Before I talk about the subject at hand, let me say that when a business sends out a flier to promote itself, it seems most important that they check the phone number listed. Apparently, a landscaping company has sent out a mass mailing with my phone number on it. Five potential customers have left messages about pansies and the like, much to my amusement. I may let the Cutlet take the next call.
Ah, beer. Not everyone likes it, but we all know what it is. It's one of those things that needs no introduction, yet it is advertised ad nauseum in magazines and on TV. And besides the now-extinct cigarette ads of yesteryear, beer advertising has to be the most blatant pack of lies tossed out as mythical truth that ever was. Let me make it clear that I have been wooed by the sexy temptress that is beer, as a drunk college student, a semi-drunk recent graduate and now a mostly nondrinker who has an occasional brew one at a time. I am solidly in the beer camp as opposed, say, to wine. That beverage is a thinking person's beer, and when it comes to alcohol, it's better not to think too much about it. Just have your designated driver beforehand.
I was watching the World Series (Game 2) and that new Miller High Life commercial comes on, the one with the girl in the moon (part of the logo). Makes it seem like history hinges on the frothy mugs placed before gaping maws. No, history happens anyway. Just another lie, just like drinking a certain beer will make large-breasted women want to rub up against you, will somehow park a nicer car in your driveway, make you happier, make you simultaneously cooler and now invited to all the best parties. If one should really care about those things, let them drink beer. If they want clear-headed success, let them drink water. Unfiltered. Preferably out of a garden hose.
I know what beer drinkers look like. The hardcore ones don't care about the amount of carbs per serving. Heck, they don't even care what the stuff tastes like. My great-Uncle Ed (my mother's father's younger brother) was a hardcore beer man. In his dwindling years, he looked like someone had made a wax statue of him at age 60, then turned up the heat so he started to melt. After years of trying to get help for him, which he refused on what I think was ignorance and indignation rather than not needing it, we saw him only in passing. He would walk from his home on one end of the island, past my grandmother's house, to the Grubstake convenience store. Because he moved slowly, was probably full of beer when he left his home, and was diabetic, the urge to pee overtook him about three-fourths of the way there. He'd shuffle off the sidewalk to the sanctity of my grandfather's old boat house and relieve himself. Then he'd go to the store, and ramble back home with his beer.
It wasn't him wanting to be popular with the chicks, but rather his need to have beer. It was practically all the guy had. Eventually, he was admitted to a nursing home to die. There he didn't even have beer, so it was a sad end to a sad life.
Now, beer didn't put him in that hole. Uncle Ed never had a steady job, mooched off his parents who mooched off my grandparents until they died. His lack of work ethic was a birthright.
I'd say beer was his enabler, a banana peel on the stairway that was his life. Could have been whiskey. Could have been wine. Could have been drugs. Could have been lemon cream pies, or those little packages of powdered donuts. Could have been unadulterated laziness. Uncle Ed was his own problem. And he would have slipped down a slippery slope without any substance abuse in his life.
Beer advertising would be more palatable if they showed the effect of hardcore beer drinking on consumers ... beer bellies, pregnant bellies, pathetic people whose bank accounts, libido and excuses have dried up. Same goes for fast food advertising. Those youngsters bee-bopping with their Big Macs are nothing like the fat man sitting in his Prius ordering five double-cheeseburgers and a small Diet Coke. Not because he's hungry, but because he needs it.
What's the solution? Changing the ads won't help entirely. I think just as we all know what beer is, we know smoking can summon us to early graves yet it remains a popular way to win friends, influence people and smell like crap. It's scary. Maybe there is no solution. But I guess the first step is admitting we have a problem. If we do.
This isn't a fresh post, but it's still on your page to read. There's a man of about 60 that lives near here. He's always lived where he is. People say beer was put in his baby bottle to keep him from crying. He's F.A.S. to the max. Beer's his only concern for all his waking hours. He shuffles five miles with empty bottles to trade in for a fix. He has a grown daughter who is very close to the same way. She took a neighbour's car to go to a bar. She plowed into a new pickup that was purchased 48 hours before, and never got out of the driveway. It's an ongoing lifestyle that is all they know. Her 13 yr old son is severely handicapped and can only crawl and drool. She denies he has FAS, and claims it is an extremely rare disease instead.