Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Little Pig Town BBQ

Living in the desert, with only the blistering sun for a companion and the empty wind for a lullaby, can drive even the soberest soul crazy.

So when your raw materials are a pig with a mental impairment, you're going to see some insanity fireworks going off. Which is what's happening here.

The saguaro-strewn badlands of Owasso, Oklahoma—a scant 10 miles from Catoosa, as the buzzard flies—are a crucible, a chrysalis from which one's own twisted self emerges. Further evidence of our little pig's "idiosyncrasies": in the glare of the sun's spotlight, he leans against a smoking barbecue. While smiling. With his legs crossed at the ankle. Slow immolation isn't a laughing matter, but the pig is practically giggling. This is not happiness, friends. No, not happiness, but happiness's false shadow. A phantom of desperation. An infected mind.

Through it all, through the agonies of thirst and loneliness—the cow skull. It is our Ham-let's Yorick. What the little pig hungers for is the same quiet dignity that the weathered cow skull exudes. That is his ideal.

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