Making Love in a Canoe

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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31 Responses

  1. KenB says:

    I have broadly similar tastes as you in this area, and so I found this quite informative — thank you for your sacrifice.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to KenB says:

      One point I wanted to make was that they weren’t *BAD*. They just weren’t particularly good.

      If I were out at a picnic and had a full plate and this is what they had in the cooler? Walking distance from the house? Yeah, I could see having a couple with a plate full of food. Heck, if it were a particularly hot day, I might not even bother telling anyone who would listen that I prefer wine or *GOOD* beer.

      But there’s nothing there that calls to me and tells me “you should get a sixer of that for the weekend!”Report

      • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

        It’s all party beer. AKA what you buy en mass for a tailgate so people can walk into a stadium with a buzz (or more), not get hints of chocolate or orange or what have you.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

          If that’s true, then I completely and totally drank these wrong.

          But that gives me an idea for an ad campaign:

          “We know how to Tailgate”. A guy making brats on a grill and laughing and holding a beer. A lady playing cornhole and laughing and holding a beer. Three guys doing the side by side lineup thing and bouncing and laughing and the two guys on either end are holding a beer.

          Open the gate to the stadium. “GAME ON”.

          WHICH IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN HAVING AN INFLUENCER DRINKING A BEER IN A BATHTUB TALKING ABOUT THE BEERReport

  2. InMD says:

    I have a weird partiality to Busch Light. It was always the cheapest at the liquor store we used to go to in college a little ways into the ‘hood, where things like checking ID wasn’t something they were really into. I’m sure I’ve drank gallons of it, but it’s been at least a decade since I cracked one.Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    There’s an apocryphal story in the wine biz that the reason Merlot took off in the 90s was because it was easier to say than Cabernet Sauvignon… this was before we’d all become pals with wine and called it Cab. We ruined an entire varietal over linguistic temerity. Side note, a few years back I had a Pahlmeyer Merlot (2006) and it was one of the best wines I’ve ever had… made me realize what people probably had access to in 1990 and decided… Hey, this Merlot shit is pretty good – like a cloud of blueberries and chocolate. Then they planted it everywhere and made it taste like tomato leaves and tin.

    Anyhow… my faulty recollection of Lite beers from the 80s – 90s is that they went from being, I dunno, a category, like Light beer from Miller to being a brand: Miller Lite, then Bud Lite, then… it made grabbing the Lite beer a sort of adjacent to your favorite brand rather than a different choice. It was still Bud, just BudLite. Now, I don’t know how Natty Boh became the beer of choice for our South Carolina roommate who had an ID, but he who has the ID drives the flavor bus… so Natty Boh was the beer of choice for our slice of Notre Dame – and they didn’t have a Lite version.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

      That dang movie “Sideways” wrecked Merlots for a good long while there.

      Suited me fine, the prices went down. I do think that the people who looked at the main character and said “you know what? He’s right!” were missing the point of the movie but nobody remembers the point of the movie or even the plot. They only remember the “I AM NOT DRINKING ANY MERLOT” rant.

      And so Pinot Noir sales went up 16% and everybody was drinking wines that even the movie’s main character admitted that most of them were disappointing but the absolute best ones are better than anything else.

      Contrast against Merlots where pretty much all of them (to that point) were a solid B+.

      I mean, it’s only the first glass that has to taste good anyway.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

        Eat, Pray, Love for men. Terrible movie.

        But, he’s absolutely right about Pinot… most are middling and have an easier path to failure, but the best Pinot is miles better than the best Cab. Unfortunately, there are very few inefficiencies in the Pinot market to exploit. Mostly traps.Report

  4. Pinky says:

    I don’t remember which of the lite beer campaigns it was, but one of them paved the way for wacky commercials that have nothing to do with the product. Every time you want to punch a gecko, these guys are the reason.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:

      The Miller Lite ads with the athletes? Those were awesome.

      Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Pinky says:

      I wonder what qualifies as the first sufficiently “wacky” beer commercial.

      I found a Hamm’s commercial where a guy was driving his jeep through the mountains with a bear, but I don’t think that that was trying to be goofy as much as trying to capitalize on the popularity of Grizzly Adams.

      This one has Spike Jones:

      I mean, “goofy” is relative but you don’t get much goofier in 1961 than Spike Jones.

      Digging around for the first “modern” goofy commercial, I found this one and my jaw dropped and I assure you, I shook my head in disapproval:

      Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

        My favorite goofy beer ad.

        Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Mike Schilling says:

          The 80’s had absolutely *EPIC* commercials starring not just athletes but approximately ONE BAJILLION celebrities and while Miller Lite was not among the beers tasted, I cannot imagine it’s more than 5% outside of the established bands of the 4 that I did try and, lemme tell ya, the advertising budgets for beer are 100% justified given that if these beers had to get by on merit alone, they’d make about a buck and a half.

          Report

  5. Fish says:

    We drank Keystone as poor Airmen because it was cheaper than Coors/Bud Light. These days, however, I’m of the opinion that anything which makes less room for weak, watery (sex in a canoe) American lagers and more room for beers with actual body and flavor is a net good.Report

  6. Damon says:

    I drank Coors Lite in college….everybody was, so….but when someone asked me prior to a beer run what I wanted, I always got a Belgium beer six pack, knowing that after six of those, I would not care what any beer afterward tasted like, assuming I could taste it. Later my dad did some homebrew–did not like. When I went to England and Scotland in my 30s I started drinking scotch, and now have moved to bourbon. Figure it’s been decades since I drank any form of beer.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Damon says:

      I remember the story my local college booze shoppe owner told me. I would usually buy wine for myself but, sometimes, I’d pick up a bomber of something for Maribou. Something that looked like it had a lot of hops or fruity notes or something. I made a joke once about “making love in a canoe” and he told me that he went fishing with a group of guys every summer and, last year, one of them pulled him aside and asked him to just bring Bud Light. He didn’t want to deal with complicated beer while he was fishing. He didn’t want to taste the subtle nutty or floral notes. He just wanted to have a beer he didn’t have to think about while out there on the boat.

      Our local free weekly rag used to have a column dedicated to marijuana reviews and the guy would go on and on and on with positively purple prose. Here’s an example:

      Hailing from Stardawg and Afghani, this Indica-dominant hybrid shines among a shelf of fine floral offerings. The Dawg certainly has a fruity, tropical bouquet to it too — not shy at all about announcing its presence. A smell that was somewhat reminiscent of Fruit Stripe gum (for those readers whose timelines stretch far enough back to remember that oh-so-potent flavor).

      Unlike the gum, these trichomey treats were holding on tight to the dense sweet guava goodness they bring to the palate, even as I burned through those initial first hits and deeper down into the bowl.

      I realize, now, that the people who talk about wine sound like this. The people who talk about beer sound like this.

      *I* sound like this.

      So I have more appreciation of light beer than I had 10 or 15 years ago.

      But I’m still going to prefer wine.Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to Damon says:

      I drank Coors Lite in college….everybody was, so….

      One of the small simple pleasures of getting out of grad school and taking a real job was being able to afford much better beer…Report

  7. Brandon Berg says:

    When I was a kid, I lived in a Miller Lite household. One time my dad let me have a sip when I brought him a can. I’m not sure whether this was good or bad parenting, but the result was that I decided that that was enough beer for me. Now I live in a water household.Report

  8. Wagon says:

    I love a god craft beer. I have homebrewed in the past, and I did some pretty ambitious stuff, I think. It was well received by my friends. Just establishing my bona fides as an amateur who knows beer, probably better than the average consumer.

    I am not a beer snob, in that there is absolutely a place and time for these type of cheap American lagers. Some in the comment section have already noted that. Tailgating before a football game on a hot September Saturday in SEC country? You don’t want a thick juicy IPA or a sour or a stout. You want something light and crisp and refreshing that gets the job done. After mowing your grass. At a summer cookout. At a large family gathering. On the beach. At a fish fry. At a crawfish boil. On the lake. Tons of times that I would rather have a Miller Lite than the craft beee I would otherwise drink on your average Friday night.

    That being said, this reveals why Bud Light’s marketing decision here was so stupid. Most/many of those settings have a particular stereotypical market in mind. Bud forgot their target audience. In fact, if you believe what their since-fired marketing person said, she didn’t want that target audience. She wanted a new clientele, without giving any thought to whether that new audience would adopt the product in sufficient quantities to make up for the group she didn’t want to sell to any more. And from a business standpoint, that strategy is just… baffling.

    I don’t particularly care, because I prefer Miller lite anyway.Report

  9. Slade the Leveller says:

    I was golfing with my son last weekend and he bought a can of what is surely America’s worst beer: Michelob Ultra. Up until then I’d never had one with no beer flavor, but I can cross that experience off the list now.

    In a world where Pilsener beer exists, citing light and refreshing as a reason for drinking light beer is just a bad excuse for saying you prefer diet beer.Report

  10. Burt Likko says:

    I did a Pepsi challenge once with my own homebrew, a purportedly decent craft brew, and a Natty Lite. I correctly identified my own beer, but confused the craft beer with the Natty.

    My then-girlfriend tried another Natty Lite product that was the color of Hawaiian Punch. Called it too sweet to finish. Afterwards she reported “I… I don’t feel so good.”Report