Sum 41 would literally never
Plus: Fingers Regulatory Roulette!
Editor’s note: Twitter continues to collapse under billionaire-imposed stupidity measures. I have four invites to Bluesky, a popular alternative, and I’ll give them out to the first four paying Friends of Fingers who claim them by replying to this email. If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, consider upgrading today! (NB: Buying a subscription doesn’t guarantee you an invite; they went fast last time I did this. But it does guarantee you full access to a year of independent journalism about drinking in America!)—Dave.
The other day I learned that Sum 41, the pop-punk act behind such millennial puberty anthems as “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep,” is calling it quits after 27 years. The news shocked me—not because my sixth-favorite band of 2003 was breaking up, but because it was apparently performing for a full two decades after I stopped thinking about it. It’s always uncanny to be confronted by the staying power of cultural artifacts that have long since lost their meaning or value to you. More importantly: the fact that Sum 41 is disbanding up in 2023 implies the existence of people amongst us who have been listening to Sum 41 this entire time.
It’s a disquieting thought. So you can imagine how alarmed I was by the revelation earlier this week that Anheuser-Busch InBev was selling Shock Top. A sale implies the existence of a buyer, and even the legions of cheapskates, sweet-tooths, and bona fide sickos that comprise much of the American drinking public have by now mostly stopped buying this drinkable orange avatar of corporate reactiveness and banality. Anybody willing to pay real dollars for Shock Top the brand at this inauspicious hour in the American craft brewing experiment is either an idiot or a savant, or both.
Allow me to introduce you.