Headline: Bud Light's New Can Is Trying to Distract You From the Real Problem With Beer Today

Really? That's quite the job. Hate to work for that ad agency. Alright, redesign our label to boost sales, but just so you know there are underlying concerns about the beer industry, and we don't want anyone to know them. So come up with something eye-catching, but confuses and discourages additional intellectual inquiry. The article eventually cites the problem, which is consolidation. The big brewers are buying craft brewers. So? They're not changing the recipes. But we have to find something wrong with things, or what's the point of being a Gawker blog.

The result of the redesign:

That's nice. Better than the predecessors.

As the article notes, every brand had its swoosh phase. The Time of Swoosh has passed, though, and redesigns are rolling through every aisle of the grocery store. Everyone wants the badge of authenticity bestowed by hand-written text and simple letterpress graphics.

Here's something they tried last year:

That's very 80s. This Adweek piece of puffery said:

Probably so. The printing technology was capable of 32 million permuntations, which means each can was unique. Somewhere in someone's basement is a substantial collection of the cans, and somewhere some day there will be a descendent at an antique store, dismayed that these things aren't worth very much money.

TREK Shatner wants to come back as Kirk. Good. Why wouldn't he? It's not like that sequel to the Twilight Zone episode is happening any time soon.

Never shy on his own merits, our Shat, and good for him. It would be nice to wipe away the memory of Kirk's lame death and lousy last words. BTW, the Twilight Zone ep I mentioned isn't the one about the gremlin on the wing; it's the other one. Can you think of its plot without looking it up?

GEEK It's another "what's wrong with Superman" story. Last week: silly new powers. This week: how DC messed up the character over the years.

The "gloriously silly" era was juvenile for a good reason: the comics were for kids. Then mainstream comics decided to chase the alternative audience:

Because Grim is Dark and Dark is Deep. In the comments people argue about Supe vs. Cap, at least the movie version of the latter. I've no idea what the comics version of Captain America is doing these days, and at this point I'm afraid to ask.

Anyway. The point of the piece concerns getting Superman back to basics, like this:

Nice idea - and it's almost 20 years old. That's the Grant Morrison et al reboot proposal from 1998. It won't go over well with the modern editors, who are more interested in Superman beating up policemen. Really.