Beer Couture: Top 10 Suds Fashion Duds

For those whose "Sunday Best" refers to what's worn at the Piggly Wiggly cashing in those cheesy nacho Hamburger Helper coupons, here are a few beer-themed sartorial suggestions you can run by the missus as she lights a Vantage Ultra Light off the propane barbecue and kicks back in a hammock.

Now, we've chronicled all manner of drunken exploit in our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, from leaping into a stark and stingray-filled aquarium drunk on a bet (the title story) to trying to beat a DUI rap by handing the cops ID belonging to a guy with a glass eye and hoping they wouldn't notice. Our guess is, the type of person who'd get up to such hijinks would undoubtedly have a drawer filled with garments like the ones we're showcasing here that the wife would most certainly try and shrink in the wash or sneak off to a church clothing drive when her man is out of town.

For a night on the town blinding a biker with your pool cue's butt end, beating the snot out of a motel ice machine, and kicking up dust at the state police, nothing says 'I'm not to be messed with' like a good ol' 1) Classic Beer T or Tank Top. If you're the adventurous type, it comes complete with double entendre seen here.

How do you establish territorial boundaries and also alert people to the fact that your name is Dick, and you drink beer? The answer is to the left, though technically the T would make more sense if it were on the actual beer, like a beer cosy perhaps. If you receive this as a gift and your name is not Dick, it's probably best that you reconsider the nature of your association with the person doing the giving. To the right, we have the kind of T-shirt that is a must for anyone who has ever worked out for longer than one week. What use is having the big guns unless you wear one of these to show them off? There is no point in lifting weights, or even in breaking a sweat, unless you have the kind of clothing that can reveal your efforts to the outside world.
[Fashion Suggestion: Best paired with an undergarment of some kind, though for the girl who is looking for instant popularity this is completely optional.]

2. The Coors Draw String Pant. Elegant, stylish, these are words that are never mentioned in conjunction with this item. A comfy expandable elastic waistband, means you're limited only by how many Hardee's Thickburgers can be forced down your gullet and by how many negative triglycerides readings come back from the lab that you choose to ignore before that tingling sensation in your arm gets too worrisome. [Fashion Suggestion: Pair with a sleeveless Stone Cold Steve Austin 3:16 T, Crocs, a frog doing something sexually suggestive tank top or bare-chested if you have errands to run and drive a jeep]




3. Budweiser Tie. For more official gatherings, like say the christening of the neighbor's riding mower, the burying of a beloved family pet or a sentencing hearing, you can get the gavel banger to at least chuckle at your official Budweiser Tie before sending you straight up the river without a raft. Whether such bold haberdashery really constitutes throwing yourself on the mercy of the court (or just a cheap ploy to beat that Oxycontin possession/indecent exposure rap) is up to legal interpretation.








4. King of Beers One-piece/Corona Bikini Top. For a more tasteful statement, such as a backyard grill-off where the neighbor's leering nephews are present, here's a two-piece, left. For wrestling in wet lettuce/impromptu Playboy Mansion badminton, to the right is a sassier version once those same kids turn 17. [Corrupting a minor charges vary according to state]




5. The 'Got Beer?' Combination Belt/Bottle Opener.
Who says style can't be functional? Give your back molars a rest as this versatile product will pop open bottles, hold up your pants, and if a rumble breaks out, you're an arm and a 38 waist's length away from being able to reach out and flog someone.





6. The Beer Belly Pouch Best accessorized with a Corona Draw String Pant if you're asymptomatic after that gastric bypass. With specs including an 80 ounce capacity and able to accommodate up to a 40-inch waistline, this product will fit at least one third of the target demographic. For a similar product we've reviewed here, click [Fashion Suggestion: For special occasions like staff meetings, sales presentations, wear a collared buttoned shirt over top, feed the drinking tube through the sleeve and surreptitiously sip from the wrist. This only applies if you're not the one conducting either meeting, unless you want to call a five minute recess to take a few swigs in the office's handicapped bathroom]


7. Miller Lite Thong Floss that 'junk in your trunk' and show your significant other that your tastes in the boudoir correspond to the case of junk you just stashed in the trunk.







8. Budweiser Beer Hat. Protect yourself from UV radiation, skin damage, good taste and the company of womenfolk with this bona fide Budweiser Beer Hat. Also, prevent sustaining any further head injury of the type that would result in the decision to sport this anywhere beyond the backyard (where it should only be donned if there is a sufficiently tall hedge) or the local laughing academy, where unfortunately, all such beverages would immediately be confiscated.




9. St Paddy's Socks Celebrate St Patrick's Day all year round with St Paddy's Day Commemorative Socks. I don't know about you, but we feel green just looking at them.










10. Pints of Beer Cuff Links. For your first time wearing cuff links, take your cue from the tone of the event you're to attend and what others will be wearing. If those people are completely and wholly unreliable, create a stir with your very own Pints of Beer Cuff Links [Fashion Suggestion: Wow the VIP section of your local Tough Man Contest with these beauties]

Belgian Beer Bonanza! Cantillon Brewery Tour, Brussels

It's impossible to forget the first time your taste-buds are left smarting from a slap of Belgian beer.

Like most, I was weaned on traditional lager or pilsener, the kind of stuff 'Johnny Sixpack' might pick up in his, well, pick-up.

To make watching sporting events palatable, such as our failing local hockey team's perpetual first round exit from the playoffs, or as an adjunct to a post-work barbecue in someone's suburban backyard, our greatest concern was a six-pack that wouldn't tax the wallet---and would leave us comfortably under the $10-dollar mark to to grab a bag of Doritos and pay for the last bus of the night without having to scramble for change.

If any of these bargain garage sale suds strayed too far from having what we came later to realize was a distinctly "beer" finish, it wasn't uncommon to hear "it's got a bitter aftertaste" bellyaching. This was odd, given that whenever anyone would inhale a candy bar, you'd never hear a "isn't that a sweet aftertaste?"

Belgian beer, as I came to learn, not only has aftertaste, but a heady "before" and "during" taste as well, and furthermore, some types weren't bitter at all.

Like the first time I guzzled a Guinness and realized it wasn't a facsimile of orange juice, like a Corona, or the first time I took a belt of whiskey left out in the bedroom of an older acquaintance whose jail-bait sis was hosting a party for precocious 9th grade tipplers, I realized it was a flavor distinctly unlike I'd ever encountered.

Most people's experience with Belgian beer comes via Stella Artois, which goes to show just how damn spoiled the Belgians are as that is the worst beer they make.

However, their other, more interesting beers trace their origins back to monasteries from the Middle Ages, and the product was so damn good many a monk broke their vow of silence to say as much. Unlike a lager, where the yeast ferments at the bottom at cooler temperatures, or an ale, the opposite, where the bits of goodness rise to the top, Belgian 'Lambic' beers do so spontaneously within the bottle itself.

This is admittedly a bit weird, and leaves the drinker wondering if the little bits floating around in the bottom of the bottle aren't the result of the local bog water source, rather than natural springs. It's also closed with a cork, so that you couldn't give it to the guy who got straight A's in shop class to remove the cap with his teeth.

Lambic beers are also laid down like fine wine to age, and sparkle as well. One of the sub-types (Kriek) is given a second fermentation with sour cherries, and another (Gueuze), is sometimes called Brussels Champagne.

For a country with a population only slightly higher than that of New York City, Belgium has 125 breweries, and an eye-popping 1000 + brands. Having been recently wowed by fruit beers, not for sissies as it turns out as they often pack a 10 and 12% alcohol punch, I figured I'd make a beer pilgrimage to the land that makes, and it pains me to say this with a mother and grandparents who hail from Germany, the world's finest beer.

I visited the Cantillon brewery, and if anyone is interested reading more about the brewing process, you can do so here, as this is not the forum to bore you with minutiae.

-- Chris

For more Shark Guy travels, check out what happened to Ireland's supply of a certain stout called Beamish when Noel visited the Emerald Isle by clicking here.

Beer Acronyms: What PBR REALLY Stands for: "Pretty bad refreshment"

What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor?
Heineken.
Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Blue Velvet (1989)

Tastes and preferences are often established early in life, and an aversion to say, the music of Celine Dion or Jimmy Buffet likely forms somewhere during the third trimester.

There are those whose first exposure to beer, sadly, occurs around this period as well (and who are then predisposed to voting Republican) but for most of us, the first time a cold one hits the taste-buds, is by surreptitious sip of the old man's
Amstel Light during a half-time bathroom break to walk the dog.

For others, it's shaking down the basement sofa for enough loose change to procure a bottle of the cheapest and most easily accessible hooch. The first beer beverage purchased, usually by an older brother, or the guy who sported a 5 O'Clock shadow at age of 14 and whose fettuccine arms could be hidden with several sweaters and an overcoat, is some mass-market swill with an advertising budget that exceeds the GDP of the entire Caribbean.

In Canada, it's the ubiquitous Molson Canadian, synonymous with hockey (or 'ice hockey' as it's referred to in the States to differentiate it from, I don't know, tonsil hockey), the music of Bachman Turner Overdrive and that uncle who spends the better part of the afternoon in a hammock, awaking periodically to get you to fetch him one.

The equivalent state-side is Coors, and it's no coincidence that these are brewed by the same manufacturer, and that they likely come from the same giant kettle as well and just have a Molson label slapped on for export north of the border.

Mediocre brews such as Budweiser, Miller or Molson are usually abandoned once a level of disposable income is reached to be able to absorb the extra $3 forked over for something premium, or during those college years, in exchange for skipping a few meals.

Interestingly, defenders of the swill are trying to block the takeover of The King of Beers by Belgian monolith Inbev. According to reports, last night more than 27,000 had heeded the call, signing an online petition to stop the takeover of the brewer of Budweiser.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is inexplicably popular too, perhaps solely for the ease with which a can of it is stuffed into a freezer so it can be chilled within minutes on a hot day, or perhaps because of its 'slumming it' hipster cache.

Anyway, here are three beers from our youth, Miller Genuine Draft (MGD), Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) and Bud, and what these really stand for. Thanks to our good buddies over at College Drinker for the idea...

MGD
Mediocre, god-awful drink
Maligned ginger-beer doppelganger
Mostly generic disappointment
Must be gluttonous dipsomaniac
Mild, gaseous, dismal

BUD
Beastly Undrinkable Drek
Basically Unfortunate Drink
Beer Under-agers Drink
Brew Unquestionably Dreadful
Base Ubiquitous Disgrace
Bubbly Urine-like Draft

PBR
Pretty bad refreshment
Possibly beer refuse
Potential brew rejected
Promoted by rabble
Prohibited by rarefied
Positively below rank
Patently banal rubbish

Beer as Fuel, and not just for your drunk Uncle Lou's awkward advances

In a previous blog, we drove home the true threat posed by global warming. Several polar bears may have been set off on that great ice-floe journey from which there is no return since that posting; however, the danger that we were pointing out looms large much closer to home – as close as your basement fridge – the possibility of a global beer crisis due to a lack of barley.

The warming of the planet, combined with a supply-side crisis, has also resulted in a short supply of hops in the US. Microbreweries, faced with less available hops, a key ingredient in their product, have taken to jacking up their prices, and, unless there is a change in the situation, we may be forced to either pay through the nose or agree with those who taunt us for drinking microbrews and settle for whatever is cheap and available because, after all, beer is beer.

This is the kind of news that is best met drunk. A recent TV news report suggested that beer is recession proof, and we would tend to agree. A few years ago you may have been toasting your good fortune, wondering why in the world someone would give a walking debt machine and astronomically high credit risk like yourself a mortgage. Now, with fortunes having reversed, and gas so expensive that you’re bargaining with the neighbor’s kid for his used 10-speed, you can tilt that same bottle to keep your mind off the dark state of your financial affairs.

Beer, however, is useful for more than just pouring down your throat in an effort to escape from the crippling grim reality of the diminished financial and natural resources of you and your country, although it is quite good for that. Beer is working for a better tomorrow.

The 2008 Democratic Convention will be sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Company. The company’s Coor’s Light, which can most charitably be described as “quite quaffable”, will be on sale at convention events. Despite both he and Hilary Clinton attempting to appeal to the lumpen by palming the odd pint on TV – which we covered here – Barack Obama tied with “none of the above” on a survey asking Americans who among the presidential candidates would make a good drinking partner. To be fair, the best drinking partners we know are able to do things like put cigarettes out on their tongues and so forth, and they would not make good holders of public office.

Perhaps sensing that it would not find a future presidential candidate that was as beer-drinker friendly as Bush, Coors chose a different and innovative tack – rather than merely fueling the drunken antics of young Democrats in functions near the event itself, it will also be fueling the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. As the “official ethanol sponsor” Coors will donate fuel made mostly out of beer waste – E85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol (beer in this case) and 15 per cent gasoline). When we speak of beer waste here, we’re not talking about spillage as a result of a shaken beer, or what results when you knock one over your keyboard while typing out a blog. The waste beer being turned into ethanol by Coors comes from beer that had been lost during packaging, or rejected for quality reasons.

Rarely, have the words of Homer J. Simpson been more appropriate: “Here's to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life's problems.”

Champions League Beer Shortage: Brits Drink Moscow Dry

A common complaint leveled against soccer is that it's boring. Meanwhile, nobody bothers issuing the same critique about baseball, where the guys hawking Amstel get more of a workout running up and down the aisles plying semi-conscious onlookers with cheap suds than the various mesomorphs manning the field and where the play -- which is about as frenetic as a Van Gogh still life -- is interrupted so that a pitcher can practice.

No other sport we're aware of, save for highly competitive mobster bocce ball, allows the flow of action to grind to a halt so that one of the participants can get in a proper warm up while eyelids flutter. Basketball players don't stand around while play stops as a guy who previously temperature-controlled the bench with his arse hoists a few shots at the hoop and soccer players don't lounge about so a substitute, who's just finished wowing middle-aged housewives with sideline calisthenics, can come onto the pitch and take a few practice kicks.

[Editor's note: baseball is also one of the few sports where the manager, even though he's older than fossil fuel, suits up like the players as if a septuagenarian is going to be called in to pinch hit. It's also one of the few outdoor sports in which play is suspended for an amount of rainfall that would not put a halt to the average wedding]

One thing for certain is that for soccer or baseball, whether it's the heaps of abuse screamed at the mascot, impromptu cheap seat 'bat day' beatings, or flares resembling a Hezbollah missile attack fired off in the stands, the real action is either in the crowd, or in the case of British football, the 18 hours prior to kick-off when the heavy drinking commences.

Dutch fans have been known to whiz on automobiles with German plates, fans of some Italian squads to do fascist salutes, Argentinian fans to knife one another pre-match, however these supporters show Salvation Army-like gentility compared with their British counterparts.

That being said, British fans gave a better than usual accounting of themselves recently, when according to the Daily Star, the 80,000 yobs who descended on Moscow for the Champions league final between Man U and Chelsea, didn't kill or maim anyone, but instead, completely depleted the local beer supply.

A United fan noted, “We were all on good form and the drinks were flowing in this little place we had found near the Kremlin. “But suddenly the barmaid threw up her hands and said: ‘No more!’

Fans complained bitterly as the lager ran out and they were told, 'no beer, just vodka'.

For more on beer shortages of a more serious, global nature, click here.

French Happy Hour not so 'appy after all

As we've pointed out a few times here, we're Canadian and many Canadians take great pains to explain to bored foreigners who could not give two shits otherwise: we're much different from Americans. For example, the Great White North, for those of you who don't know, is an officially bilingual state, though in reality English speakers are much more well-versed in what's known as "Cereal box French". For our American friends, this refers to French language proficiency a well-fed gorilla could comfortably master in sign language, and that might lead the average tourist to a bathroom or the nearest lost and found should they be parachuted into Basse Normandie.

Colloquially, it refers to an ability to do little more in "The Language of Love that's not Italian" than read the back of a cereal box and determine its ingredients (say, if peanut products, a plastic inhalable toy or trans fats are contained therein) but would not get you off with Juliet Binoche if you met her in a bar.

For those of us who couldn't converse with an "enfant" with our "terrible" Francais, it's tempting when encountering a Frenchman to simply precede an English word with "La" or "Le" and hope not to be met with quizzical stares.

One phrase that would not be lost in translation, (like the eponymous movie starring Bill Murray should've been), is "Le Binge Drinking", so obviously adopted from the English as in the UK it's their national past-time second only to differentiating themselves from lowly continentals and not combing their hair.

Indeed, there are few countries, save for Russia or Germany, who can even begin to compete with the levels of self-ruination we've chronicled across the pond.

According to a recent report though, even France is battling the scourge of increased public drunkenness and is mulling over the banning of happy hour, that period of time between work and home life that doesn't leave you looking at your watch and wondering when it's time to punch the clock or go to bed.

Other possible measures could include restricting the sale of vodka, whiskey and other high-powered potables in discos to glasses, rather than entire bottles, that you could previously hoist above your head and swing around to the beat of 'Love in this Club' while pouring the contents into the mouth of whoever you'd like to bed that evening.

They are also considering raising the legal age to three years below that of the US, where hairlines can recede, and mortgages can be bought at the comparatively ripe age of 21. Mon dieu! Sacre bleu!

Get 'Em When They're Young: Brewery draws fire for billboard outside primary school

One of the more ghoulish sounding objectives in marketing is the drive to create cradle-to-the-grave consumers. A mind that is still in its formative stages and that does not yet have the capacity to think critically or to visit the website Snopes.com is likely to believe anything, whether it’s religious hullabaloo popularized by ancient tribesman who had yet to understand the germ theory of disease, or the idea that McDonald’s is actually selling something that might fall into one of the four food groups. Indeed, the latter knows that if you include a cheap plastic toy with a youngster’s nutrient-vacant meal, you create a positive impression in that child’s mind and – if he doesn’t’ end up reading “Fast Food Nation” and swearing off that kind of food forever – he’ll likely end up cutting out Mickey D’s coupons out of his newspaper when he’s 45 and about to become a checkmark next to the “grave” portion of the cradle-to-the-grave idea.

Then there are those companies who take matters a step further and hope to “Get ‘em young”, when, legally speaking, they are selling products that the consumer can’t buy until they reach a certain age. Joe Camel, is, of course, the standard bearer in this regard. A chain-smoking cartoon camel that dresses like a pimp might not appeal to your grandpa, but it might make a lifelong brand follower out of a pimply teen who may then later disregard those gruesome displays on cigarette advertising and to whom the threat of impotence might not seem all that important.

Booze companies are also known for occasionally blurring the line between applying to a youthful audience and wanting to replace that bottle of milk in a baby’s mouth with a Mike’s Hard Cranberry.

Tasmanian Brewery Boag may have gone a step too far in the latter direction with its choice of placement for a sign promoting its “St George Beer”: the entrance of a local primary school. As children enter the school, they are greeted with a large advertisement reading “There’s fun brewing”, and while the advert doesn’t show little Johnny tilting one in the sandbox, it does have some local residents concerned that the billboard might corrupt the minds of the youngster.

A 67-year-old grandmother of one of the tots exposed to the advertising was outraged, saying that it advocated binge drinking to impressionable minds. “It's saying, 'Drink, get drunk, it's a great way to have fun'." What the grandmother neglected to mention, however, is that this is 100% true and that getting drunk is in fact one of the best ways to have fun, though it’s the kind of lesson that’s better learned at college keg parties and the like.

Getting Pie-Eyed on Pizza Flavored Beer and Other Strange Brews

Recently we covered booze-flavored toothpaste, just the thing for those looking to spruce up in the morning by brushing their teeth with something that will give them an instant and sickening reminder of the 11 highballs from the night prior. More common is the trend towards making alcohol-related products taste like something else – hence the rise of alcopops and various other beverages that are commonly ordered by girl drink drunks.

Beer manufacturers are doing this by adding ingredients to their brews to excite the Budweiser-deadened tastebuds of your average guzzler, and, in some cases, to test their gag reflexes. Pizza-flavored beer seems like the type of unorthodox brew that would do the latter, as, up until this point, the only pizza-flavored beer familiar to the recreational boozer has been the end of the night palette clearing, known in some circles as “bending and sending” or more commonly blowing biscuits.

However, according to this review from the Fairfield County Weekly, Tom Seefurth’s Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is actually quite quaffable, if not actually the most authentic-tasting beer. While the brewers do include oregano, basil, tomato and garlic in the mix, it isn’t exactly a slice of pie crammed into a beer bottle. According to the reviewer, “…it resembled the taste of pizza-flavored Combos or Pringles… rather artificial, kind of like the Baco-Bits of the alcohol world.” The reviewer, a Shark Guy in spirit, scoffed at the pizza beer’s low alcohol content (4.5 percent) and said that he’d “just as soon knock back a beer-flavored beer.”

For those looking to explore the world of flavored beer, here is a quick look at what’s on offer. We take no responsibility for sickened stomachs. (Editor’s Note: The first one is not meant for humans, but like those sad stories of senior citizens on fixed budgets being left to dine on the Alpo, there is nothing to stop you from trying it out for yourself).

Steak-flavored beer for dogs: Who among us hasn’t emptied out the odd pint into Rover’s bowl just to see what would happen when he got a little tipsy? One of our favorite tales in the animals section of our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark (and other true tales of drunken debauchery), concerned a footman of the Queen of England who was fired for putting whiskey in the water bowls of the royal corgis. (They have since straightened out incidentally). The beer we’re talking about here though, the Dutch Kwispelbier - "tail-wagging beer" is non-alcoholic, and tastes like beef. The beer has recently gone on sale in the UK and is being imported from Holland. According to the distributors of the canine brew, while little Fido may not end up as hammered as his owners, he’ll at least be drinking in solidarity with them: "It means pets are even more a part of family life as they can enjoy a beer, too."

Beer and Milk Makes Bilk: According to the good folks over at PETA, beer is actually better for you (not to mention poor ole’ Bessie the cow) than milk. “Beer in moderation is good for you, while even one glass of milk supports animal abuse and harms your health,” says a PETA spokesperson. But for those of us not quite ready to throw dairy out the door and embrace the joys of soy, the good news is that the salutary effects of both milk and beer can be found in one ingeniously named Japanese product: Bilk. The brewer, dealing with an oversupply of milk due to lower consumption in Japan, decided to use surplus to create a beer that is 30% milk. According to Reuters, “apart from a slight milky scent looks and tastes like ordinary beer”. Currently, Bilk is available only in the region where it’s produced, Hokkaido, and by mail order. The manufacturer said that further distribution would depend on how the initial beer fared in local markets, and we’re guessing the lack of reports following on from its introduction last year tell us pretty much all we need to know about how that went.

Champagne Beer: Champagne tastes? Beer budget? Willing to drink anything we suggest? Well boy do we have the beer for you. The Krait Prestige Champagne Lager, the US named for the UK Cobra Beer, claims to be the world’s first champagne lager and the only lager to be refermented in the bottle, a process usually reserved for Trappist ales (drinking Trappist ales, incidentally, is the best thing about being a Trappist monk). The bottle is made to look like a champagne bottle, and offers a combination of the two products inside (throwing into complete chaos standard rules such as "beer after wine, you'll do just fine"). Whether such a mix would appeal to you depends on whether you enjoy champagne. If you are of a mind with the journalist Christopher Hitchens who once said, “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics” then this may not be the product for you.

Chocolate Donut Beer: Brewed by Shenandoah Brewery in Alexandria Virginia, which, we shit thou not, offers a major discount for law-enforcement officials (the discount doesn’t specifically apply to the donut beer, but still…) comes the Chocolate Donut Beer. This begging-for-a-Homer-Simpson-reference beer is in league with pizza beer in terms of giving you something to drink to remind you of the unhealthy things that you like to eat. The beer overwhelmingly positive feedback on Beer Advocate, including an A+ rating from a guy who said it smelled “Like you just opened a pack of those cheap waxy corner store chocolate gem donuts”.

Hillary Clinton Takes Shots, Not at Rival Obama but of Whiskey

Based on the dismal two-term bargain basement presidency of George W, we can make this blanket statement: tipplers make better presidents than teetotalers as anyone up to this point, including notorious booze-hound Dick Nixon, has been a better president.

Dubya, who was a lot more fun back when his nose was more full of the white stuff than a face-planting Picabo Street or when he indulged in the occasional brew, hasn't enjoyed a drop in nearly a decade (he was photographed at a 2007 summit in Germany, swilling a piss-poor non alcoholic 'near beer', a nearly punishable offense in that country, not to mention a product brewed by mediocre foreign rival Heineken that luckily didn't result in an international incident)

The current crop of Oval Office aspirants, though, are no strangers to the odd bevvie, and currently reaching out to voters, by reaching for the occasional pint.

Automaton former first lady Hillary has been urged to 'loosen up a bit' and is taking this to heart as she compounded her populist rhetoric recently by pounding back a few on the campaign trail at a Fort Wayne, Indiana watering hole. [Editor's note: forced banter with someone sporting a 'DAD' sweatshirt and prominent under-bite, in a state more backward than the Hebrew alphabet is best undertaken with a few dollops of liquid courage]

According to a local wine-and-spirits representative with no vested interest whatsoever, "I think she'd loosen up better" [if she had a few]

In terms of jump starting the economy and decreasing income inequality, her campaign platform would be well served to include the following bit of wobbly, booze-friendly research (correlation not implying causation here, unless the profs are springing for the tab). According to a study out of San Jose State U, where you can major in advanced beachcombing, "drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking", with females representing the higher end of the spectrum.

Also, and this will provide a built-in pretext for browbeaten hubbies to have a few hours' respite from the missus--men who go to a bar at least once a month earn an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percent drinking premium. Of course, we'd expect diminishing returns if this figure were to include more than ____(insert double digit figure deemed appropriate here)

Here's rival Obama gingerly sipping on a pint in PA, perhaps aiming to close the gap between beer drinkers and wine drinkers, the former predominantly GOP voters according to the latest CNN Lou Dobbs book-ending filler poll.

Holy Christ in the Cornflakes! The Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings

Unless you’re mixing your booze with a cupful of the communal Kool-Aid at a Ken Kesey-themed 60s night, it’s unlikely that getting drunk – even on absinthe as a recent study revealed – will lead to hallucinations. (Editor’s note: Spinning rooms don’t count in this regard, and neither does vision compromised because you just broke your glasses head-butting a vending machine). Only a drinker approaching last call (and not the one they ring the bell at the bar for) is likely to experience hallucinations, and thus most drinkers are denied the more mystical side of chemical enhancement that their hallucinogenic-eating peers enjoy.

This past weekend, however, one pub drinker had a religious experience of sorts while out on the piss. The Daily Mail reported on how a taxi driver from Darlington ordered a bottle of cider and “got goose pimples” when the waitress opened it and staring back at him from the foil on the neck was the face of Christ himself. "I have no doubt it is the face of Jesus. You can even see his beard and hair," said the man of what is a decidedly more bug-eyed image of JC than the usual one.

The man gathered around his drinking companions to share in this miracle and snapped a photo of the bottle before it was taken away. (None of the other bottles that night bore the face of Jesus, though unconfirmed rumors have it that a glaring John The Baptist was seen in the settling foam of a pint of Old Speckled Hen.)

The drinker didn’t realize how crisp the likeness was until he checked the photos the next day and it was too late to retrieve it. "I'm not sure what message Jesus was sending and maybe now we'll never know,” the man said. The message may have been “Put me up on Ebay and we’ll have many good nights on the cider together son,”; as the Mail mentions, a similar find, the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, sold for $28,000 just four years ago (Click here for “Virgin Mary (again)”, an up-to-date chronicle of sightings).

His appearance at the British pub was only the latest stop on an unorthodox tour; the Nazarene has popped in for a visit via some unlikely, and occasionally delicious, places over the past few decades. Here then is The Shark Guys’ rundown of the Top 10 Oddball Jesus Sightings of All Time!

10) Fish-stick Jesus: This is the sole Canadian find on the list and appropriately enough was made when a guy was cooking up that quintessential Canadian repast: fish-sticks. Kingston's Fred Wan had left the fish-sticks cooking for too long, a common mistake among fish-stick eaters who are not exactly your gourmet-at-home types when it comes to paying careful attention to following food preparation instructions. The fish-sticks were burnt, but while Fred examined his dinner, he noticed something that he thought could fund many more boxes of ole' Captain Highliner's best: the image of Christ was to be found on the burnt fish-stick. Gordon kept the holy fish-stick in his freezer for some three years (that's usually about mid-shelf life for your average box of fish-sticks) before putting it up on Ebay. Alas, the website denied his posting.

9) The Messiah of the Molars: When Jesus is not making appearances in people's food, he can often be found showing up in their X-rays (click here for that), MRIs (here), ultrasounds (here and here) etc. These visions are usually seen after exams related to something important, like the birth of a child (ecclesiastical sources are split on whether having Jesus's face in the ultrasound means that you are about to give birth to a new prophet or the Antichrist. "50/50", they say). Jesus does not usually meddle in matters of good oral hygiene, but this one was an exception. A Phoenix, Arizona dentist was stunned when he developed his patient's X-ray and found Christ up there above the pearly whites. The man said he was a devout Christian, but that this was the first time his redeemer showed up on his dental x-rays. The reason for the visitation will remain a mystery for the ages as the man's dental checkup revealed no problems.

8) The Pancake Prophet: Not to be outdone by the Virgin Mary grilled-cheese sandwich when it comes to appearances in artery-clogging breakfast food, the face of Jesus was said to have appeared to an Ohio man on his morning pancakes. Ohioan Mike Thompson and his wife were sitting down to breakfast when, he said, he spotted the holy visage and took it to be a "message from above". That message was not surprisingly to take care when setting the minimum bid on E-bay -- start too high and they'll think you a fraud, too low and they'll doubt the veracity of the miracle. Bidding started at $500 and went up to an incredible $15,000 before the listing was pulled due to a "listing infraction."

A report by the website MrBreakfast.Com, entitled "Breakfast with Jesus" (not to be confused with the Andy Kaufman cult film "My Breakfast With Blassie") later determined that the pancake was, horror of all horrors, not the genuine article. An E-Bay commenter had jokingly wondered, "Maybe he has a Jesus fry pan that has an image embedded in the metal so everything cooked will have Jesus on it." The commenter was probably joking, but the pancake guy actually did have a pan that did just that. Jesus Pan.Com, maker of the pan used to create the holy pancakes, offers, for the low low price of two for $29.95 the opportunity to boost your bank account by selling your breakfast on E-bay. Their slogan: "Worship at every meal with Jesus Pan."

7) Pizza Hut Pasta Jesus: In 1991, Stone Mountain, Georgia resident Joyce Simpson had a dilemma; she was, apparently, a good singer, and had to decide if she still wanted to keep on belting it out in the choir for free, or if it was time to move on to more lucrative paid professional work. Driving along she gazed upon a Pizza Hut advertisement for the chain's new spaghetti lunch that it was promoting at the time and in it she found her answer: the face of Jesus was clearly visible to her in the pasta.

Skepdic defines Pareidolia as “a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Teresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun or a man in the moon.)." It might also explain why Joyce saw Jesus, while other passersby saw different holy men, like Willie Nelson and John Lennon.

6) Shower Jesus: This one, which could also be dubbed the "Calling Bob Vila Jesus", was spotted by Pittsburgh resident Jeffrey Rigo on June 11, 2005. Stepping out of the shower that day Rigo saw both the need for costly home repairs and the means to pay for them in one water-stained piece of plaster. Rigo was quoted in the reporting newspaper as saying "I got out of the shower and yelled, 'Jesus Christ!' My girlfriend asked me, 'Oh, my God, what is it?' I pointed and responded, 'No, Jesus Christ!'" Rigo cut out the piece of plaster with the image on it and put it up on E-bay with the description "a section of plaster wall bearing the apparent face of the Son of God." It sold for $1,999.99.

5) The Jesus Pierogi: Miracles, it seems, adjust with the times. Gone are the days of the fish and loaves; it seems that now Jesus is focused on the kind of foods that will cause your insurance premiums to go up if you circle them under the heading "Do you eat any of the following on a regular basis?". In November 2005, he made an unexpected Easter appearance on a pierogi, the tasty Polish dumpling typically boiled and then thrown into a pan with some butter to ensure that your heart is given a proper run for its money. The woman doing the cooking was sure that she saw her saviour seared into the side of the pierogi and presumably wanted to share the revelation with others: the family put it up on Ebay and netted $1,775.

4) Tailgate Jesus: In November, 2005 a Laredo Texas man's pickup truck became a site of holy pilgrimage where the faithful would go to light candles, take pictures and pray. Julio Radillo found the image of Christ (or Kurt Cobain depending on how your synapses are firing when you look at it) in the dirt on the truck's tailgate. The man was a believer and said that the appearance of the deity on his truck was a reminder for people to strengthen their faith. It may also been a reminder to Radillo that a run through the car wash every few months or so wouldn't be the end of the world..

3) The Jesus Couch (links to MySpace page of man claiming to be co-discoverer): Sometimes Jesus just needs to kick back and relax and what better time to do so than on his own birthday. On Christmas Day, Jesus appeared in a city where his name is most commonly invoked over a pair of just-kissed dice, Las Vegas. The holy visage turned up this time on a red-suede couch. The MySpace blog of one of the man who claims to have discovered the oversized relic reads:

"I am in no way religious or even moral nor do I pretend to be, yet I am telling you it was there on his couch and everyone who sees it in person can see it. I'm not saying it is some kind of miracle, or sign, or that my ass is shaped like Jesus... Sure it's no doubt pattern recognition and the power of suggestion and a whole slew of other psychological nonsense but one thing remains- the power of the jesus couch cannot be denied."

The website that the Myspace poster set up for the faithful, JesusCouch.com, sadly is no longer online and, although we're not positive, it seems unlikely that the Jesus Couch ever sold on Ebay given the high asking price of the co-owner, who wrote on his blog "Hell if a grilled cheese sandwhich can sell for 25 grand and potato chips with the face of Abraham Lincoln get thousands than we should be able to sell this couch for trillions of dollars."

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2) The Nazarene Gets His Own Nebula: In April 2004, the Hubble Science Institute released some dazzling snaps taken from its extremely high-resolution camera. The photos were of the Cone Nebula and when some believers saw the photos a nationwide call of "Oh my God, it's full of stars! And Jesus!" was sounded. The Cone Nebula, according to Wikipedia is located in Monoceros, "a region that contains cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes that abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from nurseries of newborn stars." But, as the folks over at Skyimagelab.com put it, while NASA scientists may see stellar nurseries etc, "others are inspired by the wonders of the God's creations and see something different. Look at this image from a distance, can you see the image of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, crowned by a sparkling ring of thorns as stars? Thus it was said..." and then it gets into some bible verse before getting to the purpose of the website, which is to sell prints, framed and otherwise, of the "Jesus Nebula".

1) The Shrine of the Holy Tortilla: The arrival of the holy tortilla was a watershed moment for holy found faces in food. Prior to the discovery of this relic, much food had been fried up and scarfed down and people thought things like “Hey, that was a delicious burger,” and not “Why didn’t I check that patty for the likeness of the blessed savior?!” People started looking a little harder at dinner following the arrival of the Holy Tortilla.

In 1977, Maria Rubio, a housewife in Lake Arthur, New Mexico, was rolling up a burrito when she saw that the face of Jesus in the skillet burns on the tortilla. Rubio rushed out, told her friends and neighbors (Way to look like a crackpot neighbor: Run over next door and tell them to check out the face of a deity in a dish of Tex Mex) and soon formed a shrine for the tortilla, which a priest blessed.

Over 35,000 people had visited the Shrine of The Holy Tortilla by 1979, and the Rubio house remained a tourist destination for years. The Holy Tortilla survived many attempts to usurp its place as the true miracle burrito (including this one), but its reign came to an end when one of the Rubio grandchildren took it to show and tell and broke it. Admittedly, there was not much to “show” at that point anyway since the face was no longer visible, and a burrito, not the most attractive-looking food item wh