Sauced Pigs Bar-B-Que

We love animals-as-food punning. Ask anyone. (Exhibit A, and Exhibit B.)

These two pigs are sauced, you see—drunk on the glory of their impending deaths. They're also sauced, as in slathered with flavor-enhancing goop.

Either way, we can see they're feeling no pain. (That part comes later.) Right now, it's all about camaraderie, happy wishes for an eventful future, and the profound satisfaction that comes from fulfilling one's dearest wishes. That they can experience their blossoming present and fructifying future together is icing on the cake. Or more like barbecue sauce on the hunk of pig meat.

Of course, the one on the right looks like he's had a touch too much camaraderie and reminiscing about the paltry pleasures of living.

Addendum: More sauce-related wordplay, this time courtesy of a decapitated pig head wreathed in a bandanna of fire.

Best in the West Rib Cook-Off

The rib cook-off is finally given its due!

Ensconced within the classical tradition, the rib cook-off can at last be seen as the honorable institution it has ever been.

The pig in his cerulean toga and his laurel wreath signifying high birth and virtuous deeds readies to open the games and make merry.

Friends, Nevadans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to eat this here pig, not to praise him.
The evil that pigs do lives after them;
The good is oft consumed along with their flesh;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was delicious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

Blah blah blah. Yeah, that's all very artsy-fartsy and everything, but maybe you should just listen to the pigs and start eating.

Civilization depends on obeying the pigs' wishes.

It always has.

Cubby's Q

Cubby is angry.

Angrily, he endorses his eponymous line of "killer" pig ribs while angrily holding aloft a killer barbecue fork.

We're not sure what Cubby's got to be so angry about. After all, he's orchestrated this entire enterprise according to his own scheme. If he doesn't like it, he could just leave the gigantic cowboy hat behind and assume a life of quiet dignity.

So we know he's right where he wants to be: hawking ribs by the platterful, in the hopes that one day it'll be his ribs up there.

Maybe that's what's got him so mad, the knowledge that it's always someone else's turn, some other pig's chance to sacrifice his meat and bones for the "good" of humanity. What about Cubby? When is it his turn? He has a restaurant, he has standing in the community, he has a set of custom-made overalls. So why not him?

In time, Cubby. In time. Until then, content yourself with the thought that your anger is the secret ingredient that'll make you one memorable meal.

 

Griff's Chicken Shack

For our money, any chicken who can manage to grow sideburns has earned the right to make crummy decisions about his own life.

Like Griff here. He's not just a finger-pickin', guitar-strummin' bird. He's also the proprietor of his own shack as well as a main dish.

He'll just keep on crooning and wailing and offering up his wings and legs for the deep fryer. That's the performance that really matters.



Addendum: Griff's rockabilly vibe calls to mind the celebrated Elvis/Pork Nexus and this rocking and rolling chicken.

Chickin' Pickin'

It's an allegory.

With pop-eyed abandon, the chicken pursues his own mortality.

The headless, skinless, footless chicken corpse scampers gaily ahead, leading the poor living bird further into the realm of delusion. You can almost feel how carefree the innocent cadaver is, with what solemn mischief it tempts the living.

Looking on from the stage, their role obscure, a pig and a steer.

Are they the judges of this macabre ceremony, this wretched game? Are they timekeepers of some kind, the sport's sacred adjutants? Are they waiting for their turn in the arena, their chance to confront their own imminent deaths?

No, we're not sure why we're trying so hard to make this rational either.

Fighting Cock Kentucky Bourbon Brand Barbecue Sauce

Over the years, the animals have granted us a taste of many flavors of madness. Their deathwishes are as varied as all creation. For many animals, of course, the urge to die is primal and ineffable. It just is. As real, as fundamental as a genome, the drive to succumb to oblivion's gentle caress is inherent in the very act of being an animal.

The lesser-known imperative, second only to this basic impetus, is to serve. Oh, we have seen the many forms this service has taken: To please, to pay tribute, to titillate, to secure for oneself the blessings of humans' crumbs, of their attention, of their favor.

We've even seen animals sacrifice themselves to improve the sex lives of their (barely) betters.

But with this Fighting Cock Kentucky Bourbon Brand Barbecue Sauce, we discover a whole new reason to die!

"C'mon," the bottle commands, "singe a few tailfeathers... unless you'd rather stay in the henhouse."

The animals are lining up before the blade so that you can prove your manhood, an opportunity that concerns them greatly. If they can't be eaten by the manly, they'd just as soon—shudder—go on living.

Al Baik

It is with equal parts excitement and nausea that we discover, again, that the animals' death-drive is universal. Wherever we look, to the New World, the Old, to Asia, we see animals who want nothing more than to be dead. And now, with al Baik, it is clear that the Great Wish extends even into the Arabian Peninsula.

The 37-year-old franchise's 40-plus outlets and its 18 secret herbs and spices are capably represented by a dapper chicken with a giant bow tie and a dracular collar.

It's "nice" knowing that some things—for instance, nattily attired animals contentedly awaiting death—are the same wherever you go. It's like we've always said: Suicidal animals are the universal language.

Addendum: While we know it doesn't really, we choose to believe that al Baik means The Beak.

Cohoctah Cook'n

It's the wistful side of suicide food. This pig's heart is about to burst. Look at his eyes. You can practically feel the pain in those big, heavy-lidded eyes. He wants so much. The yearning is written all over his face. His ears hang down, symbolic of his downcast soul. He suppresses a tear. When he's alone, those tears will flow. His sorrow will emerge, tentatively, so afraid is the pig of the mockery he has come to regard as his due.

To be put to work, managing the grill, while his dreams are elsewhere. Not far away, no, but elsewhere. 

Stuck behind the scenes, as it were, tending to the actors, he longs to be on the stage. It should be him crisping above the coals! It should be him sizzling, as his cooking flesh exudes its precious freight of fat! It should be him filling the skies with his smoke!

But they've got him standing behind a board (?), his "hands" alongside his, um, pointy fingernails—look, we're not clear on his anatomy at all—so he can watch. So he can eat his heart out.

But if he wants to be near, to have one foot in that glorious world of dead pigs, this is where he needs to be. Bitter as it is, this is the choice he must make. And always, in the shadowed cell of his mind, the thought resounds: Maybe one day....

Red'z Ribs

All we know is that Red looks a little—just a little—evil.

It's those leering, threatening eyes. And that iron grin. His cheeks heavy with menace. From his haughty height, he looks down on you.

Like another apostrophe-z fellow we know, Red is certainly full of attitude. We're not sure exactly how we'd characterize that attitude, but there's something of the bully about him. He's daring you to eat him and his ribs.

With that red vest straining against his girth, he taunts and tests. Do you have what it takes? Will you accept his challenge?

He's going to see you eat him if it's the last thing he does. Which is a convenient arrangement.

Le Vrai Menage

Hanging on like grim death to his cylindrical totem of cured meat, the pig ponders the meaning of his life. He quickly realizes—it's as plain as the meat in his loins, really—that without the promise of death, his life holds no meaning whatever.

The salami-sausage thing (why demean it with anything as puny as a label?) is the pig's life preserver. It is his flesh apart from his own flesh. The meat is sans rival. Nothing is better.

Nothing buoys him more surely on his journey along life's brackish course, and nothing promises to deliver him more quickly into the ocean of death.

Lord of the Ribs

At first we weren't sure whether Tolkien's timeless epic translated well to the world of barbecue. We knew the chicken was Gandalf, the cow was cast as a man of the Second Age (Elendil, presumably), and the pig was some Second Age elf (Elrond or Gil-galad, we assumed), but it all felt contrived. Not as contrived as other barbecue-related stretches we've encountered, to be sure, but where were they going with this? If the One True Rib promised to enslave the free peoples of Middle Earth, then our protagonists want to destroy it? And that's going to sell pig meat?

Then we realized we were looking at it all wrong. We were seeing the details but missing the big picture. For what is J. R. R.'s tale about? Beyond the comings and goings of bearded weirdos and a bunch of business about a giant, evil eyeball, it's a story about brotherhood and sacrifice. Brotherhood and sacrifice? That's the hallmark of modern "food" animals!

It all made sense! Who knows more about sacrifice and selflessness than cows, pigs, and chickens? Who is better suited to hit the battlefield of Dagorlad—also known as the backyard barbecues of North America—and offer themselves up for their friends? In this respect, all the animals are Sam Gamgees, bearing all our burdens, long-suffering, never questioning our motives or intentions.

Epilogue: Five minutes later it stopped making sense again.

Colby's Pig Roast Catering Inc

After years of clambering after the cutting edge, this pig has finally found it.

The little round sunglasses, bought in a spasm of self-consciousness, didn't do it.

The supposedly slimming black tee didn't do it.

The striving and struggling, showing up early and leaving late, didn't do it.

The tirelessly positive attitude didn't it.

No, all it took was deliberately lowering himself into the flames, there to be crisped and cooked. In other words, he became his truest self when he finally surrendered the very idea of his own identity. That's when he finally mattered. When he finally became cool.

Slumpbuster BBQ

This only looks like it's about baseball.

The pig isn't hoping to get off the bench or boost his batting average or up his slugging percentage.

Don't let the bat, cap, and jersey fool you. The slump he's talking about has nothing to do with baseball.

Ever since his sow-and-teat days, this pig's been an also-ran. No challenges gracefully faced and bested, no successes racked up in the ledger of his life. But it's all about to change. When he is transformed into ribs, chops, and the rest, everything will be different.

You see, the slump is his life, and the barbecue's about to bust it. Wide open. This is the big league. Pig's waited for years, hoping for this break.

Queer Eye for the BBQ Guy

This thing is less sociopolitcal touchstone—some statement or other about "Our Changing Times"—as it is testament to suicidefoodism's power to adapt.

The Movement can take any form, clothe itself in the mores and ways of any subculture, any cultural moment.

The Movement is opportunistic, crawling and seeping into any available niche.

Leonard's Pit Barbecue

More aristocratic pigs tempting you to eat them.

We've seen them before (in both their pre-death and their post-living states), and they never fail to impress.

You see, even in these times of economic uncertainty, where the Average Joe looks upon the high priests of finance with richly deserved suspicion, the wealthy pig still commands respect. Still, they look to him, for guidance, for wisdom, for an example. And when the example he gives is one of utter self-abnegation… Well, it does contribute to the pervasive feeling of impermanence, the unmooring of our institutions, the weakening of our most celebrated beliefs.

Which, bizarrely, is Leonard's objective. He wants you to eat your betters. He wants you to strip him of his finery. To trample his striped trousers. To poke him in the eye with his own walking stick! To choke him with his spats and suffocate him with his top hat!

If you can't upend the System, if you can't avenge yourself upon the keepers of accounts, the repossessors and foreclosers, the buyers and sellers, the accumulators of wealth, then topple him!

Topple Leonard! Cast him down, down, all the way down!

Fischer Family Farms Pork

The Fischer Family Farms pork pig is practically a member of the family.

That he shifts so easily and readily from category to category—on the left he's a sentient being, on the right a delicately ruffled chunk of meat—is only part of his charm.

Separating them is a gossamer thread. Each self, each half of the whole, can regard the other with grace. "Hello, Brother Who Shall Be," says the living pig. "Hello, Brother Who Once Was," says the dead one.

Like you, we are reminded of this dramatic representation. Before and After shots of this kind are always sobering. For us, at least. For the pigs, they are merely confirmation of the rightness of life, a validation of The Way of Things. Which is why the Before pig here is quietly pleased with his situation. Here, alive and smiling; there, dead and sliced by practiced hands. Six of one, half dozen of the other.