The Friday Mash (Payday Edition)
The 27th Amendment bars Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise. It was added to the Constitution after Michigan became the 38th state to give it the thumbs-up on this day in 1992.
If today is your payday, we hope you’re celebrating it with friends…and a pint of good beer.
And now…the Mash!
Barm, who blogs at I Might Have a Beer, broadened his knowledge of Real Ale by volunteering at a CAMRA beer festival.
Bad enough that rainy weather brings out mosquitoes. Now we learn that the little pests are attracted to the skin of beer drinkers.
From the Department of Minimalist Art: The 100th entry in the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s beer advertisement series is Budweiser Budvar’s classic “barley, hops, water, yeast” ads. Worth a look.
In case you missed it, Tuesday was Star Wars Day. To celebrate, Stephen Rich at Definitive Ale matched Star Wars characters with beer. It goes without saying that Darth Vader’s beverage was Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout.
The Stone Brewing Company took another step toward building a brewery in Europe. It issued what brewery officials calls the most arrogant RFP ever.
Crime might not pay, but sometimes it entertains. Noah Davis of Draft magazine has compiled a series of stories about beer criminals. Even for criminals, these guys are incredibly stupid.
Think your local beer laws are crazy? Try running a brewery in Pakistan. Rawalpindi’s Murree Brewery has managed to survive in this tough environment for 150 years.
Finally, tomorrow is National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association is celebrating with its annual Big Brew event.
What Would Fred and Barney Drink?
Jay Brooks, who blogs at the Brookston Beer Bulletin, has run across some video from 1967 which features Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble drinking Busch Bavarian Beer. You can watch them here and here.
We can’t say we’re surprised. We’re old enough to remember Fred and Barney smoking Winstons.
Just imagine the reaction if any of these commercials aired today.
Artistry in Advertising
Some years ago, we stopped at the Maumee Bay Brewing Company in Toledo and wandered through its extensive breweriana collection. In one corner of the bar area was a display of beer advertisements that appeared in magazines back in our fathers’ and grandfathers’ beer-drinking days. Some of those ads were classics of their genre, and Jay Brooks obviously agrees. Jay’s been running a series devoted to them on his blog, the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
The latest in his series–number 19, if you’re keeping score at home–is a Budweiser ad from 1937. It depicts an exotic-looking fortune teller, gazing into a crystal ball…maybe it’s better if you take a look for yourself. A picture is worth a thousand words. And while you’re there, take a look at earlier entries in Jay’s “Beer in Ads” series. It’ll be time well spent.
Top Ten Beer Jingles…With a Baseball Bonus!
Paul just had to include this one: the Brookston Beer Bulletin has compiled a list of the Top Ten Beer Slogans. Topping the list: the Schaefer jingle. Back in the day, every sports fan within a 50-mile radius of Manhattan knew it by heart, and tuned in to “another major event in your Schaefer circle of sports.”
Today, Jay Brooks, the publisher of the Bulletin, provides us with a bonus post: a 1950s-vintage, 78-rpm medley of the Carling Black Label jingle with different arrangements of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”–a song, by the way, that was written in 1908 by two men who had never seen a game in person.