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.

BBQ Trophies

You are looking at a bunch of true believers. This Unholy Trinity has fully embraced their status as food. They have totemized themselves, solidifying their very objectness.

The point is that these animals have so thoroughly assimilated the very concept of their own worthlessness that they can appear—excited, eager, with fond wishes for a future constituting more of the same—as living embodiments of others' desires to eat them.

They do not merely offer their blessings on an endeavor dedicated to their destruction; they ratify the worldview and priorities of their destroyers. And so the cow represents herself as beef and the pig as ribs. They are just (temporarily) living stuff.

It is a curious phenomenon, this use of the animals' agency to reaffirm their lack of agency. Curious, but altogether commonplace.

Then again, it should hardly surprise us when animals this warped fail to appreciate the difference between prize-winner and prize.

Henderson Chicken

From where does the Henderson Chicken chicken derive his sense of identity and purpose? It's not a trick question. In fact, the answer is the same one we've found approximately seventy-seven jillion times: The bird has placed all his (?) eggs in the basket labeled "I am edible."

Oh, the chest-swelling pride!

He suppresses a satisfied tear when he remembers the legend rippling beneath him: Once you've tasted our chicken, you'll want more!

You know—you just know—when he first saw that motto he called everyone he knew and gushed. "Our chicken! They called me their chicken! They really love me!" That's right. Someone finally believes in him. For an insecure chicken, that means the world. Something has plucked him from the obscurity of his fellows, his indistinguishable coopmates. He is a chicken of distinction.

Oh, and he might be saluting, too. But don't hold us to that.

Thighs-N-Pies

She's got thighs—has she ever!—and she's got pies. Put them together, and she's got thighs-n-pies. While this image scores high on the Truth in Advertising Meter, it does raise a vexing issue.

Namely, does this lipsticked chicken in Daisy Dukes have pies in the same way she has thighs?

We think not. The pie is an item she holds aloft. When she shows it off to you, she's inviting you to select it from the menu. But when she struts and shows off those long legs, she's inviting you to select it from her body.

When you tell your server you'd like the Smoked Chicken Thighs (Hot, BBQ, or Mild), the chicken steps out back for a rendezvous with the cleaver. Which, apparently, is what's in it for her.



Addendum: When it comes to Pies 'n Thighs, a similarly named establishment, it's the pies that receive top billing. And among the wide assortment of pre-dead animals clamoring for you attention, there is, surprisingly, no leggy chicken hoping to catch you eye.

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.

Festival of Cruelty 18

It's time once more to enter the shadow world of suicidefoodism, the world where no one's constrained by decency. They don't have to pretend that animals are complicit in their own deaths. It's a world we visit every few months, though we've long forgotten why. (Read up on the custom by checking out Festival of Cruelty #17.)

Rural Route BBQ: As every crazed hillbilly with a knife to brandish and a chicken to choke knows, terror is the finest seasoning.

Pig Chaser BBQ Sauce: Continuing the theme, the Pigchaser menaces pigs throughout Illinois. He's just so villainous, the way he pursues his panic-stricken quarry, sandaled and full of wicked glee. The entrailpreneurs of the various Festivals of Cruelty are no shrinking violets, meekly coaxing the "food" animals onto the coals. No, they tend to drift more into bloodthirsty Harold territory. They are hunters (of penned livestock), and they ask no one for permission!

Virginia Smokis Porkis: It looks like an innocent depiction of Man's brutal dominance over gentle Nature, but you couldn't be more wrong.

See, in the official state seal (no, this isn't the official one), Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue, is shown triumphant over Tyranny. The legend beneath the vanquished despot reads Sic Semper Tyrannis or "Thus always to tyrants." In the Smokis Porkis (or "Doesn't actually mean anything") version, the role of the tyrant is played by a dead pig. So, like, take that, pig? You, um, tyrant?

Smokin' Up a Storm: It's no longer enough, apparently, to kill and butcher them the old-fashioned way. To satisfy a jaded public, ever more diabolical means of dispatching the animals must be dreamt up. In this case, it's some kind of weather-controlling contraption that has sucked up the cow, pig, and chicken. Within its artificial funnel cloud, it subjects them to punishing speeds and stunning jolts of lightning.

WTF? Smoke -n- BBQ: It would hardly be a Festival of Cruelty without some dog or wolf making life miserable for a pig or two. It's practically a tradition! No, seriously. Take a look at recent Festivals and see what we mean.

Byrd'z Bar-B-Q

Can we all agree, once and for all, that the attitude on display here is not what is usually intended when the phrase "with an attitude" is deployed?

Yes, the leather jacketed chicken affects an air of carefree cool. Yes, there are sunglasses involved. And yes, the letter Z has long been recognized as an orthographic signifier of rebellion.

But where is this would-be disrupter? The bird is in the fire, making not the slightest effort to escape! He positions himself just so, to ensure even cooking!

Attitude? While we agree that it demands no small degree of toughness to hold one's ground even as the flames cook one's flesh, it's a toughness in service of maintaining the status quo. No matter the cost.

Murray's Chicken

In the two and a half years since we last looked in on the trend of hobo livestock, things haven't gotten much better.

High unemployment, strained finances, and frayed safety nets have all taken their toll, and the "food" animals are bearing the brunt.

No longer can they count on the same sty-to-slaughterhouse, coop-to-throat-slitter care their fathers received. No more can they take for granted the security enjoyed by previous generations. It's every chicken for herself now, and many are forced to make hard choices. This representative from Murray's, for instance. Like so many who preceded her, she has taken up her bindlestiff and hit the trail.

Who knows what she'll find around the bend? We know what she hopes for: an untimely, economical death. We can only hope.

Off the Hoof BBQ Crew

Beneath a legend made of bone, gristle, and blood, they disport themselves. The pig and chicken, their faces bearing smiles that shade into idiotic grimaces, play on their madhouse jungle gym.

Is anything about this image natural?

The way the animals hang from the steer's horns, the way the steer, looking as though he's gone five rounds with a pugilist, lets them—we are seeing the final stages of life's miserly drama.

If we were to try to name their emotions, we'd say the pig displays jolly resignation, the steer glum incredulity, and the chicken sheer lunacy.

Are they hanging above steaming cauldrons? Are their unseen lower regions still there? If they were gone, having been gnawed or hacked off, would it only add to the animals' fun?

(Thanks to Dr. Lance for the referral.)

Beguiling Chicken Skin

Reminiscent of the exalted Rachachuros Seasoning chicken, this glorious monstrosity served up by the New York Times art department bursts upon the scene, an audacious example of myth-making!

As the Times says: "There are white-meat people and there are dark-meat people; there are those who swear by the drumstick, thigh or breast. And then there are skin people."

Here, then, is the patron saint of the Skin People, a carefree scaffolding of chicken skin, otherwise known as a dead, plucked, headless, and footless chicken. It used to be a bird, but it has become so much more. A symbol! A figurehead! The emblem of a new identity! What started as a mere living thing has parted the veil surrounding the eternal and become the apotheosis of a New Discipline.

This politico-religious icon, this beguiling provider of multifariously edible skin, this let-me-just-slip-out-of-something-more-comfortable charmer is part-vixen, part-apostle. Nothing could be more familiar to the lusty despoilers of animals!