Bud Lite & Clamato Chelada

Now, you may have noticed a new subtitle for this blog: "These bars are filled with things that kill, by now you probably should have learned." It's from a Bright Eyes song, and I chose it because  a) there are a lot of things I am not, and faggy is not one of those things, and b) I do stubbornly refuse to learn.

He's like a scared little kitten. I'd totally drink some Riva with that guy.

Even then, though, some of you might thought a pre-canned blend of clam juice, tomato, bud lite, lime, and salt (it's supposed to be served in a salt-rimmed glass but they just said fuck it and put salt in the goddamn can like goddamn assholes) might daunt me. Those of you who did either seriously underestimate my courage or overestimate my will to live.

"So I give myself three months to feel better/ or I swear to god I'll drive right off a fucking cliff." Oh, this is pretty much what highschool with me was like, by the way.

Well, almost. You need more Smiths references but, as both Morrissey and beer-clamato are for inexplicable reasons enjoyed by swarthy Latinos, I guess this'll make an adequate substitute.

LOOK
Reddish-pink, with matching foam. It's a little faintly orange and more translucent than I like my beer, let alone how I like my beer mixed with what-should-be-opaque tomato juice. Which, in all fairness, I proabably wouldn't mind if it was absolutely translucent, by which I mean didn't exist. I mean, Jesus christ, I know Bud Lite is for drippy vaginas but does that mean this has to look like period blood.?

What are you, on y-- shit, already made that joke in the Cossack review. Welp, hopefully some Winstone will class this place up a little regardless.

NOSE
It's in the nose where the rich bouquet of clams comes  through. It still smells faintly like tomatoes and faintly like beer, but mostly it just smells fishy.

I want you to try and wrack your brain for anything that can be described as "smelling fishy" that is good. Nothing is supposed to smell like fish. Even fish. When fish get aromatic you throw 'em the fuck out, but NOPE, Amheuser just thinks yeah, yeah, this beer smells like low tide. And I'm okay with that.

I want you to keep in mind, given the metaphor I used in the section above, that I didn't make a single vagina joke. I stayed the hell away from vaginas in the fish-smell metaphor, and that makes me classy.

Pictured: Class, a Turkey.

TASTE
They put salt in this. Do you think they understood what a bad idea that was? When you salt the rim of the glass, it gives a nice sharpness to what you're drinking and, by making you thirstier, makes the drink more quenching. I've only started appreciating tequila in the past month since I bought a little bottle of 1800, and I understand that. The people who came up with this deal in booze for a living and they couldn't figure out that if you put salt in the beer it just makes it painful to drink. The lip of the can tastes like seawater and it burns my throat in the worst way possible.

(For the record, whenever I think of budweiser I just flash to the scene in Blue Velvet where Laura Dern says it's all she's had, and Kyle MacLachlan just sighs and disappointedly replies "yup.  King of beers.")

"Diane, I'm drinking Clamato, salt, and Budweiser. I've made a huge mistake."

Honestly, the only flavor advertised on the bi-lingual label that I would want in my cheap watery lite American beer is the lime, and I can't taste that. It mostly tastes like tomato juice. Bad tomato juice. At least when you drink it, the clam-- the "unique flavor of Clamato" they advertise on the back of the can-- doesn't really come through. It just tastes like beer and tomato juice and it makes you thirsty when you drink it, making it a failure at the one reason I ever have cheap watery beer. And I drink a lot of Rolling Rock, so it's not like I'm coming at this with unreasonably high standards.

Can I just say that my spellchecker doesn't recognize Clamato as a word? That's because it shouldn't be.

"Clamato, per se?"

I will say this though-- it makes a nice counterpoint to the Four Loko from earlier in the week. On a surface level, that's because it's horrible flavors and colors are at least natural; I know what makes this bad, unlike the awful undertow of Loko, which I can only guess at being the rough flavor of Nyarlothotep's dust-covered taint (not taint in the Lovecraftian sense, I mean the space between Nyarlothotep's testes and Nyarlothotep's anus). On a less awful level, though, it's because chugging this actually makes it better. Your mouth gets acclimated to the store-brand V8 taste and it just tastes like watery, vegetable-y beer after a few swigs.

Also, I think the salt did help clear up these congested sinuses I've had, so that's good. I'm not even joking, that happened.

FINAL THOUGHTS
On the other hand, I think my throat might be bleeding. It's really hot and sore I don't know if my spit's red because of the tomato or if the saltwater kinda fucked me up because, you know, you shouldn't drink saltwater.

It's like nobody even watched Waterworld.