It can’t be good, can it?

We are all well aware of the role that the senses play in advertising, with shopping environments beginning to resemble nothing so much as they do a casino. But this roadside billboard on River Highway created by Charlotte-based ScentAir for Bloom grocery stores  takes the cake … er, rancid filet. Fragrance oil is blown by high-powered fans during prime commute times of 7 – 10 a.m. and 4 – 7 p.m.

We’ve a few problems with this. OK, more than a few. But for starters, do people really want to smell cooking steak making their hungover ways to work at 7 a.m.? Second, can drivers and passengers in the cars screaming by on the highway really get the full effect (the answer, we suppose, is hopefully not — though it seems likely that those stopping for gas will smell it and probably pick up a Slim Jim meat stylus in the convenience store).

Which brings us to another problem: Does artificial meat smell make anyone want to do anything besides throw up? Let us know.

The point, dear reader, is that an awful lot of people know so little about where the meat they tear into around barbecues each weekend comes from that they just cling to catchphrases and buzz words to guide them. Dickson’s and the Eat Meaty crew have come to their rescue. And in doing so, they answer the eternal question: What are you grilling this weekend?

Dickson’s is offering a special that says basically, in the words of Sy Syms, an educated consumer is their best customer. And in this thinking the Chelsea Market-based meat shop offers its grand special for the uniformed and indecisive. In a battle for the ages it’s the Grass-Finished vs. Grain-Finished Burger Bash.

For $70 you get to take the Pepsi Challenge this weekend with enough fresh ground beef to make 20-30 burgers. The bash includes:

• 5lbs of dry aged Grass-Fed Ground Beef from Herondale Farm (in 2.5# packages)
• 5lbs of dry aged Pasture Raised, Grain Finished Ground Beef Wrighteous Organics (in 2.5# packages)

Not only do you get the beef, but you get a whole bunch of knowledge about your food and information about the small-scale suppliers Dickson’s uses. They’re out to change the bad name that grain-fed beef has gotten since being associated with factory farming and agribusiness. The biggest issue here are the farming practices, use of hormones and antibiotics and how the animals are cared for.

So, no, kids, grass-fed beef isn’t necessarily “green” or better and grain-fed isn’t necessarily evil. There are taste differences to be sure, and, after you fire up the grill this weekend and sample each type of burger you’ll know the differences for yourself and can decide which you prefer. Or you can just keep getting both.

And watch out for the killer sheep.

Moving on, we come across a new ethical sustainable locally-sourced Heritage-bred buzzworthy phrase we haven’t seen before:  Steak Shoppe’s beef is  “vintage.” Which sounds great, if you are shopping for a Halston, but a rib-eye? What is it, old beef? According to Steak Shoppe, it “comes from a consortium of family-owned ranches committed to raising natural beef to a higher level of purity. This beef is humanely raised and contains no added hormones, steroids or antibiotics.”

And you thought it was annoying enough that they had to use an olde thymey spelling with two ps and an e.

The challenge (PDF) was to eat a full-on Hill Country feast in under 60 minutes and then the meal was free. The main obstacle (to us at least) was the cupcake required for desert. Our first thought, when we heard the challenge was open to anyone who asked for it, was, why don’t the homeless storm the restaurant?

The tale of the tape for the meat was as follows:

1⁄2 lb. of Moist Brisket
1⁄2 lb. of Lean Brisket
1⁄2 lb. of Beef Shoulder
1⁄2 lb. of Prime Rib

Throw in a couple of sides and a soda and it seems like a pretty easy feat to get your Polaroid up on HC’s gluttony wall of shame “Wall of Cue.” The “winnner” would also receive a hat and T-shirt.

So what happened? Was it too easy?

Consider this: This week’s New York Mag has an infograph comparing the pounds of smoked meat one would need to finish (2) with the fastest time an especially amped up patron finished the challenge (8 minutes).

While it might take some sort of performance enhancing drug (such as a package of  Perky Jerky) to achieve such a spectacularly disgusting time, the challenge seemed flawed, and we said as much to Hill Country. What was needed as part of the challenge was a beer component — perhaps two pitchers, or a pint of everything the joint has on tap. This would truly have upped the anti.

There’s still time, Hill Country. Do it right.

Well we are attempting something similar here at Chez Butcher this morning, except instead of replacing the fine French press coffee that usually gets our days started with some crappy instant crystal, we’ve substituted caffeinated beef jerky.

We feel the need to preface this by saying we are not making this product up. It’s called Perky Jerky and comes in a foil pouch that seems like it’s begging for you to mix its “invigorating” contents with vodka at some cheesy club. (We will save that experiment for another day, but man it’ll be great, and we will certainly have video: “This glitzy stretch outside the Gansevoort Hotel is home to the Meatpacking District’s swanky Provocateur, host to NYC’s finest Eurotrash and B&T visitors. We’ve secretly replaced the Red Bull in the Vodka Red Bulls with super-charged dried beef strips. Will it be rich enough for our special guests?”)

But, next time. Right now we are just testing the product, billed as the “world’s first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack” as a coffee replacement. (Did they have to qualify it as the “first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack” because one loaded with chemicals preceded it?) As far as jerky goes, it’s not at all bad. It’s soft and chewy but not at all tough. There is a nice peppery spice to it, but much too soy saucy for our taste. The guarana might add some zip to the heat on our tongue, or maybe we just got a clump of chili pepper extract.

But then, perhaps we ate it a bit too quickly, though.

There is a certain hotness swelling up in our face and eyes and we feel jittery a few minutes after polishing off the 2 oz. bag. Maybe some instructions on the proper dosage are in order? Or at least a paranoid housewife musing to herself: “That’s funny, Jim never has a second strip of jerky at home.”

In this video made by Liza at Food Curated, proprietor Jake Dickson outlines a few other good reasons to shop at his store. No. 1 probably being that he visits all the farms that he works with to ensure that they live up to his standards (which he outlines), and No. 2 probably being that he describes the taste difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef like he is a sommelier talking about the difference between two Riesling grapes.

Tune in next week when Dickson’s chef Gabe Ross makes terrine. (No, seriously.)

Now, you’d not think a message like this would be necessary, but apparently in Florida it is. One of the owners of the Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk (founded in 1658 and the nation’s oldest cattle farm, if you go in for trivia) was actually arrested Monday for devouring a packet of ground beef while strolling the Rines’ IGA in Indiantown, Florida. Maybe she was just craving iron?

Montauk’s Diane Leaver grazed away on the open pack, carrying the styrofoam tray with $1.98 worth of raw ground beef around the store, then dropped the package and proceeded to the checkout, like she had done nothing more than eaten some purloined M&Ms. Both impressive and completely disgusting. Horrified clerks called the police, though it’s not clear if they were upset about the misbegotten meat, or worried Leaver might be some sort of zombie.

That’s what living in Montauk year-round can do to you, kids. All we can say is, those horses better watch out when she gets back.

Mile High management encourages you carnivorous animals to follow the shop on twitter to stay abreast of the meat supply situation.

The week-old Montreal-style food purveyor has had a roller coaster opening, and we’ve been salivating over the notion of digging into poutine and thick slabs of pastrami ever since the Robs posted this bit of meat porn on GS.

Well congratulations, Brooklyn. Save some for the rest of us. We’d actually like to get there and get our arteries clogged before St. Vincent’s, the nearest hospital to Butcher Westside HQ, closes, as has been threatened.

The wearing meat department just got a little bit weirder. Sure the meat coat guy was sort of hoot, but he looked like he was involved in some sort of bizarre Christian Fundamentalist healing ritual. So-called Brief Jerky are underpants (bedazzled no less) that are meant to arouse the, er, senses of an amorous carnivore.

They are not for the faint of heart or, at &139, the faint of wallet. Actually, we don’t know who they are for, but we do get an inordinate amount of hits from people searching for “wearing meat,” so maybe there are things people do in private that we don’t want to know about.

And as if further proof were needed that these panties bring out the very, very strangest in the already extremely odd, Ted Nugent sent the company the above inscribed record sleeve as thanks for a pair of the briefs, signing off with “Can’t wait to see how they taste.”

Buy two pounds of cheap fat hamburger
so the meatloaf will be sweet, chop up
a big onion, add leaves of basil,
Tabasco, newspaper ads, soy sauce,
quail eggs, driftwood, tomato ketchup,
and library paste. Bake for ten hours
at thirty-five degrees. When pitchers
hit the batter’s head, Kurt, it is called
a beanball. The batter takes first base.

This poem revisits a series Hall wrote 25 years ago called “Baseball,” addressed to dadist collage artist Kurt Schwitters who died in 1948 (who was German, and probably not a Red Sox fan as is Hall). There were nine poems (one for each inning) with nine syllables to each line and nine lines to each stanza.

The poems lament the pains of mortality and the joys of baseball but lack any serious references to ground beef. It may have taken 25 years to correct that oversight, but better late than never.