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PBR

Pabst Blue Ribbon is making a comeback. This article at CNN says that PBR is popular again with kids of all ages:

    "It's really popular with not only the college students but also the working class guy and the Social Security crowd," said Lilias Barisich, whose family has operated the bar since 1954.

The arch-cool kids like it for its obvious anti-pop-culture appeal:

    "There's a theory that there's a niche out here for a consumer that's anti-marketing," said Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer's Insights.

    Betty's owner Lessner said, "People are really sick of the Budweiser-type marketing with naked girls and cars. Pabst is kinda hokey and nostalgic and people like it."

And of course, the price; you can get one for $1.50.

Yet they don't mention the best reason: Dennis Hopper, as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet recommended it heartily: "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!!!"

Still, I'll likely never buy a six pack of PBR for home. If cheap beer is what I need, then I'm always a sucker for extra-pale Rolling Rock, or that other cheap Pennsylvania beer: Yuengling; now that they've put some marketing behind their beer, I can find Yuengling way down south in NC. There's plenty of cheap or nearly-cheap beer with far more character than PBR.

Of course there's a time and a place for ultra-cheap beer with no character: college. In my college days, all we drank was Golden Anniversary, cause you could get it for $8 for 24, or $2.50 for a six. At that price, everything else was a luxury - even The Beast or PBR's cousin, Old Milwaukee. You'd save yourself the price of two packages of ramen noodles - perfect for tamping down that sweetish, churning, warm G.A., at 2AM.

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Scam the scammers

CNN reports:

    A former Harvard University instructor of medicine who was arrested on Tuesday for conning friends, colleagues and Internet acquaintances out of $600,000 was himself duped when he trusted other swindlers with the money, police said.

    Weidong Xu, 38, quickly lost his ill-gotten loot by investing it in a dubious Nigerian business offer he received by e-mail. The spam message promised gains of $50 million, police said.

There's nothing on the page that says if this is an April Fools joke or not.

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The problem with vampires

    "That's the problem with vampires," said Doru Morinescu, a 30-year-old shepherd who, like many in the village, has a family connection to the current case. "They'd be all right if you could set them after your enemies. But they only kill loved ones. I can understand why, but they have to be stopped."

According to Knight Ridder (the news service, not the show about the talking car), some Romanian villagers are upset that the police are investigating their re-killing of vampires. The police say vampires aren't real, and are out to put a stop to what they call grave-robbing. The locals disagree and are mad that they might be in trouble for merely defending themselves:

    Before Toma Petre's relatives pulled his body from the grave, ripped out his heart, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it, he hadn't been in the news much.

    Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead - they're pretty common - but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.

    "What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"

"Vampires? How ridiculous!" you might say. Well, that's because you don't know about real vampires; you only know the pretty vampires that look like Tom Cruise (who's actually a Scientologist, and not a vampire - a common source of confusion):

    Theirs is not a Hollywood tale, and they laugh at Hollywood conventions: that vampires can be warded off by crosses or cloves of garlic, or that they can't be seen in mirrors. Utter nonsense. Vampires were once Catholics, were they not? And if a vampire can be seen, the mirror can see him. And why would you wear garlic around your neck? Are you adding taste?"

Via Volokh