What "Good Beer Night" Means in Texas:

I think I'd place Lone Star Beer somewhere between PBR and Miller High Life on the "Quality of Beer" scale. But what it lacks in tastiness, it makes up for in absurd ad-campaign slogans.

Like High Life, Lone Star attempts to connect with the common-man in its advertising. Unlike High Life, Lone Star attempts to connect with the Texan common-man. It also assumes that the Texan common-man is a fucking dunce. (Judgment on whether this is true or not will be withheld from this review.)

LS prides itself on appealing to the sense of Texas nationalism, which, I have to say, it quite strong in these here parts. Basically the premise behind the current LS ad campaign is: "Only true Texans drink Lone Star beer."

This leads to little quips such as "88% of Lone Star drinkers believe we need to protect our borders from the rest of the U.S." and "84% of Lone Star drinkers are wearing something with the word 'Texas' on it right now."

However, these simple statements that exude Texan patriotism start to run off the deep end when they reach the next level of stubborn redneck pride-of-my-own-ignorance: "90% of Lone Star drinkers believe Oklahoma is a small town in Northern Texas" and "82% of Lone Star drinkers think Austin is the Capital of the United States" comes quickly to mind.

I'm sure that when this savvy group of advertisers saw the Taco Bell ad campaign, they thought: "Wow, this is great stuff! But it's a little too high-brow for our demographic... let's just take the same internal logic and dumb it down a little. There. Solid gold!"

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Suffice it to say Texas is not a land that is super conducive to micro-brews. You've already heard from Indy what a failure Zeigen Bock is... the only other one they make down here is Shiner. I'd rank that one as only a little worse than Henry Weinheart's. I think it has to do with the consistently hot weather--since tastier beers tend to have more weight to them, they aren't as conducive to the climate. (Would any of you want to drink Snow Plow on a 80 degree day? I mean, maybe. It is delicious... but it's a lot better when your sitting next to a fire after a long day out in the cold. "Cold" here means: dipping below 55 degrees.)

So if ever a GBN is held down here that involves more than just Indy and me, you can be sure that we will partake in this inoffensive, watery, ignoramus-friendly brew. And I'm sure we'll buy some out-of-state beer with flavor, too.