Read this with your "mourning" coffee..

Ok, first I’ll hit the drive-thru at Starbucks and pick up my coffee. Then I’ll drive-thru McDonald's and pick up my Egg McMuffin.  Since the bank lobby is not open yet, I’ll make a quick stop at the bank drive up ATM and get some cash.  While I’m at it, I’ll drop off my dry cleaning at the drive-thru cleaners and then pick up my prescription at the Rite Aid drive-thru. I saw on Facebook that Joe’s grandmother died so as long as I’m out doing errands, I’ll go to the funeral home and use the drive-thru window to pay my respects. 

Drive-thru funeral home viewing?!  Yes, you heard it right. Here’s how it works. When you drive up, the curtain opens and the angled casket becomes visible.  You can then sign the retractable guest book and insert a card or other condolence. Then you can attend the funeral service at the drive-in church, where you can park and tune in your radio and hear the service. 

As James Taylor put it so aptly in his song “Traffic Jam”:

“just strap me in behind the wheel

and bury me with my automobile.”

Many commuters, from NYC to Boston to L.A. spend so many hours of their life in their cars that when added up can be measured in days, weeks and months.   The problem is that in trying to make the time in the car more productive they become increasingly distracted from the task of driving.   Though we all thought there would be flying cars or at least monorails that would diminish our commuting time, it seems that the big auto makers have made sure that we are married to the internal combustion engine vehicle to get us from point A to point B.  Maybe the best we can hope for is the “Google” auto drive car with a built in iPhone with Siri to respond our commands.  

As a teenager, I worked as a “carhop” (a what?!) at the local Stewart's Root Beer stand.  Cars would pull up and I would go out and take their orders for hamburgers, fries, shakes and root beer floats.  The customers would wait in their cars until I brought out the tray and carefully placed it on the partially rolled down window.  Around this time, power windows became all the rage and caused a few major spills of food and drinks into the driver’s lap.  (I was guilty as charged on at least one occasion.) Our 1950’s carhop predecessors used to do this on roller skates!  

With the convenience of drive-thru windows and our propensity for instant gratification, we are only limited to our imaginations for ways to avoid exiting our cars. Consider this idea (not legal in all states):  The drive-thru liquor store.  Isn’t that a sensible idea?  You can drive to the store sober and be drunk by the time you return home without getting out of your pickup truck.  Louisiana actually has drive up bars (called Daiquiri Planet) where you can order a Red Bull and vodka Daiquiri from the drive up window. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere and Happy Hour at the drive-thru bar!  (Please drive carefully and drink responsibly.)

Given the convenience of drive-thru cocktails, it is no great leap to discover the drive- thru Strip clubs that offer shows through a peephole as well as drive-thru sex shops for your brown bag purchases. (Keep both hands on the wheel and no idling please!)

Now who has time to wait in the E.R. when a health emergency arises?  Someone came up with the idea of  an urgent care drive up window. If you want to find out whether you are having a heart attack or if your arm has just fallen asleep from hanging out the window of the car all day doing errands, just drive up and the doctor will see you now.  The following dialogue might ensue:

“Please put your arm in the sleeve and we’ll check your blood pressure.   On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your pain level? We will now go online to WebMD and check your symptoms for a diagnosis.  Please pull up to the next window and you can pay and pick up your prescription.”  

How about taking the quickie, wedding trip to Vegas to a new level?  The “Say I Do- Drive-thru Wedding Chapel” will do the trick. Get married and start a family right in the comfy confines of your Smart Car.  

With TV lawyers hawking their services in ads starring themselves, it is no surprise that we now have drive-thru legal offices.  Don’t wait after you’ve been arrested on the way home from the drive-thru cocktail lounge.  Drive right to the drive-thru at “Payne & Suffrin” law office and get some legal advice.  “What, they didn’t tell you should not drink it until you got home?! I think we’ve got a case.”

So if you’re behind me in the Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru, give me a wave and I’ll pay for your coffee. (You’ll know it’s me by my “Tom Hanks for President” bumper sticker.)

Steve E. Reno. 

I hate to "Bud" in.....but WASSSUP!

If I had a dollar for every Budweiser can I’ve picked up that’s been discarded into the environment, I’d be rich enough to buy a team of Clydesdales or buy a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. 

If you asked me (go ahead, ask me, I dare you) to identify one reason that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, I’d simply say; “Budweiser.”

Now why am I demonizing Budweiser, which is a ridiculously popular part of life in America, as we know it?

(Bud Light has a 19.7 % share of the beer market.) What could possibly more American than the picture of the dude coming out of the convenience store carrying his 24 pak of Bud Light cans? 

I am often espousing this “truth” to anyone that will listen. My theory is that anywhere in the world, from the most remote to the most densely populated areas, if you look hard enough you’ll stumble across an empty, crushed Budweiser can. (Bud bottles are a slightly less plentiful perhaps because they are a little less portable and tend to shatter when thrown on the ground by the inebriated drinker.)

When Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, do you know what he found? An empty Bud can in one of the lunar craters!  “That’s one small step for man….one more goddamned empty beer can!” Now that’s an exaggerated rewrite of history but if  “man” does establish any kind of habitat on the moon or any other planet, I’m confident that my prognostication may come true.  

 

I used to walk my dog in the local cemetery and it was a daily ritual of picking up the empty beer cans.  Granted, even though they were “Light”, (or less filling), it gave me no particular satisfaction.  I’m sure that the “dead” were not “grateful” for those littering their resting place with nightly visits by those who may have missed the Bud ad that states; “Where there’s life, there’s Bud.”

The notion of “drinking responsibly” was a feeble attempt to justify Anheuser-Bush’s ads that have been increasingly geared toward the “now old enough to drink legally,” Spring Break loving college age kids. But Bud Light can also boast that it is the drink of choice for the unauthorized high school party taking place when the “rents” go away for the weekend. 

Now to be fair, Miller Lite (“tastes great…less filling.”) cans are often found in similar abundance on roadsides, woodsy trails and in parking lots. Can we extrapolate the of quantity of beer cans sold to quantity of beer cans callously and unceremoniously left for dead in the environment?  After all, isn’t even negative advertising, good advertising?  To the easily influenced, seeing more discarded Bud Light cans than Miller Lite cans in a pile in the woods would certainly influence their next purchase of a 24 pak –they would buy Bud Light!  

Can you imagine life without beer commercials or billboards?   Could we live in a world where they did not sell Bud Light at the ballpark in a plastic cup for $10 apiece? Could we endure the Super Bowl without the “Bud Bowl,” talking frogs or the adorable Clydesdale commercials?  Imagine what John Lennon might say:

Imagine there's no Bud Bowl

It isn't hard to do
Nothing but ads for Best Buy
And no tailgating too
Imagine all the viewers

   Drinking responsibly… 

Ok, inventors, let’s put on our thinking caps and come up with some solutions.  
 Here are my ideas:

Let’s design a “self-destructing” Budweiser container that will disintegrate automatically when it comes in contact with the ground.  (Note: If you’ve fallen down and passed out after drinking your entire 24 pack of Bud Light and you’re laying on the ground, the can will disintegrate and spill all over you, like someone splashing cold water in your face.)

How about the environmentally friendly cardboard can? (Like a juice box with a pop-top, plastic straw not included, as the inebriated imbiber would be unable to poke the straw through the opening and throw it on the ground.)  An alcoholic juice box with a  “born on” date!

Imagine if we could coat the can with a strong magnetic material that would rub off (add metal to the aluminum).  When the drunken litterbug tries to toss the empty can, it will “yo yo” right back up into the hand of the beholder. After all, “beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve imbibed my share of “brewskis” over the years and would be happy to have a beer with you after work some day.  But I’m tired of picking up after those who persist in leaving their pop-top aluminum calling card all over “this land is your land, this land is my land.”  I almost “laughed out loud” (LOL)  last week when I went out to get my paper and what do I spy in the grass next door?  A crushed Bud Light can! I might have laughed if I were not so “hopping” M.A.D.D!  So faithful readers, here endeth today’s blog rant. And in conclusion I will say; “ When you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all.”

For all you do, this (Bud)Blog’s for you.

Steve E. Reno