Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Red Dog

I first discovered Red Dog, in college.  Back then, I might not have always had money for food that wasn’t Ramen based, but thanks to beers like Red Dog at least I didn’t have to eat the Ramen completely sober.  Ever since I started this section of my blog I’ve looked forward to one day reviewing Red Dog.  It might not sound like much, but it’s not every day you get to review a beer that costs about half the price of Miller Lite and tastes twice as good. 

Just a reminder: the 80's sucked.

The most common question I get asked when I tell people I like Red Dog is, “they still make that stuff?”  So let’s just clear that up right off the bat.  Yes, Red Dog (not to be confused with Rude Dog) is widely available.  It’s a fair enough question though; Red Dog was introduced by Miller in 1994 as their entry in the “Red Beer Wars.”  At the time of this blog post, it is the only known survivor of this conflict. Unlike the” Ice-Beer Wars” of the same era or the Cola Wars of the 80’s, very little is known (easily found on the internet) about this conflict.  I don’t remember much about beer in 1994, being only 11 years old, but I do remember that all of the sudden red beer was fucking everywhere.   In particular I remember this commercial:   

I don’t know how Red Dog survived the Red Beer Wars conflict, but I can hazard a guess.  In the late 1930’s the Nazis invented the blitzkrieg, or lightning war.  Since then, defensive coordinators have used the word “blitz” for plays in which they send players that are normally in coverage to attack the offensive backfield (it is unknown if any defense has ever gotten bogged down in the harsh Russian winter.)  But before WWII, the “blitz” was called “Red Dog.”  Perhaps the marketing execs at Red Dog hired Bulldog Turner to beat the shit out of the competition.  It would explain the bulldog mascot, but I guess it’s kind of unlikely since Bulldog Turner is dead.  What’s far more likely is Red Dog survived because Red Dog has attitude baditude. 

"I'm gonna murdalize you Red Wolf Beer!"

Unlike your goddamn pussy beers, Red Dog is pissed.  If you don’t believe me just watch that commercial again.  Then smack yourself in the nutsack for doubting Red Dog.  This baditude has led to what is probably my favorite thing about Red Dog: the bottle caps.  On the underside of every Red Dog bottle cap there’s a little message.  These messages all read like some Miller ad-exec’s idea of clever, badassness.  The language and innuendo on the bottle caps never even crosses into PG-13 territory, so they come off as completely out of touch and hilarious.  They’re like the “Cool Kid” in an after school special or your racist Great Uncle.  Completely harmless and funny.   

Click on the pic to get sum Red Dog attitude!!!

If those caps don’t seem that funny to you, I guarantee that it is fucking hilarious with six or seven Red Dogs in you.  Still not convinced?  Consider this: If you turn the Red Dog logo upside down it looks like Batman going down on some chick!

You'd think he'd have a device on his belt for that

If this doesn’t seem like your kind of joke, maybe Red Dog isn’t the beer for you.  Actually, if that doesn’t seem like your kind of joke, what the hell are you doing reading this blog?  Shouldn’t you be hunting foxes or some shit like that?  The rest of us have an “uncommonly smooth” beer to drink.

"In Soviet Russia, beer drink you."

Speaking of which, I haven’t even touched on the flavor.  It tastes nothing like Red Pop, in fact I have no idea what’s “red” about Red Dog other than the name.  It’s not a pinko commie beer; it doesn’t taste like boiled shoelaces and depression.  It tastes pretty goddamned amazing, especially for a beer of this ilk.  Usually when beer is this cheap you have to settle for no flavor or a bad flavor.  Red Dog tastes good and goes down smooth, with none of the poo aftertaste you get with most cheap beer.  Sure there are certainly better beer out there, but not many on the bottomshelf. 

Between the flavor and the price you really can’t go wrong with Red Dog.  Although Red Dog is sold in cans and bottles, I’d say stick to the bottles.  It tastes better, and you get the hilarious bottle caps.  One of the drunkest nights in my life was fueled primarily by Red Dog, and the next day I took a final with vomit in my hair.  It might not have been fun at the time, but it’s one of my favorite stories about college, and I got a B; somehow. That being said I’ll give Red Dog an A+.  Buy some today. 

Everyone loves Red Dog (except Ramiro)

Note:  I try to spice up this blog with pics of hot babes that are loosely related to the article, but if you google “sexy chick and dog” the results are simply disgusting.  I guess I’ll have to go with a somewhat unrelated picture of REDhead Christina Hendricks.

Pizza Delivery Adventures: Porno Pizza

"I'm a HOT dish. Get it?!?!?!"

 *Ding Dong*

“Pizza delivery.”

“Hey, that was fast.  I didn’t even have time to put all my clothes on.”

“It’s okay ma’am.  I’ve got a large sausage pizza for you.”
“I don’t remember ordering large sausage on my pizza.”

“It’s not on the pizza, it’s in my pants!”

Sumthin' for the ladies

Then the guy opens the box, and he cut a hole in both the box and the pizza, and then poked his penis through, like some sort of perverted jack-in-the-box.  Her roommate shows up and they all go at it for a while.  I’ve seen lots of porno movies that start like that, and as someone that delivered pizza for about two years, I can tell you that my customer interactions usually had little in common with that of Harry Reems playing a pizza guy.

I emphasize the word “usually” because one time things worked out a little different (if you know what I mean.)  On this particular occasion, I had a delivery on the ass end of Blue Island, which sucked balls.  You could end up spending over a half hour making a single delivery to Blue Island due to the train tracks, distance, and poorly laid out streets.  To top it off, Blue Island wasn’t exactly known for the huge tips.  You’d be lucky to get $2, and not stiffed outright.

Blue Island, IL

Actual photo before his mushroom cut

I’d been to this customer’s house before, and every time I delivered there the guy didn’t tip very well and gave me a creepy vibe.  Picture a dude with a red mushroom cut, in a stained Cubs shirt opening the door to Cheech and Chong’s van, and you have a pretty good idea what it looked like when the dude opened his front door.  But as I said before, this time was a little different.  It still looked like there was a private Bob Marley concert in the house, but this time the serial killer’s wife answered the door.  She said I was cute, her girlfriend agreed and they invited me inside to hang out.

Fucking finally.

"Hey little man, you wanna come inside?"

Earlier, I said it usually sucked balls to deliver in Blue Island, and this time was…no different.  Remember that red headed kid that was in Son In Law and Big Green?  Well the chick that answered the door looked like that kid with long hair and fat girl boobies.  I was a little flattered when she told her friend that she “had to see me.”  Her friend was better looking, the same way most women are better looking than Godzilla.  She still had kind of a hatchet face, and really weird teeth.  They weren’t traditionally bad, like the hillbilly teeth at Spencer’s Gifts. Her teeth were creepy, like the teeth Dracula would have if he smoked meth.  Monster Teeth said she liked my leather jacket and hair and that I should come in.  I said, “Sorry, I gotta get back to work,” which was a convenient truth (suck my balls Al Gore.)

 The moral of the story: porno movies happen in real life, just not with anyone you would want them to happen with.  This should come as no shock to anyone that grew up in the 90’s.  Back before Al Gore invented the internet, if you were under 18 you had to watch your dad’s full bush porn, or settle for HBO’s Real Sex.  Real Sex was a documentary style show that set out to destroy your preconceived notions about sex, and it did, for the worse.  It turns out: key swapping parties happen; they’re just full of people that look like the PTA.  By the same token, in real life, girls invite the pizza guy in for threeway sex; they just happen to look like proof that grizzly bears and humans can produce viable offspring.    

"Nice hair"

It could have been worse.  One of the guys I worked with was tricked into delivering a pizza by some perverts fucking on the couch.  In comparison, I guess getting propositioned by lamprey-face and a wildebeest wasn't so bad.  But thats the kind of thing pizza guys put up with every day, so tip the pizza guy.

A little sumthin' for the ladies (assuming all women are bi)

Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Olde English 800

If you don't feel like reading all this, you can check out the video version here.

I don’t know if you were aware, but it’s black history month.  In grammar school this was generally the time of year when I got to hear about George Washington Carver (he invented peanuts.)  I don’t know much about black history.  My knowledge of black culture pretty much begins and ends with old school rap, and back in the 90’s they rapped about malt liquor about as much as they rapped about getting hassled by The Man.  So I thought I’d celebrate black history month with a couple 40’s of Olde English 800.   

I see the liberal warning lights going off in your head.  “Isn’t saying black people like malt liquor a stereotype?”  I guess it would be if I said, “ALL black people liked malt liquor,” but I didn’t, so I guess that makes you the bigot.  You racist piece of shit.  Eazy-E liked Olde English 800 or “8-Ball” enough to write a song about it.   I think it’s safe to say that I’m not an expert on being black.  I’m a square white dude from the suburbs, and I wouldn’t even consider myself an expert on that.  Eazy-E might not be an expert either, but he was definitely black and he definitely liked Olde English (and pussy.)

“Police on my drawers and I have to pause.  40 ounce in my lap and it’s freezing my balls”

Eazy-E and the rest of N.W.A. might not speak for all black people, but I would argue that rap music from the early 90’s has done more to improve race relations in the last 20 year or so than anything else. The fact that a square like me includes “Straight Outta Compton” on his desert island top five list speaks for itself.  I grew up in the 90’s in what was, at the time, a lily-white suburb, and gangsta rap changed the way people dressed, talked and acted.  Rap probably made being black look cooler than anything since Dolemite.

"That rat-soup-eatin', insecure honky motherfucker!"

Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs explaining why it’s not racist to review Olde English as part of black history month I should probably get down to the meat and potatoes of the article, right?  I bought two 40’s for 2.59 each in Chicago.  For those of you that live somewhere else in the country you should know that in Chicago everything, from cigarettes to parking spaces, costs A LOT more than it does in the suburbs.  2.59 a pop is a pretty good price, especially when you take Chi-flation into account.  It’s marginally cheaper than your average six-pack, with higher alcohol content (5.9%.)  A good deal if I ever saw one.

It tastes pretty good.  Without a doubt it’s better than Gameday and Big Flats.  Not necessarily a big accomplishment, but certainly worth mentioning for comparison’s sake.  It goes down smooth with a sweet aftertaste.  You do get a slight hint of that cheap malt liquor aftertaste that lets you know they cut corners somewhere, but it’s mostly covered up by the sweetness.  Those snobby assholes on beeradvocate hate this stuff, and I’m going to just go ahead and call them racist.  To be fair, the title is a little misleading.  Olde and English are two of the top criteria for beer snobs.  They love beers with names like, “King Arthur’s Penis” and “Dumbledore’s Hat.”  Olde English 800 sounds like something right out of Canterbury Tales or The Silmarillion; two books that are know favorites amongst racist beer reviewers, along with the Turner Diaries. 

Typical beeradvocate user

Back to the beer: Eazy-E might not drink brass monkey, but I thought I should give it a whirl.  Afterall, the Beastie Boys wrote a song about it, how bad could it be?  Brass monkey, for those of you that aren’t street, is a cocktail made from Olde English and Sunny Delight.  Traditionally, you drink your 40 down to the top of the red label and fill it back to the top with Sunny D.  Then you roll it on the ground to get it good and mixed.  I tried it out and honestly, it tastes pretty damn good.  The sweet aftertaste is amplified, and the cheap taste is almost completely gone.  I don’t really go for fruit beer, but I liked brass monkey more than most (Cherry Wheat is fucking disgusting.)  It tastes sweet and citrusy, but it still tastes kind of like beer.  If that sounds like your think check it out, or if you’re trying to get your younger sister’s friends drunk, brass monkey could be a cheap alternative to a case of Mike’s Hard.

"Hey...ugh, you chicks wanna play spin the bottle?"

Olde English isn’t for everybody, but if you’re trying to get shitfaced on the cheap you could do a lot whole lot worse.  It tastes pretty good, and everyone from the Beastie Boys to Ice Cube likes it, so why don’t you?  Just remember to pour a little out for Easy-E.

Mel B is: olde (35,) English, and black.  This makes her perfect for this article

*UPDATE 2-27-13 VIDEO ADDED*

Pizza Delivery Adventures: Shitty Apartments

Today has been dubbed “Blizzard 2011,” “Snowpocalypse,” and even “the Snowlocaust.”  I wouldn’t go far as that, but man this weather is nuts.  It’s funny how your perspective can change over time.  When I was a pizza delivery driver shitty weather meant I was gonna make some serious money.  Granted, I never worked in weather like last night, but a good blizzard meant we’d get swamped with orders and that people would be a little more generous with their tips than usual.  It was a little more hazardous working in the snow; you could hit some black ice and wipe out, or more likely slip on some assholes front porch and crank your noggin wide open.  That wasn’t much of a concern for me.  The biggest danger in delivering pizza is getting mugged.     

Give us the pizza, and no one gets hurt.

5 survivors of fetal alcohol syndrome

The closest I ever came to getting mugged was this one time when I had to deliver to the shitty apartment buildings on the street that dead-ends on the highway.  I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the houses on a dead-end street, particularly one that dead-ends on a highway, but they tend to be full of the most vile base degenerates and scum you’ll ever meet.  Consider this: what kind of person would rather put up with highway noise and diesel fumes than live on a street the cops can drive down easily?  Crackheads, perverts and ICP fans come to mind.  If you go on the Illinois sex offender registry and do a quick search in your neighborhood I guarantee you will find little cul-de-sacs of unspeakable horror nuzzled right up next to the highway.  The dead-end street is the wrong-side-of-the-tracks of the 21^st century.

A documentary on the subject

"Let's huff some roach spray!"

When my wife and I were house hunting we looked at a house next to the highway in an otherwise nice suburb.  It was all fat chicks with neck tattoos and skinny dudes with no shirts wearing jean shorts and drinking malt liquor.  I half expected that retarded kid from Deliverance to show up with his banjo and a paper bag full of spray paint fumes.  Some dude practically started a fight with me for parking in front of his house.  The rest of the neighborhood looked like the neighborhood Beaver Cleaver would grow up in if the show was set in the early 21^st century instead of the 1950’s.

Anyway, there weren’t a lot of places in our delivery territory I hated going, but the apartment buildings by the highway definitely made the list.  Being on a dead-end street by the highway wasn’t just a sign of possible moral depravity; it also made it a pain in the ass to get to.  To top it off, a lot of those apartments were section 8 housing, which increases your odds of getting robbed and decreases your odds of getting tipped to an almost infinitesimal percentage.  I’d be lucky if the person didn’t demand their change down to the penny, which I didn’t carry.  I mean, if someone wants 13 cents change they can go fuck themselves.

Actual photo of the door buzzer

Now, like I said, I never got robbed while delivering pizza, but I knew enough to take precautions.  I left all but about $20 in mixed bills at the restaurant so that if someone stuck me up they wouldn’t get much.  I also cased the building and verified that it was a real address before I got out of the car.  So I walk into the vestibule and rang the buzzer.  The thing was busted.  Typical slumlord bullshit.  So I tried the door, and wouldn’t you know it, it was busted too.  Apparently, at an earlier date, some psycho had kicked the fucking door in. So the door swung right open and revealed six black dudes sitting in the hallway in the dark.

It was like walking in on this.

I hear the political correctness warning buzzers going off in your head.  “Why does it matter that they were black?”  I guess it doesn’t, but it actually would have been a whole helluva lot scarier if they were white, because what the fuck would six white dudes be doing in the dark in the black apartment building?  In any case, I went immediately went into fight or flight mode, or more accurately flight mode.  There was no way in hell I was gonna take on six dudes over an Italian beef sandwich and an order of deep-fried broccoli.

I was about to drop the food and run, when one of the guys asked who the food was for.  I answered and he calmly knocked on the woman’s door. She came out, paid for the food and I got the hell out of there.  I guess it was simply a matter of the hallway light burning out and some guys deciding it wasn’t creepy or weird to sit in the dark.  I mean, who does that?  The only answer I can think of is vampires, but the only black guy that’s a vampire is Blade and he kills other vampires.  I guess there’s Blackula too, but he died with the blaxploitation movement.  

Best film movement ever.

I guess I wasn’t in any real danger, but geez for a second or two I was sure I was gonna get my ass kicked.  I guess I should count myself lucky that this was the closest I ever came to really getting the shit kicked out of me.  Some drivers aren’t so lucky, so don’t be a cheapskate and throw ‘em a few dollars.  Especially in weather like this, I mean, if their job was easy you’d just go get your pizza yourself. 

Note:  This post doesn't even mention beer.  How bout that?