A casualty of the Spam toss is fair game for Niko, an American hairless terrier, who is accompanied by owner Maggie Weaver.
Posted on 04/04/2004 11:55:32 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952
By Melissa Ludwig
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, April 4, 2004
Evelyn Volz is obsessed with the idea of Spam. Not the actual food product. The 17-year-old senior at St. Stephen's Episcopal School dressed as a can of Spam for Halloween in the ninth grade, owns a Spam T-shirt and calls her mother "Spam."
But before she accepted a plastic cup of green eggs and Spam at Saturday's Spamarama, she had never even tried it.
"I was always too afraid," she said.
Volz claims her affection for the pork product is tied more to its status as an icon of the post-World War II era, when a navy-blue can of Spam could be found in the kitchen larder of nearly every smiling American family.
"It's all fake, but that's why it's intriguing," she said.
Volz joined about 6,000 others at the 26th annual Spamarama in Waterloo Park Saturday, a curious display of devotion to the canned meat. It was conceived as a chili cook-off spoof a quarter-century ago; Spam chefs such as Dan Redman still ply their trade at the festival's cook-off competition.
Redman served up his "weapons of mass indigestion" -- including Spam-fried Condoleezza Rice and nuclear jerk Spam steak with government cheese -- with a political message.
"Spam is baby steps to the bigger goal" of getting Bush out of office, Redman said.
Organizer John Booher, who bought the rights to the festival last year with partner David Spooner, said they plan to expand. Next year, they want a two-day festival at Auditorium Shores.
"We're trying to export our little Austin festival to the world," Booher said.
Hormel Foods Corp., which makes Spam in Austin, Minn., sent the Spammobile down to the festival for the first time ever. Documentarians and film crews from the Game Show Network roamed the event, and the International Federation of Competitive Eating sanctioned the Spam burger-eating contest.
Austin resident Dean Crawford has been coming to the event for five years.
"I don't want to know" what's in Spam, said Crawford, who munched on a free Spam sandwich from the Spammobile.
Spam is an amalgamation of ham and shoulder meat, nothing so mysterious as urban legend would have people believe.
"It's versatile. It can be used as a floor wash or toothpaste," Booher said.
Not just a binge-fest, the event featured music, such as the 13th Floor Elevators Tribute with Sumner Erickson and Grupo Fantasma, and engaged participants in a relay race and a Spam toss. Wobbly cubes of gelatinous pork flying through the air attracted a big crowd, but didn't beat the long line to get into the cook-off tent.
"I don't even know what's going on in there," said Johnny Villareal, a 22-year-old musician.
"I figure this many people are doing it, it must be cool," said friend Patrick Roberts.
Had they known the Squeallage People were in the tent dressed like construction workers and offering "queer pork on a straight fork" they may have reconsidered.
A casualty of the Spam toss is fair game for Niko, an American hairless terrier, who is accompanied by owner Maggie Weaver.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
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| Alaska |
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150.00 |
3 |
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mmmmmmmmmm, smackin' my lips right now!
You can have Spam and Blood Sausage, Spam and Ox Tongue, Spam and Sheep Liver, Spam and Haggis, or Spam and Spam.
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