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by Andrew Hume
A healthy fondness for malt liquor is indicative of a zest for life and a strong imagination (see “Cool Runningz” on the preceding page) that facilitates the anthropomorphism of our favorite animals. Be it fighting bees, wild horses, angry bulls or Chaucer-era plebeian folke, brewing companies offer a malt liquor mascot for each of our personal spirit guide animals. My totem malt is the Panther, well, used to be, before they went extinct.
Back in the post N.W.A heyday of corporate malt liquor experimentation, Panther (brought to us by the casual genius of Gluek Brewing Co.), was only eighty-nine cents a bottle. It boasted an eight per cent alcohol content (most malts are only about six per cent) and the slogan “Coolest Cat in the City”, on a label that pictured a sleek, neon-bordered black panther prowling a late night cityscape and coolly eliciting swoons, no doubt, from sexy lady-panthers in tight red skirts.
I was into co-opting black culture back then, as is the white suburbanite’s wont, and this seemed to have the necessary ingredients: black panthers (duh), the original jive usage of the word “cat”, “and lots of malt”. Then all I needed was a glowing, Alp-white South Pole parka, some blonde cornrolls and some dick hard flows about “Tha Burbz” for the infamous CU/DU/Naropa Institute Creative Writing Departmental poetry battles (holla back, Bass Mentalism). Thankfully, I only made it as far as Polo jeans and a pair of (understated) Lugz. Looking back on those times, I now see my weekend ventures into the Panther’s jungle as short descents into the true heart of dorkness.
As far as I know, Panther Malt Liquor is gone forever. And, though they rarely make the newspapers these days, those militant revolutionary cats for whom it’s named still remain. Yet, for the most part, they’ve left the urban jungles of Oakland and Chicago for their original homes in the regular plant jungles of Asia.
Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t really a species of animal called “the black panther”. Black panthers are really just melanistic members of the Panthera family. They could be leopards, jaguars, tigers or even lions that were born with the recessive gene for full pigmentation. They’re sorta like the opposite of albinos (the squarest people in the world!). Most black panthers are actually leopards and are found throughout the African continent and much of Southeast Asia, though some have returned to the underground or converted to Islam. The low light conditions of the tropical forest floors and American underground seem to have a selective advantage for the leopard’s melanistic variety, as they are better camouflaged in these areas.
The average life expectancy for a panther in the wild is fifteen to twenty years. It is unknown if this figure is correlatively shorter for the panther of color. Panthers have no breeding season but tend to bone in January and February. The male then typically leaves his mate, but with the help of after school programs, it is hoped that this will change.
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