Manhood in a Bottle

Listening to This Guy is Like Taking Business Advice from Fredo.

Would you buy tequila from this guy?I like Michael Imperioli as an actor, but they have him playing Christopher Moltisanti from the Sopranos for these commercials. And “Christophuh” was the worst kind of psychopath, the wishy-washy, whiny kind. It’s like buying pasta sauce from Fredo in the Godfather.

Maybe he should play Spider from Goodfellas instead, and Joe Pesci can wander in and shoot him in the foot. “Tequila so good, you’ll crawl for it!”

Part of me is chafing at these ad campaigns for old booze because they attempt to make men of my age feel somewhat lacking in manhood, compared to our fathers. Not to disparage a generation, or paint all Ever since Hemingway, we’ve decided that Manhood means shooting wild animals, climbing mountains, and drinking copious amounts of hard liquor (which is especially amusing, since Hemingway popularized the daiquiri). The Canadian Club ads state “Damn right your Dad drank it,” playing into the bullshit that it is somehow difficult or less enjoyable to be a man these days.

Your Dad May Have Never Said He Loved You, But He Banged Lots of Chicks.

You know what? The easiest thing in the world is to be a white middle to upper class man. Let John Scalzi put it more eloquently than I can: If life’s a game, it’s the easiest difficulty setting. We all got troubles. But you know what? Your DAD wouldn’t whine about them, and wax poetic about the ’60s, when we had free rein to be assholes. You want to be a man? You don’t need to run a triathlon, or flip giant truck tires, or climb a mountain that 3,100 other people have climbed,*

Try this:

Stand up to bullies. Respect women. Respect others. Be this guy:

August Landmesser. No, he was not executed.

If August Landmesser hawked schnapps, I’d buy a bottle. And no, you don’t need to stand up to the Nazi regime to be a stand-up human being. How about this guy, who saw his neighbor whipping his son for not being good at playing catch, and not only recorded it to show authorities, but yelled and got him to stop, and told him to come over and whip him if he was such a tough guy. And the abuser wasn’t just a neighbor, but a powerful board member.

Unfortunately, you can’t buy principles like that in a bottle of booze. You have to practice them, each and every day.

*Everest. There are unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas, either avalanche-prone or sacred to the people of the region.