Cheap Booze Reviews: “Malt Beverages With Caffeine and Ginseng”

Once upon a time, in a universe existing primarily in the spaces between computers, two stalwart adventurers met on the road. One, an adventurous musician with a weakness for rubber chickens. The other, an idealistic lunatic with a penchant for awkward linguistic constructions. Both had a fondness for mischief and strong drink. And so a beautiful friendship was born, and thus many dubious enterprises took shape (mostly for their own amusement, but sometimes with an incidental side effect of bringing enjoyment to all).

It was a cold night in December when Celestina (that would be the idealistic lunatic, for the uninitiated) sat straight up over her bottle, struck to the very core with a brilliant idea (only an idea of this magnitude could have made her sit up straight at this point, as she was at least halfway through a fifth of scotch): for years she had been selfishly using her unique skillset only for her own amusement, when clearly it had been gifted to her for a higher purpose: The service of all mankind! Caught up in the beauty of her vision, she quickly emailed the only other person she knew uniquely qualified to participate in an endeavour of this magnitude, the adventurous musician known as Walt D. Upon receiving her urgent missive, Walt was struck by the knowledge that his entire life had been propelling him toward this moment, and so a new venture was conceived in the spirit of sacrifice, service, and inebriated camaraderie.

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The Bad Guy Epidemic

There has been a slowly emerging trend in fiction over the last fifteen years or so. Replacing the simple goodness of protagonists such as King Arthur and the simpleminded goodness of heroines such as Snow White, we have a growing contingent of more complicated, morally ambiguous characters taking center stage in our stories. Dubious heroes such as Batman and John Constantine exist only to fight off worser evils (and often their “good deeds” are almost coincidental to their battles against their own, personal demons). The traditional antagonists of our childhood have taken on new shades of human character and societal misuse, as in the cases of the Wicked Witch of the West in Wicked or Morgan Le Fay in The Mists of Avalon. We have a bevy of new “bad guys” at center stage, some of them irresistible in spite of their villainy (Thomas Crown, for example, or Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects), and some without any attempt whatsoever to justify their actions through sympathetic moments or incidental benefits to humanity, as is the case with Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player. Why, as a culture, are our stories evolving in such a way? What is the appeal in watching the bad guys win?

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