Beard-Eating Assault Mined for Comedy Gold

The news media is buzzing like flies today, over the sentencing of the criminals who allegedly assaulted a Lawrenceburg man. According to reports, the man faced gunpoint and knifepoint as the assailants cut his beard off and forced him to eat it.

Apparently, reporter Cathal Kelly of the Toronto Star thinks it's something to make mirth of, with puns like "his hunger for justice". And oddly, though Kelly used this WLEX story as its source, the quotes were altered to reverse WLEX's editorial cleanup of the man's grammar.

WLWT couldn't help punning either, although they were slightly more subtle: "A central Kentucky man said he's waiting for justice to be served after two men shaved his beard, then made him eat it."

(And of course, the kind of people that enjoy sites like Fark won't be disappointed by their coverage.)

The idea of beard-eating is intrinsically humorous, of course, there's no denying it - there's an old Johnny Ryan comic strip that comes to mind - but correct me if I'm way out of line here, assault and violence isn't funny, even if the victim is wearing a Confederate Flag hat. I'm sick to death of media/internet snarkiness that reflexively, as a rule, now feels mandated and obligated to use people's misfortune for bread-and-circuses entertainment.

A few years back, I actually saw a "news" story on local TV about an elderly woman who tripped and fell and injured herself, and waited a long time before anyone found her. These capped-teeth talking heads actually peppered the story with puns like "went on a trip this fall" and actually dared to invoke the monumentally unfunny cliche "Help, I've fallen and can't get up".

I'm all for making fun of criminals, of course - I mercilessly heckle sociopaths from this microscopic podium in the ocean of internet noise. But I oppose "news" stories that make fun of the victim, an act which places the reporters themselves in the sociopath seat, and encourages the audience to slough their civility and come along for the rude ride.

World's Largest Skillet

It may not look a whole lot like a skillet (they have a detachable handle that they put on it for photo-ops) but it certainly counts as one - and man, is the chicken dee-lish. I haven't been to London's annual World Chicken Festival lately and probably won't make it there this year either, but I miss it greatly. Next year. It's there that you'll find this amazing monument to man's devotion to fried birds.

The World Chicken Festival was originally held in Corbin, but they moved it to nearby London as the event grew and became far bigger than anyone dreamed. There's plenty of flea-market vendors, musical acts, and other entertainments, but the real centerpiece of the Festival to me is the World's Largest Skillet. Who can say it isn't beautiful?

It's 10 feet 6 inches in diameter, and it weighs 700 pounds. It can cook 885 quarters of chicken at one time, and requires 300 gallons of peanut oil to do so. They also use approximately 375 pounds of flour, 75 pounds of salt, 30 pounds of pepper, and 30 pounds of paprika. On average, 8,000 pieces of chicken are prepared each year on the giant skillet.

Former Lawrenceburg mayor and Harland Sanders lookalike Colonel Bob Thompson (seen below at the Derby) is a regular guest at the Festival.


(photo of the superskillet is by Daveblog.)

Colonel Sanders Impersonators

Two ersatz KFC mascots have caught my eye lately.

Colonel Bob Thompson (photo above), former mayor of Lawrenceburg, is in demand these days as a Sanders impersonator. According to his website:

"Thompson has appeared as the late Col. Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, in promotional events marking the 50th Anniversary of the KFC restaurant chain. Thompson has also won several look-alike contests, most notable was the World's Chicken Festival.

Colonel Bob makes many personal appearances. Please contact him for your special event!"

I found Colonel Bob's business card in the parking lot at Claudia Sanders Dinner House recently.

And then there's Don Decker (photo below) who LEO Weekly recently profiled. According to the article, Decker is a man with a criminal past who found redemption in imitating Harland Sanders for tourist photo-ops at Louisville's Fourth Street Live (Much to Fourth Street Live's dismay.)



A third Sanders mimic, one Thomas Rost, is mentioned on numerous websites that all seem to be referencing a now-removed Wikipedia entry. Aside from that, I can find no info on Rost.

At this rate, professional lookalikes of Sanders could one day be as lucrative a gig as Abraham Lincoln impersonators.

The "Mad Stone"

February 19, 1903, in the brittle and decaying pages of an obscure Lawrenceburg newspaper called simply It:

On last Thursday, the little eight-year-old son of Mrs Ide Long of Van Buren, was brought to this place to have the mad stone applied to a wound on his hand made by a rabid dog some days past. When the stone was applied, it adhered one hour and forty minutes.

Mad stone? Adhered? Huh?

I'd never heard of such a thing, but as it turns out the Mad Stone was a peculiar quasi-medical superstition of the day. According to an essay by Dennis Muncrief:

The Mad Stone is a stony concretion (as a hair ball) taken from the stomach of a deer. They have been described as round or oval in shape with a porous surface texture measuring about 3 to 4 inches in size and very light weight. They have a brownish-green color with a highly polished surface. The purpose of the Mad Stone was to cure rabies, hence the name.

The Mad Stone is an object that has several grades of curative power. All stones are not created equal. A stone from a brown deer will work in a bind if another cannot be found. A better grade of Mad Stone comes from a white or spotted deer. This stone works a lot better than a stone from a brown deer. The very best Mad Stone comes from an albino or "witch deer" that is pure white with pink eyes. It not only cures the rabies, it also cures rattlesnake and spider bites.

Now, there is a very strict set of rules associated with the use and care of a Mad Stone. First, it can never be bought or sold. It must never be changed in shape. The patient must go to the person with the Mad Stone. The Mad Stone must never be brought to the patient. There can never be a charge for the use of the Mad Stone. The stone was usually passed down from father to son. Anyone who owns a Mad Stone can use the stone as long as they follow a strict set of procedures.

The use of the Mad Stone is quite strict. The procedure for curing the infected patient is as follows. When the person with the bite arrives at the place where the Mad Stone is kept, the stone is boiled in sweet milk. The sweet milk neutralizes the poison from the bite. The stone must be boiled in the milk until the milk turns green. That is how you can tell when all the rabies is out of the stone.

After boiling the stone in milk, it is applied directly to the wound. The wound must be bleeding. If it is no longer bleeding it must be scraped until it is bleeding. The Mad Stone will stick to the wound if there is rabies infection in the wound. It does not need to be tied. When the stone falls off the wound, it is boiled again in milk to remove the poison from the stone. The stone is re-applied to the wound. If it sticks, there is still rabies in the wound. When the stone fails to stick to the wound, the rabies poison is all gone and the patient will not get rabies.

Thankfully these aren't standard issue in Kentucky doctor's offices anymore. (They're not, right?)

And just a day after discussing the "Devil Deer", now we get references to "Witch Deer"? The plot thickens, like an Appalachian forest.