6. It’s the smell….
At the Coachella festival in California this April, British singer/songwriter Morrissey walked off the stage when the smell of barbecued burgers wafted into his vegetarian nostrils. "I can smell burning flesh... and I hope to God it's human," he told his human fans before he walked off in the middle of a song. He would eventually return, claiming "The smell of burning animals is making me sick. I just couldn't bear it." My question is whether or not he would have stayed on stage, had he discovered the smell was in fact human.
7. More than meets the eye…
From shopping carts to toilet bowls, people have made barbecues out of just about anything. They’ve even gone as far as to attach HEMI engines to them. Leave it to the Aussies to make the best photo gallery of weird but functional barbecues.
8. Smoked leg anyone?
When Shannon Whisnant bought his used barbecue smoker, the last thing he was expecting to find inside was John Wood’s leg. In 2004, Wood’s leg was amputated after it was damaged beyond repair in a plane crash. Ironically still attached to his leg, Wood decided to keep it. The limb was kept on ice until he was evicted from his home in Greenville, S.C., and forced to live in a van. His leg was then wrapped, placed inside a barbecue smoker, and put in storage. When rent payments were missed however, the storage facility owner held a garage sale, human leg-filled smoker and all. Recognizing the incredible business opportunity that came along with his new barbecue, Whisnant planned on adults paying $3 and children $1 to sneak a peak at the lost leg. North Carolina police stepped in and returned the leg to its original owner. Whether or not Wood now has a wooden leg is unknown.
9. Location, location, location… and a half-naked mannequin
The owner of a barbecue restaurant in Cincinnati was taken in front of a city Design Review Board for having a life-sized, scantily clad mannequin woman outside his store. Affectionately named BarBe Q, the plastic bombshell has increased sales by 40 perecent. After the first hearing, Kenny Tessel was told he could keep BarBe Q in front of his restaurant—as long as she is wearing more than just the bikini top and tight shorts that seemed to attract customers like moths to a lamp. Tessel appealed the case and won, so now BarBe Q can continue to wear her revealing outfit. Hard to tell what’s more embarrassing as a species: that city officials were offended by a mannequin or that a plastic woman increased restaurant sales.
10. Bacon can make you famous
Sometimes all you need to gain mass attention in this world is to sprinkle delicious bacon over Italian sausage, and then wrap the whole project in—yes, you guessed it—more bacon. The fine folks over at BBQADDICTS.com created the ultimate recipe for your barbecuing pleasure known famously around the world as the Bacon Explosion. Barbecue enthusiasts and Internet savvy inventors Jason Day and Aaron Chronister posted the recipe on their website on December 23, 2008. By Christmas day, their website was visited by over 27,000 people. It is arguably the most viral recipe of all time, having close to 400,000 visitors in less than half a year, earning 16,000 links from various websites, while being featured in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html and the Telegraph, on CNN, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends. Since I’m throwing around lots of numbers with zeroes in them, it’s only fair to mention that the legendary log-o-bacon contains 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat. But according to the recipe’s popularity—and when it comes to bacon-stuffed sausage-stuffed bacon—who really cares?
