Mid-Atlantic Brewing News

Aug/Sept 2003

Modern Drunkard: Putting the Pub Back in Publication

By Martin Morse Wooster

Magazines must reach increasingly specialized audiences if they are to succeed. But when I first learned of Modem Drunkard Magazine in Peter Carlson’s column in The Washington Post, I said to myself, “At last! A magazine for ME!”

Possible the most politically incorrect magazine ever conceived, Modem Drunkard is a monthly humor publication based in Denver. If you think that the humor in Maxim or The Man Show is funny, then Modem Drunkard is a magazine you’ll enjoy.

I’ve never heard of either editor Frank Kelly Rich or any of his writers before, but the magazine reads as if a bunch of inebriates came up with story ideas after pounding down many, many shots and brews. The colophon, however, explains that they are looking for new writers. “All the really great writers are drunkards, so we expect a lot of you. Published efforts will be rewarded with promises of strong liquor, provided we have money.”

As anyone who has looked at the history of beer and spirits knows, there are a lot of things to make fun of. In the November issue, editor Rich looks at some classic beer and spirits ads. I had forgotten, for example, that in the early 1970s, Carlsberg ads featured a muscle-laden warrior, drawn in the style of Frank Frazetta or Jeffrey Jones, saying, “I told you not to touch my Carlsberg!”

“Never steal beer from a Viking,” Rich writes, “especially if he’s carrying his war axe.

But the old whiskey ads are funnier. One for Old Quaker, for example, shows the head of a man eerily resembling the beloved breakfast icon. “Doesn’t this guy push oatmeal now?” Rich writes. “Of all the mascots a whiskey company could have come up
with, they chose a super-religious guy with a Cleopatra cut who’s forbidden to drink.”

But my favorite ad is for Schenley Reserve, which promised “sunny morning” taste. “Ah, yes, and what goes better with a sunrise than a couple belts of Schenley Reserve?” asks Rich. “I know the promise of a good pull of morning whiskey is more likely to get me out of bed than any crappy cup of coffee.”

Of course, if you want to make fun of alcoholic beverages, why not pick on malt liquor? An article in the March issue

is highly educational: you’ll learn that Old English 800 (known in the hood as “8-Ball”) gets its name from its 8% alcohol content, which is only found in the stronger HG-800. Regular Old English 800 only has an alcohol content of 5.9%.

But even for the modern drunkard, there’s more to life than drinking. Sometimes he goes to the movies—if only to see what
James Bond is drinking. “License to Swill,” reprinted in the May issue, looks at five Bond movies and finds that 007 drinks not just vodka martinis, but Gluwein, ouzo, champagne, Red Stripe lager, bourbon and vodka shots. But Bond’s most inebriated moments come in Goldfinger, where he swills at least half a bottle of Dom Perignon ‘53, a mint julep, and a drink on a Miami beach which is possibly a rum and Coke. In addition, Bond helps himself to three glasses of his boss M’s cognac, while critiquing M for buying a “30-year Fino indifferently blended.”

My single favorite article in Modern Drunkard, however, is the cover story of the December issue, allegedly written by Giles Humbert Chapman III, “Denver’s perfect gentleman.” Whoever Humbert is, he must have read a great many men’s magazines of the 1950s, as he captures the style of those weasels-ripped-my-flesh yarns perfectly.
Humbert tells the story of the Oxford Men’s Tippling Club, a secret society that for over a century has taught Oxford undergraduates the manly art of consuming too much booze. (Their slogan: Spiritus supra omnia, or “Alcohol above all.”) When one member learns of the secret of the perfect cocktail, allegedly available in a remote retreat on the headwaters of the Amazon, the club commandeers a boat and sails upriver, accompanied by a thirst for adventure and a distillery’s worth of booze. People who enjoy adventure fiction interlaced with lengthy descriptions of mosquito-infected drinking bouts will find this tale quite enjoyable.

Not all the articles in Modern Drunkard work: the editor, for example, thinks that hangovers are an unlimited well of ribaldry. They aren’t. But the batting average of Modern Drunkard is very high.
Will Modern Drunkard be a success? Or will the editors and writers blow the profits in a titanic binge? Who knows? But Modern Drunkard is pretty darn funny.