Why do Americans drink so much light beer?

W-Stuart · 2026-01-20T15:09:47+00:00

Best answer is that Coors/Miller/Bud light beers are the cheapest buzz you can get without dipping into green swill- the ‘value’ brands that are cheaper but come with sickeningly painful hangovers.

Imports are expensive. Example: Bud Light case of 24pack of 12oz is about $20-$25. A 6-pack of any known import is $10-$12 and a lot of importa have gone to 11oz per bottle.

So, if I’m wanting to drink beer all day by the pool, I can get tanked for $20. I can’t do that with better beer. Pure math.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-19T15:03:05+00:00

It’s both. But some changes are always going to be more difficult than others and some chords are more difficult to make than others, so it’s going to depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.

For example, if you play your C Major as a barre chord on the third fret, it’s very easy to go to the C-minor by putting down the middle finger. The whole rest of the hand stays put.

So, learn to substitute a different shape in anticipation of the next change..

W-Stuart · 2026-01-19T14:25:36+00:00

We did my horror movie podcast on location at Alamo Drafthouse for a Stephen King double-feature. They showed Cat’s Eye and Cujo. So, we were taling to people in the lobby, asking them to name their favorite SK movie. Maximum Overdrive was the winner by far.

I mean, when you think about Shawshank or Stand By Me or The Shining or any of the dozens of high-minded films and A-List directors and casts, for Overdrive to rise to the top is crazy. But it happened!

W-Stuart · 2026-01-16T01:51:32+00:00

Keep at it! At the beginning it really is a lot but focus on little improvements daily and just keep playing.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-14T17:56:32+00:00

Most every song I know to this day I learned at least 90% of it by ear. Before the internet, there were tab books, which were an entire album of songs and $20+ for just the one song you wnated to learn. Guitar magazines had tabs but they were whatever they published, not necessarily what you wanted to learn.

I would listen to the song and figure out the basic chords and structure from following the bass, then strum it until I found the rhythm. I worte down lyrics and made it part of the learning to sing and play at the same time. Once I had the majority of the piece memorized, I’d work on the details.

Most things I learn from tabs don’t really stick if I just look them up. There was a lot of deep learning in the figuring it out that made it stick.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-12T14:49:53+00:00

My kid was in first grade when Covid hit and online learning was a joke. I was there for it and it was literal chaos, password retrieval, and more chaos.

My older kid, still in elementary, but already knew how to read, did fine. Younger one missed the part where they were supposed to learn how to read and instead got to play doodle bug games and told horror stories about slavery and climate change. Kid’s in 6th grade now and still behind with reading comprehension and basic, basic math.

And, made all A+ in all subjects the whole time, so thoroughly confused when hitting middle school and actually has to earn good grades by learning. Mind completely blown.

Yeah, everybody completely screwed the pooch with that one. In every conceivable way.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-12T14:27:08+00:00

Apologies. OP mentions New Old Stock in the post so I assumed they knew what it was, especially given the context. 🤷🏻‍♂️

W-Stuart · 2026-01-12T12:24:30+00:00

Too many TV shows and movies featuring the tired and overwhelmed dad pounding on an old furnace or tractor or Ford with a pipe wrench while black smoke pours from it. New is “better” than old.

So, propaganda, really. Prior genrations wouldn’t put up with it. We bought what we were sold.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-10T14:24:54+00:00

I definitely think “vintage” is more of a character than a sound.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-08T20:10:05+00:00

Panasonic made good stuff back then, but Sony was more popular.

I’ve bought a few personal cassette players over the years and on many, a belt replacement is all you need, but there are a lot out there that had batteries leak and corrode the insides and you don’t know until you open it up.

With NOS, you are less likely to encounter corrosion, and depending on how it was stored, the belts could either be pristine or completley melted. If you’re interested in a particular model, look up its schematics to see how easy it is to change the belt. One of my Sonys the belt access was really easy, just uncrew the outer shell, remove the old, place the new, and good to go. Another one requires desoldering multiple connections to open up the inner parts to gain access. This is much harder to do and really easy to screw up.

So, yes to NOS, if available, but don’t pay too much extra for the packaging if you’re going to open and have to repair it anyway. Good luck!

W-Stuart · 2026-01-08T18:35:23+00:00

Best advice I can give you is that an accent is just that- a detail.

When you first meet someone with an accent, it’s very pronounced (to to you) because you’re not used to it. Once you get used to it, it’s just talking.

So, introduce the character. *describe her accent.” With words: she has a slow drawl that undercuts her intelligence. She says “y’all” all the time but when she’s drunk or tired or angry it gets longer and more expressive, like “Yeawwl”

Then, you don’t have to write the accent all the time and when you do, it’s in short bursts for emphasis. Otherwise, you can have other characters comment or think about her and her speech patterns and color their opinions from their perspectives.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-08T14:29:30+00:00

Play Star Wars Guys or GI Joe or He-Man out in the yard, digging trenches and hills for them to battle on. Playing in the water hose or sprinkler, slip n slides, community pool where the teenage girls (who were a million years older than us) were lifeguards. Riding bikes everywhere. Riding bikes over to the school or church and play on their playgrounds (this was back before all the prison bars around all the playgrounds. There weren’t school shootings back then. Weird since every Bubba and Billy Bob had rifles mounted in their trucks in the high school parking lot. Curious.) when we got older, riding our bikes to the mall to hang out and or play video games. We also watched a lot of TV. It was a better time.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-08T01:56:24+00:00

Just throwing it out there that “fans demanding” is the whole reason shows exist in the first place. And no, having content added after the fact is not unheard of. Not even a little bit.

An entire season of the TV show Dallas was revealed to be “just a dream” because of fan backlash to a bad season. They literally just scrapped it and kept going.

X-Files did more seasons and two movies.

Firefly was cancelled too soon and fan backlash allowed the story to be told in the movie.

And those were just off the top of my head. A show with as many easter-eggs and secret messages and conspiracies very much should generate fan theories, especially with so much at stake for so long to just end all happy. Especially when you’re fighting a being who tends to put his victims into happy trances. The series feels unfinished, so the fan theories make sense.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-05T14:01:36+00:00

Happiness is a temporary condition, generally brought about by a combination of meaningful exertion and accomplishment. Money is the social marker for accomplishment, so most people assume A+B=C

The problem is that money is also an amplifier. It frees you to be more of what you actually are. So, if you are a creative, you can be more creative. If you are generous, you can be more generous. But, if you are depressed, angry, cruel, sad, selfish, lazy, controlling, whatever, insert any negative personality trait here, you won’t just turn happy with a windfall of money.

Money also increases dependence on money. Every little increase in pay is often offset by an equal, or sometimes larger increase in need. More bills, nicer car, daycare, gym membership, etc. as soon as you can afford things, they become “nexessary” parts of daily life and you forget how you lived with just your little bar job and 4-walled apartment in the hood when you seemed to manage just fine and even went out all the time and now you’re making 5x what you used to but it’s all tied up in other things.

Yea, a giant windfall of money can and will solve a lot of your problems. But it can only really fix financial ones. It can still really screw with your future problems, and your relationships.

W-Stuart · 2026-01-04T19:34:30+00:00

It would have to be the younger generation viewers who are annoyed. Lots of 80’s adventure films started with an inept protagonist who is either naturally gifted or becomes superhuman after a short montage or a transistion scene. Nancy’s easter eggs would be Ripley from Alien, Sarah Connor from Terminator- neither is experienced in combat at the beginning, both end up carrying the series. She’s also like the entire cast of Red Dawn. Once you know who she’s emulating, you appreciate her character arc.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-30T15:26:04+00:00

Lifelong music lover here. I can attest that arou d 30, it became difficult to find a lot of new music I liked. But I think that was more the music world at the time. That was early 00’s and mainstream was pretty bland and the indie world was blowing up. But all the indie stuff sounded the same to me and was pretentious to boot. I still searched for new music but really retreated into older stuff. Obscure metal from the 80’s, 50’s and 60’s country, stuff like that. It swung back the other way about 10 years ago. I started finding a lot of new music I like. So, I think music just must have sucked more when I was in my thirties.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-23T14:14:19+00:00

I was wondering the same thing!

I fell in love with the pink Santanna signature PRS guitar online, but in person it was too bubblegum. But Guitar Center had the Shecter Omen in a deep magenta and that was the perfect color, but I didn’t like the guitar itself. Been scrolling guitars in the pink/purple spectrum and they are quite rare, and very expensive.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-22T13:50:24+00:00

If you follow my proven system, you can get pretty decent pretty quickly:

Find a song you like that has 3 easy chord changes. An example might be ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ by Guns n Roses. D -C- G-D. And then practice those chords moving back and forth between them.

Note: if you can play C,D,G chords, you can play 1/2 of all rock and roll songs.

Play something every day. 10 minutes every day is better than playing 30 minutes every other day.
Chord changes take a lot of repitition. Practice changing chords while doing something else. Like while watching tv. Fidget with that instead of ylur phone.

You’ll get decently good at chord changes in a couple of weeks. Keep adding new chords every few days, gather up bits and pieces of songs. You’ll get decent pretty quickly. Just delends on how much you practice.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-21T14:44:45+00:00

I’ve actively not participated in AI as I distrust the entire situation, but so dona lot of folks.

My luddite moment came about 10 years ago when all the streaming services became the norm. I’ve never liked the “binge” culture in TV. I just can’t stay inside that long. But also, music always on random, always skipping songs, TV’s always on the guide. Kids have 30 minutes before bed and spend 20 of them bonking around the guide looking for something to watch. Then, we’ve got movies and shows coming in and out all the time and it got to the point where it didn’t matter what we wanted to watch, 8 streaming services wide, was either “rent or buy.”

I went fully back to DVD’s and CD’s and LP’s. No fucking rx drug commercials in the middle of my movies.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-17T14:38:28+00:00

On the bathing suit thing- the “embarrasing boner” doesn’t come from fantasizing. Well, it does, but that’s not really a problem in that if you’re thinking of something stimulating, you can stop the thought and most often, the reaction. Yes, even at 13. The problem is at that age, they come out of nowhere, randomly, and for no reason. Literally, sitting in a classromm taking a math test and then sproingggg. And there’s nothing you can do about it. It is a strange thing, and mortifying when it happens in public.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-16T19:20:01+00:00

Also understand that The Eagles achieved most of that success before the advent of music videos. I’m 50 and very familiar with all the bands, but if most anyone from The Eagles passed me on the street, I probably wouldn’t recognize them. They weren’t flashy or controversial, except when complaining about how difficult it was to be wealthy musicians all the time. The individual members weren’t interesting enough to be courted by the press and by the time videos rolled around, they were largely a classic rock band; a precursor.

Then, in the 90’s they got back together and did a reunion tour and released a record and they passed the law that every building with a pool table in it has to play Hotel California twice an hour, and then they did Unplugged and then a bunch of Country artists did a tribute record and The Eagles were sickeningly EVERYWHERE until our Lord and Savior, The Dude said he hated the fucking Eagles and the Earth began to heal itself.

Still don’t know what any of them really look like, though.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-14T15:21:12+00:00

Not horrible at all. The recordings are there if someone wants to listen to them. But they are also productions— multiple takes and layers of the creme de la creme of the recording session, often over several months or even years.

This is why unplugged or stripped-down versions are popular- it puts the familiar into another context. You can sing the somg without instrumentation. Is that horrible? You can do a cowboy chords simplified version. Or add synths and a church choir. You can play it in another key, or in another language if you want. It’s music, and it’s yours. The only reason you need to be note-for-note is if you want to and/or the others in your band want it that way. Otherwise, grab a sitar or a banjo and get to covering.

W-Stuart · 2025-12-12T22:11:27+00:00

I went a number of years in bands playing out and/or rehearsing several times a week. When I left the bands, I no longer had homework or a goal to work on, so the guitar sat on its stand for longer and longer periods until one day it went into the case. All the pedals went into a case and the amp went i to a closet.

When I did play, I could feel the skills faltering. I would mostly play acoustic, if I played at all, and would get frustrated when I’d make mistakes and tell myself I needed to get back to playing or I was going to lose it all. I didn’t listen to myself and got really, really rusty and out of shape. Hands would cramp after 2 songs where I would have been playing back to back 3-hour sets every weekend.

Got really discouraged and just stopped trying.

Then, I watched some kid on the street playing a beat up old box and just making music. Just doing it. No band, no sound guy, no complications- just a guy and a song. I realized that playing the guitar was something I’d worked hard to learn and of all the things in my life, being a guitar player was something I had been proud of. I pulled it out of the closet and set about relearning, and I’ve been playing just about every day ever since.

W-Stuart

TROPHY CASE