Retro Holiday Ad – The Guy Just Couldn’t Hold Out for His Schlitz, Circa1950

/ Ray Van Horn, Jr. / 15 Comments

My dad was a rabid Schlitz drinker. With the age of microbrewing and higher APV (alcohol by volume) in today’s beers, it’s amusing to me Schlitz was considered a choice pilsner of its time. Honestly, Schlitz was the first beer I ever tasted from my dad, a sip once, then a full glass winning a bet I could take him in chess. I won’t tell you what ages those were. My dad was a ferocious chess player, and he beat his young, still-learning son over-and-over until he pissed me off by roasting me. I bet him and I won, fair and square. The man was flabbergasted, and he ponied up. My one and only time beating him at the game, since we never played again after that. Most satisfying victory of my life.

It took my stepfather much later in life (again, no ages divulged here) to refine my beer drinking tastes by introducing me to the German fineness that is Spaten Optimator. Dark, rich, it forever dictated my approach to beer appreciation. Now, in more recent years, I’m all over the place with beer. I hated IPAs originally, now I love them as much as stouts, bocks, ales, ambers, altbiers, Kölsch, Belgians and rich lagers.

So much I consider Schlitz one of the weakest beers ever produced. You want a rich, American classic lager? Laugh all you want, Pabst is king. You wouldn’t tell Schlitz was ever considered subpar in the American public, touting its totem, “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous.” Especially now, I think Milwaukee can do far better than that. Still, this holiday ad made me smile, made me think of my dad who loved this swill to both good and bad effects. It’s Christmastime, though, and I’d rather think of the good times with my late father. Steamed shrimp on Christmas Eve, just adult versions of father-and-son, Schlitz on the side. This ad’s for you, old man. I miss you.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

“Behind the Shadows” Reviewed at The Bedlam Files

/ Ray Van Horn, Jr. / 1 Comment

What a terrific thing to wake up to the other day, this INCREDIBLE review of Behind the Shadows by The Bedlam Files’ Adam Groves, who says:

“The stories of Ray Van Horn, Jr. are drafted with enormous energy and ingenuity, but what really gives them their edge is the author’s Tarantinoesque grasp of late Twentieth Century pop culture minutiae. The skilled prose and pointed conceptions, which often revolve around actual media events from years past, make for a collection whose horrific content registers as strongly as its name drops.”

Read the full review here:

https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/behind-the-shadows/

The Journey

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This stack represents books I have written or appeared in to this point. Never mind my other published short stories and binders of tear sheets from 300 music and film interviews conducted and more than a 1,000 media reviews.

Miniscule to many of my peers. The more pros I have made friends with this year, the smaller I feel. My life’s mission and utmost desire is to triple this at a minimum in my remaining years. May that be a long, fruitful road. The biggest difficulty in my recent years is reinventing myself into a fiction author, specifically a horror author, after 16 years as a music and film journalist, an NHL analyst, beat reporter, local photographer and serialized superhero scribe. It’s been a humbling ride rising up from a nobody to a music industry described A-lister to a nobody again.

Writing was never a hobby for me. Just ask my friends, family and high school and college classmates. It was a side hustle when times were hard and we needed all the coin we could get. Eventually, that took the love out of what I was chasing after. There are days I lament not being in the music racket, but this year, I have been doing band press releases on the down low for an LA publicist who I am proud to see her shop boom. I just got my first freelancing pay from Rue Morgue magazine. It all starts to bring back that tickle in my heart, that flame of passion.

I want to thank those who have supported and bought Behind the Shadows in the two short weeks it’s been out. My best sales launch to-date! I will soon have another anthology to add to this stack when my story “Good Day for a Seven Nation Army” appears in the Maryland-themed Ole Blue Claw: Tales From the Crustier Side of Maryland.

I give this my all and I do my absolute best not to shirk in defeat reading such wonderful books by notable authors, some of whom I am now lucky to call friends. I have a woman who kicks my ass whenever I say I suck or question why I want it all so badly. I do want it, though, and the mission is always the mission until it’s not. To the divine which is always at elbow’s reach, may the latter come only with my final breath.