Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | February 3, 2026
Thank Zod, cellphone videos weren’t really a thing when I attended a theater conservatory at 18, having never been drunk before. Drinking cheap booze with others quickly became the main way to socialize, and I had no idea what I was doing. There were lots of puking and crying, and whole Sundays spent in bed, questioning my choices and trying to remember monologues. I truly shudder to think about how much time I wasted being too drunk or too sick, and that would continue to my first job out of school: a theater bartender!
Good lord! Would you believe me if I told you that my drinking only got worse at that job?! It was terrible, and I’m lucky my 20-year-old ass didn’t get hit by a subway train while I was stumbling around all aimlessly. To make matters worse, I now had to take my hangovers to work, where I would often be serving booze to folks at 1:30 in the afternoon (which is basically morning time for an alcoholic 20-year-old). So, I’d have to take big whiffs of what did me in the night before, and one bottle I still can’t look at, thanks to those days, is Svedka.
Svedka is not good vodka, but it’s also not terrible. Basically, it’s cheap enough that someone young and irresponsible can likely afford it, but classy enough to not be in plastic bottles (and that’s where the classiness ends). It was the source of much sickness in my youth, and the company I worked for sold it, so I’d see it constantly. Just seeing the purple label is enough to make me feel queasy. But it can get oh-so-much worse!
The company behind this swill will be taking part in the annual tradition of shelling out absurd money for a Super Bowl ad. But don’t worry, they aren’t going to worry too much about the quality (as is its MO). Svedka has revealed that their commercial, which features a nightmarish mascot that looks like Elon Musk’s dream girl, is primarily AI-generated. And boy oh boy does it look freaking terrible. The thing starts with one of the creepiest smiles I’ve ever seen in my life and somehow manages to get worse from there.
There was something almost comforting about seeing Svedka go this route. Too much of my youth was spent getting way too drunk off of cheap booze instead of focusing on what was important. But I have changed and matured. I found time to focus on the important things in life, like family and marijuana. Meanwhile, Svedka stayed the same, shelling out cheap bulls*** for a bunch of rubes.
