Löwbrau

Jacques Barzun said you can tell a civilization is in decline when it starts making dictionaries, compilations, and lists. So what does it mean to make lists of bad beer commercials? These five aren’t the worst, exactly, only the most shameless in their appeal to the LCD.^*

5. Miller Lite. Tastes great, if your idea of a cocktail is horse piss and sand. Less filling, so you can get tanked yet stay nimble for that bar fight you’ve been spoiling for all evening. Honorable mention: “It’s Miller Time.” Time to knock off at 5:00, lest my boss get a nanosecond of work out of me that I don’t owe him (one ad in this series actually showed the clock reading five after five as the boys file into the bar), and head for the nearest watering hole to get plowed with my mates so I don’t have to face my shrew of a wife sober.

4. Meisterbrau. Mercifully extinct, but the basic pitch was “tastes as good as Budweiser, but cheaper!” So does tap water.

3. Keystone. “Bitter beer face” hasn’t yet entered the language, which I can’t say for “I love you man” and “Whassup,” but the commercials are still running. We aren’t out of the woods yet.

2. Tequiza. Not on TV, but all over Manhattan billboards and subways. “I’m only laughing cause you’re my boss.” I’m a pathetic corporate suckbutt who feels the need to ingratiate himself with my superiors to keep a job I hate anyway. “No, they aren’t real, so what.” Yes, I elected surgery to increase my appeal to that special class of men who like their mammaries really, really large. You got a problem with that?

1. Budweiser. It’s unpatriotic not to drink Budweiser, I’m pretty sure. (Bud Lite may be OK with a note from your bartender.) At the very least the Clydesdales aren’t going to parade through the picturesque little town that you live in, nosiree.

^*Liquid Crystal Display.