Scientists Prove Beer-Goggles Effect is Real -- Efficacy of Spitting in the Wind Currently Under Review

In the latest revelation to come out of science’s unending quest to prove the utterly obvious, a recent UK study has shown that being drunk makes the people around you appear more attractive. This is following on from shocking research conducted in France that determined that loud music is often played in places serving alcoholic beverages. A look into whether drinking in the winter increases the likelihood that one will attempt to urinate one’s initials in a snowbank is set for the first snowfall.

The beer-goggles effect is of course commonly known to all drinkers and the sober ugly people hanging around them looking to get laid. Lowering inhibitions and standards right along with them is what alcohol is for. However, it was never proven in a controlled, scientific setting, and for some reason, some academic types at Bristol University in the UK thought it should be.

The researchers gave both a lime-flavored alcoholic drink and a similarly flavored non-alcoholic drink to 84 university students, who may or may not have shown up solely because they heard word that an egghead was giving out free booze. They were told to drink what was given to them and then shown pictures of people their own age once they were finished. The slightly tipsy students found the students in the pictures more attractive than the control group did. Hence: the beer-goggles theory formerly bandied about ignorantly is now established in fact. Interestingly, the heterosexual group of students with a drink in them also found members of their own sex more attractive, which might result in an unexpected conclusion to the evening the next time Billy and Bo Dog go out for a Friday debauch.

The study’s lead researcher said that ethical constraints prevented him from giving his subjects more than the equivalent of a few glasses of wine, something he regretted. "We can look at smaller doses and we can look at slightly higher doses," he said. What people would be rating others on HotOrNot.com after having, say, fallen down the stairs in a puke-stained drunken stupor is thus a matter of pure conjecture. In the meantime, alcohol, will continue with its sacred mission of giving hope to those battered mercilessly by the ugly stick.

The World's Worst-Sounding Booze Brand Names (Part Two)

For Part One of the World's Worst-Sounding Booze Brand Names click here.

(This is the second part of a blog that originally appeared on Cracked.com this past weekend. Since Cracked has space considerations, and we most definitely do not, here is the remainder of the full list. To see the list as it appeared on Cracked, click here This version contains a few horrendous booze-branding choices that didn't make it into the final entry. To sip your favorite fermented beverage while enjoying part two, don't click anything; just manipulate the down arrow on the keyboard as appropriate.)

Arnold Palmer Cabernet Sauvignon

Golf, to say the least, is lacking in youthful verve. It’s one of a handful of sports whose physical demands are so minimal it can be played while attached to an IV drip, which can be hauled around in your golf cart, if you don’t take any sharp curves. And here’s a wine that won’t appeal to anybody other than the old duffer whose handicap is possibly dropping stone dead on the 9th green.

What the Company Might Have Intended: Celebrity endorsements can be lucrative, especially if product and pitchman are well-paired, like Donald Trump and his vodka, which like all vodkas is transparent and tasteless. It works best though, if the median age of the fan base isn’t older than jokes about how old people are, material more well-tread than the starting line of the Boston Marathon and more tired than the finish.

Why This Marketing Ploy is Heading Toward the Bunker: Arnold Palmer is not named Tiger Woods, and the differences don’t even begin to end there: for one thing, they are clearly two different people (we confirmed this by looking at them). If you break a bottle of Palmer out at the dinner table, your date will think you wrested away a family heirloom by posing as a distant relative, www.deadoraliveinfo.com will be consulted and a generation gap will appear wider than that between The Big Bopper and 50 Cent—if you’re old enough to remember the Big Bopper, your parents hand-forged their own clubs and were Palmer fan club members during the Dust Bowl years.

Goats Do Roam Wine

Just the right touch for any intimate gathering with friends, an oddly named wine that reminds you of a garbage-eating oversexed animal with a poor disposition.

What the Company Might Have Intended: Goats have been associated with virility since ancient times, well, not so much goats but whoever first decided to cross that interspecies divide and mate with one and spawn a Satyr. While perversions that would shame the mayor of Amsterdam have been etched into Grecian urns since antiquity, the Goats Do Roam label is decidedly quaint, and details some legend or another involving a Yemeni herder that we cannot make out even by squinting. We imagine such a fable involves a goat say, wandering off the edge of a precipice, at which point a wizened herder remarks to his young upstart, ‘See, goats DO roam’.

Why We’re not Ordering Another Round: Lumbering ruminants such as water buffalo, antelope, bison or anything else that could be pot-shotted from the comfort of a passing train are not to be associated with the liquid portion of any meal.

Bürgerbräu Bad Reichenhall Suffikator

From the land of euphonious-sounding beer names, Germany, comes Bürgerbräu Bad Reichenhall Suffikator, a premium doppelbock beer, or a hasty confession to a murder charge, we’re not quite sure which.

What the Company Might Have Intended: For the most part we avoided including beers with foreign names just because they had an icepick-like effect on our ears, such as the Belgian Affligem Paters Vat (shiver), or even English names that just somehow nauseate by their very sound – like “Norfolk Nog”. Germany is home to some of the best beer in the world – maybe the best and they also like to drink it in giant steins with food that’ll kill you before you leave the table, so the country’s boozing credentials are solid. Deutschland is also home to the highest concentration of booze brand names that sound like biblical plagues – reference the many ‘Hell’ beers, ala Bock Hell (hell means “light” in German). The first part of this one is the name of the brewer and using our German acquired from a week of Teutonic swimming lessons, we can guess that it means something like “Richard’s Castle Natural Springwater” or something like that. Suffikator is the actual name of the beer.

Why They Failed: Suffikator is the actual name of the beer. Taken as a whole, this beer’s name has one too many umlauts for comfort and sounds like some period in the Middle Ages when people laid around dying from pestilence while bleeding from the eyes. But given how often German is similar to English – (Maus = mouse, Bier = beer, Katze = Cat, Hund = dog/hound) – the Suffikator part, for which we could not find a translation, makes it just that bit more mercenary-sounding. This might well be a terrific beer – and doppelbock does mean double-strength so it’s certainly got some fire power – but we’re guessing this will not make much of a splash on American store shelves until its name is changed to something that does not conjure up the image of a nutcase going around with plastic bags and bad intentions.

Zodiac Vodka / Nostradamus Beer

When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will rule the planet, and yet this will still go unsold in bars.

If a conversation with the opposite sex drifts, like medical waste onto a Jersey beach, to the topic of the various phases of the moon and how they really do affect a person’s menstrual cycle and Nostradamus’s thoughts on the sub-prime mortgage crisis, it’s best to back away slowly, and fake an impromptu exit — citing a dry cleaner who closes early for the afternoons. This is unless, of course, your last sexual experience was long enough ago to have exceeded at least 3 zones of celestial longitude.

What the Company Might Have Intended: Tapping into superstition and supposed divination of either ancient firmamental noodlings or the gout-addled ramblings of a 16th century French druggist is niche marketing of sorts, even if this niche is narrower than Nicole Richie in profile.

Why They Failed and, Apropos of Nothing, How the Moon in Venus’ Sign Means you Should Cease Mortgage Payments Immediately: Approaching a woman and slurring ‘hey baby, what’s your sign?’ is questionable behavior at the best of times, let alone inviting mockery by using a prop (in the event that your state’s liquor laws enable you to order a jug to have all to yourself). If not, you’ll have to simply invite her to share a belt of Zodiac Vodka with you, mention “I’m a Taurus’ by way of introduction, at which point any objections we’ve raised here will drift through her mind in less time than it takes to make a quick dash to the powder room for reasons undisclosed. We prophesize diminishing market share for these products.

Essex Boys Bitter/The Bishop’s Finger

We’ve opted for prudence and to refrain from commenting on this pair of UK beers out of a fear of reprisals from the Catholic Church. Suffice it to say it’s advisable to knock twice before entering any confessional within a one-mile radius of a pub with these two on tap.

Cloudy Bay Chardonnay

If you’re making plonk in an abandoned garage, and planning on having a great unveiling of the saran wrap at the neighborhood flophouse, you’d be forgiven for having a product that looks like something that would bubble up from a bog as you swat away the flies. We’re not saying this product looks like that, but with a name like this one would not want to risk one’s eyesight by sampling a glass.

What the Company Might Have Intended: This product was produce in a place called Cloudy Bay, New Zealand. But if I’m a maker of frozen seafood products and I hail from Botulism Springs, Manitoba, would I feel the need to give a shout out to the home town? Unless you skipped marketing 101 and the guy whose notes you borrowed dropped dead mid-semester, you’d realize that “cloudy” is not going to attract any intended demographic. The adjective, whether it refers to urine and the need for a hasty a referral to a specialist, inclement weather that ruins an otherwise perfectly good day at the beach, (or for that matter one's judgment when it comes to naming your product) never connotes anything positive.

Why They Failed and Why Breweries Learned Long Ago that No Matter how Flat the Countryside, it’s Best not to Draw Attention to It as this Can Be Misconstrued: In day one of sommelier school, after thorough instructions on how best to condescend to the customer, and how to scrub Chianti out of a silk tie using nothing but the hem of a waitress’ skirt and a blob of saliva, it is noted that clarity rather than cloudiness is much-sought after in a dinner wine. As a general rule, you don’t want to be gazing across the table through glassware that looks like an aquarium someone’s put out on the curb.

Shingleback Shiraz

Awaiting test results from the lab on this Aussie oddity.

What the Company Might Have Intended: It's well known that there are as many beaver shots in Canadian tourism materials as there are in those forwards you get from the guy in IT, and Canada is not alone as a country that likes to celebrate its indigenous creatures. Australians too take pride in their wildlife, as evidenced by Steve Irwin before he uttered his last “Crikey!”. Like grungy backpackers, shingleback lizards roam large parts of Australia, especially Bondi beach, whereas shingles of the variety not installed on your roof by ex-cons, is the common name of the nervous disorder Herpes Zoster, and it can be found roaming many more beaches than this lizard. You can see why they changed the name as a casual mention of ‘Shingles’ rather than ‘Herpes’ in polite conversation implies to the casual eavesdropper that you might’ve had some home reno done, rather than having slept your way through the entire baritone section of the varsity glee club.

Why We’re Getting a Doctor’s Second Opinion Instead of Ordering Another Round: Ordering a bottle of a skin condition that commonly presents itself as red marks on your back that aren’t caused by fingernails having dug into it in the throes of passion might result in a goodnight peck on the cheek and a round of antivirals on the house if the more positive connotation, in this case a disgustingly slimy lizard, isn’t the first thing that springs to mind.

Special Mention:

Pruno

Did you make it through today’s recreation period without getting shanked by Phil the Fish? Looking to celebrate? Pour yourself a glass of Pruno!

What the “Company” Might Have Intended: Alas there is no CEO of Pruno Industries, and chances are that you would not want to sit on the board if there were, as a hostile takeover would likely mean being attacked by a guy who spent the previous night fashioning a deadly weapon out of his toothbrush. “Pruno” is the term given to prison wine and Jarvis Masters, a man sitting on death row in San Quentin Penitentiary, is credited with popularizing the term “Pruno”, in a 1992 poem entitled, “The Wine of My Youth Was Pruno”… actually it was called, “Recipe for Prison Pruno”. The poem coupled bits of the verdict that was read out on the day that Masters was sent up the river with practical tips on how to make prison Pruno: “Take ten peeled oranges/Jarvis Masters, it is the judgment and sentence of this court.” Since penning that little ditty, Masters has had plenty of time to perfect his Pruno-making abilities as he remains on death row to this day.

While most modern-day recipes for Pruno do not specifically call for prunes, and one would suspect that this is not the most popular fruit for prisoners, we would assume that at one point it contained prunes and was thus dubbed “Pruno”.

Why We’re Going to Be Good, Law-Abiding Citizens: Pruno is a sickening-sounding name as is anything derived or related to prunes, a fruit typically employed to keep the elderly regular. Then again it would be hard to come up with an attractive-sounding name for the kind of booze that can be made by anyone using only fruit, ketchup, sugar, a plastic bag, hot running water, and a sock. Whereas the worst aftereffects of a bender on the outside would be the unwelcome sight of someone only passable with beer goggles asking you how you like your eggs the following morning, the aftereffects of Pruno include blindness, death, irresistible urge to instigate a riot, and death in a prison riot. In a trend that must just tickle every poor slob who has had to drink the stuff in jail, Pruno is now being “enjoyed” outside of prison. In 2004, at the American Homebrewer's Association's National Homebrew Conference in Las Vegas, a “Make Your Own Pruno” competition was held. The winner was dragged out of his hotel room in the middle of the night by security guards and beaten with bars of soap tied up in pillow cases.

CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORST-SOUNDING BOOZE BRAND NAMES!

Notre Dame QB Drinks Beer! Life of as we know it is irrevocably altered

What do the US, Oman, Indonesia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates have in common?

Well, nothing, apart from a legal drinking age of 21, the highest in the world.

To put it another way, the US is the only non-Muslim country we're aware of (though in some parts of the Ukraine, they enforce the age of 21 though by all accounts it's roundly ignored) where to consume a beer, you must be old enough to earn a college degree.

Since many so-called 'student athletes' don't, we figure they just enjoy the college experience (the aspects unrelated to the taking of actual courses), in the limited time that they have.

Members of the Notre Dame football team (seen here) were cutting loose in a rousing game of Beer Pong, a time-honored college tradition, and for some reason, this non-event made its way into the pages of the Chicago Tribune, among others.

Now, to be fair, The Fighting Irish (a bizarre name for a team whose college name translates to 'Our Lady' in French, but to be more fair, being French is not typically associated with fighting anything successfully) have a graduation rate near 80%. This is substantially higher than the coin flip figures elsewhere in the country, some of which are as low as 30% and the team is known for hitting the books at least as hard as those across the line of scrimmage.

Of course, when the rest of us were busy say, studying, we weren't cut admission breaks for being able to run a 40 in under 5 seconds, common practice so that, well, dumb kids can practice.

A Notre Dame football spokesman said Monday there was no comment from the team for the time being, apart from 'Chug, chug, chug, chug!'

The World's Worst-Sounding Booze Brand Names (Part One)

(Editor's Note: The following blog appeared this weekend on Cracked.com. To see it there, complete with welcome jab at Dr. Phil, click here. Below is the first part of the original submission. Part Two will run on Wednesday. Reader feedback on brands that we may have missed is as welcome as a free round... almost) :

For a booze-maker, giving your hooch the right name can mean success, even if you are hustling a product that could be put to better use in the gas tanks of a fuel-hungry nation. Malt liquors like Wild Irish Rose, Night Flight, and Schlitz fall into this category, but their respective names hearken to the splendor of the Irish countryside (or a prostitute in the Irish countryside named Rose, which is still not so bad), getting high in the evening/the adrenaline that comes from sprinting away from a crime scene, and, well, Schlitz doesn’t really signify anything but it seems like it would be a fine name to give one’s first-born son – “The proud parents are thrilled to welcome little Schlitz Rasmussen into the world”. Like putting a silk hat on a pig, it’s a way of sprucing up your product and fostering a loyalty that is completely divorced from product quality – in other words, the kind of loyalty that lasts.

Just as a catchy name with positive connotations can mean success for a product with “optimal serving conditions” listed as “best served in the general proximity of someone who drinks fast”, so too can a bad name sink the fortunes of a quality product. Many of the booze brand names below have been slapped onto products that judging by reports from beer and liquor snobs on the Internet sound pretty good, but we are not going to find out just how good because their names send us dangerously close to wanting to walk the line of sobriety.

It has become trendy among booze purveyors, particularly brewers and wineries these days to give their products deliberately jokey names like “Arrogant Bastard Ale” and “Wasatch Polygamy Porter” etc., but here we’ve stuck to those that sicken or repel consumers unintentionally for the most part (passing on Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout, however, was not an option). In some cases, these names sound terrible due to language or cultural differences; in others it’s a name that started off as perfectly acceptable but later become increasingly risible as the years passed and people looked for more words with which to form double entendres; and, in the majority of cases, it was a bad name to begin with and shit doesn’t turn to gold with age.

It’s last-call, the bar has been drained of all other brands, these names are presented to us on a menu, and we opt instead to do the unthinkable and flag down a taxi. There ought to be a law.

Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout

From Sweetwater Brewery in Atlanta, Georgia comes a beer that attempts to bottle the exotic allure of getting a five-fingered shuffle from someone who may or may not have found her way into her present place of employment as part of a barter deal for a Chevrolet.

What the Company Might Have Intended: The cartoon of the winking, cleavage-bearing sexpot masseuse on the label means this wasn't a case of someone having failed to check out the urban dictionary before naming the beer. But the description on the label, "A huge, dry hopped stiffy, for a full figured beer, resulting in an explosive finish!" suggests that perhaps this was an attempt to celebrate the defining qualities of a good stout – full-bodied, satisfying with a pleasant aftertaste etc – in a way that would stand out on the shelves. That this quotation makes no grammatical sense may have been a play on the language difficulties that confront rub and tug patrons, or point to the need for a copy-checker at Sweetwater Breweries.

Why They Failed and Why We Want to Vomit: Beer companies often get a bum rap for glorifying alcohol abuse by producing commercials that show good looking young people having the time of their lives while in the general proximity of a crapload of their product. Someone living in a converted garage, drinking Miller Genuine Draft and spraying his shirts with deodorant so he doesn't have to do a wash, might look at those Greek statues come to life in the Miller commercials, who seem to be preparing for a cabin orgy with the Swedish Bikini Natural 10 Extra-Beautiful Club, and think that he's a few six-packs away from joining them. That same slob would have far less mental jogging to do to make the image that Sweetwater Happy Ending Massage conjures up a reality. Even more unappealing-sounding than "Hummer", also put out by this same brewer, this one brings to mind the altogether unpleasant image of some naked horny fat guy in a towel overcoming a language barrier by counting off sums of money using his fingers and waving a stack of greasy low-denomination bills.

Deerstalker Scotch

From Scotland comes the perfect complement to a day spent skulking around a tranquil forest dressed up like a bush in the hopes of bagging Bambi.

What the Company Might Have Intended: A deerstalker is the kind of jaunty cap that Sherlock Holmes wears, and one that has also graced the fictitious heads of cynical low-life Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”, and portly truculent hotdog vendor Ignatius J. Reilly of “A Confederacy of Dunces”—lit personae you’d least like to emulate behaviorally or sartorially. In real life, most people who are able to tie their own shoes and for whom strangling by shoelaces is not a danger, don’t wear these hats. The exception, of course, are those for whom the hat is named – hunters out for a day’s drinking and shooting in the best tradition of American vice-presidents. They are presumably the target market for this whiskey.

Why They Failed and Why We Are Untying our Deerstalker Hats: This is not the whiskey to break out on a first date. First, it promotes headwear favored by those in cold climates who have severed all ties with mankind. Second, any reference to the slaughter of deer is unlikely to impress. Paired with the term “stalker”, showing up with a bottle of this falls between having BO and casually mentioning that you have a family of 10 “out there, somewhere” as a sure way to kill a date.

Dr Loosen Riesling

From along the banks of the German Rhine comes this medical malpractice suit in a bottle.

What the Company Might Have Intended: The eponymous Dr. Loosen started this winery nearly 200 years ago and the German vintner has been run by assorted Loosens since then. The founder was not, as far as we could determine, the kind of doctor who spent his off-days rambling about the German countryside and snatching women’s underwear from clotheslines. It would appear that the makers of this one never really thought too much about why their English friends were snickering under their kerchiefs, and once their export market expanded and the name of “Doc Loosen” came into hands such as ours, they were already too rich to give a Scheiße.

Why They Failed and Why The Officer Would Like to Have a Word With You Downtown: This sounds like the kind of booze you’d need to warn your teenage daughter about before she agrees to go out alone with the highschool quarterback. Booze has been helping ugly people get laid since the first caveman realized that it had its advantages over the club in terms of taking the relationship to the next level. But these days the inside of a prison cell and a standing engagement with someone who or may not want to tattoo you as his own property has lessened the acceptability of booze’s “liquid panty-removing” qualities. “Loosen up”, is of course, the most oft-heard entreaty of a teenager looking to get laid – right before the open palm of the girl he’s trying to woo hits his face. Adding the modifier “Doctor” doesn’t help. Doctor Loosen Reisling sounds like a moustache-twirling creep in a grungy white coat with breath that reeks of yesterday’s after-dinner bender and a special getting-to-know-you rate for all the young mothers in town.

Kelpie Organic Seaweed Ale

From the Argyll coast in Scotland comes a beer that will take you back to the times when you stepped in something squishy at the beach and hoped it wasn’t a turd.

What the Company Might Have Intended: According to Celtic legend, kelpies are child-killing shape-shifting water horses that can be found murdering innocents along lochs and rivers in Scotland and Ireland. The legend has it that a kelpie will appear as a lost pony on land and somehow BS a child into taking a ride on its back. The kelpie then makes a mad dash straight for the bottom of the nearest body of water, the child is unable to get off due to the creature’s skin suddenly becoming adhesive, and… we have one less citizen on the village census rolls. This all sounds like a tale concocted to cover up the baptismal boo-boos of “Dunker” Father Fred, or possibly further proof that those closest to the water drink booze in greater quantities and packing a higher punch than do their land-locked brethren. This beer is actually brewed using seaweed, a particularly disgusting-sounding strain of the stuff called “bladder rack”, harvested off the Argyll Coast. And presumably it’s organic, rather than that chemical shit that McDonald’s try to sell you.

Why They Failed and Why We Want to Puke in the Ocean: In a word: Blech! Aside from naming the beer after a children’s myth that has undoubtedly traumatized generation of kids, we cannot conceive of the appeal of advertising the fact that a beer is brewed using the stuff that you need to wash off your boat with a high-powered hose every time you take it in for the season. Seaweed, for all its purported ecological benefit, is one of nature’s more repulsive creations, and there’s no reason Zebra Mussel Barnacle Stout or Man-o-war Jellyfish Wheat won’t be joining Kelpie Organic in the brewery’s seasonal gift basket. As a kid, there were few things as fun to at the beach as getting a handful of the stuff and chucking it at the bald head of your favorite hectoring uncle, but drink it? No thanks Bucko, we’ll keep to the dry land.

British Navy Pusser's Rum

From England comes a brand of rum that takes you back to the days when the British Navy were earning their reputation for being adept at nothing other than “rum, sodomy, and the lash”. This rum celebrates the rum part of that naval “to-do” list.

What the Company Might Have Intended: Members of the British navy, back when they were out sailing into mysterious foreign ports to bayonet the locals and open post offices, were kept from mutiny largely by a daily allotment – a “tot” – of rum. Sure there was the scurvy, the filthy living conditions and, if you were the cabin boy, the constant fear of being raped and/or eaten, but none of that would seem as terrible if you were out of your gourd on rum at the time. What’s more, the daily pint of rum also helped contribute to turning sailors’ skin cirrhosis-of-the-liver yellow, which made for a pleasant effect in combination with the sun shining off their faces as they were tipped into the ocean during at-sea burials. On the ships of old, the daily tot of rum was doled out by a purser and “pusser” is how you pronounce “purser” after you’ve had your daily tot. The practice of giving sailors a pint of rum a day was discontinued in 1970 – or perhaps the stress there should be it actually went on until 1970 – and British Navy Pusser’s Rum then is an attempt to carry on in that manly tradition of iron boats and hard men with even harder livers.

Why They Failed and Why, Yo-ho-ho, A Pirate’s Life is Not For Us: Another contender for this list was Sailor Jerry Spiced Navy Rum, but Pusser’s won out because nobody without an encyclopedia of tedious naval trivia at their side – or Google – would guess that Pusser’s is a derivation of Purser. Not only does it call to mind unpleasant images of Sheriff Buford Pusser kicking a Texas drunk to death, but it also sounds like the kind of wound you would not want to get while on board one of those hygienically-defunct ships of yore.

Entire Butt Porter

From the UK comes this porter that gives you a retort to have at the ready the next time someone tells you your favorite malt liquor “tastes like ass”. This stuff is called Entire Butt Porter and by all accounts it tastes pretty damn good.

What the Company Might Have Intended: What initially appears to be an entreaty not to give preference to one cheek over the other, but rather to embrace the “entire butt” – commendable as that might have been – actually seems to be one of those quirks of American versus UK English (like how in the US they call that thing that soccer moms carry their mace in a fanny pack, whereas in the UK it’s presumably known as a vagina mace-carrier). Butt, it turns out, is an old English term for barrel, so “entire butt” means “the entire barrel”, and has nothing whatever to do with asses.

Why They Failed and Why We Won’t Be Saying “Bottoms-up!” with this stuff: All meaning-of-word nonsense aside, there’s no getting around the fact that this is ass beer. If you order this one, you’ll be left to the mercies of your howling friends who can inquire quite justifiably, “Tell me, just how does ASS taste?” This also goes for Butcombe Bitter, all of the beers put out by Butts Brewery (particularly our favorite “Le Butts Biere”) and, of course, king of the ass beers, AASS Bock out of Belgium.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO OF THE WORLD'S WORST-SOUNDING BOOZE BRAND NAMES!

Cups Runneth Over: The War Against Beer Pong in Time Magazine

Interestingly, Time Magazine posted an article recently, about the 'War Against Beer Pong'.

Now, we're no strangers to the game, having played it at our book launch, and we're certainly no strangers to writing about it:

For those of you who missed it, click here and here.




Cheers,

The Beer Pong Champions of the Greater Toronto Area,

The Shark Guys

Royals Sample Carbon Neutral Beer: Chuck and Camilla Chug Cold Ones

As Canadians, we're grateful for all the Royal Family have given us, namely a holiday in May that coincides with warmer weather, and currency featuring the Queen, whose craggy visage youngsters can fold into creative shapes when they're old enough to earn an allowance.

We've also noted how gratifying it is to find a crumpled twenty in the pocket of a pair of slacks and included only one tale involving royalty in our who's who of drunks, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion.

According to reports, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were in Suffolk recently, sampling 'carbon neutral' beer (there are conflicting reports as to whether it was flat or fizzy) and arriving by helicopter as befitting such an eco-friendly event.

Here are pictures of the couple testing the 'beer goggles' phenomenon they've no doubt heard so much about.

Beer Couture: Top 10 Suds Fashion Duds

For those whose "Sunday Best" refers to what's worn at the Piggly Wiggly cashing in those cheesy nacho Hamburger Helper coupons, here are a few beer-themed sartorial suggestions you can run by the missus as she lights a Vantage Ultra Light off the propane barbecue and kicks back in a hammock.

Now, we've chronicled all manner of drunken exploit in our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, from leaping into a stark and stingray-filled aquarium drunk on a bet (the title story) to trying to beat a DUI rap by handing the cops ID belonging to a guy with a glass eye and hoping they wouldn't notice. Our guess is, the type of person who'd get up to such hijinks would undoubtedly have a drawer filled with garments like the ones we're showcasing here that the wife would most certainly try and shrink in the wash or sneak off to a church clothing drive when her man is out of town.

For a night on the town blinding a biker with your pool cue's butt end, beating the snot out of a motel ice machine, and kicking up dust at the state police, nothing says 'I'm not to be messed with' like a good ol' 1) Classic Beer T or Tank Top. If you're the adventurous type, it comes complete with double entendre seen here.

How do you establish territorial boundaries and also alert people to the fact that your name is Dick, and you drink beer? The answer is to the left, though technically the T would make more sense if it were on the actual beer, like a beer cosy perhaps. If you receive this as a gift and your name is not Dick, it's probably best that you reconsider the nature of your association with the person doing the giving. To the right, we have the kind of T-shirt that is a must for anyone who has ever worked out for longer than one week. What use is having the big guns unless you wear one of these to show them off? There is no point in lifting weights, or even in breaking a sweat, unless you have the kind of clothing that can reveal your efforts to the outside world.
[Fashion Suggestion: Best paired with an undergarment of some kind, though for the girl who is looking for instant popularity this is completely optional.]

2. The Coors Draw String Pant. Elegant, stylish, these are words that are never mentioned in conjunction with this item. A comfy expandable elastic waistband, means you're limited only by how many Hardee's Thickburgers can be forced down your gullet and by how many negative triglycerides readings come back from the lab that you choose to ignore before that tingling sensation in your arm gets too worrisome. [Fashion Suggestion: Pair with a sleeveless Stone Cold Steve Austin 3:16 T, Crocs, a frog doing something sexually suggestive tank top or bare-chested if you have errands to run and drive a jeep]




3. Budweiser Tie. For more official gatherings, like say the christening of the neighbor's riding mower, the burying of a beloved family pet or a sentencing hearing, you can get the gavel banger to at least chuckle at your official Budweiser Tie before sending you straight up the river without a raft. Whether such bold haberdashery really constitutes throwing yourself on the mercy of the court (or just a cheap ploy to beat that Oxycontin possession/indecent exposure rap) is up to legal interpretation.








4. King of Beers One-piece/Corona Bikini Top. For a more tasteful statement, such as a backyard grill-off where the neighbor's leering nephews are present, here's a two-piece, left. For wrestling in wet lettuce/impromptu Playboy Mansion badminton, to the right is a sassier version once those same kids turn 17. [Corrupting a minor charges vary according to state]




5. The 'Got Beer?' Combination Belt/Bottle Opener.
Who says style can't be functional? Give your back molars a rest as this versatile product will pop open bottles, hold up your pants, and if a rumble breaks out, you're an arm and a 38 waist's length away from being able to reach out and flog someone.





6. The Beer Belly Pouch Best accessorized with a Corona Draw String Pant if you're asymptomatic after that gastric bypass. With specs including an 80 ounce capacity and able to accommodate up to a 40-inch waistline, this product will fit at least one third of the target demographic. For a similar product we've reviewed here, click [Fashion Suggestion: For special occasions like staff meetings, sales presentations, wear a collared buttoned shirt over top, feed the drinking tube through the sleeve and surreptitiously sip from the wrist. This only applies if you're not the one conducting either meeting, unless you want to call a five minute recess to take a few swigs in the office's handicapped bathroom]


7. Miller Lite Thong Floss that 'junk in your trunk' and show your significant other that your tastes in the boudoir correspond to the case of junk you just stashed in the trunk.







8. Budweiser Beer Hat. Protect yourself from UV radiation, skin damage, good taste and the company of womenfolk with this bona fide Budweiser Beer Hat. Also, prevent sustaining any further head injury of the type that would result in the decision to sport this anywhere beyond the backyard (where it should only be donned if there is a sufficiently tall hedge) or the local laughing academy, where unfortunately, all such beverages would immediately be confiscated.




9. St Paddy's Socks Celebrate St Patrick's Day all year round with St Paddy's Day Commemorative Socks. I don't know about you, but we feel green just looking at them.










10. Pints of Beer Cuff Links. For your first time wearing cuff links, take your cue from the tone of the event you're to attend and what others will be wearing. If those people are completely and wholly unreliable, create a stir with your very own Pints of Beer Cuff Links [Fashion Suggestion: Wow the VIP section of your local Tough Man Contest with these beauties]

Belgian Beer Bonanza! Cantillon Brewery Tour, Brussels

It's impossible to forget the first time your taste-buds are left smarting from a slap of Belgian beer.

Like most, I was weaned on traditional lager or pilsener, the kind of stuff 'Johnny Sixpack' might pick up in his, well, pick-up.

To make watching sporting events palatable, such as our failing local hockey team's perpetual first round exit from the playoffs, or as an adjunct to a post-work barbecue in someone's suburban backyard, our greatest concern was a six-pack that wouldn't tax the wallet---and would leave us comfortably under the $10-dollar mark to to grab a bag of Doritos and pay for the last bus of the night without having to scramble for change.

If any of these bargain garage sale suds strayed too far from having what we came later to realize was a distinctly "beer" finish, it wasn't uncommon to hear "it's got a bitter aftertaste" bellyaching. This was odd, given that whenever anyone would inhale a candy bar, you'd never hear a "isn't that a sweet aftertaste?"

Belgian beer, as I came to learn, not only has aftertaste, but a heady "before" and "during" taste as well, and furthermore, some types weren't bitter at all.

Like the first time I guzzled a Guinness and realized it wasn't a facsimile of orange juice, like a Corona, or the first time I took a belt of whiskey left out in the bedroom of an older acquaintance whose jail-bait sis was hosting a party for precocious 9th grade tipplers, I realized it was a flavor distinctly unlike I'd ever encountered.

Most people's experience with Belgian beer comes via Stella Artois, which goes to show just how damn spoiled the Belgians are as that is the worst beer they make.

However, their other, more interesting beers trace their origins back to monasteries from the Middle Ages, and the product was so damn good many a monk broke their vow of silence to say as much. Unlike a lager, where the yeast ferments at the bottom at cooler temperatures, or an ale, the opposite, where the bits of goodness rise to the top, Belgian 'Lambic' beers do so spontaneously within the bottle itself.

This is admittedly a bit weird, and leaves the drinker wondering if the little bits floating around in the bottom of the bottle aren't the result of the local bog water source, rather than natural springs. It's also closed with a cork, so that you couldn't give it to the guy who got straight A's in shop class to remove the cap with his teeth.

Lambic beers are also laid down like fine wine to age, and sparkle as well. One of the sub-types (Kriek) is given a second fermentation with sour cherries, and another (Gueuze), is sometimes called Brussels Champagne.

For a country with a population only slightly higher than that of New York City, Belgium has 125 breweries, and an eye-popping 1000 + brands. Having been recently wowed by fruit beers, not for sissies as it turns out as they often pack a 10 and 12% alcohol punch, I figured I'd make a beer pilgrimage to the land that makes, and it pains me to say this with a mother and grandparents who hail from Germany, the world's finest beer.

I visited the Cantillon brewery, and if anyone is interested reading more about the brewing process, you can do so here, as this is not the forum to bore you with minutiae.

-- Chris

For more Shark Guy travels, check out what happened to Ireland's supply of a certain stout called Beamish when Noel visited the Emerald Isle by clicking here.

Beer Acronyms: What PBR REALLY Stands for: "Pretty bad refreshment"

What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor?
Heineken.
Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Blue Velvet (1989)

Tastes and preferences are often established early in life, and an aversion to say, the music of Celine Dion or Jimmy Buffet likely forms somewhere during the third trimester.

There are those whose first exposure to beer, sadly, occurs around this period as well (and who are then predisposed to voting Republican) but for most of us, the first time a cold one hits the taste-buds, is by surreptitious sip of the old man's
Amstel Light during a half-time bathroom break to walk the dog.

For others, it's shaking down the basement sofa for enough loose change to procure a bottle of the cheapest and most easily accessible hooch. The first beer beverage purchased, usually by an older brother, or the guy who sported a 5 O'Clock shadow at age of 14 and whose fettuccine arms could be hidden with several sweaters and an overcoat, is some mass-market swill with an advertising budget that exceeds the GDP of the entire Caribbean.

In Canada, it's the ubiquitous Molson Canadian, synonymous with hockey (or 'ice hockey' as it's referred to in the States to differentiate it from, I don't know, tonsil hockey), the music of Bachman Turner Overdrive and that uncle who spends the better part of the afternoon in a hammock, awaking periodically to get you to fetch him one.

The equivalent state-side is Coors, and it's no coincidence that these are brewed by the same manufacturer, and that they likely come from the same giant kettle as well and just have a Molson label slapped on for export north of the border.

Mediocre brews such as Budweiser, Miller or Molson are usually abandoned once a level of disposable income is reached to be able to absorb the extra $3 forked over for something premium, or during those college years, in exchange for skipping a few meals.

Interestingly, defenders of the swill are trying to block the takeover of The King of Beers by Belgian monolith Inbev. According to reports, last night more than 27,000 had heeded the call, signing an online petition to stop the takeover of the brewer of Budweiser.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is inexplicably popular too, perhaps solely for the ease with which a can of it is stuffed into a freezer so it can be chilled within minutes on a hot day, or perhaps because of its 'slumming it' hipster cache.

Anyway, here are three beers from our youth, Miller Genuine Draft (MGD), Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) and Bud, and what these really stand for. Thanks to our good buddies over at College Drinker for the idea...

MGD
Mediocre, god-awful drink
Maligned ginger-beer doppelganger
Mostly generic disappointment
Must be gluttonous dipsomaniac
Mild, gaseous, dismal

BUD
Beastly Undrinkable Drek
Basically Unfortunate Drink
Beer Under-agers Drink
Brew Unquestionably Dreadful
Base Ubiquitous Disgrace
Bubbly Urine-like Draft

PBR
Pretty bad refreshment
Possibly beer refuse
Potential brew rejected
Promoted by rabble
Prohibited by rarefied
Positively below rank
Patently banal rubbish

Beer as Fuel, and not just for your drunk Uncle Lou's awkward advances

In a previous blog, we drove home the true threat posed by global warming. Several polar bears may have been set off on that great ice-floe journey from which there is no return since that posting; however, the danger that we were pointing out looms large much closer to home – as close as your basement fridge – the possibility of a global beer crisis due to a lack of barley.

The warming of the planet, combined with a supply-side crisis, has also resulted in a short supply of hops in the US. Microbreweries, faced with less available hops, a key ingredient in their product, have taken to jacking up their prices, and, unless there is a change in the situation, we may be forced to either pay through the nose or agree with those who taunt us for drinking microbrews and settle for whatever is cheap and available because, after all, beer is beer.

This is the kind of news that is best met drunk. A recent TV news report suggested that beer is recession proof, and we would tend to agree. A few years ago you may have been toasting your good fortune, wondering why in the world someone would give a walking debt machine and astronomically high credit risk like yourself a mortgage. Now, with fortunes having reversed, and gas so expensive that you’re bargaining with the neighbor’s kid for his used 10-speed, you can tilt that same bottle to keep your mind off the dark state of your financial affairs.

Beer, however, is useful for more than just pouring down your throat in an effort to escape from the crippling grim reality of the diminished financial and natural resources of you and your country, although it is quite good for that. Beer is working for a better tomorrow.

The 2008 Democratic Convention will be sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Company. The company’s Coor’s Light, which can most charitably be described as “quite quaffable”, will be on sale at convention events. Despite both he and Hilary Clinton attempting to appeal to the lumpen by palming the odd pint on TV – which we covered here – Barack Obama tied with “none of the above” on a survey asking Americans who among the presidential candidates would make a good drinking partner. To be fair, the best drinking partners we know are able to do things like put cigarettes out on their tongues and so forth, and they would not make good holders of public office.

Perhaps sensing that it would not find a future presidential candidate that was as beer-drinker friendly as Bush, Coors chose a different and innovative tack – rather than merely fueling the drunken antics of young Democrats in functions near the event itself, it will also be fueling the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. As the “official ethanol sponsor” Coors will donate fuel made mostly out of beer waste – E85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol (beer in this case) and 15 per cent gasoline). When we speak of beer waste here, we’re not talking about spillage as a result of a shaken beer, or what results when you knock one over your keyboard while typing out a blog. The waste beer being turned into ethanol by Coors comes from beer that had been lost during packaging, or rejected for quality reasons.

Rarely, have the words of Homer J. Simpson been more appropriate: “Here's to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life's problems.”

Champions League Beer Shortage: Brits Drink Moscow Dry

A common complaint leveled against soccer is that it's boring. Meanwhile, nobody bothers issuing the same critique about baseball, where the guys hawking Amstel get more of a workout running up and down the aisles plying semi-conscious onlookers with cheap suds than the various mesomorphs manning the field and where the play -- which is about as frenetic as a Van Gogh still life -- is interrupted so that a pitcher can practice.

No other sport we're aware of, save for highly competitive mobster bocce ball, allows the flow of action to grind to a halt so that one of the participants can get in a proper warm up while eyelids flutter. Basketball players don't stand around while play stops as a guy who previously temperature-controlled the bench with his arse hoists a few shots at the hoop and soccer players don't lounge about so a substitute, who's just finished wowing middle-aged housewives with sideline calisthenics, can come onto the pitch and take a few practice kicks.

[Editor's note: baseball is also one of the few sports where the manager, even though he's older than fossil fuel, suits up like the players as if a septuagenarian is going to be called in to pinch hit. It's also one of the few outdoor sports in which play is suspended for an amount of rainfall that would not put a halt to the average wedding]

One thing for certain is that for soccer or baseball, whether it's the heaps of abuse screamed at the mascot, impromptu cheap seat 'bat day' beatings, or flares resembling a Hezbollah missile attack fired off in the stands, the real action is either in the crowd, or in the case of British football, the 18 hours prior to kick-off when the heavy drinking commences.

Dutch fans have been known to whiz on automobiles with German plates, fans of some Italian squads to do fascist salutes, Argentinian fans to knife one another pre-match, however these supporters show Salvation Army-like gentility compared with their British counterparts.

That being said, British fans gave a better than usual accounting of themselves recently, when according to the Daily Star, the 80,000 yobs who descended on Moscow for the Champions league final between Man U and Chelsea, didn't kill or maim anyone, but instead, completely depleted the local beer supply.

A United fan noted, “We were all on good form and the drinks were flowing in this little place we had found near the Kremlin. “But suddenly the barmaid threw up her hands and said: ‘No more!’

Fans complained bitterly as the lager ran out and they were told, 'no beer, just vodka'.

For more on beer shortages of a more serious, global nature, click here.

French Happy Hour not so 'appy after all

As we've pointed out a few times here, we're Canadian and many Canadians take great pains to explain to bored foreigners who could not give two shits otherwise: we're much different from Americans. For example, the Great White North, for those of you who don't know, is an officially bilingual state, though in reality English speakers are much more well-versed in what's known as "Cereal box French". For our American friends, this refers to French language proficiency a well-fed gorilla could comfortably master in sign language, and that might lead the average tourist to a bathroom or the nearest lost and found should they be parachuted into Basse Normandie.

Colloquially, it refers to an ability to do little more in "The Language of Love that's not Italian" than read the back of a cereal box and determine its ingredients (say, if peanut products, a plastic inhalable toy or trans fats are contained therein) but would not get you off with Juliet Binoche if you met her in a bar.

For those of us who couldn't converse with an "enfant" with our "terrible" Francais, it's tempting when encountering a Frenchman to simply precede an English word with "La" or "Le" and hope not to be met with quizzical stares.

One phrase that would not be lost in translation, (like the eponymous movie starring Bill Murray should've been), is "Le Binge Drinking", so obviously adopted from the English as in the UK it's their national past-time second only to differentiating themselves from lowly continentals and not combing their hair.

Indeed, there are few countries, save for Russia or Germany, who can even begin to compete with the levels of self-ruination we've chronicled across the pond.

According to a recent report though, even France is battling the scourge of increased public drunkenness and is mulling over the banning of happy hour, that period of time between work and home life that doesn't leave you looking at your watch and wondering when it's time to punch the clock or go to bed.

Other possible measures could include restricting the sale of vodka, whiskey and other high-powered potables in discos to glasses, rather than entire bottles, that you could previously hoist above your head and swing around to the beat of 'Love in this Club' while pouring the contents into the mouth of whoever you'd like to bed that evening.

They are also considering raising the legal age to three years below that of the US, where hairlines can recede, and mortgages can be bought at the comparatively ripe age of 21. Mon dieu! Sacre bleu!

Get 'Em When They're Young: Brewery draws fire for billboard outside primary school

One of the more ghoulish sounding objectives in marketing is the drive to create cradle-to-the-grave consumers. A mind that is still in its formative stages and that does not yet have the capacity to think critically or to visit the website Snopes.com is likely to believe anything, whether it’s religious hullabaloo popularized by ancient tribesman who had yet to understand the germ theory of disease, or the idea that McDonald’s is actually selling something that might fall into one of the four food groups. Indeed, the latter knows that if you include a cheap plastic toy with a youngster’s nutrient-vacant meal, you create a positive impression in that child’s mind and – if he doesn’t’ end up reading “Fast Food Nation” and swearing off that kind of food forever – he’ll likely end up cutting out Mickey D’s coupons out of his newspaper when he’s 45 and about to become a checkmark next to the “grave” portion of the cradle-to-the-grave idea.

Then there are those companies who take matters a step further and hope to “Get ‘em young”, when, legally speaking, they are selling products that the consumer can’t buy until they reach a certain age. Joe Camel, is, of course, the standard bearer in this regard. A chain-smoking cartoon camel that dresses like a pimp might not appeal to your grandpa, but it might make a lifelong brand follower out of a pimply teen who may then later disregard those gruesome displays on cigarette advertising and to whom the threat of impotence might not seem all that important.

Booze companies are also known for occasionally blurring the line between applying to a youthful audience and wanting to replace that bottle of milk in a baby’s mouth with a Mike’s Hard Cranberry.

Tasmanian Brewery Boag may have gone a step too far in the latter direction with its choice of placement for a sign promoting its “St George Beer”: the entrance of a local primary school. As children enter the school, they are greeted with a large advertisement reading “There’s fun brewing”, and while the advert doesn’t show little Johnny tilting one in the sandbox, it does have some local residents concerned that the billboard might corrupt the minds of the youngster.

A 67-year-old grandmother of one of the tots exposed to the advertising was outraged, saying that it advocated binge drinking to impressionable minds. “It's saying, 'Drink, get drunk, it's a great way to have fun'." What the grandmother neglected to mention, however, is that this is 100% true and that getting drunk is in fact one of the best ways to have fun, though it’s the kind of lesson that’s better learned at college keg parties and the like.