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.

Special Report: Pig Logo Exposé 11

We're ready to dive back into the world of recycled pig logos. Review, won't you, the last time we indulged our inexplicable penchant for RPE (Repetitious Porcine Emblemology).





























































































(From left to right, by row: Lillie's, Northwest Tennessee Battle of the Pigs BBQ & Car Show, Get Your Pig On; Gourmet Grills, Holy Smokes BBQ Festival, In Hog Heaven BarBQue; Shawn's Smokehouse BBQ, Que-by-the-Sea, Pork U; BBQ Pit Boss, Louisiana State Championship Bowie BBQ Duel & Festival, Microwave Pork Puffies; Greet American BBQ Tour, Bixby BBQ 'n Music, BBQ Bonanza; Eagle BBQ Cook-Off and Spudfest, Giggly Pig BBQ Team, BBQ Throwdown.)

The hallmarks of the breed are the burly forearms and intricate nostrils. True, some examples of Burly (as he is hereby designated) are missing those two f-hole nostrils, but all appear to boast forearms of Popeye proportions. He also always (so far!) sports a bandanna or an apron. Unless those are overalls. It's clear that somewhere in his evolution, Burly split into two variants: the elbow-on-the-bar glad-hander and the dimwitted cowboy.

We'll be watching this one.

Addendum (12/16/11): And here are Burly specimens #19–22.

Don't think this is actually Burly? We admit it's not a perfect example of the form. But look at the curlicue nostrils. Never forget the curlicue nostrils.

Hamstock

Behold the death of Youth!

Witness the silencing of Rebellion!

Hearken to the imprisonment of Freedom!

Coherence itself is pulped and quietly disposed of. Wait, did we say quietly? No, no! This is Hamstock, and there is nothing quiet about it. This is triumphal! This is the glorification—reverberating from the hills—of senselessness!

Woodstock, with its tawdry legacy of stickittothemannity, has effectively been erased from the history books, for now we have the amplified justice of Hamstock! Unlike those unruly peaceniks—some of whom were no doubt vegetarians—the pig sings no hymn to individuality. He is no unique blossom in life's garden. He is a cog in a meat machine, remarkable only for his uniformity. Along with the millions of his identical brethren, he makes music to accompany the end of his days.

South Park Rib & Wing Challenge

Again the idols are cast down. Knocked from their pedestals, they are dashed to the floor, ensmithereened. First the pirates were emasculated. Then the bikers. In turn, the cowboys, the boxers, the superheroes, and still other he-man archetypes were fettered and enfeebled.

So it is with a mild sense of disgust—yes, we still have a supply of disgust, even if we ration it with more care than in the past—that we take in these (ahem) rockers. When such stalwart symbols of reckless hedonism and bull-headed individuality can be so thoroughly tamed, we are all diminished. Even the power of freedom—the very possibility of defiance—is tenuous.

There they are, crooning into a microphone-bone, bashing out power chords on a meatar (not the first we've seen, mind you: check out addenda 7 and 9 here), and just generally uncooling up the place.

Instead of singing for their supper, they and the other rockers we've presented over the years sing to become supper. Instead of a thorn in The Man's side, rock 'n' roll becomes The Man's servant. Instead of issuing a challenge to the status quo, howling with the pain of the oppressed, the hungry, the stifled, the shut-down, the fed-up, the bored, and the ignored, they bow at the waist.

JWT Salt Lick BBQ at SXSW

We could go about investigating the confluence of forces that led to this phantasmagoria (an ad agency, a barbecue joint, and a music conference), but that would just detract from the insanity on display.

The basics are, well, basic: A cow and a pig advertise barbecue by repeatedly killing and eating each other and themselves. If that's all it was, we'd be out of here in five minutes.

But where other outfits are content delivering stale homilies about service, dedication, and self-destruction, these guys give us a tour de force of gore and depravity!

And what makes it even more chilling is the animation's reliance on the tropes of childhood. It's Wes Craven meets Sesame Street, a pairing that only the joined psychoses of barbecue, advertising, and rock 'n' roll could have conjured.











Pigs eagerly grate themselves to pulp on a monstrous playground slide. Aboard a pogo-stick, another pig bounces into a bonfire and then a barrel of barbecue sauce.

A cow slices herself into quivering slabs of flesh with a wire jumprope.

Childhood has become a nightmare! Freedom has become a nightmare! And play and leisure—nightmares. Living itself has become a nightmare! And the animals frolic gaily through the nightmare landscape, their only sadness born of the knowledge that their suffering must someday come to an end.

(Thanks to Dr. David for the referral.)









Addendum: If you must.

Pies 'n Thighs

Sure, it's no Packard's (or even a Thee Pitt's), but there's a certain depraved charm on offer in this Pies 'n Thighs menu. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

You've got your tough-guy chicken endorsing the fried chicken box. You've got your fishy skipper pleased about the catfish box. You've got your lazy, degenerate pig nonchalant about the pulled pork box. So even with the conspicuous absence of a cow to point out the brisket box, this is still an impressive range of fauna and temperament.

Animals of the sea, land, and sky (kind of) have gathered to heave a single, unified, unenthusiastic sigh. Together they shrug. Just because the menu features their kinds (and maybe even their own flesh) is no reason to get bent out of shape. Or express much in the way of emotion. Just show up, pose, get eaten. That's all this bunch can handle.

The Rockin' Chicken

Have we finally reached it? After all the fakes, the has-beens, the wannabes, and the never-gonna-bes, have we finally found the true spirit of poultry-based rock-n-roll?

We've been around a while, you know. We've seen 'em come and we've seen 'em go. Fowl with big dreams and little else. But now! Now we might have found what we've been looking for all these years: a bird who can show us what freedom and rebellion are all about!

The Rockin' Chicken hits that stage and takes over.

He's got the look. (The way his comb turns into those sideburn things!) He's got attitude to burn. He drips with cool. This guy, he just doesn't care! He's looking out for number one and if you don't like it? You can kiss his ass!

And when you're done kissing his ass, you can wrench his wings off and fry 'em up! Oh, you want more? Well, how about carving out his, um, tenders, breading 'em, and shoving 'em in the oven?

How's that for rock-n-roll? Par-ty!

The Rockin' Chicken just isn't gonna play by your rules. He's a sleep-all-day, play-all-night, get-killed-and-eaten-when-you're-good-and-ready kind of guy.

Midsouthcon23

When Midsouthcon—a science-fiction convention held annually in Tennessee since the late 70s—hosts a barbecue, it would seem they see it as an opportunity to haul out a bunch of themes and cram them together in hopeful glee.

So Elvis is hybridized with a pig (which we've seen plenty of times before), and then beamed into the Star Wars galaxy. It transmogrifies into a Submissive Dominant of awesome pop-culture proportions! If anyone should be able to wriggle out of his cage and avoid being cooked and eaten, it would be a cross between the King of Rock 'n' Roll and Luke Skywalker! He could swagger out of Memphis, pelvis thrusting and lightsaber slashing, and into his own happy sunset.

But suicidal pigs are the same the whole galaxy over. They could, but they won't.

Their duty is to die and, having died, to be erased. Unremembered, they fade, and in fading they find their only fulfillment. While they might have lived as kings or Jedi, they die as eternal nobodies.