Blogabillies

Fried Chicken: A Southern Addiction

by T-Bone, certified chickenologist

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to eat fried chicken.

Heroin couldn't be worse. Besides Pop Tarts (Kellogg's, are you reading this?), I am addicted to fried chicken. Those who know me know both addictions well. I am not proud of this reality of my culinary life. But I face my tasty failing with a roll of Bounty in one hand and a chicken wing in the other.

I have gone to great lengths to get my fix of our flowered, featherless friend – strolling the streets of New York at midnight and having to settle for a bastardized Chinese version of my beloved bird, or driving LA's freeways looking for El Pollo at odd hours. I have chickened my way across the South more than once and have the chest pains to prove it.

In case you didn't know, God did not send manna to the Israelites. He sent fried chicken. That's what kept them wandering for forty years in the wilderness.

On film shoots, I look for that little chicken shape on signs. On road trips, I ask about fried chicken establishments - and breaking an enshrined man-law, I will ask for directions. When it comes to the real white meat, I take no chances.

Last week, while driving to UNC, Mr. Gene and I stopped at the Nottoway restaurant on I-85, south of Richmond, to chow down on their particularly famous version, served up and washed down with one of the finest specimens of sweet iced tea I have ever soaked my tongue in (and Southern sweet  tea is an whole 'nother blog).

Mr, Briggs and I flew into a small Louisiana town once at midnight for a week of shooting, and we had the cabbie run by Popeye's on the way to our late check-in. Even with my fixation, it's not a good idea to eat a bucket of fried chicken that late. We paid the colonary price later. But I'd go back. Life is filled with sacrifice.

I come by this fried chicken Jones honestly. In high school, there was a small restaurant in my hometown of Andalusia, Alabama, called "The Little Kitchen." Wednesdays was all-you-can-eat fried chicken day. Some of us from the football team always went there to test that all-you-can-eat promise. Harris won the prize. He ate 48 pieces of fried chicken at lunch one day in the spring of 1975. He went on to be a star linebacker at Auburn.

Fried chicken first. Star linebacker next. Coincidence? I think not.

My mother makes some of the best I have ever eaten. But then again, every mother in the Deep South can claim that prize. I have tested this theory enough to have a PHD in KFC. I can honestly say I have eaten what would pass for fried chicken in every single place on earth I have ever been.

Speaking of KFC . . . When my oldest son, Abe, was about ten years old, we went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken (it was just turning into KFC at the time).

We walked in the door and Abe noticed a huge poster of Colonel Sanders in the entryway. The old white-whiskered, Southern gentleman was sitting in a yard chair under a big magnolia in front of a plantation with a subtle smile that said, "Fried chicken made me rich." Under the framed picture was a small gold plaque that read: Colonel Harland Sanders.

Abe stopped and looked at the image and blurted out, "Hey look dad! It's Deion Sanders' grandpaw!"

I looked at his face in shock. He looked totally serious, as if he'd just discovered some deep truth of the universe. And then I saw the people in the restaurant. It was packed. Not one Caucasian in the place. They all turned to look at the two white people who looked totally out of place at the moment.

An old African American woman near the door smiled at Abe as she ate her fried chicken and said gently to no one in particular, "Lord, honey, I sure hope that's not true."

Why I Watch the Super Bowl: Joe Willie

by T-Bone

I am a college football guy. The idea of millionaires playing a game I would still love to play for free is tough. But because I am from Alabama, I watch the Super Bowl; not because the teams are my favorites or because anyone I am rooting for is playing, like Shaun Alexander (a fellow Tide alumni, who last year ran his way into the NFL MVP); not because I have a commercial on it either (I haven't had one on there in years).

Instead, I watch the Super Bowl because of one man who is old and bent and cripple and flawed, who still has a famously carved face that is hawkishly capable of exploding into a smile that makes you believe that losers can win and the crippled can walk and the blind will see. 

This man made his share of mistakes. He wasn't exactly a role model nor a model of moral behavior, and he may have played drunk or hungover on more than one occasion. But even with a crushing after-all-nighter fur ball in his mouth, he could throw 5 bitterly accurate touchdowns and embarrass gifted athletes who were as sober as Jerry Fallwell. He played through pain and insults and under the pressure of fame, threats, money and cortisone.

 

The last time I saw him live on TV, he was drunk again, asking a young sportscaster to kiss him. I nearly cried. There was a time when there would have been 40 million women lined up for that opportunity. Not anymore. As he smiled and looked vulnerable, the woman squirmed and turned him down.

How the mighty have fallen. It made me realize that our heroes are flawed, and that's why we love them. They are like us, but we are not like them. Not on Super Bowl Sunday.

Joe Willie Namath is why the Super Bowl is Super. His young, brash guarantee of victory against the favored Colts put him in the cultural ring with Mohammed Ali. Joe Willie Namath came into a league that only a few eccentric diehards followed, and the Jets' Sonny Werblin stroked the young Alabama quarterback the biggest check in football history. Why? Because he knew Namath could not only deliver the TD's and the wins and the women that would insure success, Namath could deliver the baby that was soon to be the biggest thing in sports.

On January 12, 1969, in Miami's Orange Bowl (a stadium he knew all too well from his days under Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant), Broadway Joe threw his way into Super Bowl history by backing up his boast and grinning like it was easy. But that wasn't the biggest thing that happened on that day when he famously ran off the field pumping the number one sign. The Super Bowl itself rode into national holiday status on his ruined knees, devil-may-care attitude and brutal arm.

Namath turned the Super Bowl from a game into an icon; he took it from a stadium into America's living rooms and hearts. Legendary NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, the marketing genius who saw the power of football on TV and made the Super Bowl into the holiday we know today, needed a magic, defining moment, a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus blinding light that would rip the past from the future and give birth to something bigger than a mere game -- which is what the Super Bowl was before that day.

Namath delivered it like one of his dreaded passes, renowned because they came so hard that your hands would bleed. 

Pre-Namath, 40-50 million people watched the Super Bowl and a 30-second commercial cost 42 grand. Today, a billion viewers worldwide watch two teams, dozens of commercials (at $2.3 million per :30) and our own addiction to celebrity in a Roman-numeral'd buffet of capitalism that rivals Christmas and overshadows Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July in the psyche of America.

All other sports seem like multi-game, scripted affairs (March Madness, The World Series). But when the Super Bowl cranks up, it's one big Chipotle burrito. Millionaires are made. Corporate cash is guzzled. Companies fight it out in the commercials. Legends are cast and careers are made. Embarrassments are unfurled. It's an orgy of corporate, athletic entertainment. We might see anything from Mick Jagger shake his 60-something arm-flaps to Janet Jackson's pierced nipple. There's even a football game.

David Halberstam's XL Super Bowl: The Opus is adapted in this week's Sports Illustrated and if you love football, you should check it out.

And then there's Joe. When Susan and I were in college at the University of Alabama, Joe Namath would show up on campus regularly with the newest Jets QB, former Alabama QB Richard Todd. I suspected a couple of cheerleaders were the lure, but that's just my opinion.

Namath was an adopted Alabamian. We share a Crimson diploma -- and on a particular night at his restaurant in Tuscaloosa, we shared more. Susan and I were about to start eating when Namath hit me in the head with the kitchen door of his restaurant, just as cleanly as he ever hit Maynard for a TD back in the day.

That big grin exploded and he grabbed me and patted my head like a dog. He apologized, and I apologized for denting his door with my pate. Then he sat down, autographed a napkin for Susan, talked for a few minutes about our recent marriage, and paid for our meal. It was like he knew us.

I can still see that big grin, that same grin those guys saw in the huddle in 1969 on the field in the Super Bowl as he made them believe they could do what nobody else believed would ever happen – except Joe Willie.

That's why I watch the Super Bowl.

5 Things Meme: Tagged by My Own Petard

Back in the fall of 2006, Connie Reece plowed me out of her memory and Googled me off the web and we reconstituted a friendship started nearly 25 years ago. We had a digital reunion. I'd been writing a blog for Big River Advertising in Richmond, VA, and Connie was starting up a blog for AnthonyBarnum PR in Austin, TX. It didn’t take long for two old Southern storytellers to start Blogabillies with the hopes of making a few people laugh as we celebrate our Southern heritage and humor.

Last week Connie told me that I have been tagged for the Five Things meme. She's the one who tagged me, so I guess she should know. She swears it's a good thing, and I'm pretty sure I trust her. So here goes.

Five things about me that nobody probably cares to know:

1. I was unable to read until I was almost in the 5th grade. One day my mother dropped me off at the public library and I dug around until I figured it out, learning to read and then write by thumbing through well-worn copies of Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver. Eventually I became a story junkie and I continue to need my daily fix. I currently own about 9,000 books. I still get Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver.

2.  The Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery was one of my first brushes with the unfolding history of that turbulent era in my home state of Alabama. Inside of a year in 1965, I ran across Dr. Martin Luther King and George Wallace, face to face. Several years later, after having met Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant several times, I figured I'd met every Alabamian who mattered and some more than once.

3.  Michael Jordan has beaten me more than once playing H.O.R.S.E. It's sad that I list that athletic failure as a highlight in my life; but I don't have a lot of big-time accomplishments, so there it is.

4. I jumped from the second floor of my hotel in Santa Monica during the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994. Thank God I wasn't staying on the 11th floor. I would have jumped from there as well, no doubt, since I was in an unthinking hurry to exit the undulating building. I landed in a palm tree, slid roughly to the trembling turf ,and dropped next to a half-naked Fabio look-a-like who’d also jumped. That memory is worse than the quake.

5.  This is sick. I am addicted to Pop Tarts. I mean, seriously hooked. It's not that I just enjoy one now and then either. I have a frosted-brown-sugar-and-cinnamon monkey on my back.  I mainline them raw, no milque-toaster for me. I have eaten at least three Pop Tarts a day for 25 years. Do the math – that's 27,375 Pop Tarts that I can honestly recall chomping. Kellogg's owes me a lifetime achievement award.

Now, since I read about one-tenth of the number of blogs Connie does, I've had trouble identifying five bloggers to tag.  So if any of the bloggers below are second-time taggees, or the kind who despise this sort of meme, I'll offer my apologies in advance. Otherwise, take your meme-medicine and 'fess up.

1. Starbucker, author of Ramblings of a Glass Half Full. I especially like the fact that he writes music extolling caffeine, and he still considers Pluto as a bona fide planet.

2. Ryan Anderson, who writes the New PR blog and doesn't let the glamour of PR go to his head.

3. Chris Brogan, proprietor of the Grasshopper Factory, an almost daily poster of self-portraits. (Happy Birthday, Harold!)

4. Curt Hopkins over at Foam Finger Media also works behind the scenes to protect bloggers who face government repression.

5. Jon Sobol, whose Talking Shop is part of the 76 Design group, advocates for every company to have a Chief Storytelling Officer. Chief Storyteller; that's a job I want!

Talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation

by T-Bone

I turned 50 today.

I already got the letter last month - the solicitation from AARP. Tossed it as fast as I could. But now I'm rethinking my membership in the Nastiest Generation and possibly the AARP as well. My G-g-g-generation now means sales, profits and rock n' roll, baby.

Been doing a little research on AARP, a 37-million-strong group that is cranking up some ferocious fuzz box feedback. Who'd have ever thought this group would be sponsoring the devil's music? Yet here they are, cutting music and concert deals with rock bands and people like James Taylor and Elton John, Earth, Wind and Fire – and more are coming. $750, anyone, to see Barbra sing and insult a fake George Bush on stage?

The Meanest Horse in Texas

by T-Bone

I once worked on several Western wear accounts, Justin Boots and Panhandle Slim PRCA Rodeo apparel among them. We'd shoot for weeks on Texas ranches with real, working cowboys or in rodeo arenas with rodeo cowboys. They are a tough bunch. I found out I wasn't.

One morning before the sun came up, we were on a huge ranch north of Fort Worth, shooting cowboys rounding up longhorns. Just as we got set up and ready to shoot, the entire herd got upset stomachs - a polite term for what actually happened. Hundreds of bovinae suddenly unloaded everywhere - on cue, as if their colons were on a synchronized timer. The aroma hung in the air for miles.