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]

Toothpaste for Boozehounds: Get your choppers your whitest, with wine, whiskey flavors

For the average boozehound, dredging themselves out of bed and scraping a toothbrush across their hairy tongue, is part of the pre-work grooming regimen (after dousing less than fragrant loafers with the remainder of a bottle of cologne).

The taste of toothpaste though, is second only to a whiff of the previous night's poisons when it comes to potentially launching that morning bagel into an anti-gravity, toilet-bound trajectory.

So, it's a wonder that at Toothpasteworld.com, speaking of gravity, you can procure all sorts of boozy flavors that would turn your stomach worse than a NASA gyroscope.

Michigan dentist and self-professed 'toothpaste collector' Val Kolpakov features American-produced bourbon, whiskey, wine, and for the high-rolling set, champagne flavors.

Why these exist is anyone's guess, as the market

for people looking to give themselves booze breath when they're not drinking is likely a small one and those who are drinking would like to rid themselves of it.

Of interest, Jigger Bourbon Whiskey Flavored Toothpaste, pictured here: The 'refreshing' [source's quotation marks] morning-after pick up. It contains real alcohol - no more than 3% alcohol by wt., 2oz, so if you haven't slept all night, you can refresh your hellfire and asbestos-singeing breath with the flavors of the night before.

Don't forget to floss.

Beer Pong Tables Portable? Cups Runneth Over!

According to the press release, "Bing Bong Inc. has paved the way for the entire beer pong industry" (our italics) with their "beer pong" accouterments.

If you're unfamiliar with beer pong, consider this a public service announcement (or, to put it another way, one of the few instances we're ever 'pro Bono'--har, har, har).

Before shunting your son, and especially your daughter (see pictures below) off to some third-tier state college where, influenced by this game and others excuses to get college-age women drunk, the only Varsity Letter they're likely to achieve is an "F", here are the rules. (At this point we should mention that we don't think we're taking liberties with standard procedure if you substitute the eponymous 'beer' with any other alcoholic beverage or recreational drug of your choice as regional differences are likely to come into play).

Two teams take turns shooting ping-pong balls into a triangle of cups at their opponent's end of the table. When a ball lands in a cup, the contents of the cup are quickly quaffed. Each cup is systematically removed until one team sinks all of the cups on their opponent's side. The game is won by eliminating all the other team's cups and then as a clincher, if projectile vomiting and requisite stomach pumping has yet to set in, the losing team must then consume all the beer remaining in the winning team's cups. Unless you have a storehouse of ping-pong balls on hand for this one, the ball you are using will have presumably been all over the filthy floor where the game is being played, so we hope you're too blasted to give a damn when the time comes to down the losers' share of the beer.

According to Bing Bong Inc., the "largest supplier of regulation [our italics again] portable beer pong tables in the world", the product offers "the convenience of taking this game virtually anywhere," if by "virtually anywhere" they mean, the privacy of your own home -- it's probably illegal to play in a public park or beach as the women in the above publicity shot appear to be doing--then yes, it can be taken virtually anywhere.

While we appreciate this advancement as much as the next guys, having participated in such shenanigans at our book launch for the "The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death", we question how a target demographic can find plastic cups, ping pong balls and a flat surface hard to come by, unless they're serving time (although luckily in lower-security facilities and mental wards table-tennis is widely encouraged as a "no-sharp -points" way to pass the time).

Regardless, consumers can experience Bing Bong's "innovative" gear (apparently, a folding table with their logo slapped on it, with a few cups thrown in), which (again quoting from their press release literature) is getting "tremendously positive feedback."

Remote Control Beer Gadget: Paging Dr Drunk!

Boozing, when done well, is the welcome opposite of work. Very little effort should go into a good booze-up; the drinker’s main concern should be remaining smilingly ruddy-faced while pouring the nectar down his or her gob and thinking capital thoughts. There are, however, certain minor exertions that interfere with the complete rest that is the drinker’s due when tippling, and it is here that technology has stepped in admirably to help out.

There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy “orders up another.”) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we, in the interests of keeping down breakfasts, did no further research into that.

Pictured here is another addition to the beer accessories market and it is one that makes the beer rocket-packs we covered last month (3-liter beer dispensers strapped to the back of a ball-gown-wearing waitress who may or may not be sporting a pair of giant black wings) seem downright sensible. The remote control beer pager is designed for beer drinkers who may have misplaced their drinks at a party. If your beer is adorned in one of these babies, you need only press a button on a mini-remote that attaches to your belt (presumably, in keeping in mind the target demographic [pictured none too subtly on the cozy itself] this will also clip just as easily on to a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants) and the beer cozy will light up and “let loose a satisfying belch.” Class.

We can appreciate the need for tracking mechanisms on beer: after all who hasn’t swallowed the odd cigarette remainder after picking up the wrong beer at a party? That said, a critic might point out the fact that the loud belch that accompanies the paging is both excessive and potentially confusing since at any party where this sort of thing is present, a loud satisfying belch would not be the distinctive sound the makers of this seem to think it would be, and, not to be a couple of spoilsports, but wouldn’t simply placing your beer into this unsightly thing be enough to distinguish it from all others without the technological intervention?

Such niggling points aside, the price of the remote control beer pager is, depending on how you value money, somewhat reasonable at $20 a pop and an item to keep in mind for the holiday shopping season (provided you do not live with or intend to party with the intended recipient).

The Portable Beer Cooler: And now, a word from our sponsors...

As the observant among you will have already noticed, we here at TheSharkBook.com have elected to include Google ads to go with our drunken chronicles. Consider it the cyber-equivalent of that guy at a spoken-word performance who comes around at the end with a hat, forcing you to feign distraction so that you can hold on to your small change and lower-denomination currency and thus be able to tip that attractive bartender consistently throughout the night.

Google’s AdSense works on some sort of mysterious computer-language-based voodoo that we don’t have a clue about, however it seems to base what ads are displayed on the text that appears on a given page. Thus, when we posted a blog in tribute to the drinking prowess of a certain young prince among drinkers (we will withhold his name for fear of those irrelevant ads popping up again), all sorts of advertisements began to pop up that were somehow based on his name and title – gossip sites, genealogy services offering to trace your heritage back to the big Kahunas of various medieval fiefdoms, and travel offers to places with royal sounding names like… (Again, we won’t mention the town's name here, but let’s just say that it is the westernmost point on the TransCanada highway, which makes matters convenient once you’ve soaked up a bit of the sad local life and are ready to jump in the ocean.)

However, given the nature of this blog, and the drunk-compendium from which it sprung, ads more related to drinking, drunkenness, and the various accouterments that can spruce up this lifestyle do thankfully appear (including ones that are a little too appropriate, such as the ad that asks if you drink too much wine or another that wonders if you could stand to lose some beer-fat). Editor’s note: While we normally would include links here, we have opted not to in the hopes that you’ll refresh your screen a thousand times until the relevant ad comes up and then click on it. Danke!

Of these, our absolute favourite thus far is from the Frankfurt-based “Rocket Packs Getränke-Rucksack-Systeme”, a company that sells “Beer rocket-packs”. This is a huge step up from the beer drinking hat popularized by fans of American sporting events who don’t want to get up to get a drink (and who presumably wear diapers to deal with the natural corollary of that kind of beer consumption).

Getranke’s website itself is not text-heavy, and most of it is in German, however the pictures seem to tell the story: the company sells packs that can keep a two or three liter tower of beer cool so that drinkers can be served on the move. A serving person straps on the jetpack-looking like device (at times while wearing a ball gown, which may or may not be offset by a pair of gigantic, devil-swooping-in-on-a-bad-dream pair of black wings) and offers freshly-tapped beer for thirsty patrons. In terms of venues where this sort of thing might be popular, it seems from their publicity material (see above photo) that no place is too toney to have a lady in high-heels squirt beer into your glass from a hose attached to a backpack.

We here at TheSharkBook thank all of our inadvertent advertisers and commend Getranke especially for coming up with a product that makes shameless shilling fun.