MOgridder's BBQ

The perfect family: the happy hillbilly Head of Household, the pig (who, even though hairless, seems to be actively balding), and the cow. You can see the love, the respect, the fun in their eyes. These folks sit around sipping cider and launching into warm "Remember the time we?" stories. They represent an ideal we can all aspire to.

Of course, in our tabloid-centric world, we love our idols only until we find their Achilles heels and bring them crashing to the ground. Then we dust ourselves off and look for someone new to adore. Temporarily.

All of which is another way of saying we don't trust this "perfect" family unit. There must be something, some secret wriggling behind those smiles. Sure, the animals seem to enjoy their role as perpetual "food" animals. They seem to accept their place in barbecue's unbending hierarchy. But could anything really be so clean, so tidy, so loving?

We'll put it this way: Have you seen the four-time Oscar-winning film Ordinary People? If you have, you undoubtedly remember the "camera scene," a stunning example of family dynamics turned explosive. While the Jarretts pose and get into position for a family photo, the mundane awkwardness and irritation of close quarters and domestic life shoot cracks through the veneer of their happiness.

Timothy Hutton's Conrad to Mary Tyler Moore's Beth (we paraphrase): Just take the goddamn picture already!

Always there, simmering below the surface of the Jarrett family's idyllic life together, demons lurked.

And when our barbecue family draw the curtains closed after another successful gathering of friends and well-wishers, when their hidden selves are free to frolic, their love curdles in the presence of fear and murderous hypocrisy.

This is the true face of the suicidefoodist family: a psychopathic hayseed with a shotgun fixin' to kill him a terrified pig and cow.