Alcohol. It helps 220 million American adults deal with their goalless lives. Well, not all adults...you still have to wait three years after your "adult" 18th birthday.Why did we, as a country, decide you need to be 21-years-old to legally drink alcohol? Because Herbert Hoover was a gambling addict, and figured it was a lucky age for you to get unluckily plastered.
But Americans weren't always so lucky.
The year was 1922. Americans were happy because no one saw the Great Depression coming. The men were hung like elephants, and the women were looser than a pair of old socks. Then, someone decided to ruin the fun and prohibit alcohol from being consumed. Redonkulous.
For the next 11 years, Prohibition helped millions of tavern owners become homeless, gave homeless people an excuse to actually buy that bus ticket home, and helped build millionaires out of whiskey-runnin', gun-totin', law-flauntin' future politicians. But, that all came to an end after Eisenhower's famous "I'll Have a Beer" speech.
The end of Prohibition allowed our nation to stagger back to it's feet, just in time to get drunk of its ass.
As I write this, America is the only country whose drinking age is 21. All other countries have either 1) no alcohol, 2) no drinking age, or 3) a drinking age lower than 21 (it's 12 in Brazil). Do the math.
Turning 21 is a special time in every non-teetotaler's life. It's the day that one usually sees how much alcohol can be ingested before his or her body defense system literally rejects (read: regurgitates) more than the amount it has determined will kill you. Does that make sense?
Anyways, back to malt liquor: If our Forefathers hadn't invented malt liquor, I would not have been able to get depressingly drunk on my 21st birthday. Not only did I go to the liquor store at the STRIKE OF MIDNIGHT, I bought King Cobra.
Have you ever drank King Cobra? I hadn't. My buddy and I thought it would be a fun choice. We were also idiots.
Now, I'm not sure who the brainiac-wizard was who came up with the name "King Cobra," but it has no snake parts listed as ingredients, and the only reason to call it "king"-anything would be the fact that after too many, it commands you to lie across the kitchen floor.
We were drinking forties. That's slang for a 40-ounce beverage. A big beverage. It's feels even bigger as those alcohol-soaked ounces drive through your circulatory system.
After a couple of "KCs", as we liked to call them, I went to the bathroom. (Warning: a little gross disclosure coming up.) As I sat on the toilet (doing what men do when they sit on a toilet...besides reading), my stomach told me it wasn't feeling good. So, I had to throw up in the bathtub. At that point, my eyes were watering because the stomach acid was so pungent. Also, my nose was running. If earwax could somehow flow, I think all my orifices would have been putting in some O.T.
The moral of the story? Don't drink King Cobra.
So, malt liquor and Prohibition (the end of it) are just two more reasons why America is awesome. Don't think I'm right? Why don't you let me know in the comments
1 comments:
Personally, I think KC is fantastic but Im slightly subjective. Ive started to reconsider, after reading some objective reviews.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29/66/
Budweiser plug:
On the night of April 6, 1933, more than 25,000 St. Louisans, representing the hopes and dreams of American workers, long since home from the war and demoralized by the Great Depression, gathered with eager hearts and tin cups in hand to once again sip the bittersweet nectar of Budweiser, a sensation unknown to them for 14 years.
As the clock atop the brewhouse showed one minute past midnight on April 7, 1933, sirens and steam whistles sounded, the large wooden doors of the brewery's Bevo bottling plant opened to the cheers of the thirsty, and 55 trucks laden with America's favorite brew rolled out into the night, delivering the first cases of post-Prohibition Budweiser to the masses.
The airwaves echoed with the charming voice of August A. Busch, Jr., who spoke to the nation through a special radio broadcast via KMOX CBS Radio, welcoming the return of beer saying "Beer is back!" and restoring confidence in American industry during the Depression. "April the 7th is here and it is a real occasion for thankfulness marking a newfound freedom for the American people made possible by the wisdom, foresight, and courage of a great President and the cooperation of an understanding Congress," Busch proclaimed.
Simultaneously, the Budweiser neon-lit clock in New York's Times Square rang out with the tune, "Happy Days Are Here Again."
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