Not for Nothing November - Part 8

Yes, I'm still sticking with my "post every day in November" self-imposed sentence. The Rerun post from earlier is technically my Saturday post. I was unable to blog yesterday because I was at the Big Pig Jig.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Big Pig Jig.

I'll let that soak in a minute.



The Big Pig Jig is a yearly barbeque competition and festival held in Vienna Georgia. The Big Pig Jig is now one of America's largest cooking themed festivals.

Fast Facts About The Big Pig Jig:

*Over 120 cooking teams are expected to compete for top honors.

*Competition rules state that barbeque is defined as pork meat only that is prepared on wood and/or a charcoal fire.

*Over 25,000 festivalgoers are expected to take in the two-day event this year.

*Cash prizes are awarded to the winners and prizes awarded in the past have totalled over $15,000.

The Jig really is a big deal around these parts. It's been featured on the Food Network as part of the show Good Eats with Alton Brown.

One of my favorite things about the Jig is the yearly themes. This year it was "Pigieval Times". Other themes have been "Hogaritaville" and my beloved "The Wizard of Hogs".

I'd like to point out a couple of things before I regale you with my favorite Pig Jig story.

First, it is held in Vienna, GA. 99% of people on God's green earth would call the town Veeenna, as in the capital of Austria. However, the lovely citizens of south Georgia refer to the town as Vyenna, as in I don't know how to pronounce words correctly. Of course these are the same people who call the town of Milan, Millin, as in "chillin' like a villian taking penicillin in Milan". Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Second, the thriving metropolis of Vienna boasts one traffic light. I grew up in Connecticut until the age of 19, lived in Florida for three years, and then moved to Georgia. Not just anywhere in Georgia, mind you. Vienna, Georgia. I was driving home after work late one night and to my utter amazement, a goat wandered into the intersection. I swear the bastard paused for dramatic effect under the one traffic light in town just to freak me out. That shit doesn't happen in Connecticut. Martha Stewart simply would not stand for it.

Okay, it is now time for my Big Pig Jig story.

The delightful Mr. Peaches and I were married on October 14, 1995. My two bffs, Julie and Betsy, flew down from Connecticut to be my bridesmaids. We did not plan this as part of the nuptial celebrations, but the wedding just so happened to fall on the same weekend as the Big Pig Jig. Being the good hosts we are, we took the wedding party to the Jig to show Julie and Betsy how the rednecks lived.

People, we had the betrunken time of our lives.

There is really not much to actually do at the Jig unless you are part of a cooking team. One would think it would be a smorgasbord of porcine taste testing, but it's not. It's a competition, so all the teams are cooking for the judges, not for the general public. It's great if you know a team, because they will feed you much pork and beer. My darling friend Tara and her husband Jeff were kind enough to shower me with delicious ribs yesterday. 'Tis manna from heaven, I tell you.

Anyhoo, back to the redneck bachelor/bachelorette party. There were three girls and three guys in our crowd, wandering around trying to see what we could get into. My friends were flabbergasted that you had to purchase beer tickets at one booth, then go to another booth to get the beer. They were even more flabbergasted that one had the option of buying a 12 pack of beer (Bud or Bud Lite - anything else is goddamned un-American) and walk around with it.

So we proceed to see the limited sites of the Jig. Back then, they had a mini carnival set up with rides. Personally, I refuse to get on those fly by night rides. Have you seen the people that set the rides up? Mother fucker, if I can't trust you to brush the 3 remaining teeth you have in your head, I damned sure ain't gonna trust you to put together a 3 ton mechanism that could potentially be my final resting place. Hell to the naw.

The guys in our group, including the besainted Mr. Peaches, didn't care about such logistics, so they got on the Tilt-a-Whirl. This ride has cars that turn independently whilst the ride is also turning. The girls, including my betrunken ass, thought it would be funny to flash the guys as they were spinning around toward us. Of course it never occurred to us that as we were flashing them, we were also flashing everybody at the Jig.

To this day, I still have the urge to lift my shirt up whenever I go to the Jig. Good times.

Why do most of my stories end up with me whipping out my cans?