Vintage Crawfish

In his pan, the crawgentleman salts himself judiciously and checks the results with his hand mirror.

You know how we sometimes believe that our modern world, with its hurry-up underpinning, its speeding technology, its celebrity scandals, is a breeding ground for absurdity and insanity?

Well, sure, maybe.

But things were plenty crazy back in the days of celluloid collars and toothbrush mustaches, too.

For instance, this crustacean has clearly gone around the bend. He can manipulate objects. He demonstrates a sense of self. He cares about his appearance. And yet he cooperates with his killers. He will season himself, thank you very much. No, no, don't bother setting him in the—no, he will arrange himself in the pan. He can do it. If you would just let him—please! Just have a seat. He'll have himself brought out to you when he's ready. There's a good man. Yes, thank you.

(Thanks to Dr. Javier for the referral.)

Landry's Seafood Restaurants, Inc.

And then there's this guy.

He has certainly settled into his role as seafood with panache. A tawdry, leering panache, to be sure, but have you ever seen a crawfish with more self-confidence?

Feet dangling in the ol' briny, teeth clamped on a cigarette holder worthy of Thurston Howell, suspect mustache winking in the sun, he's the very model of looking-out-for-number-one-ism. That he expresses his exceptionality by playing the part of foodstuff will discomfit no one familiar with our work.

He will be boiled and cracked apart, his pale flesh dug from his blood-red carapace, and he accepts it all—the attention, the adulation, the respect—as nothing less than his due.







Addendum: Or maybe he's a lobster?

Addendum 2: An earlier Landry's crustacean, this one exhibiting none of the moneyed importance of the current crawfish. Or lobster or whatever.

Rajun Cajun Café

There's nothing an inspired crawfish can't do!

And nothing inspires a crawfish more than the prospect of his own annihilation.

And so, warmed by thoughts of boiling from the inside out, the crawfish acquires a drum kit, practices tirelessly (even to the point of mastering the not inconsiderable drumstick-held-in-claw technique), assembles a band (Rajun Cajun), writes some material, finds someone to tie a napkin around his "neck," and offers up a musical salute to his eventual consumers.

Popeyes Musical Seafood

The seafood is going out with a bang!

Life has been good to the catfish and the crawfish. It has supplied them with sunglasses, hats, and the tools and time to make sweet jazz.

So don't grieve for them. Know that they go gladly, joyfully, jazzfully into the Waters of Death. And then on, of course, into the Fryers of Eternity.

And nobody's happier than they are that Popeyes, long associated with dead birds, has opened up its arms to let in the dead fish and crawfish! It's a fine thing, a good thing, a right thing that all of life's bounty can be funneled through the dying corridors and into the no-land of nonexistence.







Addendum: These two chickens at Popeyes in Chicago are enjoying a little live music while sampling the wine/broth/chicken "juice." (Thanks to Dr. Anthony for the photo.)

Seafood Festivals, a retrospective

For sheer pageantry, nothing beats a seafood festival!

Let's face it: barbecue festivals can be tawdry affairs. Lewd, beastly, tawdry affairs. But seafood festivals are full of wholesome, welcoming energy. The fish, shrimp, crabs, what have you, are thrilled to step on dry land. This is their first foray into the world of humanity, so, unlike the sordid, jaded pigs and cows, they still love us. They've come to put in an honest day's work. To earn a fine, fine death.

They play trumpets and saxophones for us! Guitars! Some kind of thin, flexible piano keyboard things! They put on one-man-band shows for us!

In their winsome naiveté, they honestly believe they owe us something. Perhaps for having been spared the feedlots and pens? For being allowed natural lives, up until the nets trap them in the choking, alien air?
















Even their royalty and their entourages make appearances at seafood festivals. It is also possible that the two non-royal crabs are official decoys, employed to throw off subversive crustacean elements. Then again, what could plotters do to the crabs that their beloved humans aren't already planning?

We are especially touched by the pearl-wearing crab queen and the plucky shrimp she has impaled on the blessed tines of her regal fork!

Finally, we are reminded that it is not only royalty and music-making courtiers who show up for these things.

Garden-variety aquatic fun-lovers are here too!

Here we see a high-roller from Atlantic City and a skipper from Pompano Beach. Each cares enough to gasp their last in our presence, surrounded by their cherished totems: the dice, the weathered plank.












Addendum (5/28/09): Another good time for food and mankind both! These toe-tappers aren't even fazed by the prominent use of the word boil.









Addendum 2 (5/23/10): Another swinging, musical shrimp.














Addendum 3 (5/23/10): This crustacean doesn't so much swing as rock.











Addendum 4 (5/23/10): Look! It's that same darn crab again, creepy leer and all!

Addendum 5 (12/18/11): Another creepy and/or drunk crab.

Crawfish Boil Championships

What to make of the crabpot vessel bobbing on a soupy sea?

Look at the crew of the good ship Suicide sailing, sailing over the bounding broth!

How would you characterize them? Do they appear to be fleeing those who would kill them for sport? Are they weak from horror? Are they desperate with the fear and apprehension of the fugitive?

Not even close.

While two of them pull apathetically at their celery oars, the others relax with bottles of beer. They're not escaping. They're pleasure-boating!

Or—who knows?—maybe they're in search of even bigger pots and even hotter waters into which to hurl themselves.

Crawdad Creek BBQ

It's as though every link in the chain of being is content. The hat-tipping farmer/pig is happy to represent a barbecuing concern. The crawdad is happy to have been fished from the creek and delivered into a land of deathly salvation.

(Brief Interlude: This all takes place in Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina. Does that mean the pig is fixing to dunk the cheerful crawdad in the boiling spring? In other words, is he hauling him out, or getting ready to put him in? Regardless, in this context, Boiling Spring Lakes is the most cruelly apt name we've seen in a good long while. Remember the "Noose" River?)

Back to our analysis: Regardless of its crustacean-boiling properties, Crawdad Creek and Boiling Springs Lake are surely magical places. They transform hogs—hogs who identify with their human overlords—into willing participants in the dark rite known as barbecue.

Steamboat Bill's

Toot toot! Here comes Steamboat Bill on the shipshape S. S. Suicidefood! With a friendly clack, he waves his claw at the well-wishers lining the riverbank, face tendrils (?) flapping gaily like pennants.

The imagery is routine, but the subtext is ghoulish as ever. Our happy hero, loving life from the helm of his adorable tub, is steering her right into the cooking pot. There, as the paddlewheel churns helplessly, he'll consign himself to Davy Jones's locker to be "boiled with pride" (as Steamboat Bill's website puts it).

"Permission to come aboard, Cap’n?"

Granted! (Toot toot!)

"Permission to boil you and the crew alive, Cap’n?"

Darn tootin’!

"Permission to tear you apart and suck the meat from your glistening carapace?"

Sho nuff!

We're denied even the opportunity to deliver the poor crawfish from a miserable existence. No, we're encouraged to take him at his fullest, when his life is smooth sailing!

If you doubt the grisly undertone of the action—and, really, how could anyone past the age of majority doubt what the proponents of suicidefoodism have declared so vigorously for so long?—behold this T-shirt design offered in the official Steamboat Bill's catalogue:

Pinch Me, Peel Me, Eat Me. There, in six words, is the fundamental theme of the suicide food worldview, along with the concomitant sexual connotations. Oh, suicidefoodists! Clean up your act!

Dixie Crossroads

Mr. Rock, the craw-toady of the Dixie Crossroads restaurant, sure seems eager to please. He has submitted to the apron, the (plainly incongruous) white mittens, and the chef’s hat. He looks beseechingly “off screen,” doubtless to his human betters. He holds his plate aloft, awaiting praise for the heaping bounty carried thereon. He has entered the world of animal-eaters, and wants nothing more than to appease them. So far, Mr. Rock is a textbook case of Subservience Complex, Animal.

But look more closely at the plate in his “hand.” On first glance, he appears to be brandishing a deep-dish casserole of ants and marshmallows. The truth is more horrific.

What you are witnessing is a platter of decapitated crawfish, and, judging by their size (compared to Mr. Rock), they are babies! This self-loathing crustacean has taken his psychosis one step too far. Not satisfied to sell himself into slavery to a world of dixie diners, he is even willing to offer up his own spawn to the demands of a hungry South.