Comedian Doug Stanhope, who performs tonight at Trees, seldom ventures onstage without a drink. Usually it's a beer. As anti-establishment as he comes off in his act, you might think he would be drawn to products from smaller breweries. If not simply to enjoy superior beers, he seems like someone who'd rather not support companies whose marketing and political influence props up so much of the bullshit he rails against in his act.
Not so.
"I'm really embarrassed that I like the shittiest beers," he says. "All the beers that are advertised to the dumbest fucking people on the planet. I drink corporate, light beer. That's what I was weaned on. And every time I see a commercial that says, 'Oh, the label will tell you if it's cold,' I'm like, 'Really? Am I the target market for this?' I drink your beer, and you're making me feel like a complete fucking asshole for buying your product. A vortex neck? Come on, stop fucking with me. I'm embarrassed to like what you sell."
While he's got nothing against craft beers, he just prefers weak beers. "When I'm drinking beer, I drink a lot of it. The last thing you want is something heavy."
Other than beer, he's a vodka cocktail drinker -- but not on stage.
"I drink beer on stage because I know how much alcohol is in it. You
order a vodka soda at a club, you don't know if there's fucking two
shots in there or nine shots in there. They're gonna try to impress you
because you're the comic. 'Oh, I'll pour ya ... ' Then you drink two
drinks and you're fucking hammered because you just drank nine shots of
vodka in 40 minutes."
Getting hammered on football Sundays is another story, though, an
all-day progression as carefully planned out as a five-course meal.
"We try to do the whole rotation on football Sunday," he says. "We start
out with Bailey's coffee, then make smoothies with coconut rum and 99
Bananas or 99 Blackberries, then we go with the mimosas, the Bloody
Marys. Then we drink beer, then vodka, then if you round out the night,
we'll close on a bottle of wine. The first three, the Bailey's coffee,
the mimosas and the smoothies, can go in any order. Mimosas, I make
apple cider mimosas in season, and it's fucking fantastic."
Read the rest of my Q&A with Stanhope over on our arts blog, The Mixmaster.
