Pie

Chances are, as you're reading this (especially if you're reading this after 10:00 am), I'm on the road. That's right, my friends. As we speak (or whatever it is we do here), I am joining millions of other Americans by taking to the open road and driving to a far-off destination in order to eat myself into a stupor on Thursday afternoon. Hopefully, since I'm now in the land of the woebegone Panthers, Thanksgiving dinner won't cut into the Packers/Lions game too much. I would like to watch the one football team I pull for that has some semblance of a clue on the gridiron.

Anyway, I told you about how much I despise pumpkins. That big, evil fucker has scarred my childhood psyche beyond repair. Some of you assumed, then, that I dislike pumpkin pie. Really? Do I look like a guy who doesn't like pumpkin pie?

Of course I like pumpkin pie, you silly geese! Pumpkin pie is like the ultimate victory over those vile orange gourds! I mean, we've ripped them from their vines, cut them up, boiled them, mashed them into orange paste, sugared and spiced them, and then for good measure we baked their candied asses in a pastry shell. And if that wasn't enough injustice to crush their already fragile psyches, then we squirt whipped cream on top of the pie and devour it. And then, as one final insult, we turn them into poo. I'd say that we're the winners in that battle, my friends. Yes, I love pumpkin pie!

How do you eat your pie? Settle down, perverts. I know the answer to that already, which is why the Comely and Buxom Boudicca has that smile on her face all the time. Hmmm...perhaps I've said too much. Anyway, how do you eat your pie, perverts? I go crust first. The baked part of the crust is my least favorite part. It's dry and crumbly. I don't do dry and crumbly too well. Sorry, that's just me. So, I eat the crust first, usually cutting it off the slice of pie with my fork and sweeping it through either the pie filling or the whipped cream. After I've polished off that little appetizer, I go right for the wedge, eating from the smaller vertex of the wedge of pie first and working my way down the warm and delicious triangle. That's lip-licking good!

It's tough to pick a favorite kind of pie. Like I tell my kids, there's really only one flavor of pie: delicious! This isn't true, because some people frankly can't cook. Plus, I've only ever had mince meat pie once. I think I liked it but...*shrugs helplessly*

A few of my other favorite pies are blueberry, old-fashioned cream, and my wife makes this fabulous lemon chess pie. And, of course, there's the old stand-by and standard for delicious, apple pie. I love you, apple pie, and I love you, America.

My least favorite pie? Hands down, pecan pie. I hate the shit. Growing up, when Thanksgiving rolled around, I thought there were only two kinds of pie to eat: pumpkin and pecan pie. The pumpkin would get slopped down first, and then there'd be this brown gooey mass sitting there, unappetizing and foul. I'd sigh and go without any more pie. Damn, I hate pecan pie. My brother loves the shit, though. He can have my share, and often he does. According to some reports, he ate 4/5 of a pecan pie last year at Thanksgiving.

I also hate peach pie, but that's more because I hate peaches. Even cobbler can't save their squishy, fuzzy asses when it comes to dessert time. Again, I'll opt for the apple when it comes to cobbler time.

Anyway, chances are, if you're reading this between 10 am and 6 pm, I'll be on the road. Pieless. And heading to a place where the pie to person ratio is going to be woefully unbalanced in the direction of the person. Seriously. It's like five pies to 19 people. That's nearly a 1:4 ratio. And one of those pies is pecan. Plus, my in-laws, they enjoy their pie, too.

I have a bad feeling that I'm going to go for pie and discover one tiny wedge of disgusting pecan pie.

Damn.

Anyone know if they make a pumpkin-pie flavored rum?

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Chunkin'

I might have misled you all a little bit last week. See, while that pumpkin terrified the living hell out of the four-year-old version of me, thus removing the pall over my eyes and allowing me to see pumpkins as demonic, orange globes that they truly are, this time of year isn't hell for me. Mostly because I don't live in a pumpkin patch. If I did, however, I think I'd probably be a touch more anti-pumpkin than I already am. At this point, I don't fear the pumpkins so much as I did when I was younger; I'm bigger than they are (mostly). The thing I dislike most about pumpkins? Scooping their innards out while carving them. But, I do it, because of paternal mandates and parental instinct to make happy holiday memories.

Plus, pumpkins make an excellent pie. And cookies. And, I'm not opposed to a little pumpkin-pie-flavored creamer for in my coffee. And, as Tennyson ee Hemingway pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they make excellent soup. Thanks for the sharp reminder, my antipodean friend.

They also make excellent projectiles.

As Del-V mentioned last week, there's an annual event in the wilds of Delaware centered around throwing, heaving, launching and shooting pumpkins as far as humanly possible. Being that I'm both a man and easily amused, this event really excites me--perhaps the two are intertwined, I dunno, kind of like a caduceus or something similar. I have vowed that, someday, I will attend the Annual Punkin Chunkin event live and in person. I mean, a place like Millsboro, Delaware can't be too tough to find, right?

My attention was brought to the Pumpkin Chunkin contest through a special I saw on Discovery Channel one Christmas. I think it was my first Christmas after moving to North Carolina, and while everyone was getting the midday meal ready, my brother-in-law and I sat and watched this show about how a bunch of people design and build their own machines to hurl pumpkins as far as humanly possible. It involved trebuchets and mangonels and onagers, so you know I was hooked. We actually got yelled at for holding up the meal because we wanted to see if some guy with a massive trebuchet could set a new world record. Since no man stands between my father-in-law and his holiday meals, we had to miss the final throw and eat delicious, homemade food. Oh, the agony.

As an aside...how fucking cool would it be to just own a trebuchet?

Anyway, I thought that, since we've just been through the pumpkin's greatest month when not in pie form, we could step away from blowing them up and just watch them get thrown toward the horizon.

Here's a nice little example of some of the contraptions used to punish our favorite orange gourds. It's taken from the 2004 competition.

I realize that there's nothing, technically, being blown up, but it's still effing cool, right?

Because I like to go that extra effort to try and bring you guys the good stuff, I read through the rules for the competition. Well, I can safely say this isn't some Mickey Mouse Horseshit Dog and Pony Show (as my grandfather used to say). You've got to actually know what the hell you're doing to be out there firing off your trebuchet and hurling your pumpkins into the distance.

Have I mentioned how cool it would be to have your own trebuchet? I have? Okay, then let's move this along.

Anyway, there's seven adult divisions in the Punkin Chunkin contest: air cannons, centrifugal, catapults, trebuchets, human power, human power centrifugal, and torsion catapult. I won't get into the specifics of each kind, but obviously air cannons use compressed air, trebuchets are catapults with huge counterweights on them, and centrifugals are machines that spin, generating enough force and energy to convert the pumpkins into tiny dots and craters.

In case you're wondering, there are also youth divisions for competition, broken into 11-17 year old teams and under-10s. In a word, that's effing awesome.


And, when you're done watching the pumpkins flying off into the wild blue yonder, you can head down the road and drink yourself stupid at the Dogfish Head Brewery and maybe make some girls feel really uncomfortable on the boardwalk at Rehobath Beach. Oh, Delaware, with your teeny, tiny landmass, your fighting blue hens, your three counties, and your abundance of cities that start with the letters "Mil" (Milton, Milford, Millsboro...), who knew that you held so many wondrous and delicious creations?

By the way...Delaware Board of Tourism...I'm totally available to whore myself out for your state. Just say the words and sign the checks. I even promise to talk about something other than your duty-free liquor stores.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Edition

Has it turned to fall where you are, too? Okay, sorry, Elliot. For the rest of us, fall is most likely in the air, and we can now feel comfortable with ourselves while we're lying under a blanket or afghan watching college football games all day on Saturday.

Wait? What? I'm the only worthless sonuvabitch who does that? Really? Huh. Maybe my wife has a point. If she's right about that, then my feet probably stink, too!

Anyway, fall down in the southeast is a lot different from fall up in the Great Lakes area. For one, it typically comes later down here than up in my beloved homestate of Indiana. Another is that, down here, we have a lot more trees and fewer withered fields of corn, so I think fall is prettier down here. At least in the mountains. But then, I like mountains...as we've discussed previously.

Fall is easily my second-favorite season. I mean, sure, summer is great for getting out and about, especially with the slutty way girls dress in the south east (I know, they dress skanky everywhere...I just notice it here more). I love the nip in the air, the earlier evenings, the cool nights made for sleeping. It's time for the leaves to change. It's time for the birds to migrate. It's time for squashes, corn and pumpkins.

Did I say pumpkins? No, I typed it. Pumpkins, however, were mentioned. You know what would be awesome? Blowing up a big one.

Fortunately, we live in a world with David Letterman, and he can accommodate us.

Sorry, I don't know what the "stuff" was that Drew stuffed in the pumpkin before it was turned into pumpkin compote. To that end, we'll not have sciency lessons today. I can hear you weeping. No, really, I hear weeping. Oh, that must be me.

Either way, that explosion was pretty nice. Most of the force went into blowing the pumpkin to pieces, since the wet sand would have just absorbed whatever shock went into it, thus helping to hurl chunks of orange gourd all about the beach. Run for your lives, indeed.

Oh, and as a follow up to yesterday...I came home and took the kids outside to play. When we were done out there, I came in, wandered upstairs, and then decided to change out of my clothes. I took my pants off, took my shirt off, and pulled on a pair of pajama pants. Then I decided that, since I was upstairs anyway, I might as well fix the kids' bathroom. I put in the bar, put the float on, turned the water back on and everything worked perfectly.

It took less time to fix that than it did to change my pants and shirt. I celebrated with a brownie. The edible kind, not the ones you find in the toilet. Gross. Corny, but gross.