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Monday, May 19, 2014

Cool Hand Fangs


I comment quite often on food issues, after all like many people, eating has become almost an obsession for me. I could just as easily have kept or acquired many other vices to help ease me over life's little hurdles but food provides an endless amount of choices, is readily available, it's legal, injures no others and it provides comfort; thus the name “comfort food”.
Who ever heard of comfort beer?

I always mentioned my on going battle to win the personal war over girth, but another strange twist came to my attention recently whenever I frequent the local hipster-markets (Trader Joe's & Whole Foods), namely the war going on in my shopping cart at the check out line.

I never realized that not all foods in my basket love one other, actually the check out hipster request that I place some my choices in separate bags, almost like battling siblings being ordered into separate corners of a house by a frustrated mother.

They never seem to explain just why I should choose to have my meats placed in their own canvass bag away from all my other choices but I listen very carefully on each ride home and have yet to hear any commotion between a chicken leg and a can of beans.




I think their screwing with me. They have no other hobbies since no one seems to be “occupying” anyplace at this time.

We all know those hollow leggers who eat all day without remorse. There are no food battles for them.

I have one in particular in my own family, my brother Johnny Fangs.

I can devote volumes to his legacy of consumption but the story I have today is one minor episode in the life of Gobzilla, (the monster who devours gobs and gobs of food hourly).

I thought about Johnny yesterday while watching a Paul Newman movie.

We were kids both away at summer camp and the movie everyone was talking about was “Cool Hand Luke”. There is that memorable scene where Luke (Paul Newman) devours 50 hard boiled eggs on a wager placed by the other chain gang inmates to help pass the time.

I was telling the other campers about Johnny's accomplishments and of course there were many doubters. If they had only noticed that he regularly returned in line for 3rd 4th and 5th helpings they would have saved a few camp dollars when the wagers were placed.

This time it was pancakes.

I lived with him, I new his culinary skill set and to consume 50 pancakes in an hour while washing it all down with a few gallons of milk would be child's play for him.

We were both ready to earn some serious camp bucks.




As the clock ticked away there he was proudly pouring syrup all over his conquest, downing glass after glass of milk with the ease of that skinny Asian hot dog eating champion kid.

Fifty was certainly a stretch but after one hour there he lay on the ground, his big old smile covered in stickiness, wearing a milk mustache holding a fistful of camp dollars and asking if he could get a doggy bag to take back to the cabin.

The rest of us hurled pancakes like Frisbees in a big food fight.
Cool Hand Fangs, the legend continues.