Every week, I pick five things that make me proud to be an American. This week: flamingos, the Dodge Challenger, the Virgin Islands and more.
Madison, Wisconsin designated a new official bird this week – the Pink Plastic Flamingo. You might think this tacky. I think you might be right. But not in the way you think.
Nobody does tacky like we do. I mean, some people have inclinations -- but there's a distinction to be made here. There's "oh that's tacky", and then there's Tacky. Hell, we built an entire city on tacky.
You can be tacky in an ostentatious way – but that's really just being ironic, which is another way of saying "condescending asshole". Some people are unironically tacky, which really isn't tacky but just sad and pathetic. A lot of people are into kitsch, which is being tacky on purpose but in an earnest kind of way.
Pink flamingoes are often considered tacky when they are in fact kitschy. Mostly they are awesome. Who doesn't love a Pink Plastic Flamingo? People who hate America, that's who. In a lot of ways the Pink Plastic Flamingo more American than the Bald Eagle.
Until recently the Bald Eagle was first "endangered" and then "threatened". Is this the message we want to be sending via our national bird? Are we, as a nation, a people "threatened"? Of course not. Our national bird should be representative of who we are as a people. It should be a microcosm of our culture and heritage: mass-produced and disposable. It should be kitschy and yet possess a certain lack of self-awareness.
In short, our national bird should be the most American bird it can be: it should be the Pink Plastic Flamingo.
Summer, that endless morass of meaningless baseball games, boring NASCAR races, and horrible reality television is over. Now, though, it's September.
And that means football. Thank freaking God.
Football is 22 armored sociopaths beating the living face out of each other for three hours. The chattering heads on ESPN and the like will talk about the strategy of the game. They'll talk about the ins and outs of various permutations of the Spread offense. They'll chirp about why the zone blitz was so effective against the Run and Shoot. Retired linemen with terrible facial hair will sit across from freshly-scrubbed anchors with meticulous teeth and talk about why the Giants are going to do this and thus the Packers will do that.
Football is America's Game because what it's about is two things close to the heart of every red-blooded American: violence and gambling. As a nation the players we exult are the most violent and destructive – talking heads can babble endlessly about strategy and gamesmanship but what we really want to see is some guy get blown the damn hell up. We want to see that guy get blown up and win money when it happens. It's all very Rome. Only moreso. Because this is America.
The situation was grim: a global economy that was hosed, for lack of a better word. The parent corporation, Chrysler, was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. New car sales were tailing off with no end in sight.
Dodge took a good hard look at the situation and said Screw It and shoved the new Challenger out the door.And that is exactly why we love the Challenger: everything about it says Screw It. Or maybe it says Screw You. Either way the Challenger is the most American thing on four wheels today.
You might raise your hand and point at the Mustang and the Camaro and thus imply that the Challenger is nothing special. A couple of points, here: Ford never stopped making the Mustang; the current model – badass it may be – was coming along either way. The Camaro never should have been killed in the first place – at some point Chevy was going to have respond to the new Mustang.
The Challenger, though, was completely unwarranted and unnecessary – sure, Mopar geeks had been begging for a new Dodge muscle car for years, but no normal, well-adjusted humans were asking for one. And yet, all of a sudden, there it was.
I saw a black one on the road the other day. Black and tinted and rumbling – Darth Vader with a Hemi – it pulled up alongside for a terrifying half an instant before it roared off into the night.
You look at that car, you take a moment to soak it in – there's something about it you can't quite put your finger on. Then it hits you and you're like Yes. This is why the terrorists hate us.
Just got back from the Virgin Islands. Which is pretty much a tropical paradise. Like most other tropical paradises though, it has more than its share of holy crap we're going to get killed-type areas. Don't be fooled, though – what you see are actually holy crap they're going to sell us a bunch of trinkets we don't need-type areas.
This isn't urgent breaking news though, we've known for a while that people who live in tropical climates have the lowest standard of living in the world.And anyone who's traveled anywhere outside the U.S. knows that "low standard of living" = "let's sell these white people whatever we have laying around the house". Just don't buy anything carved out of bone – they'll claim that its animal bone but its just as likely to be some dude's femur. Steer clear.
The best part about the Virgin Islands is that while, yes, they're a sort of sketchy don't hurt me why yes I'll buy your tchotchkes tropical paradise, they're our sort of sketchy don't hurt me why yes I'll buy your tchotchkes tropical paradise.
What says F--- You Money more than buying your own island? How about buying a whole mess of islands? Why extend your cultural and political hegemony through force when you can just write a check?
Which, in a way, kind of sums up the whole Virgin Islands thing: a bunch of white people barging down to the Caribbean to gobble up a little slice of paradise.
The crown jewel of French cuisine is the black truffle. You may also know them as Périgord truffles. If so, you're probably an asshole.
They look like little rocks, or worse, but sell for hundreds of dollars a pound. Specially trained pigs or dogs search them out and then dig them up. A truffle with clawmarks on it is especially prized, as it was apparently so yummy-smelling that the dog or pig or whatever clawed at it to get it out. Just about every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking involves either truffles or truffle oil. Believe me when I tell you that to anyone who knows about these kinds of things, truffles are Serious Business.
All of which makes this recent development even more awesome/hilarious: a guy in Tennessee has somehow cracked the code when it comes to growing and harvesting truffles.
Tom Michaels has a couple of farms in Chuckey, Tennessee (i.e. the boondocks) where he cultivates the truffles. He brings in a dog from a neighboring farm to dig up the truffles, which he then sells off for retarded amounts of money.
The kicker, though: GQ conducted a blind side-by-side taste test pitting the Tennessee truffles against traditional imported Périgord truffles. Who won? Who the hell do you think?
The lesson, once again, is that Tennessee owns France.
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 Aaron B. Murray writes words and makes pictures. He is credited on more than a few high profile video game releases as well as an ever-growing stack of unproduced screenplays. Originally from East Tennessee, he currently lives in Utah with his wife and a ridiculous dachshund. Follow him on Twitter at murray_cod |
