America and Meat. The two go together like heart attacks and cholesterol. Clark Gable and misogyny. Mitt Romney and meh.

And now there is an art project and forthcoming handsome coffee table book at the nexus of these two great institutions called, appropriately, Meat America. We’re not running for office during this primary season (so please stop begging, republican party brass), but if we were, we’d have photographer and food stuffs designer Dominic Episcopo make the posters: we are thinking maybe a “Heart and Chuck” platform, just so Sarah Palin could ask us, “How’s that hearty chucky thing working out for you.” Our answer, as usual, would be a satisfied belch.

"Elvis Tenderloin" by Dominic Episcopo

Spread the bloody truth.

]]> http://thebutcherblog.com/love-me-tenderloin/feed/ 0 http://thebutcherblog.com/the-kevin-bacon-bacon-bust-and-our-long-coronary-nightmare/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-kevin-bacon-bacon-bust-and-our-long-coronary-nightmare http://thebutcherblog.com/the-kevin-bacon-bacon-bust-and-our-long-coronary-nightmare/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 03:36:28 +0000 Bill http://thebutcherblog.com/?p=1302 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; } Oh, dear reader, how we wish this post were about some story where the actor Kevin Bacon is arrested for some illegal pork transport or the like. Alas, it is not. Yes, as Grub Street and others have so emphatically pointed out every time it comes up, bacon is a tired trend. All the bacon [...]]]> #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { height: 30px; width:50%; padding-top:1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; height: 30px; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; }

Oh, dear reader, how we wish this post were about some story where the actor Kevin Bacon is arrested for some illegal pork transport or the like. Alas, it is not.

Yes, as Grub Street and others have so emphatically pointed out every time it comes up, bacon is a tired trend. All the bacon chewing gum and vegetarian-friendly kosher powders that make everything taste like bacon are an abomination. Some in our stable have even written multiple letters directly to bacon begging it to stop. But it doesn’t stop.

The latest bacon idiocy is a bust of Kevin Bacon made out bacon. Sorry, yes, it’s to help cancer patients. But it doesn’t look a thing like Kevin Bacon.  It does look exactly like Conan O’Brien, however. But that sort of ruins the joke.

People get away with way too much dumb shit just because they say they are raising money for cancer, anyway.

But all of this nonsense is beside the point. Because everyone loves bacon, right? As Jessica Applestone pointed out Primal in Napa this weekend, even vegetarians eat bacon. So, we think bacon is the wedge to start the whole-animal conversation. Give a man a bacon pork jowl and he’ll really be listening to you (if he can hear you over the crunching). So, bring on the busts of Kevin Bacon made out of bacon and sell them on eBay. Go ahead.

Because you can’t stop bacon. Hell, there is even a bacon mania Wikipedia page. How can you hate on any trend that allowed this to be written in Wikipedia?

There is a “clamoring” for the bacon happy hour at Bad Decisions bar in Fells Point which includes a menu that is completely redone with bacon dishes and big bowls of bacon served on the bar (using up to 30 pounds of bacon in a two hour period).^[8]

But despite the gross implications of 30 pounds of bacon being consumed in a Baltimore bar alongside Natty Bos at break-neck speed, the insatiable thirst for bacon is an opportunity. The Wikipedia entry on “bacon mania” references a story in The Stranger subtitled “The End of Our Long Coronary Nightmare” that predicted swine flu would end the bacon explosion. Of course, it did not. And therein lies the strength and power of this foodstuff.

British academic and journalist Aleks Krotoski is retelling George Orwell’s novel “1984″ one word at a time through one photo a day. Today’s photo, day and word 22 — “breast” –  just happens to be from the meat section at Sainsbury’s on Victoria Road, according to Krotoski. This “breast” is meant to refer to where Winston Smith’s chin is nuzzled, but just go with it.

You might argue that this is the long way round to reading a novel, but the combinations of images and words in the stream create a transcendent beauty that is unique to the project. Krotoski explains her rationale for the lifestream project on her blog. Yes she’s aware of the irony of combining lifestreaming and “1984.” We look forward to her rendition of “Animal Farm.”

Where in the world is this meat from?

View Larger Map

Meatloaf is an art form. Like collage, like poetry, like a devastating change-up, a good meatloaf is a delicate balance of flavors and textures, carefully combined by a master hand. But you don’t have to take our word for it. A poet laureate has our back: In Donald Hall’s poem “Meatloaf,” published in this week’s New Yorker, the art of creation is celebrated:

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.

Sarah Illenberger is a Berlin-based artist (German, why are they always German?) who made this pig out of cold cuts. It’s just a small sample of her work. She has also made a cow out of cold cuts (after the jump, of course), human body parts out of yarn and stained glass depictions of perfume ads (that either look like religious art or Nazi propaganda, depending on your point of view and how you feel about Chanel.)

As if any further proof of how fucked up German artists are was needed, along comes Patricia Waller, who technically is Chilean but has lived in Germany almost all of her life. Sure the suckling pig (or spanferkel) she crocheted is pretty great, but things get disturbing quickly.

This bunny probably had this coming to him, in Waller’s mind, which is fine, because it’s sort of neat in a frightening Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction sort of way, but then things quickly move into deeply, deeply disturbing territory. We are talking weird aliens with giant genitalia, pink S&M outfits, beasts gnawing on human flesh, creepy prosthetic devices, animal experiments, dead dogs, severed heads, and dentures—all made out of delightful, comforting yarn.

Entropy, the work of Czech artist David Černý, who had the balls to take grant money to create a work of art under the auspices of touting unity to celebrate Czech Republic’s EU presidency and use it to make something that did exactly the opposite, may have garnered some attention in Europe and stirred up controversy but does this concern us?

As with most things that happen in other parts of the world that don’t involve oil, the American press has sort of failed to take notice. But the Butcher noticed, and why? Because one of the countries, Portugal to be exact, is a butcher block with three nice pieces of meat on it. It’s supposed to mean something that the cuts are in the shape of former Portuguese colonies Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique, but we are American and it just makes us want a steak.

Each of the pieces in the giant hanging sculpture in the form of a child’s sheet of plastic punch-out toys is meant to be a representation of a different EU member country, but Portugal may be the only one that seems at all edible. People are currently debating whether Slovakia is some sort of salami or human entrails, so we reserve judgment on Slovakia until this matter is resolved.

Wouldn’t life be even more awesome if you could eat your way up the creamy gorgonzola capped peaks of a Tri Tip, base-jump from the summit with a tortilla for a chute and make a splash in the savory juices of a gravy river? Then perhaps it’s time you took a lesson in nutritional geography from the fine folks at The National Cattleman’s Beef Association who proudly present “Powerful Beefscapes,” six breathtaking vistas made almost entirely of meat. In this magical “Land of Lean Beef” you can have your ground with a side of rocks and maybe a tree or two while relishing – according to the press release – “the qualities unique to beef: passion, protein and strength.” Think flavor country, but for your feedbag and here, the only thing being smoked is the whole goddamn landscape – if that’s your thing anyway. For in this vast terrain of beef, there’s more than enough room for grilled, pan-seared and roasted, too. So go on, loosen your belt and indulge your bottomless appetite with your newfound freedom from the scourges of fat. It’s the American Dream airbrushed and larger than life. Meat porn to make you suck back a line of spittle and gnash your teeth with anticipation. Evocative full color spreads awakening a hunger that no ordinary meal can ever hope to sate. Give me a coastline of rare steak and don’t even think of putting it on a plate. When I’m finished I’m going to swallow the sun for dessert then sink into my couch, the very picture of health. And if you’re still searching for more fodder to arouse your carnal-ivorous desires, contact the aptly named Meghan Pusey (mpusey@beef.org) for hi-res images (suitable for framing or wallpapering your den) and recipes so you can create small-scale replicas to enjoy in the privacy of your home. Just don’t get any on you. Some stains are impossible to get out. -Scott J Lachut

More beefy vistas and the Butcher speaks after the jump.

Some in the media industry see this as just another food industry fiasco. They might not be quite as susceptible to the dulcet tones of Matthew Mcconaughey’s voice as are the stocky well-fed women of middle America.

There’s pointless performance art done for the sake of being weird (such as anything involving the word vaginal) and then there’s the project “Wants for Sale” by an NYC couple, which is pure genius. They take an item someone might want, say a slice of pepperoni pizza, a plane ticket to Vegas, or an iPhone, paint it and price the small canvases at what the actual thing would cost—$3.50, $488.50 and $649.17 $432.42, respectively. Then the artists use the buyer’s money to purchase the item when the painting is sold. Their masterpiece? A 12″x12″ of a juicy steak that went for $18.39. We think they may need to aim a little higher and suggest the $175 foie gras and golden truffle mayonnaise topped burger at the Wall Street Burger Shoppe.