beer

O’DOUL’S—What to do with crack

My Fellow Inebriates,

peopleofwalmart.com

My mum swears she saw ass crack in Walmart today as she was leaving with the stroller, the kids and the groceries. Right before that she’d witnessed giant, pendulous bosoms lolling out of a dirty negligee over in the frozen-foods aisle, a week before darkest winter.

I believe my mother because she’s too humorless to invent an elderly man in a death-metal leather jacket yanking up his ill-fitting jeans to return to proper privacy four inches of rectal spectacle. She said this parting shot from Walmart had kind of made her forget about the half-naked woman buying ice cream.

peopleofwalmart.com

I love fashion diversity, but even more, I love knowing that the People of Walmart are a real phenomenon, not something staged by Walmart haters or, more deviously, by Walmart itself. No, these people actually flock to Walmart every day wearing feathers and leather and tats and animal prints—without coaching or prompting—spilling out of their (perhaps carefully chosen) duds. What a marvelous, organic culture Walmart has spawned.

My mum predicted I would say it called for a toast and unfortunately kiboshed a bottle of wine, lording her opposable thumbs over me. Which leaves me to review a very unworthy beer available at grocery stores everywhere, even in Canada and probably at Walmart.

Calling O’DOUL’S a beer is charity to say the least. O’DOUL’S is an alcohol-free abomination, a <0.5% pretender. Faintly metallic and over-sweet, this wanna-be brew pours light amber-yellow, then rests uneventfully in the glass, wafting chemical aromas and mocking you with its lack of alcohol.

You guys know I find something to like about pretty much everything, provided it has alcohol, so it’s really not fair to beat up O’DOUL’S too much. If you’re pregnant or driving or drying out, maybe it’s a good solution. But it’s hard to tolerate something that taunts you with beer-like qualities but simply isn’t a proper beer. There are a million other fizzy beverages I’d have before I’d crack another O’DOUL’S.

So on the “crack” note, and for consistency’s sake, here’s my recommendation: Use it for enemas.

 

LABATT BLUE

My Fellow Inebriates,

There is a time and a place for mass-market beer. The hockey game, on my couch.

This is where mainstream beer really shines—you can drink it fast with no pretentious tasting pressures, and it gets you nice and gooned. My good friend Jean-Guy recommends starting a case of LABATT BLUE just as Don Cherry starts mouthing off before the hockey game, then stretching it out for the next couple of hours. Perfect. Neither item distracts from the other: beer and hockey synergize into a perfectly anaesthetizing pocket of time.

Jean-Guy has all sort of other ideas about alcohol. He was the dude who first urged me to mix Stolichnaya and Smirnoff in a 50:50 on pointless-feeling days.

I barely know anything about hockey. I’m usually looped before the puck gets dropped. But as a Canadian bear I like to be semi-present for a game once in a while. What I can’t decide about hockey is, Is it emblematic of Canada? Or is it a meathead sport? What does “offside” mean? It seems to mean a couple of different things.

Mostly Don Cherry hurts my eyes with his outfits. Sure, that’s his gimmick, and I do have a soft spot for unusual visuals, but I think most people would prefer him naked to seeing these fashions.

Cherry does explain some of his get-ups. He has worn his pink suit, for instance, to thumb his nose at the left. “I’m wearing pink for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything.” Wow, so cool.

Don Cherry triggers me to drink LABATT BLUE, and fast. This last part is key, because LABATT BLUE has little to recommend it tastewise.

Less visually assaulting

Straw-colored with a quickly dissipating fizz, LABATT BLUE feels empty and light in the mouth, with a bit of a twangy, metallic funk. It has a pleasant crispness that is dependent on its being cold—hence the importance of pounding the case quickly.

As far as macro beers go, LABATT BLUE isn’t the worst, simply because it’s not memorable in any aspect. It’s an entirely appropriate accompaniment to anything mediocre you plan to do.

HEINEKEN Lager—but DON’T read this if you’re underage

Tweet from HEINEKEN today:

“Thanks for following! Our content is intended for people of Legal Drinking Age so please don’t share it with those who aren’t. Cheers!”

I’m really glad HEINEKEN reminded me about this. I would never want to divulge the existence of alcoholic beverages to people under legal drinking age. To the best of my knowledge, most teenagers are unsullied by any awareness of beer. This is good for North America, because knowledge is dangerous, and knowing about beer could be a gateway for knowing about wine, and vodka, and tequila. OMG.

Drink responsibly.

Teenagers already make a decent effort not to learn anything, so if HEINEKEN’s on track with this idea, shielding them from any information about alcohol should enable them to glide past its temptations—at least until Dad buys them their inaugural 19th-birthday drink at the bar, little knowing they’ll have a dozen more with their friends later and need their hair held back over the vomit-gulping toilet.

I wonder if HEINEKEN would apply the same logic to sex. Don’t tell teenagers about sex, and it won’t occur to them.

Now, to whom would this logic be logical? Oh yeah—half of North America. The half that overlaps with the young-earth and intelligent-design clubs.

Amsterdam's Red Light District (Wikipedia)

I shouldn’t really single out HEINEKEN; this is obviously a policy thing, a hedge against a litigious world where, heaven forefend, someone might sue them for sewing the seeds of drunkenness in the impressionable. It just hit a funny note for me because HEINEKEN comes from the Netherlands, whose Red Light District is internationally famous for liberalism about sex, drugs and drinking.

Getting to the point, what is HEINEKEN, and should we drink it?

When people think HEINEKEN, they think skunky. The skunkiest of popular beers, this lager nevertheless holds mainstream status. HEINEKEN pours yellow, fizzy and watery, the carbonation dissipating quickly. The fizz is essential to HEINEKEN’s drinkability, as whatever pleasant malty taste might be in there is playing second fiddle to the headlining aromas, so some fireworks are necessary to distract the mouth from the nose, or reconcile them, or something.

Knowing about alcohol leads to deviant behavior.

All that said, I really enjoy HEINEKEN. It reminds me of Amsterdam, where I’ve never been but where I expect I might find interspecies couplings like the one I sometimes enjoy with my girlfriend Dolly when she’s in the mood and her nose is plugged up.