COLUMN: Don't let your beer emasculate you: Drink from a can

I spent the majority of this summer in Houston, whoring myself out to a large aerospace corporation. Houston, my personal thoughts on the city aside, was an eye-opener. I had almost every random experience a 21-year-old intern in a new city is entitled to: I arrived at work on my second day at 9:30 a.m. (I was scheduled for 7:30), I walked straight from a strip club into work a few weeks later, and I saw Austin during a biker rally.

One of the places my friends and I occasionally visited on the weekends was Midtown. For those of you from Houston, you know what I’m talking about. For the majority of you that aren’t, imagine a place where Ben Affleck, Brody Jenner and K-Fed can meet and exist in a wonderfully magical utopia for tools. Everyone there sucked.

One Friday evening, a couple buddies and I decided to endure the miserable clown pit that is Midtown in search of people we wouldn’t hate. We were morons.

First, there’s a 20-minute wait to get in. I’m already pissed off about this as it is, so I decide to take matters into my own hands. I walk up to the front of the line and try to stroll right on in. As I approach the door, I am promptly stopped by a bouncer. He inquires if I am on the list; I inquire as to his IQ. He scowls, and I’m pretty sure I could hear the gears grinding to a start in his head. I was obviously dealing with a quick one here, so I acted fast. I begrudgingly handed him the cover and then some for my friends, and we walked on by. I hate doing that, and I feel like a tool myself, but I can’t stand waiting. The fact that I actually overpaid to get into this place still disturbs me.

We walk in and, of course, everyone still sucks as badly as before. Surprise! So I look around and, after about three to four seconds of evaluation, make the same choice any rational man would when faced with such daunting misery: I got piss drunk.

I was trying to get the attention of our bartender when some Jake Gyllenhaal wannabe with enough hair gel to cement the Hancock Building sidles up to the bar and orders a beer. I wasn’t really paying attention until his drink arrived. What I saw is the most threatening assault to American manhood since facial moisturizer.

I nearly vomited. It looked like a champagne flute on steroids, but it contained this guy’s beer. The icing: the guy actually picked it up by the stem, stuck his pinky up in the air and brought it delicately to his lips. I wanted to pound three (canned) beers and crush them all on my forehead at once to make up for this guy’s total lack of manhood.

As a beer alone, Stella Artois is already hog swill marketed to posers and morons who think that, because their beer has ads in GQ, it’s trendy and delicious. But do they stop at forcing this bile down our throats? Oh no. The maniacal profit whores at InBev, the beer company that owns the distribution rights to Stella Artois, has only just begun. In order to get the full Stella Artois experience, InBev prefers to cram it down your throat with an authentic goblet stolen from Elton John’s dinette set. You look like a pansy simply by sitting next to it.

In my humble opinion, there are three things that males can acceptably drink beer from: cans and bottles, Solo cups and glasses.

Anything else is totally unnecessary in almost any conceivable social situation. Think about it. What would possess a man to take a perfectly good beer mug and shove a glass stem underneath it? That’s a crime right up there with castration and messing with a man’s radio. Don’t do it.

But just because InBev is pumping your bars full of crap doesn’t mean you have to take it. Backhand InBev straight across the face and refuse to drink, associate or be seen with anyone who drinks beer from a “chalice.” You should drink beer because you like it, not because you think it will impress people.

This company’s advertising slogan in the United Kingdom is “Reassuringly Expensive.” I don’t even need to make fun of that line; it does just fine on its own.

So next time you’re out with your buddies and someone makes the mistake of ordering a chalice, be a friend and intervene. They may hate you for it, but in the end they’ll come out with their manhood still intact.

Andrew Solomon is a senior in the School of Engineering.