Now, people, we don’t much like the show Lost, and scratch our heads and make the excuse that we have to leave to continue marinating a skirt steak or something whenever someone tries to expound on the virtues of the show to us. But today, we realize that you are probably feeling a little dazed, a little angry — like a woman who has just learned that her husband has a whole second family with an albino pygmy wife in Cincinnati or something. But we digress.

We’ve always kind of felt that JJ Abrams’ goal was just to mess with as many people’s heads as possible. That there were no “answers” to be had in his psuedo-mystic-spiritual-sci-fi-adventure mindfuck. And whether the whole thing was all just one character’s dream or all of the characters were dead and in purgatory or if Abrams just wanted to be super-cute and claim it’s not purgatory because that would be Judeo-Christian mythology and the show’s great spiritualism is something else so they were in a purgatory-like place, but not “Pugatory,” well, reader, we just don’t care.

But there is one thing we do care about. Pork. And barbecuing it. Wait, that is two things.

Regardless, as much as we would never allow Kraft barbecue sauce within a distance roughly outlined by a legal restraining order of any meat we had supervision over preparing, we were tickled by Target’s Lost-themed ad of a boar running through the jungle on the island advertising said sauce. And we can’t help but concur with the commenter on New York’s Vulture who said, “At least the ads had closure.”

In just one month, five chefs, five heritage-bred pigs, and five winemakers will converge on Pier 60 in Manhattan. Yes, swine-lovers, It’s time for Cochon 555, the traveling cooking competition which we’ve likened to an ATP for pork, which takes place on March 21. (In a back-to-back porkfest, the Boston Cochon goes off the very next weekend.) Tom Mylan of Brooklyn’s Meat Hook will be on hand as VIP butcher and Ryan Farr of San Francisco’s 4505 Meats, the organization’s “resident butcher,” will also be there, so we expect meat demonstrations.

This year the battle moves to Pier 60, from its surprisingly comfy home at Hiro ballroom, where last January Fatty Crab’s Corwin Kave took top honors. This time around he’ll be fighting under the Fatty ‘Cue mantle — and the restaurant may even be open by the time the competition comes around this year.

Kave will have his work cut out for him in defending his “Prince of Porc” title: The competition is fierce and this will be a contest to be watched. The winner of each Cochon is chosen by a panel of 20 judges, with a separate people’s choice winner determined by popular vote (which, in our opinion, allows chefs to stack the judges’ plates and save the most daring constructions for them, though most abide by gentleman’s rules of conduct and strive for equal representation on both sides of the table). The winner will go on to compete in the Grand Cochon against the winners from other cites.

This is the toughest field of chefs we’ve ever seen at a Cochon. There are a lot intangibles at play, though. The winner is not always the one with the most stars, or the best knife skills, or most time spent playing in the mud at farms. Herewith, the Butcher handicaps the odds on this year’s Cochon New York.

Corwin Kave, Fatty ‘Cue
Kave has his title on the line here and will bring all he’s got. The Fatty team is behind him as evidenced by the crew proffering the Tiger Special (Tiger beer, shot of whiskey, shot of pickle juice) to those who show support for their chef in the Cochon. Fatty ‘Cue has been in development for what seems like forever, so Kave has had his fair share of practice on the whole hog — what amounts to a solid year of training (and word is it’s paid off) — all of which gives him an excellent shot at repeating.
Odds: 3-1

Mark Ladner, Del Posto
Ladner is making a return trip to the Cochon and was barely edged out last year by Kave in a tightly contested battle for porc prowess. He must have been itching for a rematch after seeing the burly Crab crew take the stage last year, PBR cans in hand. The refined and reserved Ladner somehow made his bones in Batali kitchens, so he surely brings an interesting mix of brass and artistry to his work. As reserved as Ladner seems on the outside, he also has an edge to him. The fires of revenge, coupled with his kitchen craftmanship, could put him over the top.
Odds: 5-1

Adam Kaye, Blue Hill at Stone Barns
We must preface this by saying that Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns is one of our favorite restaurants and one of a very few reasons we can find to go up to Westchester. Kaye, who comes from a long line of butchers — his great-grandfather was a butcher and his grandfather ran a butcher-supply shop — began working in the kitchen at Stone Barns 10 years ago as the “meat cook” and worked his way up to chef. A lot depends on what pig he’s assigned (this has not yet been determined), as he’s most familiar with working with the Stone Barns house-raised Berkshire. If he pulls the Berkshire it could be a walk.
Odds: 5-2

Gavin Kaysen, Café Boulud
We’re not sure about this one, to be honest with you. For starters, Kaysen has been on television, which is a little suspicious. And he told Food & Wine, in his 2007 “Best New Chefs” interview, that spoons, his favorite kitchen tool, are “like the ultra-utility knife.” Hmm. It’s hard to believe that a man who came to fame as a chef at El Bizcocho, a restaurant in a golf resort and spa in California (the land of fruits and nuts) and thinks that spoons are like knives stands much of a chance of prevailing here. Though he certainly has the chops and could pull off an upset.
Odds: 10-1

We could have just pointed out this wikihow story on how to make a BBQ hat and apron. We could easily have suggested a few materials you could make your hat and apron out of. We could have said use those pig sheets you’ve had since you were 7-years-old that you’ve only soiled once or twice. We could have pointed out that it’s pointless and ridiculous and wonderful all at the same time and makes us want get the knives out. We could have said wear your new outfit this weekend to the second annual 3rd Ward Pig Roast and Dance Party in Brooklyn on Sunday where Tom Mylan will personally butcher a 200-pound hog that will be turned into pork tacos and a base to soak up your PBR.

We could have said all these things, and not said anything about the fact that the word “hat” in the title of the article triggered a contextual ad for “hats for cancer patients.” (Do they really need special hats?) We could have done all of those things. And yet we didn’t. Because what fun would that have been?

American agribusiness is now fouling up the rest of the globe. The Times has run an in depth and illuminating piece about American pork giant Smithfield abusing the laws and lands of Romania. The companies talk only of dropping pork prices for the American consumer, not the environmental impact of the — in the words of Robert Wallace, a visiting professor of geography at the University of Minnesota — “livestock revolution that has created cities of pigs and chickens,” or incidents such as a swine fever (sound familiar?) that swept through the Romanian operations resulting in 67,000 hogs dying or being destroyed, “with infected and healthy pigs shot to stanch the spread.”

But, says the Times story, “Smithfield’s global approach is clear”: Chairman, Joseph Luter III, has described it as moving in a “very, very big way, very, very fast.”

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.)

The three owners of Feast in Houston, Tx.. two British ex-pats and one of their wives, got matching pig tattoos on the occasion of their one year anniversary. The restaurant, highlighted by Frank Bruni in the Times as part of a series on recent restaurant openings the Brunster deems important around the country, is a fierce advocate of nose-to-tail cooking in an unlikely location. While Texans are known to enjoy their meat, they are surely less famous for noshing on pork cheeks, haggis, rabbit’s liver and lamb tongue. They now have the opportunity to enjoy all of the above, and often, says Bruni, on any given night. And the restaurateurs are not out to serve bull testicle for the sake of slapping a testicle on the plate; they make every attempt to justify their being in Houston by sourcing locally — even if the style is far from it.

“We are like lambs in a field,” wrote Schopenhauer in “On the Sufferings of The World,” continuing, “disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.” It’s fate that’s our butcher. Unlike the lambs, who never know the butcher is sharpening his blade, we sense the ravages of time that determine our fate. Ever the cheerful guy, Schopes points out that it’s work, worry, labor and trouble that define our days. However, as an old Kantian, he offers a reasoning: “But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves.”

This is all somehow applicable to the world of Blandings Castle as created by P.G. Wodehouse. In his novel of gluttonous abandon chronicling a sow-fattening contest, “Pigs Have Wings,” the butler Beach, when caught in the cross hairs of Galahand, is described thus: “But his jaw had fallen, and he was looking at his visitor rather in the manner of the lamb mentioned by the philosopher Schopenhauer when closeted with the butcher.” Now the simile doesn’t quite bear itself out, if one is supposed to get the impression that Beach is terrified, since the lambs are never aware of their fate. However, Wodehouse’s double anthropomorphic somersault maneuver might just work, given that Beach is one of only a few characters in the novel with a greater self awareness than the pigs.

Sure, when Mario Batali calls them guanciale they sound palatable — or at least more palatable than 40 Acres’ term: “little fat bombs” — but a pig’s cheek is a pig’s cheek. And it makes bacon seem like a minor indulgence. And that’s just one of the many parts of the animal routinely wasted by city sophisticates. Hankering for some salted and grilled crispy hoof, or a bit of boudin noir (pig’s blood)? Maybe a sow’s ear? The folks at Time Out New York have done us the service of compiling a tour of the whole hog moving through some of city’s top swine servers.