Seriously, have you ever listened to a conversation between PBR drinkers when you are sober and they are not? It hearkens one back to that famed interview between Hunter S. Thompson and Keith Richards you can see on Youtube. Each seems to be speaking their own language, that makes perfect sense to them, but to the outside observer is a mish-mash of wild tangents and gesticulation.
Immediately after stomping the language portion of the brain into a bloody pulp, this beverage then makes a bee-line for the judgement center of the brain. A woman so ugly you would be ashamed to bed for fear of doing permanent damage to your genitalia is suddenly attractive in a shy, provocative come hither kind of way. With each and every passing sip, her voice mellows to a golden dulcet tone, with just a hint of earthy sexuality. By the 6th or 7th beer, you judgement is so far gone, you might as well be going home with a woman hiding under a gorilla suit on Halloween night, without ever bothering to look under the mask. Don’t ever ask how I know this. It is a dark and sordid chapter in my drunkenness.
Also getting stomped are other sections of the brain that control judgment. Somehow, it seems to be a good idea to steal that traffic cone, or climb a tree to get naked. Only on the pale reflection of the early morning sun squinting through the window, when you suddenly find yourself awake on the floor, naked, holding a traffic cone does any of this make sense. You simply look around the floor of your apartment, count the number of empty PBR cans, multiply times three, and suddenly the reason for waking up that way seems abundantly clear.
Unlike normal beverages that effect your sense of balance, PBR seems to give you a gift of balance second only to cats and swordsmen. I’ve seen people go at a staggering run through the Old Port, shrieking at full drunken volume. They hit a cobblestone in the street, take an advanced lesson in flying, gravity, and the art and science of physics, and find themselves sprawled out on the street, bleeding profusely. They never spilled a drop of beer.
It is a beverage to itself. A previous editor of mine, upon hearing of my PBR habit, loudly announced to all that it should come with aspirin taped to the side of every can, for the headache that goes along with it. He has seen me put down record quantities of the stuff, with nary a headache in sight. After a while, the headaches go away, but have that boomerang effect similar to coffee, where you only get a headache when you STOP drinking it.
The “Jedi” like powers of PBR are numerous. They turn a 2 at the bar into a “10.” You end up with super balance skills. Its remarkable cheapness doesn’t leave a dent in your wallet. Unlike Guinness, you don’t have to put in your “fancy eating teeth” just to chew through a few glasses of it. In fact, your fancy eating teeth are best left at home, lest someone decides to take a poke at you for saying something stupid.
There are more powers to this beverage, but we’ll leave that for the next episode.
