I was just flipping channels and I came across a show about pregnant women preparing to have their babies. I normally don’t watch such fare, but in this case I broke my own rule. What came next made me want to quit my chosen profession.

One of the mothers to be was a branding expert. She and her husband were web branding “entrepreneurs,” I think was the description. That was not so hard to fathom. They looked the part. How she viewed her pregnancy and baby, however, was the most preposterous thing I have heard since watching politicians on C-Span last week.

“We see our baby as a brand,” said the woman. “We went through 12,000 names and considered the brand ramifications of the names we are considering. And of course, before we actually choose a name, we want to focus group the names. Our baby’s brand is important. Your personal brand is the most important thing you have.”

Before I could throw up in my mouth just a little, the husband chimed in.

“The focus group will help us pick a name that may have a good shot at the 2060 presidential election.”

He said this with a straight face.

Then they had a dinner (for schmucks) of all the best people to go over the names. It was quite a pompous group, to be sure.

I sat in my red recliner, mouth open, my brain seized in a sick fog of what people in our business will do to other humans in the name of branding. This child is doomed, doomed, I tell you, doomed in the womb. This crazy woman and her equally over-branded husband never talked about loving this baby. They talked about the kid’s brand. They took the poor child’s future to a focus group. I honestly have no words to describe how I feel about that. I turned the channel after hearing the above comments. I can still her the deeply serious voices discussing their child as if it were an interactive campaign.  What the hell?

Perhaps this was just some producer’s idea for the show. The woman might be acting. I hope so. When people in branding begin to think like that, it’s time to get into another line of work – and I can’t think of that career path right now. I have known some stupid people in this business, but none of them said stuff like these two. I went to high school with a guy who stuck a bottle rocket in his butt while jumping from the bed of a moving pickup truck, and I would hire him as a babysitter before I’d leave a child with these future parents.

All I could think was this: we are so worried about gay people adopting children in this country, but perhaps we need to worry more about heterosexual branding people conceiving children. After all, look at the world. A mom and a dad birthed every monster in human history. I don’t need to name names, do I? You took History in high school, right?

Being a father, myself and being in branding for enough years to remember Lyndon Johnson as president, it appears I already have two strikes against me. In light of what I have just seen, I must say something to my children now. You can continue to read if you want, but this is only intended for them.

To my precious children: I have tried really hard not to consider you as a brand. If I had, I would not be worth a card on Father’s Day. I am ashamed by parents like these. Please forgive me for being late for dinner tonight, as well. I am in the middle of creating a brand called “Dumb Ass” and the focus group starts as soon as some of the branding people get off from work.

Recently I saw a story in Garden & Gun by Roy Blount about worms, the kind people use for bait. We used to call them wigglers. In that same issue was a story about barbecue by John T. Edge. Even though I have spent much of my life either picking worms on my uncle’s South Alabama worm farm or eating barbecue from any hole-in-the-wall stand willing to sell me some, I will not try to out-Southerner either of those esteemed gentlemen by pretending to know more about both subjects than either of them. Most likely, I do not. After all, John T. Edge goes around the country eating everything he can find. His culinary resume is longer than the Dauphin Island Bridge. Besides, pretty much all I eat originates from Kroger or food Lion. As for Mr. Blount, I cannot hold a Coleman Lantern to his expertise and talent, no matter what his subject. Hell, he quotes Socrates and parses wigglers within a few words of each other. That’s impressive. But I am going to do something neither Mr. Edge or Mr. Blount did: I’m going to discuss barbecued worms.

First you have to clean the worms, then you marinate them in a generous pot of – okay, I can’t write this. No one should eat barbecued worms. Not even the dumbest drunk on a Mississippi night would eat a wiggler meant for fish bait. Do not tell me the slimy creatures are high in protein. My toenails are high in protein too, but no one is lining up for a snacky snack.

I knew an old man in the Florida Panhandle who swore he barbecued, deep-fried, boiled and roasted wigglers. He said people would drive all the way from Atlanta to dine on them. He sold something called “worm jerky.” He offered smoky, teriyaki and Cajun styles. If someone is willing to drive from Atlanta to Pensacola to eat a worm, then the price of gas is just too damned low.

I have read up on the subject. I know all about the ongoing study mentioned both in the New York Times and on Fox News (so it must be true) about how eating worms can help strengthen our immune systems. I do not care. It went on to imply that ingesting the dirt from the worm’s intestines could possibly cure allergies and asthma. Still do not care. I can, however, see why eating worms would make having other disorders, no matter how dire, seem more pleasant by comparison. I’ll take my chances with whatever disease comes along if eating worms is the cure.

A website from the UK sells “BBQ Flavored Worms” as a crispy “farm-raised” treat. Says the worms “taste similar to popcorn.”

Okay, I love barbecue as much as any three people you know, but I have to draw the line way back there in this story, long before the old man in Florida, long before the healthy claims of worm-eating and not far before crispy, farm-raised, barbecued-flavored worms that taste like popcorn. Have you ever had barbecue-flavored popcorn? Damn. It will turn you against both ‘cue and corn. I can only imagine one thing worse than barbecue-flavored popcorn: worm-flavored popcorn.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDQHjYIojTs

Detroit has been maligned for years, some of it deserved, some of it not. I do not have to replay news stories of the auto industry’s collapse or houses going for $1 or unemployment over 30% and entire neighborhoods going up in flames. There is no shortage of videos on YouTube blasting Detroit for being a hellhole. And parts of it are, indeed, just that. Then again, we all saw the Chrysler commercial up there at the top featuring Eminem on the Super Bowl, touting “Imported From Detroit.” Last week, I was imported into Detroit and this is what I saw.

It was cold. No surprise there. But the people were just the opposite of the weather. There is a pride in Detroit that goes deeper than the chassis of a Ford F-150 or a Chevy Volt. People here believe in their city, even when it hurts. And it hurts a lot sometimes. But day after day, these people are applying a hard-won Mid-western work ethic to pull it back from the depths of crime, poverty and despicable corporate stupidity and greed.

The heads of the automobile companies did everything in their power to destroy the city that gave them life. And they damned near did it. A drive down 8 Mile Road reveals a few of the scars. A drive down a lot of roads up here breaks your heart.

Detroit has its share of blight – like any city in America. You may not drive into those neighborhoods in your town, but they are there, not far from where you are sitting right now. I spent today shooting images of the poorest most crime-infested neighborhood south of New York City – right in the heart of Richmond, Virginia. So Detroit does not have a lock on desperate poverty no matter what you see or read. We could all learn a little from their resilience, though.

Few cities have Detroit’s guts. This is the town that cranked out America’s transportation for over 100 years. Those cars were not always great, but when you make that many vehicles, you learn how to go somewhere. You learn how to build an engine that can push two tons of metal 200 mph and still have a gear left, just in case. Building things is what Detroit does. And now they are busting ass to build a new Detroit. It is a tough job, to be sure. Parts of the city look like Beirut. Parts look like Georgetown. Parts look like every city in the world.

Lifting Detroit from the ruins will not happen by tomorrow or next week, but it will happen. You can see it in the eyes of the woman in Birmingham, and in the jaw of the man in Dearborn, and the words of the kid from Oak Park. You feel it when you drive through River Rouge or Troy or Midtown. No matter how tough it is, or has been, people are finding ways to reinvent the city that invented America.

That’s a strong couple of words: inventing America. Yet when you drive down any road in the country, you are part of what Detroit means to all of us. And when you see a car “Imported From Detroit,” take a closer look. That’s your reflection in the paint.

South Alabama, between Mobile and Dothan and north of Pensacola, is a rural place filled with deer, rabbits, alligators, foxes, squirrels, bobcats, panthers and even an off-course bear or two. There are no reindeer. Not officially. This fact never stopped my uncle from hunting them.

“This year I’m gonna get me one of them reindeers,” he would say.

My cousins and I would cry. We only saw reindeer as cute characters with weird names hooked up to Santa’s sleigh. It never occurred to us that anyone would hunt one. But when the weather turned cold, my uncle would start in with boasts of “baggin ol’ Rudolph.” I knew he would not stop there. He’d take out Dasher, Dancer, Donder, Blitzen – the whole song-full. It scared the hell out of us.

Every time he would go off at 3 A.M., toting that 12-gauge, we just knew he would come back dragging one of our beloved reindeer. He never did.

Years later, I realized that he was just messing with us kids. He never intended to kill Rudolph or any other reindeer. But he got a twisted kick out of our worrying about it.

When he was an old man, invalid and dying, he pulled me aside and whispered, “You know there ain’t no reindeers down here, don’t you?”

I nodded that I did know.

“They’re all out in Los Angeles,” he said. “makin’ TV shows.” Through the pain of cancer, he grudged a smile.

On his dying day, he was still messing with us kids.

Merry Christmas

Let’s all gather around the fake tree – the tattered Tannenbaum that no one will want to take down in January – and pretend we can’t wait to watch “A Christmas Story” for 24 straight hours on tbs. Fah-ra-ra-ra-ra.

It’s that time of year, when people stress out over their obligations to attend endless holiday traditions. A cursory glance at any local publication will reveal a festive season filled with so many freaking festive festivities that the Trans-Siberian Orchestra could barely hold a pyrotechnic laser beam to it.

How many festive open houses and festive holiday tours of festive decorated homes and mansions and historic landmarks can a person endure in three festive weeks?

How much spiked eggnog does it take to withstand another presentation of “The Nutcracker” or “Amahl and the Night Visitors” and God forbid your kid gets the part of a rapping Scrooge in the new drama teacher’s hip version of “A Christmas Carol.”  Has anyone ever not slept through “Handel’s Messiah?” Really? Bite me, Cousin Eddie.

What is the new holiday tradition this year? Flashing Santa. Yeah, Jerry Springer style. Then there is the “Ms. Santa Lingerie Fest.” And you can’t have your Christmas cookies without the pushed-up, wing-sprouting, Victoria’s Secret Christmas Fashion Show. No wonder the old fat man is so damned jolly.

There are so many Christmas parades the cops must be ready to pull out the 9 mm and uncork a six pack into Santa and his band of festive trolls waving to freezing families and hucksters selling inflatable candy canes and white, fuzzy-balled caps. Tensions run especially high at these parades. Do not pretend you have never elbowed a little kid so you could snap a shot of your old high school band playing “Deck The Halls.” I saw you do it.

Yesterday, in downtown Richmond, an angry guy with his sullen family struggled for a place beside Broad Street while and angry woman with senior citizen parents hogged the sidewalk, blocking his view. He finally yelled, “Go F#@! yourself!” His F-word was not “festive.” Nor was her response.

Of course every town has its own version of a tacky light tour where people who bitch about their electric bill all year try to max out the meter in one month while others who bitch about traffic all year happily endure snarls just to see an inflatable Santa swell up next to Rudolph humping a snowman out by the mailbox.

Just when you thought you had…oh, wait I have to go. Chevy Case is about to utter the most festive of holiday sermons from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation:

“Hey. If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here…with a big ribbon on his head! And I want to look him straight in the eye, and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?”

{Note: While I don’t agree with everything those 2 gentlemen are doing in that video up there, I do like the weird music, the dude’s Sam Elliot-esque voice and the crowing rooster at the end.}

This is not an authentic recipe. That requires planning. This is just a soaked chicken meeting an accidental heating experience under one long, licking flame. Let me explain.

While I am no expert like the fellows above, I do grill a lot. And I’ve damned near worn out a two-year old propane grill. At least 10 other grills have met similar fates in my backyard over the last 20 years. I even run a charcoal Smokey Joe Weber now and then when I have time.

I see guys who take care of their grills like a classic automobile and the things last for years. These pretty boys nurture the surfaces and coddle the burners and clean up afterwards as if Bobby Flay was about to throwdown on their asses. Not me. Hell no. I get them cheap, run them hard and fast and abuse them in ways that fit more in a demolition derby than in a culinary experience. I treat a grill like Ray Lewis treats running backs who tippy-toe across the middle. It ain’t pretty, but no one has ever complained. To me, that equals success.

My lax treatment of cooking devices has caused a few problems, however. I’m down to a single flame, shooting out of the back, blow torch style. The rest of the grill is pretty much useless. Just couldn’t take my heat. This one flame is all that’s left of the business end and it’s an art maneuvering and shuffling the meat around to take advantage of this one searing opportunity to crisp a crust on something.

Since I eat a lot of chicken, I have a method to marinating breasts that is short, sweet and sloppy. This is as close to a recipe as I have even divulged. Usually it is all in my head.

1. Use bone-in breasts. That’s the only kind to grill. Wash it good and give it a little massage while you do it.
2. Toss it in an eight-inch deep plastic tub that’s big enough to wear like a helmet.
3. Some people use a raw egg. I don’t. There’s already a mature chicken involved.
4. Glob a dollop of fresh garlic on top (a dollop is about three tablespoons).
5. Coat with olive oil. Use the cheap stuff with the grocery store logo on the label.
6. Gurgle a can of Bud Light Lime into the mix. You can use any beer you choose as long as the chicken gets as much as you drink while cooking it.
7. Pour in a half-cup of lemon juice. Awe, hell, pour in 3/4ths cup. Give it some citrus bite.
8. Chase the lemon juice with a cup of orange juice. Gives it a Florida feel.
9. Squirt on three good jerks of low sodium soy sauce.
10. Two pinches of No Salt should do right about now too.
11. Sprinkle in a couple of tablespoon of my secret seasoning. If I told you what was in it, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it? So make your own secret seasoning and use that. If you have never made a secret seasoning, just stop right now and go buy some chicken from a restaurant. You’re wasting you time making your own.
12. Stir it around for exactly 12.5 seconds – no more, no less – or you will ruin the whole experience. Okay, this is complete bullshit, but recipes are usually so exact, I thought it best to include such preciseness.
13. Let it all stand in the fridge for 3 or 4 hours.
14. Use tongs to extract chicken and alternate the pieces over one pathetic flame. Be careful to turn the chicken so all sides get their fair share of flame.
15. Here’s the dangerous part – and I am bound by law to warn you not to try this at home: Periodically dip the chicken back in the salmonella-ized juice so as to increase your odds of food-borne illness. I am not telling you to do this, mind you; I am telling you that I do it. But before the chicken is done. I stop and let the chicken sit for several minutes on the grill with the lid down until the temp is about 500º.
16. Yank the whole gaggle and take the caramel-colored bird bits inside and cook for one more minute in your microwave, just to kill the last, lingering diseased bastards left on our food by poultry processing plants.
17. Eat it. But don’t eat it all. Save some for lunch tomorrow.
18. The next night, make chicken salad by taking a little…awe hell, that’s another recipe altogether. I’ll tell you that one later.

Unless you are from Sacremento, it’s hard to imagine that the band, “Cake,” has been around since the early 1990’s. Yet there stands John McCrea in his worn gimme cap talksinging the words to one of the hottest songs on the air: “Short Skirt, Long Jacket.”

Earlier today, a friend of mine asked me if I’d heard the new song on the Apple iPod Nano commercial. I said, “Yes, I have. And not just on the commercial.”

It doesn’t take an Apple commercial to make you start tapping to this alternative beat with the brilliantly mundane lyrics about a girl, a skirt and a long jacket, but scoring an iPod Nano spot sure helps – especially since the song was released in 2001. My friend argued with me until he finally succumbed to Google. The iPod spot launched in early September 2010. Now the old song is hotter than melted caramel blistering your tongue.

If you were born when “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” first played, you would be almost 11 years old – easily old enough to cinch the Nano to your own long jacket, ear buds tucked in as you unconsciously nod and weave to the beat on your way home on the school bus. If you were twenty when that song came out, you are now officially old. If you were already old when Cake first wanted to meet that girl at Citibank, you may now be dead. That’s how culture works. You hear something new and it’s ten years old before you can even look it up on YouTube.

John McCrea was born way back in 1965. So he’s every bit of 45 years old. He could easily have a kid who’s 25. I can see your face while you’re reading this. I’d bet a crisp Andrew Jackson that half the people listening to “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” think the singer is not even that old. Kind of messes with your sense of cool, doesn’t it?

Even though my friend’s question prompted the general idea of this post, the real reason why I’m writing about “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” is one simple line: “She’s touring the facility.”

I laugh every time I hear it and have for years. You have to respect anyone who can write that in a song, sell it, get paid, sing it with a straight face while wearing a gimme cap – and wait ten years for it to be a huge hit. Damn. Nice job, Mr. McCrea.

You don’t have to be a Jets fan to like Hard Knocks on HBO. For the entire summer, I have flipped between replayed games on the NFL channel or watched replays of Alabama versus Virginia Tech, or Alabama versus Florida or Alabama versus Texas. I purchased the sports package from Comcast so I can watch every possible college game, many of them in such poor broadcast quality that it feels like 1971 with rabbit ears. I have every version of ESPN hardwired into my carotid artery. Even a special about referees pulled me away from grilling some chicken long enough to burn four birds.

High school football is now on ESPN. I saw three games last weekend. This does not resemble the high school game I played back in the day when I spent most of my time pissing off one of the best coaches in Alabama high school football history. The players on my 55” Samsung last Saturday could have played for the Crimson Tide in the 1970’s. They were that big and fast and strong. I think one of them already had a shoe deal with Nike.

Which brings me to the reason I started writing this post 200 words ago: millionaires playing a game most guys would love to play for free, or did.

Go to B-Dubs on Sunday afternoon and look into the faces of any guy who has just spent two hours sucking down two-dozen Asian Zinged wings chased by 24-oz’s of Bud Light while watching his favorite team get beat. He would pay a month’s salary for the chance to suit up and get beat like that on any pro football field in the world – just for the privilege of saying he did it.

There is no shortage of millionaires playing pro sports. The minimum salary of an NFL benchwarmer is $325,000 a year. Try to pull down that much at the welding supply or plumbing company or climbing electrical poles in a hurricane trying to fix a broken power line. Few guys who own their own successful companies make anywhere near that much. And even fewer have as much fun as the kicker who just missed that 20-yard chip shot. Yet the average family of four will pay over $415 to attend a single NFL game (tickets, parking, food, etc.).

When it is time for kickoff, I still don’t care. I’m right there, spread out in my recliner, remote in hand, watching millionaires hit each other so hard they will look like extras in “Cocoon” by the time they are fifty. If they are honest, every guy in every sports bar in the country would trade his bass boat for just three hours between the sidelines wearing a helmet of his favorite team; and that is how athletes and owners become millionaires in the first place. Guys like me are willing to give them and their teams our hardest earned dollars for just a few minutes of wishing we were them. And sadly, on an orange-leafed autumn day under a porcelain blue sky, it is worth every penny.

The new high-end LED/LCD, 3D HDTV’s are ruining my old school eyes, but not in a painful way. It is delightfully devious retina ruination, an eye-opening bite of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, like in Genesis. Instead of a snake, however, you are tempted by a remote – four of them, actually. A machine like the Samsung 55-incher is a peek behind the wizard’s curtain, a look up a tragically famous celebrity’s dress. I was blind, but now I see, and what I’m seeing has caused me to question everything I knew about visual entertainment.

When a movie like Public Enemies pours across the screen in such clarity that your nose bleeds from the sharpness, you know you have stepped into the next La-Z-Boy existence, a reality where the old concepts of film and grain and light are altered forever.

Coppola’s re-mastered Godfather films on Blu-ray take on a clarity, lushness and thickness last seen by Gordon Willis (Coppola’s DP) in a dark screening room as he squeezed the film fresh out of the canister. It looks like a completely different movie.

Wrap 7 Klipsch theater speakers tied to a 3-D Onkyo 7.2 channel network receiver around your head and that anger you felt earlier in the day at the office melts into a little puddle under your chair. I am sitting here now, barely able to type these words, as the Corleone Family does their dirty business in the most beautiful images I have ever seen, and I have seen this movie at least a hundred times. Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. I have no idea where the hell we are, but I like it.

If you’re calculating what such a system will cost, just think about college football in 3-D. Just let that settle in for a few seconds before reading the next sentence. Think about Drew Brees throwing a tight spiral right through your living room, knocking over your beer and peanuts. There is Kobe draining a 3 in 3D from the top of the arc. Unspeakable imagery flows into my face from the screen and unexplainable sounds sneak into my ears from the speakers. It gets better – three years, no interest.  A few clicks on my Droid calculator assures me the whole set up costs less than eating fast food for lunch every day. So you get a great TV and feel better while watching it.

There is one drawback: the 3D glasses.

They work like a jacked-up border collie on a sheep farm, but I wear regular glasses all the time, so the idea of wearing two pairs of glasses is not exactly appealing, especially since the glasses I wear every day already help me to see life in 3D. With the digital glasses, I feel like LeVar Burton’s character, Geordi La Forge, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Perhaps they will eventually have a 3D helmet where the entire visual/sound experience happens right around our heads.

I can see it now. We are all sitting around with our heads encased in brain cancer-causing 3D entertainment. I can’t wait.

The car-carrier hauling four sports cars to the tiny airport takes all afternoon. When he finally reaches the top, the driver’s shirt is off, sweat drizzling down his ample belly like a pork shoulder slow roasting at Extra Billy’s Barbecue. Curses spill from his snarl.

As the 300-pound man angrily unloads the cars, a 300-pound black bear roams one end of the runway, watching us warily. Planes landing here often buzz the runway first to scare of deer, bears or coyotes. In the opposite direction, a coyote tests the system, avoiding the bear and us. Deer sneak along the tall grass at the drop off into the valley towards Hot Springs.

We are here to put cars on HD for the Virginia Lottery’s Muscle Car Money. Later we will slice the images into 45-second, 30-second, 15-second and 5-second commercials riding on top of grinding, thumping drums and guitars.

The next morning, a yellow Camaro SS, charcoal Mustang GT, screaming red Challenger RT Hemi and a deep gray Charger RT Hemi line up facing the ceramic blue sky punctuated by clouds shaped like buttermilk drop-biscuits. Cameras aim at an S-curve in front of them.

These cars don’t just look fast. They are fast. Hundreds of horses hide under Detroit steel carved into retro sheet metal bringing back retro memories for anyone who lived in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  The Camaro and Challenger turn heads. The Mustang turns wicked lap times. The Charger sits alone in this bunch, like a pimply boy at an eighth grade dance, it’s sporty pedigree diminished by four doors and a police car reputation. But even as the 4^th wheel at a three-wheel roundup, it growls like an angry colon after bean dip and beer.

Tattooed crew – some wearing headbands, all carrying grip tools – mount high-def Canon 5D cameras with expensive lenses to hot, metal roofs and shiny fenders. One by one, the cars peel across the tarmac toward the runway looking for the perfect shot. Inside, some of the cams point at tachs, some at shifters, some at steering wheels. A large cinema camera called a Red is bolted to the rear of a Ford F-250. In its lens, muscle cars blow past, dropping back, then blow past again, over and over until it is exactly the way the director wants it. This dance goes on for two days.

The Challenger chases the camera truck over a slight arch in the runway that ripples the horizon. Out of sight, we hear tires screaming and gears shifting and V-8’s oiling cams and cylinders. Next the Mustang gets its turn in the barrel followed by the Camaro and Charger. It is a thing to behold.

This is a guy’s shoot. It is car porn, starring wicked RPM’s, sucking every guy’s metal dream into its exhaust-flavored vortex. These cars are designed to touch that reptilian part of a male’s brainstem housing the internal combustion engine. The rest of a guy is not much else but worthless decoration. That little spot between a man’s ears, however, is the driver’s seat. Muscle cars live here, not on the road. And today, our inner reptiles are smiling.

Virginia Lottery Muscle Car Money Behind the Scenes