This, like all things important, begins in West Alabama on Butt Day. Each year, Melinda, the Senior Office Associate for the University of Alabama First-Year Writing Program, raises money for her son to attend the JF2 Dolphin Project: a therapeutic/teaching program for children with special needs.
Growing up in New Jersey, fundraising meant shilling Krackel bars outside of the Flemington Department Store for a dollar apiece or having my parents hit up their friends for subscriptions to respected periodicals like Redbook and Sassy.
This is not how Alabama rolls. The Friday before Finals Week, those who have donated waddle up to the second floor of the English Department building and pick up an eight pound piece of pork for instant devouring that afternoon. Of course, you could freeze the Boston Butt (or for those not being crass, the Picnic Shoulder) but not inviting your friends over for lawn golf, darts, and an absurd amount of beer is NOT what Butt Day is all about, and, quite frankly, insults both the children and the dolphins.
Explaining the nuances of barbecue to people not from the South can be quite difficult. Tuscaloosa has no fewer than thirty barbecue places, each of which has its own merit, idiosyncratic as that merit might be. For example, I have never been to Tee’s Ribs, but I am aware that it is closed on Sundays because it is converted into a church—Tee is both pit master and pastor. Merit!
For the uneducated, barbecue in the Deep South means pork cooked indirectly over hardwood smoke; imagine this Easterner’s surprise when I showed up to a barbecue with things to grill, only to find that five eight-pound tins of shredded pork were provided. I left my brats in the car.
The South is so hog-wild about barbecue (I will never make that joke again) for the same reason many regional dishes are regional dishes: simplicity and poverty. Wild pigs were easier to kill and easier to domesticate than other animals and produced a relatively large amount of meat. Also, the tougher and less expensive cuts (such as the Boston Butt) can be slow roasted to make them tender. Couple that with a halfway decent sauce and you are in business—you and thirty other families that had the same idea.
As with any regional delicacy, competition is fierce. In this writer’s learned gustatory opinion, Archibald’s is best by far, Mike & Ed’s is the most consistent with the best sides, and Dreamland can be spectacular but is often simply good. Those are the big three in town. There are other smaller places that could very well be mindblowingly good, but there is risk in pork: religious abstentions are not unfounded. Still, my friends Stephen and Robin swear by a place attached to a gas station. There are rumors of one down by the railroad depot that has the best sauce in town. To quote Alabama’s most famous native son, smoked pork is like a box of chocolates.
But this is not about whose pit has finally been broken in or about which place has been shut down because the neighbors complained, though it should be noted that the neighbors who did complain owned the other less-superior barbecue place across the street and that the cause for the “complaints” was an African-American owned place in a white neighborhood.
No, this is about pigs in sunglasses.
By pigs in sunglasses, I am referring to the marketing techniques of small restaurants all across the world – marketing techniques that utilize some anamorphic version of the food they serve to sell the food they serve. If I did not make it clear by writing an entire piece devoted to pork, I am no vegetarian: however, animals selling out their own kind continually perturb me. I am reminded of the old The Far Side cartoon in which a cow flips burgers while the other cows look on in horror. This, of course, is not a new concept: in the 1950s, Swanson’s frozen dinners were often peddled by cartoon ChickenSuzy homemakers, and it is common to have a picture of the item you wish to purchase on the outside label—something I have found very useful while grocery shopping in foreign countries.
In an essay by Mark Morton on this very subject, he states, “Sometimes dismissed as jejune, the pathetic fallacy can, at its best, offer us a vision of a world where humans and their environment coexist in harmony. But at its worst, the pathetic fallacy can become a grotesque fantasy of self-indulgence. In the culinary world, that began to happen about a century ago in print advertisements that depicted animals perversely and gleefully seeking their own slaughter—all in a bid to satisfy human consumption.” This makes sense—there is a certain amount of guilt in being on top of the food chain, especially in America. My family is originally from Barcelona and when I was nine years old, we flew over there for a wedding. Dinner was fish served whole—the head and the eye still intact. I couldn’t eat it: it was looking at me. Of course, I’d have had no qualms about eating the fish if it were prepared in filet form or pulverized into a paste and breaded.
As a solution, the Catalan chef put a hat on the fish and cut out a little word bubble that said “Eat Me”, showed it to nine-year-old Brian, and brought it back into the kitchen, where he took off the hat, threw out the word bubble, and then gave it to me on a plate.
It helps when the food presented to you to eat does not resemble the cartoon mascot who appears to be capable of self-cannibalism. When you open up a can of Starkist Tuna, you are not staring at a little blue fish. When the Chicken on Sesame Street sings, “I am chicken, I’m not scared, Cause I’m always well prepared,” it is admitting that preparation is key. Sesame Street Chicken seems to be saying, “You aren’t eating me, just a shadow of me far removed from my purist form! You’re eating chicken, not chicken. Don’t even get me started on how Mr. Potato Head used to be the spokesperson for Burger King French fries. Traitor.”
While there are a handful of these vorarephiliac mascots in national campaigns – I’m thinking of Charlie the Tuna, the California Raisins, and cows debating over which barbecue sauce they would prefer to be devoured with – the crude cartoon drawings of which I write seem to be wonderfully local. This makes sense in a small Southern town such as Tuscaloosa: a corporate logo with a formal font would imply that the proprietor is an outsider with little authenticity and zero local tradition. Moe’s, a new barbecue place that opened downtown about two months ago is a small chain that started in Colorado. However, the owners, originally students at the University of Alabama, have made sure to let everyone know that they are from Alabama and are bringing the chain home. It’s too soon to tell if their ploy will be successful: new things in Tuscaloosa usually flourish for a few months and then die out. My friend Luke has a theory that if you own a restaurant in Tuscaloosa, you should give it a new name every six months.
Moe’s is off to a good start by letting people know that they have roots here. But if business starts to dip, I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing their name in conjunction with a cartoon pig looking totally rad in its sunglasses while dressed in an apron and a chef’s hat, nodding as if to say, “Hey it’s cool! I’m delicious! If I were you, I’d eat me too!”
Perhaps the most horrifying food mascot is that of Tuscaloosa’s own Bottomfeeders: a pig with the body of a chicken and the tail of a fish (or is it a chicken with the head of a pig?) wearing an apron and sunglasses, holding a spatula, and licking its lips, while the slogan “We’re Smokin’!” hovers above its Frankenstein’s monster body, at once a pig that cannot run, a chicken that cannot fly, and a fish that cannot swim. I weep for you, you horrid creature of culinary science, you lovable omen. Could we not change your hands to cornbread? Could we not make your sunglasses out of Pepsi products? Pigchickenfish, je me regrette.
Of course, the one animal that sticks out in this tasty carnival game is the pig. Suicide Food, a blog dedicated to finding the most egregious instances of autophagiac animals has 358 posts tagged with pig—the chicken finishes in distant second with 149 (sunglasses, unsurprisingly has 73, remember, don’t look ‘em in the eye!).
So why the pig? It helps that it is a cartoonish animal to begin with—not to mention easy to draw. Plus, pigs tend to sell ovens, grills, and smokers. Thus, not only do pigs sell their own flesh, they sell the tools of their own demise. I found this disturbing until I thought about hunting: the logo for wildlife conservation and pro-hunting organization Ducks Unlimited is, of course, a duck.
Perhaps the authorities at Ducks Unlimited choose such eponymy because they respect their quarry. Sure, they’re going to be shot out of the air, but there is an appreciation for the sport they provide. Maybe it’s the same for the pig as well: the cartoon signs are a thank you to the animal for providing us with delicious food—it would be a great honor if, despite all that we have done to you: the cutting, the delicious brown sugar dry-rub, the smoking over maple chips, the bathing in a tomato and vinegar-based sauce, you would stand and applaud our culinary prowess and what you have become.
Thankfully, there are at least a handful of folks who understand the savage oddness in all of this: Chick-Fil-A—a southern company, I may add—flipped the script on this habit by introducing cows as their spokesanimals. This is better than, say, a chicken screaming “don’t eat me, eat my friends!” but the calling for the murder of innocents to save one’s hide (another terrible joke, sorry) seems to call attention that, yes, these are living creatures that are being sacrificed for your meal. Of course, the Chick-Fil-A logo still incorporates a chicken as if to say “trust what you are about to eat—do not trust the smiling faux-military gentleman at KFC”, though it is quite apparent that the Chick-Fil-A cows are some kind of domestic terrorists. Maybe trust is the wrong word.
But as long as there are local businesses, humans will continue to use animals selling out their own kind for the sake of a meal. Somehow this makes the pigchickenfish the most authentic creature man can assemble. When the aliens come for us (and they will) one can only hope that they pause at the image of our smiling faces before ordering.
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we need a hotdog mascot…maybe nathan’s could invent some kind of raccoon/pigeon/horse innards/leather boot mutant with a huge grin and world class surfing abilities. i’d eat it. and i’d buy the action figure. maybe it’s the businessman in me, but it makes sense. does it to you?
Do some research. The pig was not wild and then domesticated in the south. It was domesticated and allowed to run wild. That’s why they are called feral hogs. But no one would expect an easterner to know that anyway.
Easterners are the worst! That being said, pigs were found to be easier to domesticate (perhaps as a result of being domesticated once before running wild–obviously the majority of wild hogs were at once privatized by individuals) than other animals: the pork came from wild hogs and pig farms alike. Nevertheless, here’s hoping that the kin of Hogzilla/Pigzilla doesn’t come and kill us all.
This should help your understanding of Southern bbq: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubTQfr_tyY
Also, Archibald is not better than Dreamland. Where did you get such an idea?
Dreamland over Archibald’s? Now that’s just mad. Although they’re obviously super different sauce-wise. That being said, the Dreamland smoked sausage is absolutely incredible.
Smoked sausage? Bless your heart.
You need to go to the Dreamlands off of Jug Factory Road where they only serve ribs and white bread.
And, if you’re ever in Huntsville, try the brisket at Chuck Wagon.
While I was in Tuscaloosa during the days when the only thing you could get at the original Dreamland was white bread, ribs, sweet tea, and Budweiser, they’ve expanded their menu to include smoked sausage and a handful of other things, which, I agree is kind of ruining the mystique, but they do know what they’re doing with the sausage at least. Also, the sad looking billboard outside of it is gone and replaced with a gigantic church that looks like a barn. The times, they are a-changing.
And thanks for the Huntsville recommendation!