The billboard is about a half mile from my church. The image currently adorning its frontage is meant to promote Father’s Day and to encourage the passerby to consider taking dad to a particular steakhouse where he might enjoy one of the restaurant’s signature Angus filets served on a cooking stone heated to about 900 degrees.

I’ve been there. It’s a nice place. And the food is great.

But now imagine that you are traveling 60 mph along the bustling thoroughfare ornamented by this massive display and you give a quick glance. The tagline “DAD DESERVES THE BEST” is certainly clear enough, however the accompanying image could be so startling that it sends you into a ditch. At a swift pace, the advertisement appears to suggest that you can show genuine devotion for dad by accompanying him to a particular venue where the proprietors are rather skilled at lopping off heads.

Take a look.

At highway speeds, that’s not a steak cleverly decked with a shirt collar and tie and resting on a powdered cooking stone. It’s the shoulders and fleshy neck of a man whose head was sawed off with a steak knife. It’s more of a “We love you, dad, but you’ve outlived your usefulness to the family so we’re taking you somewhere to put you down” kind of Father’s Day billboard.

It’s an epic fail, and had I been managing that particular marketing agency, it never would have passed the approval process. Well, not with that tagline, at least. I’m thinking something more along the lines of this:

Or maybe this:

Now, if the restaurant in question wanted to take this Father’s Day failure and make it a lot worse, they could make Scoresby Scotch and Bud Light the drink specials of the day. If they wanted to improve the circumstance, they could hop over to the local liquor store, snatch a case or two of the Jefferson’s Kentucky Straight Bourbon “Extremely Small Batch” edition and offer complimentary drams to all of the weary patriarchs who may be under the impression that their families have shepherded them to the premises for their final meal.

The end result of blending eight individual casks into a single batch, this reasonably priced whiskey reveals in the nosing that a majority of its mashbill is most definitely sweet corn. With a fuller inhalation, it sets out side dishes of nutmeg and ground ginger.

Thanking the kindly restaurateur for the generous gift, a sip is rather inviting and quite easy. The dram is warmly energetic to the palate, with a pinch of burnt (not quite caramelized) sugar and oatmeal crust followed by an obscure suggestion of melted butterscotch.

The finish sees the spices from the nosing return, but only after the initial burn begins to fade.

It’s a fine Bourbon, and it certainly goes well with a slab of beef.

Unless, of course, that slab is your head.