Beaux Hawg BBQ

It's called the Good Life, all right?

A martini, a fine cigar. Good food, good friends. And when the good food is the good friends, so much the better.

The good pig is an instant archetype, a down-home bon vivant. He smiles at his own good fortune, shrugging in lieu of explanation.

After they've experienced everything life has to offer, they'll hoist themselves onto the barbecue. Indeed, today is a good day to die.








Addendum: Yes, sir. From Kansas to Florida, the good pig is living it up, for the time being.

Traeger Nationals

From across the nation they come. Hopeful, flexing their amateur muscles, they come to Nebraska. It's a beautiful thing.

And while they are passionate, many are newcomers and could use some encouragement. Maybe they've come without their families. Perhaps their friends at home can't be bothered to check in for progress reports. Loneliness might prey on them and dull their barbecuing instincts.

No matter!

The Unholy Trinity—the cow, pig, and chicken who headline these events so often—will cheer them on.

From within the flames, they smile, projecting their goodwill. Thumbs-upping those who would cook and eat them, the animals would rather die than allow the competitors to go uncelebrated. Of course, you know, they'd, um... They'd rather die than do just about anything.

Pitmasters BBQ

Here is a sow who has lost her mind. They scooped it right out of her head and packed in their own ideas before screwing the top of her skull back on. She exists solely to satisfy the needs of others, walks only on paths set down before her.

When confronted with her own destruction, she winks. When faced with her status as chattel, she ties the Stars and Bars around her neck, and flirts. Their symbols have become her symbols, their ways hers. Their flag will be her burial shroud, but she is helpless now to resist. At the prospect of claiming an identity of her own, she demurs.

Her powerlessness is the only thing she trusts, so she clings to it. But it is her anchor. The Pit and its master have her in their clutches. She mistakes it for a lover's embrace.

KFC Chicky Club

True, we've seen death-loving chickens who represented the under-14 demographic before (remember Rocky Junior and LZ?), but this winking squab has gone right to our hearts! Chicky might not be unique, but he sure is compelling. (And extreme, awesome, and/or radical.) We may not be sure what he is compelling us to do, exactly, but we know we like what we see.

He has totally nailed the tween aesthetic: The backwards baseball cap! The clunky boots! And of course, the vest and bow tie! It could hardly be an apt portrait of today's dynamic and freewheeling youth without a vest-and-bow tie combo.

And his presentation! With his sassy, brassy attitude, we're ready to buy whatever he's selling.

Whether he's winking or thumbs-upping us, we easily recognize an eager beaver when we see one. And his eagerness is all in service of moving the merchandise, pushing those dead chickens.

"It's a wonderful filling," after all.

"What's a wonderful filling, Chicky?" we might ask.

"Why, all of it! The stuff filling your belly is wonderful! Being filled up with former birds is wonderful! Knowing I've joined consumer and consumed like some sordid Justice of the Peace! It's all wonderful! So join the club!"

Thanks for everything you do, Chicky.

Hutton's Sausage

Outside their factory in New Zealand, these sausages—forgive us, these sizzlers, as the ID label indicates—are demonstrating true dedication to an ideal.

Hunkering down in a giant frying pan, they beam, they wink to passers-by.

(Or, at least, we think they're winking. Could that be the gleam from their monocles, instead?)

One throws his arm around his brother, who is slowly, deliciously rendered, converting himself into his elemental essence. Thus, the sausages reenact the seasonless cycle of life death.

(Thanks to Dr. Michael for the referral and photo.)

Nice Rack

Mix one part complacence in the face of unspeakable horror and one part fumbling, adolescent sexuality, and you've got... Well, you've got something altogether putrid. In this case, what you've got is this, this (forgive us) Nice Racks barbecue team.

The leering mascot, the surrogate for the pigs' consumers, is far too self-satisfied by the meager accomplishment of his paltry wordplay.

That wink, that obscene token of collusion, is the icing on the rancid cake. In its superfluity it reeks of submission, like a homeowner holding the door open for the burglars making off with his silver. As though these barbecue teamsters need permission!






Addendum: Are we just imagining things, or does our lecherous winker bear a resemblance to the Swine-o-Mite swine?

25th Anniversary Barbecue Festival

With a knowing wink, Trixie welcomes you to the 25th anniversary of something-or-other.

It's classic, really. And we're not referring to the "authentic" diner ambience. We mean the gatekeeper role undertaken by the server. (We are reminded of this sassy waitress.) Hip cocked, paper hat perched atop her black bob, she assumes authority over the proceedings. She shows you to your seat and lets you know How It Is.

Remember, this is the straight-talking waitress stereotype, so when she says pig is on the menu—when she herself and all her kind are on the menu, and yet her objections don't rise above the level of a flirtatious wink—it means something. It means everything is fair game.

Zum Spanferkel

To the suckling pig! No, that's not a call to arms; it's the translation of this sign. We find this pig troubling for more than the usual reasons. (Namely, that he is a party to his own death and consumption.) A suckling pig, you will recall, is a whole young pig suitable for roasting. Does this winking pervert look like a youngster? Do we see the suggestion of five o'clock shadow on his monstrously chubby cheeks?

In other words, is he selling out himself or his children? If the former, well, we've already met an entire world of similar degenerates. If the latter, he belongs to an exclusive club of those who would destroy their progeny. (There was this striking example, and this one too.)

And either way, you just know this pig will succumb, lured by the temptation of spending eternity (or, you know, a few reeking hours) lodged in someone's digestive tract.

Zum Spanferkel has more to offer besides a conflicted pig! They also have this:

"Have you had pig today?" the banner asks.

Yes, we know. But those trunked and droopy weirdos are meant to be pigs.

Trust us on this. We're experts.

Longhorns Saloon & Barbeque

Finally! Something that makes sense!

More than three years ago, we encountered a creature suffering from a similar complaint, which has since been codified as Induced Mutation Psychosis. (And since then, we also had occasion to meet the Chiggish and the Piscow.)

Briefly, IMP is the syndrome that artificially created beings develop when their unnatural genotype leads to decidedly poor self-esteem.

In the present case, the Bovog is shockingly ill-suited to carry on a meaningful existence. Quite the contrary. Facing his own destruction, he merely winks, as though he were in on the joke.

And who can blame him? Born a freak—a freak whose freakishness only made him a more desirable foodstuff—he never had anything to look forward to except his own death. Now that his destruction is imminent, he can finally experience a modicum of pleasure. In his place, would any of us behave differently?

Diva Q

Another washed-up old floozy willing to peddle the last thing she's got that anybody'll buy.

While we admire her go-getter spirit—she will get herself killed and eaten if it's the last thing she does!—we are nevertheless saddened to see a sow in her golden years resorting to such desperate measures.

She leans against the Killing Fence, a wink on her big, lascivious face. There aren't a lot of comers out there in the middle of the field, but she's there from morning to night. (Except for those 40 or 50 smoke breaks.)

She hopes that if she waits long enough, someone will bite. You know, literally.

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)

Chicken Galore

If there's a better piece of chicken, the rooster got it.

If there's a better piece of chicken, the rooster got it.

If there's a better piece of chicken, the rooster got it.

Do you need to read that again? Is three times enough? Has it already made you despair for humanity? Right there, amid those eleven little words, lies an encyclopedia of mind-rotting garbage. The chicken—a female and, therefore, worthless as an agent of her own life—is owned by the rooster and by you. The rooster takes her for sexual pleasure, and you… Well, that's between you and the breast-enhanced, winking, flirtatious, bikini-clad bird.

That the sexual and the violent are, once again, conflated by the flesh-pushers is sad and sorry enough. (See the hearts in the logo? Love and death locked in intimate embrace!) That this depraved drama should be carried out in the realm of animals at our mercy is even worse. That Chicken Galore also offers up pigs, fish, and shrimp makes us shudder at the advertising images that might have been.

(Thanks to Dr. aubade for the referral.)






Addendum: On a less vomit-inducing note, we'd like to comment on the text in the upper right of the image. "The Place For Ribs & Chicken ... The Way You Want It!" We are accustomed to the habits of avoidance that propagate terms like beef, as opposed to "cow meat," and pork, as opposed to "pig meat." (Yes, we are aware that the food terms are all of French origin and made their way into English when the French enjoyed power in England.) And we understand that ambiguous terms like chicken must cause some psychological discomfort. As in "Is this a chicken I'm eating, or some of a substance known as chicken?" But here, even "ribs" is reinterpreted as the name of a certain kind of stuff. (You're not encouraged to eat ribs the way you want them, but instead the way you want it, even though the word transparently names particular parts of an animal's body.) Again, we wonder whether our fellow man is already too far gone.

Cedar Hill Neighborhood Cook-Off

Cedar Hill, in (we believe) upstate Suicidefood, is a downright neighborly place.

They've got themselves a neighborhood cook-off, for one thing. For another, they've got the neighborliest host this side of… say, Cedar Junction.

You step right up, you tell the Ultimate Victim Neighbor what you crave, and, quick as a wink, he gets you taken care of. Ribs? Hotdogs? Whatever you like. Naturally, he steers you away from the burgers. And, not wanting to offend him by turning down the flesh of his fellows, you skip the beef.

We all know what the highlight of the event is, right? The pig impaling himself on the tines of his prodigious stabber thing? It's only the courteous thing to do.

Pig Tails Barbeque

What you're seeing is the barbekook equivalent of the girl who pops out of a cake at an old-time stag party.

Only, instead of a cake, it's a fiery log. And instead of a young woman, it's a pig in the process of burning to death.

Sure, she's into it, but how can you not feel tainted just by witnessing this? It was obviously her choice to hop on the burning log. But maybe—just maybe—she was in no position to be making any big, life decisions at the moment? We don't know what she's going through, but whatever it is, it has rendered her unfit to take care of herself.

Pig Tails Barbeque says, "The party doesn't start until the pig gets there!" (No, really. That's their tagline.)

We say, "As soon as the pig gets there, it's time to start the intervention."

Bacon Freak Bacon Club

The (oh, please let it be!) ironic adoration of bacon has never been taken to such an extreme.

The baconcult has always been tedious, ranking up there with the winking obsession for retro bowling attire and bad television. But Bacon Freak turns it into something altogether depressing.

For instance, this pig wearing a shirt that bears the likeness of a pig and extols the dubious virtues of bacon.

For bacon is so magical that even pigs love it. Yes, even amateur rebels appreciate having permission! And fear not—the pigs approve!

So indulge your every appetite! Satisfy your every craving! No one's stopping you! The pigs have given you the keys to their greasy city.






And lest you fear that it's only bacon—that the pigs would bogart the other by-products of their blessedly brief lives—be advised that the pigs want you to enjoy the entirety of their abundance. Ribs! Ham jerky! It's all up for grabs.

The pigs are here to serve. Boy! Are they ever!
















Addendum: We can't help but be "impressed" with the presentation of this product. Nauseatingly called "piglets," these bacon pieces are shown in a serving dish shaped like a pig's head. Finally! Man is free to safely give in to his desire to eat the brains of a piglet with his fingers!










Addendum 2 (4/18/09): We were recently discovered by the Coastal Vineyard wine blog, which, in some way we don't understand, is affiliated with the Bacon Freak bacon club. They took issue—but gently—with our post. While we enjoy the attention, and any addition to our readership is welcome, we think they missed the boat. They believe pointing out that actual pigs will eat bacon if it's put in front of them somehow invalidates our thesis. Namely, 1) that real pigs have an interest in not being killed and eaten, and 2) that real pigs wouldn't willingly endorse pork products. (We feel foolish even pointing this out, as though it weren't already shamefully obvious.) The Coastal Vineyard/bacon people also believe that because animals eat animals—a fact with which we were vaguely aware—those animals wouldn't mind so much being eaten by us.