decadent means, as an adjective,

1: marked by decay or decline (as from an earlier condition of excellence or vitality): as a: characterized by self-indulgence [a rich and decadent aristocracy]

and as a noun,

1: one that is decadent, especially : one characterized by or exhibiting the qualities of those who are degenerating to a lower type or of an age that is on the decline.

We haven’t measured this scientifically or even unscientifically, but ourguess is that until recently, the word decadent was used primarily to describe the state of the Roman Empire right before it was overrun by barbarians and collapsed—as Eddie Izzard might say, “like a flan in a cupboard”—living on only as a historical object lesson about the societal dangers of unchecked hedonism.

Scholars divide the history of the Roman Empire into five distinct periods, which are as follows:

1. Republic: awesome.
2. Empire: more powerful, but not as awesome for fans of, you know, rights and law and stuff.
3. Decadence: you may think it’s awesome, especially if you’re a fan of vomiting, fiddling, burning, and/or orgies, but society is coming down all around you, which begins to be lame once you start noticing it.
4. Being overrun by barbarians: totally lame.
5. Spending a thousand years being compared to every powerful nation on Earth in a very preachy “they’ll get what’s coming to them” sort of way: lame.

So Rome, rotting from within and collapsing from the weight of its own debauchery,² is a prime example of what decadence used to mean. Now, though, thanks to the ubiquitous dumbing-down power of advertising, decadence means one thing and one thing only:

Chocolate.

Yes, that’s right, the symbol of moral and societal decay now means “yummy.”

But don’t just take our word for it, see and listen for yourself. As far as we’re concerned, the woman in this Hershey’s Bliss commercial says it all—and says it with a deep, sultry, throaty delivery that makes it clear that, if she had the chance, she wouldn’t think twice about slinking seductively out of your television set, tearing all her clothes off, and making slow, unbridled, passionate love . . . to your dessert.




And in case you think we’re just weird—instead of, more accurately, weird but correct—here are a couple more examples. You don’t have to watch the whole thing, the word you’re looking for shows up nice and early in both. We find it very odd, if not particularly relevant, that one of the examples comes from some sort of church group:





What does all this mean? Does it mean that American advertising, by latching onto yet another dopey and ubiquitous catchword (do you remember when everything from water parks to burritos were “extreme”?), tends to be embarrassingly mindless? Yeah, probably. Does it mean we should spend far less time dwelling on minor misuses of English? No.³ Does it mean that American society really does, on the whole, view decadence as a positive thing, and that we’re therefore heading inexorably along an downhill slope towards an inevitable oblivion?

Damned if we know, but we think that’s a really interesting question, and we’re glad we pretended that you asked it. Somewhere further on down the line, when we have a bit more time, a lot more education, and a few more facts and reasonably well thought-out opinions at our disposal, we’d like to address that question a bit more in depth, perhaps with the help of our faithful readers and even the Squid Bandit, co-founder of Bowling in the Dark, if he ever emerges from his cozy hole up in Punxsutawney. We hope you’re all up for it, and interested . . . or at the very least, still reading.

NOTES

1. We are fully aware that by saying this, we’re likely to not only lose half of the folks who’ll ever bother to read this, but also bore the other half to death.

2. We’ve never actually studied the Roman Empire, so everything we’ve written about it may well be complete baloney. It’s possible that the Roman Empire collapsed under the weight of lead poisoning, the rise of Islam as a power in the region, or the unsustainable expense of maintaining defenses along such a vast territory against a multitude of foes. Hell, for all we know, it collapsed under the weight of Raymond Burr, which, come to think of it, sounds awfully believable to us.

3. Yes.

Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 4

Day 4: Thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, “. . . I drank what?”

Nestled against an unforgiving shoulder of the Rocky Mountains is Golden, Colorado, home of the Colorado School of Mines, a nationally-renowned engineering school. The small but prestigious Mines is known for accepting a wide selection of gifted high school nerdlings, dorks, and brainiacs and transforming them—through the liberal application of heat, pressure, and homework—into shockingly successful paycheck magnets who have learned to design, build, test, demolish, or extract from the bosom of the Earth things that regular folks like you and me probably can’t even spell.

While you were doing kegstands, going shirtless in 5° weather to a football game, vomiting into your shoes (or somebody else’s), or showing up drunk, stoned, or naked to final exams, your contemporaries at the School of Mines were reading, computing, studying, stressing out, having minor emotional breakdowns, and then studying some more. Pressed to excel, the students at the Colorado School of Mines show a drive and motivation that matches their extreme intelligence, and this is why they’re out there earning bushels of money while the rest of us vegetate in front of the computer for hours on end, reading (or writing) pointless drivel² instead of checking the classified section for jobs.

. . . or at least that’s what they want you to believe, and by and large, the public has bought it. A closer look by a trained eye, however, reveals startling evidence to suggest that Mines students aren’t nearly as smart as they look:

First of all, they’ve freely chosen to live in a town that, on its best days, tends to smell like a frat-house carpet; 

Second, they voluntarily sequester themselves in an environment where the male-to-female ratio approaches roughly 1,732 to 1³;

Third—and most important—Mines students, on the relatively few times where they do relax (weekends, mostly, but also during E-Days, a traditional yearly celebration of drinking, games, and social interaction better described as the Orgy of Normalcy), all these alleged geniuses voluntarily and openly drink gallons upon gallons of

Coors Light, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. 
 

It pains me to criticize any sort of alcoholic beverage, because they’re all very close to my heart, like beloved children that make me fall over and say rude things to strangers. And I realize that by criticizing Coors Light, I risk being savagely beaten by an angry mob of Orediggers swinging slide rules and graphing calculators, but I can’t help but tell the truth: this beer sucks.

Not only does Coors Light have an unfortunate tendency to taste like Windex⁴ when not sufficiently refrigerated, but also even its own advertising department makes it clear that even they don’t like the beer. Think about this: Coors Light, the “Silver Bullet,” is or recently was advertized as “the coldest-tasting beer in the world.” The coldest-tasting beer in the world. Seriously.

Look, people, cold is not a flavor. This is as dumb as calling it “the tallest-smelling beer in the world”—even if it’s true, it’s meaningless.

And beyond its coldness, you’ll rarely find flavor mentioned at all in Coors Light’s advertising. Instead, you’ll be told that the little mountains on each can will turn blue when the beer is cold. I can only assume that this was developed for beer drinkers with no nerve endings in their hands or tongues, because feeling a cold beer can is usually a good way of telling if it’s cold, and if that doesn’t work, actually drinking the beer generally does the trick.⁵

But that’s neither here nor there—more important is this: what does it tell you when the best selling point the marketing folks can find has to do with the can they put the beer in?

A: It tells you that this beer sucks (see above). If the packaging of your product is an actual selling point, you really ought to consider improving your product.

Don’t get me wrong, Coors Light isn’t poisonous or anything; I’ve had several drinks that were worse and not only lived through it, but probably became a better person for it. Coors Light is merely a colossal disappointment for somebody looking for a complex, flavorful beer. It’s certainly more than adequate as a chaser for that shot you’re going to regret in about forty-five minutes, or for washing down stronger drinks like unsweetened lemonade or lukewarm tap water. I don’t know how old you are, but no matter how young or healthy you are, you have only a finite number of drinks left to drink before you kick off. Make sure you make the right choice.

I’m afraid I have to give Coors Light my lowest rating yet: Three (3) snarling werewolves, one for each can of Silver Bullet that came out of the Beer Mystery Case.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES
1. For example, I’ve never been able to spell “skyscraper” or “coal.”
2. Please note the proper spelling, drivel instead of dribble. As internet misspellings go, this one bugs me almost as much as “wallah” for “voilà.”
3. It could be argued that the skewed male-to-female ratio at the School of Mines does support the notion that the female students are pretty smart . . . but as women in Alaska like to say, the odds may be good, but the goods are odd.
4. Yes, I know what Windex tastes like. I suppose I’m going to get a lecture about this. What are you, my mother?
5. And if your tongue can’t tell you whether the beer is cold, what the hell does it matter what temperature it’s at anyway?