Before becoming a father nine months ago, one of my favorite Friday night rituals was having a couple of beers and watching stupid YouTube videos for hours.

If we had company over, I may play upbeat music videos like Miley Cyrus "Party in the USA" or the 80s song "Rip it up" by Orange Juice. But on nights when it was just me, I would watch some YouTube classics: The "I like turtles" kid, Flea Market Montgomery and the Wife Swap episode with the kid who says "Bacon is good for me."

Somewhere along the line I discovered the old Narragansett Beer commercials. Narragansett, in addition to having some southern New England roots, has an impressive marketing tradition too.

My friend and former colleague Ian Donnis at Rhode Island Public Radio had a blog post earlier this month on Dr. Seuss' connection to Narragansett Beer. According to the I-Dog, Dr. Seuss, or Theodor Geisel, was the illustrator behind the iconic Chief Gansett ads.

What I like about the classic Narragansett commercials is they're clever, funny and they have a nostalgic touch too. Today, beer commercials are just ridiculous. They're all about beautiful people, smiling in hot tubs. I don't get it.

Anyways, I've embedded a good classic Narragansett Beer commercial in this blog. Just to give you a little context: it's about a man who brings his horse into a bar and tries to get the equine served.

UPDATE: I received an interesting email from a reader named Dave after this blog post first went up. “The people voicing the ad for Narragansett Beer sounds to me like Mike Nichols and Elaine May, a popular comedy team in those years,” his email said. “They went on to achieve even greater individual success directing and writing for the movies.” Well, I looked into Dave’s observation, and he is correct: http://www.narragansettbeer.com/2009/07/more-nichols-and-may-for-gansett