I was once told that if I was going to steal somebody's ideas, I should at least steal good ideas. Alright...here goes.
Right now, the South Carolina High School League is considering plans for realignment, an every-other-year process of dividing schools up into athletic regions based on enrollment size and proximity. It's always difficult coming up with regions, since you have to make an attempt to preserve rivalries and try not to screw anybody over with obscenely long road trips. It's going to be even more difficult this year, since the legislative body of the league voted earlier this year to scrap the decades-old four classification system. The body supported going to either five or six and the executive committee ultimately endorsed having five. One of the reasons for the move was that the discrepancy in each class between the big and small has gotten wider. Schools with more students have more athletes and tend to be more successful just on raw numbers. For example, right now, Wando, with its 4,000-plus students, has almost three times the number of students as some other AAAA schools. Class A schools wanted the move because their ranks have become overpopulated with private and charter schools, which have a bevy of built-in advantages and have become dominant in most sports. Everyone also seems to agree that it is kind of goofy for our state to crown seven football champions (Class A, AA and AAAA all have split champions) which is almost as many as Florida, which last time I checked in much bigger than our state in terms of population, land mass, number of high schools and retirees, Tge returees thing isn't really relavant, but I strive to be through. It is at the sole discretion of Jerome Singleton, league executive director, and his staff how the new classes will look. Unlike past years, there is not an anticipation that classes will all be equal in number. If the most functional system involves one class being bigger than the others, then so be it. Schools are submitting ideas to Singleton and I've informally polled local coaches and athletic directors about what they hope to see. Chester High football coach Victor Floyd said he favors scrapping the current system, which has the biggest 52 schools in terms of enrollment numbers competing in AAAA, the next biggest 52 in AAA, the next largest 52 playing in AA and everyone left (51 schools) competing in Class A. Floyd said his preference is to go back to the old way of doing things, which is to set hard numbers for each classification. He set some parameters in terms of numbers and said the members per class would be pretty close to even. As we spread out basically the same number of teams among an increased number of classes, travel and geography are going to be difficult to rectify. Some regions will be far-reaching and far-flung, that seems unavoidable, especially in Class A schools which have largely disappeared in the upperstate. The trend, though, is toward competitive balance and away from proximity where drawing up regions and classes are concerned. So, basically even numbers are about the best we can hope for, but Floyd's plan has some other merits as well. I may be off slightly, but I think the numbers Floyd recited were 1,600 students and over for the new AAAAA class, 1,000-1,599 would be AAAA, 700-999 would comprise AAA, schools with between 400 and 699 students would make up AA and 399 and under would fall in Class A. According to the latest 135-day enrollment numbers, that would give us 43 schools in AAAAA, with Wando's 4,065 on the high end and Lugoff-Elgin's 1,614 on the low side. AAAA would have 44 schools, with Colleton County's 1,592 as the biggest and Brookland-Cayce's 1,002 as the smallest. AAA would have 41 schools including Palmetto on the high end with 985 and Bishop England on the low at 710. AA would have 40 schools, with Keenan's 698 at the top and Carver's Bay's 408 at the bottom. Class A would have 45 schools. The biggest would be Gray Collegiate Academy at roughly 370 students and the tiniest being something called High Point Academy High School with 24 students. Seriously...no idea what that is. Obviously, every school will want to argue that they are too small to compete with Wando and that any cutoff line should be just above whatever their enrollment number. Unfortunately there's nothing that can be done about that. They have 800 more students than the state's second biggest school (Dorman), they are going to have a built-in advantage and nothing is going to change that. The cutoff is going to have to fall somewhere and someone is going to be the smallest AAAAA school. Sucks to be them, but them's the berries, Broham. We can't very well ask Wando to expel a few hundred kids just to make things fair. Aside from that, I don't see much for anyone to complain about. The plan has the added benefit of moving nearly all the current Class A private and charter schools up to AA. Frankly, Class A schools are the smallest and poorest in the state and don't have the means to compete with most privates and charters, which can draw from anywhere (public schools have fixed attendance lines), can decide how many students they want to have and generally have more resources at their disposal. Having them be among the smallest AA schools will have them matched up with opponents better equipped to compete with them. By that plan, Bishop England, the only private school currently playing in the AA ranks (where they dominate many sports) would move up to AAA. Again, it will level the playing field a bit. I personally like the plan because it ensures that Lewisville, one of the teams in my coverage area, will stay in the Class A ranks. Some ideas pitched would set the cutoff for Class A at 350 students. Lewisville has 365, so such a plan would make them among the smallest AA teams, would have them competing against a lot of schools that are twice their size and put them in the same class as all the current private Class A powerhouses. It would also separate them from in-county rival Great Falls. Frankly, setting the bar at 350 would make for too small a classification, particularly come football season, since several small schools (charters mainly) don't field football teams. We should know in a few months what realignment will look like. I hope that, like me, the league will steal this good idea. Like this plan? Hate it? Have a better one? Leave a comment.
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I'm a little behind on posting my BBQ Pitmaster updates...GAH!!! with work and whatnot. I'll get caught up quickly, but this is actually a summary of the episode from two weeks ago...
It's sometimes difficult to resist making meat and bone jokes when writing about BBQ Pitmasters. It's so difficult, in fact, that I don't even try. Why fight failure, man, why fight it? Well, either I'm rubbing off (hahaha) on the judges or they, like me, are actually 7, despite looking much older. This week, the narrator (or balladeer, RIP Waylon) announced that the contest was set in "Texas Hill Country." This after weeks of being "just outside Austin." What are they hiding? TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE! Maybe they are setting up an elaborate contest of some kind, where they'll drop little clues here-and-there and we'll try to figure out where Myron and the boys are hiding for cash and prizes. It could be like "Million Dollar Mystery," which is arguably the worst thing ever recorded to film. A 95-minute long trash bag commercial starring Tom Bosley...HOW COULD IT NOT BE A HIT! Anyway, I digress... This all-star edition of BBQ Pitmasters was actually a three-way rematch from a semi-final round last year. Competing were Junior Urias of Midland, Texas, John Coon from Alabama and defending Pitmasters champ Robbie Royal of Rescue Smokers from Sycamore, Georgia. All three seem to be very good pitmasters who turn out good food...but boy howdy, does Robbie Royal think highly of Robbie Royal. He also yells a lot. I have tinnitus...please stop yelling Robbie. "Not to say they won't win here and there," the high priest of smoke and rub said of Urias and Coon "but they're not going to win here today." Coon promised to bring "full-figured flavor" to the competition. Isn't "full-figured" a nice way of describing a large lady? I'm just asking... The day's meat offerings were then unveiled to reveal that the boys would be cooking beef clod and baby back ribs. Baby backs are pretty common BBQ fare, beef clods notsomuch. Judge Tuffy Stone explained that a beef clod basically comes off "the front arms of the cow." It's kind of a beef shoulder, I guess, and the ones the competitors would be charged with cooking weighed 20 pounds. None of the three had ever cooked one before. Before going to their pits, Royal and Urias exchanged some smack talk. Urias called Royal a chicken, Royal called him a chihuahua, Urias said chihuahuas bite, Royal said he could bite him (hahaha) on the ankle as he walked to the stage as the winner, Urias said "yo mama," Royal said "yo greasy, greasy granny"...I kind of lost track at a certain point. Royal decided that he was going to cook his beef clod whole. He'd put his standard rub on it and smoke it at 300 degrees for three hours, then put it in a pan full of au jus and put it back in for another three hours. Coon didn't think he had enough time to cook a 20-pound hunk of meat, so he started cutting it up. "I wish you luck," the grand beef oracle pronounced from on high. "I don't think it's gonna work for you." So Royal, who has never cooked a beef clod, suddenly knows how to properly cook a beef clod. Alrighty. Urias said he was going to try to get a steak out of the meat, so he cut it way down, put it in a marinade and tossed it in the cooler. He said he'd bring it out when it "talked to" him. Your dog doesn't talk to you, does it Junior? Do you put peyote in your spice rub or something? "What's he gonna do, just cook steaks?" mused the pork poobah of Sycamore. "That's not what a true pitmaster would do." Coon's assistant said he wished he had a bucket of water to throw on Royal. I was thinking of something denser and darker in color. Truthfully, it helps to have a villain on these types of shows. You need someone to root for or root against, so Royal kinda fills that void. Coon injected his beef clod pieces with a mix of worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar. He said his technique and that of Royal were similar, so it was all a matter of "putting the right piece of meat in the right place." And I laughed. Tuffy wasn't sure about Coon's plan to serve various parts of the clod. He said it contained four different muscles and how it would be hard to get them all done just right. "He's gonna dry it out," remarked Meaty McKnowsitall. "Huge mistake." Urias finished third when the three men met previously. He was told his ribs lacked "pop." He vowed not to let that happen again. He marinated his ribs, but that prompted a visit from Myron. These baby backs were uncommonly small. "I've marinated ribs before, but not ones that small. Will it overpower the taste of the rib?" Myron asked. Royal used the same run on his ribs as on his shoulder clod, which seemed odd to me. Like Urias and Coon, the small ribs seemed to vex him. He said he'd take two hours off the normal cook time. At that point the fellows were interrupted by Myron, who announced it was time for the Kingsford One-Bite Challenge. The winner, of course, gets to decide the turn-in order. "Under this here cloth is your third meat," said Myron...who is very obviously Georgian. He pulled away this here cloth and revealed a bunch of sausages. They had mild, sweet, venison, bison and buffalo. Then, came my favorite moment in the history of the series. "Some people say a BBQ contest is a sausage fest anyway and today we're embracing that!" Myron said. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I'M 7!! Not only did he make that joke, he also talked about embracing sausage. WOO HOO HOO. I'm not even 7. Royal took the casings off of his sausages (hahahaha) and mashed them all up, other than the bison. That sausage was just too dense for him, he said. And I snickered. The judges weren't a fan of that technique. Myron said it might end up tasting "like cat food and what, Tuffy?" "Ass," Tuffy said. Seriously, are they reading this blog or something? Royal mixed in bacon, eggs and cheese to make a breakfast slider. Urias decided on a Texas twister. He put his sausage in a jalapeno pepper, which had to burn (if the judges can go there, so can I) with cheddar and cream cheeses. Coon just started cooking all of them to see which he liked best. He started cutting up some peppers and other things to go with the sausage. "There's no reason to do that," announced the Sultan of Sausage. "It's got plenty of flavor already. I think it's a mistake." Royal needs to quit casting judgement on everyone else and concentrate on his own sausage (it's just too easy, man, I can't help it). Coon ended up liking the Bison best, so he put it on a toasted baguette with a slaw. It won on presentation by a long way. Royal had his sliders and Urias his Texas twisters. The judges liked the appearance of Coon's dish, but said the sausage got lost with the bread and slaw...how do you lose your sausage? Ditto for Urias. They found Royal's dish "boring" but Myron said he could "find the sausage up in here." Not touching that one. Anyway, Royal won and naturally said he wanted to have his meat (hehehe) presented first. Coon would be second and Urias third. When they went back to cooking, I guess Urias heard his steaks calling him from the cooler. He brought them out, rubbed them with mustard (which was an interesting move), applied his dry rub and smoked them low for two hours. He would ultimately throw them on a hot grill and finish them off with a sauce and some agave. He would pull them off and cut them at the absolute last minute. "That's sweet, with a little heat," Urias' assistant said upon tasting the sauce. "That's what my wife says!" Urias bragged. Everybody is in on the fun today. Royal brought his ribs out and found them nowhere near ready. He had to jack up the temp and put them back and bemoaned the fact that he should be saucing them already. But, how could the great and powerful meat wizard have miscalculated? HOW? He seemed to be happy with his beef clod as he started cutting it. "I'm looking for the tender parts," he said. Aren't we all HEY YO!!! Coon said his ribs were close to overdone but would be fine. He decided to make a sort of burnt end-type cube, slices and chunks of the beef clod. Everybody turned their meat in for the judges. Royal went first. The judges liked the color and the presentation in the rib box. They complimented Royal on the flavor but said he they were tough. Moe didn't like the flavor of the beef clod. Myron and Tuffy did, but Myron did note that it was pushing it on being overdone. The judges liked Coon's sauce, seasoning and thought his ribs were tender. Myron did point out that they'd gotten a little dark. They thought his clod slices had a tug, mostly in a good way. They said it was steak-like. Moe said he shouldn't have put the cubes in the box, not liking the flavor or tenderness. The judges liked Urias' ribs in terms of flavor but said they were a tad underdone. Myron deemed his beef clod to be "a good bite." Moe didn't like the presentation, saying it looked "just thrown in there" but said his gamble on cutting the clod into steaks and using some unusual ingredients paid off. He said "he nailed it" in terms of flavor. The judges then sent the competitors away for further deliberation. They then called them back and told Coon he was third. He said, as lots of people do on the show, that he wouldn't have done anything different if given the chance again, which seems odd when you lost. "I loathe winning!" he seems to say. That left Urias and Royal and I just knew Royal was going to win. They'd shown one of his trademark hollers from his title win last season a dozen or so times and made sure to show all his judgement calls on how the other guys were doing things. The villain makes it interesting...the villain keeps you watching...BUT THE VILLAIN LOST! Urias was named the winner. He moves onto the next round and a near tearful Royal called the loss one of the worst experiences of his life. Hey Robbie, at least they were fans of your sausage (buh dum bump ching!) I'll have another review up ASAP. In the meantime, for more information on BBQ Pitmasters, go right here. Several years ago, I watched a movie called "From Dusk Till Dawn." It was a pretty entertaining "gangsters on the lam" sorta tale, or it was until a little over an hour into the movie. The characters were in a club watching Salma Hayek do a seductive dance...which I personally found offensive and distateful. In fact, I rewound the scene and watched it 15 or 16 times just to really get an understanding of how offensive and distateful it was. Knowledge is power kids. Anyway, out of nowhere, after an hour-plus long story had been woven about criminals running from the law BOOM...VAMPIRES. Suddenly it became a supernatural story of crazy bloodsuckers, with that unseemly dance scene kinda serving as the dividing line. There was not even a hint that in the first 60 minutes that them freaky, big-toothed Transylvania mofos were going to play any part in the proceedings. It was jarring and abrupt and really felt like two totally different movies.
Now, in what feels like just as odd a pivot, I'm going from talking about unseemly dances and the undead to BBQ Pitmasters. Last week's episode, which again took place in a barnyard-like setting "just outside of Austin"...which still bothers me. Is it Dripping Springs? Hutto? Details matter people! Anyway, this week's competitors included Ernest Servantes, who hails from New Braunfels, Lynnae Oxley of Sugar's Championship BBQ in Portland, Oregon and Mark West of 10 Bones BBQ in Memphis. Servantes is the only one of the three to never win on Pitmasters. Oxley made it all the way to the finals a few years ago (the year it was filmed in Tryon) but came in second and West has finished in both first and last place in previous seasons. He was also wearing weird pants that looked like pajama bottoms. He said they had pirates on them, but I couldn't make any out. I saw pajamas, which people now consider proper attire for shopping at The Walmart. They're an ill fit with BBQ, but hey, to each his own. It was then revealed that the pitmasters would be cooking brisket and deer tenderloin. They, of course, went right to work on the briskets, which would take most of their alloted 10 hours to cook. Oxley injected her brisket with beer (among other things) and packed some spare meat around the brisket in the pan for insulation. Her rub sounded pretty standard (salt, sugar, pepper, garlic, onion) and she used a crazed orgy of wood...I should phrase that differently. She used oak, pecan, cherry and peach wood to smoke her brisket. A seemingly odd and disparate mix, but she wins a lot of contests doing it that way. Servantes injected his brisket with phosphates, beef concentrate and tequila. Patron and fatty beef strap don't seem to go together to me, but again he's from Texas and knows a metric buttload more about brisket than me, so I'm sure it works. He used a vertical smoker, which he said was perfect for long cooks. He then flashed back to his last Pittmasters performance. "I had gray meat," he remembered. Hey, it's no biggie Mr. Servantes. You're getting a little older and...wait, he might have meant his meat got discolored sitting in the box. That's probably it. Yeah. Pajama man and his assistant were drinking beer and just kinda sitting there at that point, which did not meet with judge Myron Mixon's approval. "Nobody up here knows what the hell he's doing," Myron said of the judges table. "I wouldn't be sitting around on my ass with $50,000 on the line." West had a plan, though. He had done A LOT of trimming of the brisket and was planning to cook it hotter and faster than normal. The deer wouldn't take long to cook either, so there was ample time for a PBR. Pajamas, beer and burning wood...a magical combination. About that time, Myron told everyone to put their crap down, because it was time for the Kingsford One-Bite Challenge. The winner of the challenge each week gets the advantage of deciding the turn-in order of the final boxes. The three were then handed salmon and told they had half an hour to do something with it. Oxley was elated, but the fellows were not. West didn't look like he'd butchered many salmon in his time. "He's just whacking," judge Tuffy Stone said. And then I laughed because he said "whacking." It was an apt description, he was over there justa whackin' it...with a knife, into pieces that would be hard to grill, I think. Servantes made up a little crab, avacado mixture to serve alongside his salmon. Oxley went the "Asian Tex Mex" route. I have no idea what that is, but it involved pineapple juice, teriaki and jalapenos. Myron said aloud "I don't want no sushi...no cut bait." He didn't get anything raw, quite the opposite in West's case. He got a torched pile of fish goop. Oxley's bites looked to be resting on part of a cane pole, or maybe a poo-covered celery stalk. I couldn't tell which, but it was certainly the most appeallingly presented. The judges liked it very much, calling it "perfectly cook" and "elegant." They liked Servantes' too but called it "creativity gone wild" and thought maybe the crab/avacado mix competed with the salmon a little too much. They liked West's balsamic glaze, but it was way overdone. Tuffy actually called it "a hot mess." Ultimately, Oxley won and decided she'd present first on the brisket and deer, then West, then Servantes. By now they were cooking the deer. West marinated his in Italian dressing and some other seasonings to get the "gamey" taste out, then added salt and pepper and wrapped it in bacon. Servantes used red wine vinegar as a marinade and added something called achiote. He also concocted a cherry-chipotle glaze to put on it. He did a reverse-sear cook on the deer. Oxley cooked hers with sassafras wood. It was getting time to finish the briskets. Servantes poured Coke all over his...well, he said "cola" because they don't drop product names on TV shows. I guess it coulda been Doctor Perky or Mountain Thunder or something but it was in a red bottle, OK. West had, miraculously, cooked his despite the late start and when he cut the thing HOLY WOW AT THAT DANG SMOKE RING. It was seriously one of the biggest I've seen. Oxley had a little trouble, though. She smoked her brisket in a big foil pan, loading it up with veggies and au jus. Well, as she and her assistant slid it into the smoker, it apparently got a hole in it and all the juices leaked out. She tried to save it. She smoked the point seperately from the flat. The flat was the part missing the juice, so she poured some of the point juice (hahah) in it and seemed satisfied with the results. At juding, Myron, Tuffy and Big Moe all liked Oxley's deer. They called it "melt in your mouth tender." West got high marks for his flavor, but cooked it past the medium rare judges want to see. Servantes' deer was called "bold and peppery." They really seemed to like the cherry-chipotle glaze. Then it was brisket time. Oxley presented the judges with slices and burnt ends. However, Big Moe did a typical test on the slices, where you lay the slice down, pick up one end and bend it toward the other end, almost like you're folding it in half. When he did, the slice broke in half, which it shouldn't because that indicates it was overdone or dry. She squirmed uncomfortably as he did so. He liked her burnt ends, but said they were too sweet for his liking. Myron said he liked the slices but really like the burnt ends. He called them "the money shot" and said they melted in his mouth. And then I laughed. Tuffy didn't seem to think the slices were overcooked, though you could see a slice broken in half in front of him, indicating that maybe he'd done the same test as Moe? He liked the flavor. Mark was next. Myron said his slices were the best thing he ate that day, but said his burnt ends were chewy and underdone. He'd actually not tried them before putting them in the box. WAMP WAMP! Big Moe, like me, said the smoke ring on the brisket was the biggest he'd ever seen. Servantes was last. His meat was not gray this time, so that shot the doctor gave...sorry. We decided that meant discolored from sitting in the box already didn't we? We did. Moe said the brisket had a deep flavor. Myron said the taste was great and Tuffy liked the heat brought from the black and red pepper he used. The only negative was the lack of burnt ends. He said he was from Texas and AYE GOD Texans do what they want with cows, so mind your own dang business hippie! Actually he said Texans don't really do burnt ends. Moe said that would have shown an added skill level, so that hurt him. That brought about the judges deliberations away from the contestants. It was obvious West wasn't going to win despite doing a superior job on the brisket slices...the burnt ends having the consistency of super balls did him in. They went back and forth on the merits of what Oxley and Servantes turned in. Big Moe cast his brisket lot with Servantes, preferring the flavor and knocking Oxley for her doneness. Then all of a sudden TUFFY SPROUTED FRIGGIN' FANGS AND COWERED IN THE FACE OF GARLIC!!!!!!!!! NOSFERATU! Literally out of nowhere, Tuffy said Servantes' brisket was a little underdone in the way Oxley's might have been a little overdone...but he didn't really even concede it was overdone, making reference to the meat's "perfect doneness." Now, I get that when watching any competition or reality show, there are going to red herrings. Some pertinent stuff is going to be edited out when it happens, then reintroduced when convenient or necessary for drama-building. Maybe that happened. But seriously, there was no mention of Servantes' brisket being underdone when the judges were eating it. Oxley's was pretty obviously overcooked or dry because of her unfortunate pan mishap...which was beared out by Moe's little bendiness test. So, when they came back out, told West he was third, then crowned Oxley as the winner, I wasn't surprised. Did we just not see all the comments on Servantes' brisket? Did they feel bad for Oxley on the pan tear and figure she'd have won minus that? Was it a wacky curveball? Was I drunk and inattentive at key junctures of the show? Who knows, but the ending didn't feel right. They could have at least offered up a dance that offended my sensibilities so terribly I watched it repeatedly. For more on BBQ Pittmasters, you can go right here. You ever read a news report about somebody being mauled by an animal at the zoo? Not one that's the animal's fault, but one where Ned thinks it would be hilarious to drop his britches, hop in the cage and holler "Hey bear...look at my butt, look at my butt, look at my butt." If you shake it in the face of a large, wild, hungry animal and said animal eats your whole entire butt off, that's kinda on you hoss. Don't goad the bear. What does this have to do with "Barbecue Pitmaster?" It's called foreshadowing kids.
So, on this week's "all-stars" edition of the show, which was again set "just outside of Austin", which, as an aside, continues to bother me. Should their coy description of their location bother me this much? I'm a stickler for details I guess. If you're in Pflugerville just friggin' say so. Anyway, they were in the same sort of barnyard-looking place as last time. This week's competitors included Shad Kirton, who won season two of Pitmasters and bragged that he'd never lost on the show. Up next was Lee Ann Whippen, of Chicago Q, who was one of the stars of the first, documentary-style, season of Pitmasters and has been on as a competitor a few other times. That included the second season when she came in second to Kirton. "I beat her once, I'll beat her again," said Ike Turner...or, Kirton I mean, drawing whoops from the judges table. Lastly we have Jamie Geer, a competition cooker and builder of Jambo Pits, which are reputed to be among the finest in the barbecue-cooking world. Whippen actually brought a Jambo Pit to the contest. Geer has never won on Pitmaster, however. Next was the big meat unveiling, where the contestants learned they'd be cooking whole, gigundous slabs of prime rib (Whippen said it looked like half a cow) and chickens. Kirton and Whippen (who are both professional chefs) both got right to work on the beef. Geer, a world-champion chicken cooker, scoffed at that notion, noting that the chicken needed to be prepped first. He started mixing up a brine to soak his chicken in. Kirton rubbed his prime rib with salt and pepper and a lot of garlic. He said he'd be powering his smoker with cherry wood. Whippen, whose daughter was assisting her, mixed up a rub that was heavy on salt, pepper and sugar. That was an odd twist, because most contestants specifically try to cater their food toward what they know Myron likes and he frequently expresses his displeasure for sweetness on beef. Though she brought her Jambo Pit, Whippen also said that she'd brought along "an egg and a bullet." So, she's gonna do an anatomy lesson at some point? Oh, my mistake, an egg cooker and a bullet smoker. You can understand my confusion. Well, it's a good thing Whippen brought back-up, because she ran into trouble right away with her Jambo Pit. She wanted to get the temperature up around 300 but couldn't get it to even 200. Turns out, she was using wet wood (let the moment pass...breathe...don't say anything...just say "two, three, four" and let it go) which made lots of smoke but not a whole lot of fire. Myron came over to check things out. "You ain't got no fire in it," he said. Whippen said the fire was getting there and she would start off on the bullet or egg if need be. Myron sort of scolded her, saying you would normally check your wood before coming to a competition. He mentioned wet wood could make for bitter smoke. "Tomorrow might be your day, but it's gonna be too late," he said. Whippen got a little teary-eyed. "He hurt my feelings," she said. OK, well that was uncomfortable. Not fun watching a woman cry over wood...let's rephrase that, over meat...(two, three, four) aaaand moving on. Geer had gotten onto his prime rib by this time, rubbing it with salt, pepper and garlic powder. He said his plan was to keep it "Texas simple." "I'm going to wow the judges with perfect perfection," Geer said. Perfect perfection? I spent a long time considering how flawlessly immaculate something would have to be to attain perfect perfection. It made my head hurt and I think it earned him use of a timeshare condo on Redundancy Island...a lovely place with sandy beaches and an ATM machine on every corner. By this time Whippen had moved onto her chicken, putting a spice rub and butter under the skin. She sort of glazed it in honey and wrapped it in bacon. Geer had taken his chicken out of the marinade and put a reddish rub on it. Kirton said he hated chickens because they were easy to cook but also easy to screw up. He butchered his chicken and decided to cook it on his grill. His plan was to turn in hind quarters, though he'd also cook the breast to have just in case. About this time, Myron told the cooks to stop what they were doing, because it was time for the Kingsford one-bite challenge. They were told they had 30 minutes to concoct something out of pork tenderloin...Geer was just thankful they weren't given cooter (he actually said turtle but cooter is funnier). That isn't a lot of time to work with, so Geer cut his into chops and applied rub, saying he was going to treat it like a rib. Kirton made up some apple slaw and applied a cherry glaze to the meat, while Whippen made a habanero glazed chop and some pineapple salsa. At turn in, the chef skills of Kirton and Whippen were apparent. They literally presented the judges with bite-sized pieces of meat. Whippen's plate had the small meat pieces sitting on top of the salsa. It really looked nice. Kirton's went a step beyond that, with each piece of meat resting at the end of a fork with the slaw on top. Geer turned in big ol' hunks of messy-looking meat and felt sure he was doomed. Whippen's one-bite got high marks, but the judges felt the pineapple salsa outshined the meat. The judges were floored by the presentation of Kirton's entry but thought they could taste the slaw more than the pork. They called the appearance and effort-level of Geer's "uninspiring" but loved the flavor and he won, meaning he got to decide the order of the final turn-in, a strategic advantage. He went first (you always go first), decided Whippen would go second and he stuck Kirton last. That's a bad spot to be in, because your meat will likely get cold by the time the judges eat it. Everybody went back to their pits. Geer checked his beef temp and got concerned when the inside portion read much lower than the outside. He decided to jack up his smoker temperature. Whippen started to prepare her chicken, but she just started hacking at the bird with a big knife like Jason Vorhees would with fornicating teenagers. She also showed a not very artful touch in applying the sauce. It was gloppy, drawing more critique from the judges...Myron called her whole day "a train wreck." Kirton seemed to be having no problems at all. Nope CLEAR SAILING for him. He cut up some big slices of the beef and put them in the box, but also put some shavings in just to set himself apart. In the chicken box, he opted not to put in breasts, reasoning that the big hind quarters wouldn't leave enough room. He did throw some nice-looking wings in just to have some white meat in the box. Everyone got their stuff turned in just in time. Geer was judged first. The judges liked the flavor of his chicken, but as Tuffy Stone bit into his piece, the skin pulled badly. You want nice, clean, bite-through skin on chicken, not a rubber band. Whippen's chicken was said to be good, but again, the skin pulled as Big Moe bit down and the sauce was said to look sorta sloppy. Kirton's skin was bite-through, was lauded for taste and tenderness...but putting in wings instead of breasts was deemed to be the act of a weenie. Before the prime rib was judged, Myron asked if any of the contestants had tried their prime rib. Geer and Whippen had, Kirton had not. "Why would you not taste you prime rib?" asked the bear, I mean Myron. "Look at my butt, look at..." wait, that's not what Kirton said. He said he knew it was good. Myron made him come up and taste it. Kirton said it tasted like prime rib. "Does it taste like great prime rib?" Myron asked. "It does to me, but does it to you?" Kirton shot back to the bear, I mean Myron. Why do I keep calling him that? At this point they did a cutaway of Whippen wondering just why in the hell you'd shake your naked fanny...I mean, talk to Myron like that, since he pretty much holds your fate in his hands. Even though he struggled with getting the internal temperature where he wanted it and the judges said the pieces they got were not totally evenly cooked, Geer's prime rib was judged to be very good. Whippen got some grief for turning in tiny little slices of the beef, since she was given a trinormous hunk of cow to cook, but the flavor got high marks, to the point that the judges said they wouldn't have known she'd had problems based on the taste. That shows great skill as a pitmaster, they said, which hopefully unhurts her feelings. Kirton's prime rib was a hit in terms of doneness, taste and texture. Big Moe said the comment he wrote on the card was "W-O-W, exclamation point." He was dinged a little bit for the shavings, which the judges said seemed superfluous and didn't taste any different than the slices. After sending the contestants off for a minute for some more deliberation time, the judges called them back. In third place was...Kirton. Now, based on the comments alone, he sounded like the winner to me (and fellow blawger Jed Blackwell). Perhaps going third did hurt him a little and maybe the decision not to include breasts in the box cost him more than I thought. It's also possible that we, the viewers, were manipulated. If every clue you are given on a reality or competition show indicates the eventual outcome, there's no point in watching the whole thing. For the sake of making compelling TV, there has to be some drama and intrigue. Let's say you're watching a singing show and contestant Jim Bob is said to "sing like dookie" while judges hail Lerlene as "the blessed angelic successor of both Patsy Cline and Mariah Carey...her range is colossal, her stage presence mesmerizing and her soul is on display in each achingly delicious note that wafts away from her sweet lips." Why would you watch the finale...unless there is some chance Lerlene is going to be the surprise loser? That's interesting...but an expected one-sided ass-whipping that turns out to just be a one-sided ass-whipping is not. My last theory is that he ticked Myron off with his kind of flippant attitude. HE GOADED THE BEAR AND GOT HIS WHOLE BUTT EATEN OFF! In second place was...Whippen. Nothing beats perfect perfection Lee Ann! Geer, by virtue of his first-ever win on Pitmasters, advances to the next round. So until the next episode, don't wave your naked butt at a bear and go right here for more info on Barbecue Pitmasters. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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