These days, celebrity-made beverages seem to be soured by their accompanying endorsements. One day Mariah Carrey is on her knees in her orchard, scouring the grapevine for the perfect tweak to her  robust "Glitter Merlot" and the next she's plastered on a billboard holding a very distant version of her once-inspired wine. I see it all the time.

After Lucille Ball got down and dirty with the real thing in the grape-stomping episode of 'I Love Lucy,' it's as if the media are downplaying the hands-on experiences celebrities have with their products or dismissing them entirely. Case in point, Billy Beer, what I can only assume was the greatest alcoholic foam to have ever spawned from the bastard brother of former President Jimmy Carter. Billy Carter (see photo, above) wasn't nearly championed enough for his skills in making Billy Beer what it is today: one of the greatest unopened commodities on Ebay. On every can, Billy's words resonate with  our nation in a way his brothers' just couldn't: "It's the Best Beer I've Ever Tasted. And I've Tasted A Lot." Rumors that he actually favored PBR are unfounded.

In the same vein, you might remember Dirt McGirt, AKA Old Dirty Bastard from rap group The Wu-Tang Clan. ODB did it right. Instead of using his laboratories for the legal distribution of flashy crack cocaine-based beverages, he went with the kid-friendly bag of Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips and a message to his fans that read: "Think Responsibly." You can imagine the impact this product had after Old Dirty Bastard's death of a drug overdose in 2004. Not to mention the credit he never received for the phrase "Drink Responsibly."

Certainly, Paris Hilton didn't help matters very much when she posed in nothing but body gold to promote her elegant "champagne in a can." But as any honest marketing tool is a means to an end, Hilton's good intentions were absorbed somewhere in the application process of the gold paint. Foxnews.com revealed the heiress's good deeds as merely a sidebar to the golden can of hooker juice: "I changed all the light bulbs to energy safe light bulbs and I'm buying a hybrid car right now," she said. Hilton's failure to connect the product to her cause made the body paint seem just plain stupid.

Then there was the brainchild of vertically challenged rapper Nelly; the product that reminded us: "Pimpin' aint easy, even in South Africa." How could we forget Pimp Juice, the only energy drink on the planet (as far as we know) that actually glows bright green when placed under UV light. Nelly hardly sold his soul when he decided that Pimp Juice didn't even need the can to stand out (which explains why opaque goblet sales plummeted in 2003). Nelly's plight of empathy for the neighborhood pimp didn't stop in the states. The rapper's attempts to make PJ global got the attention of various organizations against "a nation of superenergized, drunk pimps." [MTV.com]

Which brings me to my final tableau. Not a happy one, I'll admit. Yeah. Ok. What?

Just as they say reputations tend to precede us, so did Lil' John's goblet. Even before his famed appearances on 'The Chappelle Show,' the outgoing rapper seemed to cling to this Medieval form of beverage consumption like a security blanket. The more America asked what was in Lil' John's cup, the more endearing he became. But of course, like any perfectly good concept, the je ne sais quoi in Jonnie's goblet gave way to the energy drink Crunk!!!, which had apparently been in there the whole time. But that's really not the kicker here.

The rapper recently started his own wine label called "Little Jonathan Winery." Although he admits to knowing nothing about wine [yahoo.com], it would seem that liking it is good enough. It was certainly good enough for Billy, but then again he didn't butcher his own name in the process. I urge Lil' John to step back and acknowledge that he's become a fancy, enunciated version of himself. He is the reason Rihanna is accused of not shucking the corn of her homemade Ho'bread that will be hitting stores soon.

Photo 1 from Wikipedia.com  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer]
Photo 2 from Cracked.com