First, I'm not a fan of Kid Rock. I think he's unappealingly crass and I'm not fond of his idea of music. Part of me is appreciative that he uses his puzzlingly huge celebrity status in part to help boost Detroit, but another part of me usually just feels embarrassed that he's the face of Michigan for so many people. (Still, I admit the fogeys of the 1970s probably said the same thing about Ted Nugent and Alice Cooper.)
Well, as originally reported in February on my deceased blog, the Kid is working with Michigan Brewing in Webberville to create his own brand of what I am guessing can be described only as craft swill. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he describes it this way:It just tastes like good American light beer, a regular beer and a light beer, an everyday beer ... we'd like to pair a shot of Jim Beam and one of my beers. Get off work, get a 22-ouncer and a shot, you’ll be all right.
He goes on to say it "actually tastes good, it has no aftertaste," which suggests to me he really does mean for this beer to compete with the watery, bland product of the megabrewers. (The obvious question of why America needs another one of those comes immediately to mind.)
Eyebrows are further raised when he discusses the marketing for his "Bad Ass Beer," which is typically Kid Rockean in its white trashy awfulness:There's one where it looks like the Budweiser horses, and they're all up in the air, just freaked out, like they went haywire, and whatever they ride on is smashed up, and it just has my beer sitting in the front, it says "Bad Ass." ... We've got another one with the Bad Ass beer simulating like it's fucking the St. Pauli's girl.
Depressingly, he attributes these ideas to a creative agency he's working with (although it's apparently a guy who lives next to him). Yikes.
The big Bad Ass Beer rollout is targeted for Labor Day, according to the head Bad Ass. I may have to pick up a sixpack myself and stow it away as a collector's item, because I can't imagine this will be much more successful than was, say, Billy Beer. On the other hand, Kid Rock understands his audience way better than I do, so who the heck really knows?
Bad Ass Beer or Just Plain Bad Idea?
Norman Rockwell at the DIA
Today seemed like a great day to head down to The D and take in the big Norman Rockwell exhibit now showing at the Detroit Institute of Arts through the end of the month. Tickets are normally $15, but thanks to my date, a DIA member, we got in free.
Rockwell is, of course, best known for the many Saturday Evening Post cover portraits he painted over the course of many decades. And, appropriately, there are copies of every one of his Post covers in this exhibit, 300-something strong, beginning around 1916 and stretching into the 1960s. That alone is enough to make you admire how prolific an artist he was. Looking through all of those Posts was in itself a lesson in 20th-century American history.
The Rockwell admiration deepens, however, when you stop to take in all of the little craftsmanlike details of every work. The audio guide did not say how long it took him to complete a painting, but I can only imagine the artist never slept and/or somehow planned and painted very quickly. 
There are some who would dismiss Rockwell's art as nothing but lighthearted whimsy, the representation of an idealized supermajority-white America that no longer exists, if it ever did. But a look beneath the surface reveals the artist grappling with deeper themes of, for example, childhood innocence vs. adult knowledge or reality vs. media image. His work also explores the gamut of more prosaic subjects and emotions like family, man- and womanhood, longing, fear, embarrassment, pride, and all the rest we can so readily relate to.
Although Rockwell may in some ways be a "lighter" version of his contemporary Edward Hopper (my favorite painter, next to Art Frahm, of course), after seeing this well organized exhibit I would have to say he thoroughly deserves his reputation as a true American Original™®©.
"Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative." – Norman Rockwell
