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Head butt

The Daily Picayune, September 25, 1883. Oh maaaan, that is beyond Gothic. Inferably the animal must have pulled and torqued and worried the man’s neck until his head broke clean off. Then there would have been a season of intense insect and scavenger activity until the bone was stripped. But exactly what kind of evidence underwrote the supposition that said skull was that of a negro? Was this the opinion of some armchair physical anthropologist, or did the hard-luck scenario that produced this trophy just strike our hunting party as a black thing?
Speaking of trophies, I’ve just returned from the James Beard Foundation Awards dinner with a big honking medal around my neck, in recognition of my service to mince pie scholarship. Does that raise the tone of this here historical forum or what? But don’t worry, folks: I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the blog.

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12 Comments

  1. That’s no medal. It’s a hundred-year-old mince pie. Run!

    Congratulations on the recognition of your awesome foodohistorical research. (Asimov coined the word “foodohistory” during a snack break between writing two books.)

    I’ll never win anything from the James Beard people, as long as nobody appreciates my recipe for Habanero-Encrusted Habaneros With Habnaneros. I don’t know why the Gerber Baby Food Company keeps sending me those nasty replies.

    So what was served at the James Beard Foundation Awards dinner? Did they have the the ketchup in packets or was it in a bottle like in a classy restaurant?

    • Thanks@
      I dropped the menu and program in my goodie bag for reference, but then somebody stole my goodie bag.Only thing I can tell you is that the entree was Braised Short Ribs with Baked Ricotta, Pine Nuts, Black Olives and Crumbled Feta, by Suzanne Goin of Lucques,in Los Angeles. It was good and all, but I could have easily eaten six or seven more servings.

  2. Sounds good ,Kibo!Have you ever had the pleasure of trying Froot Loop Pork Butt? Congratulations , Larry .You are fully deserving of many accolades.Regarding the above story , I’m quite sure the critter would have dragged the whole installation on down to the nearest chemin de fer and waited for the iron horse to do its thing , vis a vis the unburdening.

  3. I stopped eating Froot Loops once I was old enough to realize they were misspelled — I have a rule against eating any sort of misspelled food, including (but not limited to) Quik, Hy-Grade hot dogs, Cheez-Its, and egg nog (which should be spelled “egg hwullpBLARRRRGGGGGGH”.)

    Also, there are too many colors of Froot Loops these days. Back when I was a kid, they only came in pink, orange, and yellow (two of which tasted the same.) Trix came in the same three colors, and Lucky Charms only had four colors (adding the “New Blue Diamonds” to those was a big deal.) I feel that the food industry should maintain parity and so I refuse to eat the six-color Froot Loops until there are also six colors of steak, six colors of mayonnaise, and six colors of everything else. Sure, there are red curry, yellow curry, and green curry, but where’s my blue curry? I bet even James Beard doesn’t know! In fact, I bet he doesn’t even have a beard!

  4. Sorry to bring this fanciful discussion into the realm of fact, but I was under the impression that deer shed their antlers each year and grow new ones. Is that not how it works? My best guess is that somehow an already detached-from-its-owner skull somehow got onto the deer’s antlers while they were growing, and the antlers grew into/around the skull.

    P.S. Froot Loops and their generic equivalents are banned from our table because, in addition to being nearly impossible to find and very expensive to buy over here, caused our daughter, who has not been exposed to the same levels of food coloring as a typical American child her age, to produce technicolor poop after eating Froot Loops for breakfast on a trip to Grandma’s house. (Wow, what a mess of prepositional phrases!)

    • It is not misspelled, Jackie: they’re made with real froot.

      I believe James Beard had several beards–divorced and widowed society ladies for the most part.

      I was wondering about that antler-shedding thing myself. But if annual shedding is the rule, how do the great big trophy ones have time and resources to grow especially impressive 12-point racks and the like? We need a woodsperson to explain this, or somebody with access to Google even.

      What’s the downside to technicolor poop? And how do you negotiate the beet issue?

        • Jackie
        • Posted May 6, 2010 at 5:35 am
        • Permalink

        She doesn’t like beets, so that settles that. I guess there’s really no downside to technicolor poop, other than the fact it scared me the first time it happened, since I didn’t make the connection to the food coloring immediately. I thought she was ill.

        • mrparallel
        • Posted May 7, 2010 at 4:59 pm
        • Permalink

        That was a plot point in a Stephen King novel as I recall–kids eating a red-dyed cereal freaking their parents out when they spewed. It kills the brand overnight. Then some wendigos come and kill everybody except 5 nice people. Something like that. I can’t recall the title.

  5. I was also wondering about the beets. And Kibo , do you happen to have a blawg out there somewhere? Cause I thought it might be pretty good.

    • Well, I have this Web site that hasn’t been updated in over ten years, and is therefore only of interest to archaeologists and people who want to know how horrible Web 1.0 design looked. (“Daddy, what was a textured background GIF?”) And of course there’s the Usenet newsgroup (alt.religion.kibology) but I haven’t had a chance to catch up with it in quite few months. I keep meaning to set up some sort of actual, functioning blog someday…

        • Jackie
        • Posted May 10, 2010 at 4:04 am
        • Permalink

        You’re not THE Kibo, are you? If so, I’ll have to update my geek code. :)

  6. Holy fuck, Kibo, I never realized we have been in the presence of Internet royalty this whole time:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibo_%28Usenet%29


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