Woman:  “Who is it?”

Voice at door:  “Candygram!”

Woman:  “You’re not that sneaky land shark, are you?”

Voice at door, after a pause:   “No ma’am, I’m just a beer that tastes like Corona.”

Woman:  “Well, all right…    AAAGHHH!      You do taste just like Corona!”

I’m not sure why, in my little scene, the woman has to scream at the end, it just seemed appropriate.  Must be those 12 years of improv classes I have under my belt (and don’t forget 3 years of tap).  Perhaps I’ve grown accustomed to wandering around the limits of what beer flavors a human can withstand, ranging from horrible malt liquors to novelty beers with 18% alcohol content to … shudder … Budweiser and Clamato, but I found this LandShark brew to be pretty much a bland easy-to-chug party beer, with absolutely nothing making it stand out.  Which means the brewers pretty much got it exactly the way they want it, as this beer is part of the Jimmy Buffett Empire and is some sort of promotional tie-in with the Miami Dolphins.  I’m not sure if the Dolphin’s stadium being renamed “Land Shark Stadium” came first, this beer came first, or both are named for some other facet of the Buffett Fiefdom, because the work it would take to find out sounds an awful lot like Research, and that kind of effort just seems against the whole Jimmy Buffet Vibe.

Speaking of Buffett, his concerts would routinely sell out multiple nights in Cincinnati back when I lived there.  Cincinnati?  A beach/island/sun-kissed/laid-back vibe in Cincinnati?  Where you can get bacon-wrapped dental floss?  Never made sense to me — food and beverages in my hometown just don’t fit well with limes.  Then again, Buffett still does look like a doughy uptight suburban midwesterner at a beach-themed barbecue, trying and failing to pull off the Hawaiian shirt, despite all the years of laid-back partying.  Even after decades of Margaritaville, he still would look more appropriate doing accounting in the next cubicle over than playing slide guitar with a beer bottle neck.  Which, come to think of it, is a fairly apt description of this beer — if we could somehow eavesdrop on the various styles of beers conversing with each other, they’d describe that Land Shark dude as the same old doughy suburbanite dressed up in some half-arsed party garb.  This is a beer trying to wear a Hawaiian shirt tucked into his pleated khaki dockers.  Not bad, but I’ve met a million of ‘em before.

As for Mocne, I can’t decide if I’ve been duped or not.  They’ve gone ahead and put “Malt Liquor” on the label — does this indicate a foriegn-brewery lack of knowledge about the stigma associated with Malt Licka’s here in the U.S.?  Or have I purchased Poland’s equivalent of King Cobra, thinking it was a fancy import, despite them giving me fair warning on the label?  The fact is, it’s not nearly as bad as domestic Malt Liquors, but it’s not nearly as good as the specialty quintuple-boch-uber-malty brews that must technically be called Malt Liquors because of their alcoholic content, but nevertheless are quite tasty.  The flavor has a faint whiff of whatever domestic malt liquor reeks of.  The head had that same super-fine-grained soapy bubbliness that you see in cheap 40’s, industrial solvents, ocean foam in Newark, but never in a decent beer.  I have to conclude, therefore, that this beer is to King Cobra what Harp’s Lager is to Budweiser — an imported, better-quality yet essentially in the same family of beverage.  Since being the Best of the Malt Liquors is a distinction akin to being the professional bowler with the fastest 40-yard-dash time, I’m not sure what the point really is for this beer.  If you were somehow constrained to the world of malt liquors forevermore, this is your best beer choice, but if you’re in this situation then you really have more pressing problems to deal with…

UPDATE: This was hard to write it really was. But thanks to everyone for the witty retorts. Aprils Fools is so juvenile, but then…so are we.

I was thirsty this morning, and couldn’t find any juice. It was awful. But what I did find was a shining light of happiness on an otherwise dreary morning. A nice big mouth bottle of the tasty Silver Bullet. Saddling up to my corn flakes, I twisted open the big bottle top and downed a refreshing gulp of the sweet nectar of life. It was so good, that by the end of my bowl I had downed at least seven of the golden elixir.

But time was ticking. I had to change my wife beater and get down to the bar to meet the guys for a drink. Who am I kidding, there will be time for one more on the drive down there.

You can imagine my chagrin this year however, when I bought this brew expecting that early dose of autumn goodness. Instead I was met with … well … nothing. Its a malty fall like beer I guess. But it lacks any pumpkin flavor. I mean none. Zip. Nada. So how do they justify calling it pumpkin ale? Maybe they brewed it IN a pumpkin patch.

It doesn’t taste bad…just incomplete. And a beer that makes me feel cheated deserves a little squashing. Get it?  Squash…pumpkin? I kill me.

Budweiser Ice

The Least Interesting Man in the World Drinks Bud Ice

He lives in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. He works in accounting for an insurance company that serves other accounting companies. His favorite restaurant is Applebee’s. He is, in short, the least interesting man in the world. And he drinks Budweiser Ice.

Some facts about this man:

• His beard is not on his organ donation card. In fact, there is nothing particularly of interest on his organ donation card.
• He has never surfed, arm wrestled a dangerous foreigner, nor smoked a cigar in a high-g spinning test chamber. He has, however, scored a hole-in-one in frisbee golf.
• A CD, chosen at random from his collection, is 85% likely to contain vocals from Rob Thomas.
• The image on his desktop is one of the default selections that comes with Windows. It is centered, not stretched or tiled.
• Behind his beard, there is not a chin. There isn’t a fist, either. There is another long boring story about the 2006 draft of his fantasy football team.
• He is neither a lover, nor a fighter.

This man doesn’t always drink beer, but when he does, he makes it Bud Ice. Yes, Bud Ice, the beer so devoid of notable qualities one way or the other — it is not a very good beer to drink, and yet not bad enough to at least be an interesting story, like “Country Club” malt liquor. It comes and goes through your life like a ciper, the null set of beer-ness, the beer you’ve probably have had but don’t recall. Have a drink, won’t you, and when you do, please think about the least interesting man in the world.

[end commercial]

[and, end any idea of Walt Liquor's that he could make decent commercials]