Approaching a Milestone

Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 7

Day 7: “It is something that man was not meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. It is not of this Earth.”

The Beer Mystery Case (artist’s conception)

The Beer Mystery Case, like the fabled Ark of the Covenant (which, incidentally, mimics the Case’s design), is steeped in history yet shrouded in secrecy. Its power is both mysterious and mercurial, oftentimes granting its users wondrous gifts, other times inflicting upon them nothing but incomprehensible face-melting terror.

This is why I don't drink Coors Light.

One would be right to wonder, then, if the world might have been better off had the Beer Mystery Case, like the Ark, stayed buried in the Egyptian desert forever. One would be right to wonder the same thing about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Frankly, to rightfully question the motivations of the Beer Mystery case is far beyond the scope of mere human understanding. The mere notion of it is as laughable as, say, questioning the wisdom of Ryan Spilborgh’s beard. As some famous long-dead English guy once wrote, ours is not to question why, ours is but to drink some shitty beer and possibly barf.¹

So I, with this essential truth in mind and my fate clearly out of my hands, reached into the Beer Mystery Case and pulled out

Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.²

There’s a scene in the mock-rockumentary Spinal Tap where one of the fictional titular band’s albums, Shark Sandwich, is said to have been given a scathing two-word review: “shit sandwich.” Funny though that scene was, rest assured that we here at Bowling in the Dark would never stoop to such cheap, easy vulgarity to make a point.³

Miller Genuine Draft, ready to return from whence it came.

Our biggest complaint about Miller Genuine Draft was not its flavor (which was both thin and displeasingly bitter) or its color (which, as can be seen in the photo above, is unappetizingly similar to certain fluids that nobody in their right mind would contemplate drinking⁴), but that the Mystery Case saw fit to give us four of them.

Disappointing though Miller Genuine Draft is—and despite the red flag that comes up whenever something insists on being advertised as “Genuine” (much like a seedy used-car salesman inserting “honest” into his name)—there are, we have to admit, times where a cold MGD might prove to be welcome. For example, it would serve well as a chaser if you’re in the midst of a Nepalese drinking contest, and drinking an MGD would definitely be preferable to being trapped underground forever in the dark, surrounded by thousands of poisonous snakes. And we’re willing to admit that other good reasons to drink Miller Genuine Draft may indeed exist, but at the moment, none come to mind.

Some Guy’s rugged and adventurous rating for Miller Genuine Draft, then, consists of 1 (one) roasted Nazi henchman and 1 (one) smarmy exploding French archaeologist.

Naughty henchman (l), haughty Frenchman (r).

NOTES

1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” 1854. Quoted verbatim.

2. Because the Miller and Coors breweries merged in 2008 to become MillerCoors—a name suggesting an almost total lack of imagination—Miller Genuine Draft is, technically speaking, a MillerCoors product. But its creation long predates the merger, and Coors already has plenty to answer for, so I will refrain from blaming them for MGD.

3. We will do it, however, just to be jerks.

4. That is, Coors Light.