Generally, when I'm talking about annoying commercials, I'm speaking of ads that are on TV right now. I suppose one of the benefits of the 30-second ad is that they're easily forgotten. In addition, for some reason I rarely include one of the most annoying genres of commercial: the TV show promo. Like ads for a movie that I never want to see, these are suddenly everywhere and crazy repetitive. At this point, for example, I'm actively cheering for the end of ER--just so that I can never see an ad for the final season again.
But my current #1 commercial annoyance is the new campaign for DiSaronno amaretto, where some smooth, hip guy keeps offering DiSaronno drink recipes for the congenitally retarded. Seriously, I don't need someone to show me how to make amaretto and milk or amaretto and ginger ale. I'm not walking around the house, tearing my hair out in frustration, saying, "I just don't understand it. I have the DiSaronno. I have the ice. I have the ginger ale. And I have the glass. But what in the name of God do I do next?!!"
Yeah, I know that their point is to get us to think about trying easy drinks with amaretto. I don't care what their point is. I just want them to stop grinning at me like pouring milk into a glass of amaretto is a culinary achievement on par with making a 9 course meal for the Queen. I swear, if they do one where he shows us how to make amaretto on the rocks, I'm going to hurt someone.
Not being Irish myself (or if I am Irish, which is technically possible, then it's a negligible amount), I've always felt a little weird about investing too heavily in St. Patrick's Day. On the one hand, it's a holiday--and I am Catholic. On the other hand, nothing is more annoying that someone with maybe a thimbleful of Irish heritage who dresses all in green on St. Paddy's Day, runs around trying to pinch people who aren't in green, and finishes the night getting sloppy drunk on cheap beer. So in honor of the faux Irish, today I thought I'd count down the three worst drunks I've ever known--not worst in terms of consumption or their burgeoning alcoholism, but worst in the sense that they were a royal pain to hang out with when drinking. Here we go:
3.) McPoser. I went to a small Catholic college, which meant that about 1/2 the student body claimed some kind of Irish heritage. Of course, these were all clean-cut middle class white kids, so McPoser decided to create an identity for himself out of his Irishness. And, not being particularly tough, he was forced to rely on alcoholism (rather than fighting) as a way to establish his Irish cred. (I believe that his parents were accountants from an affluent suburb.) Sadly, this meant that most of the time not spent mooning after his increasingly impatient girlfriend was spent throwing up. This was capped by a particularly spectacular display one St. Patrick's Day, when he vomited Guinness all over the bar at our favorite Irish pub, more or less guaranteeing that nobody could go back there again during this lifetime.
2.) Drowsy. I envy guys. When you're a guy and your buddy makes a drunken ass out of himself in public, you get to leave him there. When you're a girl out with a drunken girlfriend, you have to shepherd her out of the bar, make sure she gets home ok, and find something to tie back her hair for the inevitable restroom sojourn. Once, I even woke up on a scratchy wool couch at a ski lodge miles from my college--where I had spent the night trying to use my sweater as a makeshift blanket because my friend wanted to hook up with some guy she met at a bar, and I got to be the one to go along and make sure that (if he turned out to be psycho) we could both get murdered instead of just her. I think it goes without saying that his mom is the one who found me the next morning then went on a tear through the house screaming about the fact that there were strange girls in the living room. Anyway, Drowsy makes the list due to her tendency to pass out in public after about 5 drinks. This meant that we were constantly pulling her out of booths and dragging/carrying her home. This, of course, culminated in the night that I had to crawl under the stall door of the filthiest restroom in Florence (in one of the clubs that catered to international students--which at the time meant that they played "Gangsta's Paradise" once every 20 minutes) so that I could retrieve Drowsy, who had somehow managed to pass out while on the toilet.
1.) DramaLlama. But the worst experiences belong to the time spent with DramaLlama, who enjoyed nothing so much as getting shit-faced and then pretending to try to kill herself. Obviously, she didn't actually want to kill herself. She just liked having a group of girls following her around, concerned about her safety and trying to "save" her while telling her about what a good person she is. It was a lot like those guys who pretend that they would fight you if there weren't a bunch of people holding him back. Thus, so long as there were plenty of people around to prevent her, she would get plastered and try to throw herself down staircases, out the window, etc., etc. Of course, after one night like this, I was ready to hold everyone else back and just let her jump.
Ok, then one of the problems with designating drink smugness is that too much depends on who is drinking and where. Still, I think that if we make the setting an ordinary bar in an ordinary American city, we can still generalize wildly about people's drinks. For example:
If you're a woman drinking a Cosmo, then chances are that you don't really like the taste of alcohol that much and that you have seen the Sex and the City Movie. (As an aside, I think I may have to do a separate entry on my issues with that show.)
If you're a man drinking a Pina Colada, and you're straight, then . . . um . . . you're very secure in your masculinity. Or totally oblivious.
If you're a man drinking scotch on the rocks and wincing every time you take a miniscule sip, then you're overcompensating and should have scaled back your ambitions a bit.
Ok, I will attempt (albeit half-heartedly) to come to the defense of Budweiser and the other beers that are nearly indistinguishable from it (e.g. Coors, Miller, etc.). Granted they're not exactly what I would call delicious, but they're not bad, and in certain specific situations, they're exactly the right thing to drink. Those situations are:
1.) When you're buying for people who don't like beer that much and would be perfectly happy with Bud and slightly annoyed when you tried to explain why your local microbrew is superior.
2.) When you're eating vast amounts of spicy food, and need something slightly more interesting than water (but only slightly) to wash it down. (E.g. buffalo wings or Maryland-style crab feasts)
3.) When you've just finished mowing the lawn or doing a 10-mile hike. At that moment, nothing tastes better than a really cold, extremely light-bodied beer. (My dad calls them "lawn-mowing beers" and keeps a few MGDs around just for that purpose.)
Ok, the comments on smug drinks have totally pulled me back into the smugness debate. I suppose one could debate whether an brand of alcohol can be smug on its own, or if it's only rendered smug by the annoyingness quotient of its consumers. Regardless, some smug drinks:
Grey Goose
Stella Artois (Thank you, Annearchy--totally agree on these 2)
Any microbrew with a literary reference in the name
Chopin Vodka
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Admittedly, this may be a hang-up from my waitressing days over near K Street, as there seemed to be a very high jackass-to-Sierra Nevada drinker ratio)
Come to think of it, there are a lot of drinks that I associate with being an asshole in general, rather than simple smugness.
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