Drizzt
Member
Kill 'Em & Grill 'Em
Humberto Fontova
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
The book came highly recommended by impressive sources and I finally picked it up: "Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy."
Here’s a book, they said, about animal rights by a passionate animal rightist and vegetarian – but a conservative one. Matthew Scully was a longtime National Review writer and a speechwriter for George W. Bush himself.
"Hmm," I thought. "Might be interesting. Might offer some fresh insights."
My annual slaughter of animals is not inconsiderable, thus my keen interest. From the scouting to the shooting to the skinning to the skillet – I delight in the entire process.
With rifle, shotgun and bow I take off after Bambi, Thumper, Daffy and several more of their woodland and wetland neighbors. From October through February the bullet-, shot- and arrow- riddled carcasses of one or the other hang on our swing set, to the scandal of my neighbors – but only those uninvited to our dinner parties.
Come warm weather and I grab a spear gun, treble-hook and gaff. Nemo and his neighbors now catch hell. As a result, my family (including two ravenous teenage boys) thrives primarily (but not exclusively) on the fruits of my blood-lust: fresh fish and wild game year-round. Our dinner parties also pack ‘em in.
It only took a couple of chapters to see I’d been royally rooked by the book. The "conservative" Scully branded hunters as "assassins! ... miscreants! ... bullies and cowards taking out their problems on animals!"
Our sport was simply "a debauchery! ... an abomination!"
Hunting magazines are "the pornography of blood-lust. … And like other obscenities today, a multi-million dollar industry. ... Sport hunters operate in a subculture like pornographers."
My wife noticed my reaction as I flipped the pages and became alarmed. "I can get this same c**p from PETA!" I snarled. Remember Mikey Corleone when he came back from the bathroom with the pistol Clemenza stashed for him? Remember his eyes right before he blows away Police Chief McCluskey?
That’s what my dear wife saw. My eyes bugged and twirled. My face twitched spastically. So she ran for an antidote. A powerful one was needed here. In seconds she stood before me, in one hand a cold brewskie, in the other Ted and Shemane Nugent’s new book "Kill It & Grill It" – my birthday present, as it turned out.
It was hard to tell which was better, the first frosty sip from the mug or the opening page of this rollicking book. "Meat is life!" proclaims Nugent right off the bat. "Praise and braise the flesh!"
(Seems a lot of medical folks are saying the same thing nowadays. Consider the Atkins Diet.)
"Nobody properly respects a critter," Nugent continues, " more than those whose lives are furthered and enriched with their life-giving flesh. Pure, real, Honest-to-God free-range protein is the rocketful for my spiritual campfire. Venison is free-range. Pheasant is free-range – I’m free-range!"
The maniac guitarist was just getting started. In seconds I was in bliss. My wife smiled and nodded in response. Amazingly, Ted and Shemane’s book is a "cookbook." Well, label it whatever you want. To me it’s a riot.
Good Cajun and Creole cooks (I live in New Orleans; I know a few) always say they never follow a recipe exactly as printed. They’ll curl up with a cookbook the way they curl up with an arresting novel, picking and gleaning from different recipes, reading it for the sheer joy.
If EVER a cookbook was designed for this, here it is. Between recipes for such as Jamaican Jerk Venison, Squirrel Casserole and Maple Bourbon Wild Boar, the Nugents’ book comes peppered with hunting stories and punchy aphorisms. "Vegetarians are cool! All I eat are vegetarians!"
A great cookbook by a great musician makes perfect sense. A good cook is neither mechanic nor craftsman. He (or she!) is more properly an artist, like a musician. And as we all know, all good artists are half crazy.
So who’s surprised that the same mind that came up with lyrics and notes to "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Wango Tango" also came up with makings for Pheasant Chow-mein and Rock ‘n Roll Hogmandoo?
But this book also gets pensive: "To witness the death of one’s own food will stay with you and reside deep in your heart. You will know intuitively that food gathering is serious business."
Interestingly, Madonna (of all people!) seems to agree with Ted Nugent. She’s become a big-time pheasant hunter and was recently quoted right here in NewsMax by Jim Hirsen himself: "Sure, I eat birds," she boasts. "You have more of a respect for the things you eat when you go through or see the process of killing them."
And did you catch John Kerry’s recent interview with the Washington Post? It was something to read. Kerry boasts of his love of blasting doves, ducks and deer. Then he details how he rips out their guts out and skins them himself. Too bad Hank Williams Jr. didn’t interview Kerry a coupla years ago. He mighta named his song "New England Boy Can Survive."
Heck, next to John Kerry, Hank’s Country Boy, the one "with a rifle, shotgun and a four-wheel drive," the one who "skins his buck and runs his trotline," comes across as a prissy little chump.
We live in crazy times, my friends. Scully’s book calls for an immediate outlawing of bow hunting (with perhaps an eventual outlawing of all hunting, from what I gathered) and gets ringing reviews from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator and the Wall Street Journal!
At the same time, Madonna boasts about blasting pheasant and the man who looks like the major Democratic presidential candidate boasts about blasting deer, then ripping out their heart and guts!
But ah! you say. Don’t forget that nowadays National Review represents a "hipper," more preppiefied type of urban conservatism. Recall that Ann Coulter herself called them "Girly boys" after they spiked her famous 9/11 column.
So maybe it’s not all that odd they’d endorse a book that calls the publishers of Field & Stream and The National Rifle Association’s The American Hunter "pornographers," and regards hunters as sadists, brain-damaged brutes and criminals.
OK, fine, but Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, which bills itself as representing an older, crankier, more "heartlandish," more "genuine" type conservatism gave Scully’s crazy compendium of hyperventilations and hot flashes an even bigger endorsement. Indeed, the American Conservative made it the cover story last November and excerpted a chapter!
Actually, it’s not crazy at all. What it shows is exactly what NewsMax showed with that red and blue election map. America’s divisions nowadays are more of a cultural thing. It’s a lifestyle thing.
Sure, the editors of NR or Weekly Standard might quibble about marginal tax rates or the length of the Iraqi occupation with the people they sit across from on CNN and Fox. And, sure, Buchanan disagrees with Press on NAFTA. But all these people have practically the identical lifestyle.
All the magazines that plugged Scully are headquartered smack in the Beltway. They’re mostly staffed by Beltwayers. Let’s get away from Scully’s value judgments for a second and go to what he regards as factual:
"Your typical trophy hunter today," he writes, "is hunting captive animals and for all the skill and manhood it requires might as well do his stalking in a zoo."
Does this guy realize how idiotic that sounds in Birmingham, for instance? Or Memphis? Or Charlotte? Or heck, in Houston, Nashville, Austin or Atlanta? Even crazier, doesn’t he have an old college chum, a brother-in-law, a cousin that might have pointed out this flamingly idiotic statement before it got into print?
Didn’t his editors at a tony New York publishing house think to crosscheck some of this? Of course not, because nothing in their lifestyles prompted them to dispute it. They don’t hunt. They probably don’t know anyone who hunts either. Still, checking it would have been a cinch.
Here in Louisiana, for instance, Wildlife Department statistics on public land show that barely one in thirty hunters gets a deer on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s ONE in THIRTY!! This is like "stalking in a zoo"?
As I always tell my bunny-hugging friends and relatives: "You wanna stop feeling sorry for animals? Hunt ‘em! That’ll cure ya fast! Come home bedraggled and half-frozen (and empty-handed) after three days in a duck blind or stalking deer and you’ll see these beasts are far from the cuddly, helpless little creatures you see on Disney or even the Discovery Channel!"
True, some trophy hunting ranches do exist. Equally true, any millionaire could probably "buy" himself an easy trophy with an easy hunt, just as any millionaire can probably buy himself a trophy wife.
To me those few (statistically insignificant, you might say) instances of the first don’t count against hunting any more than the instances of the second count against courtship.
Scully hyperventilates on: "The whole world is becoming an archipelago of game parks and shooting ranches!"
I’d bet no more than 8 percent of America’s 14 million hunters have ever set foot on a game ranch. Scully’s stuff is crazier than anything I’ve read from Ingrid Newkirk or Chrissie Hynde. At least these latter stick with shrill PMS-type value judgments. That stuff’s easy for any husband to handle.
The Nugents’ book really hit the spot for our Fourth of July barbecue bash. And what could be more appropriate than celebrating this patriotic holiday with Nugent recipes? Here’s a guy who opens his concerts with the Flag, who uses it as a backdrop on stage, who salutes our armed forces, who ... do I hear Pinks sniveling? ... Yes I do!
"Big DEAL!!" They snivel. "Nugent’s just jumping on the patriotic bandwagon, like everyone else these days!"
You know, Pinks, I agree with the last part. I thought about this myself, especially while watching the newly minted Dennis Miller. Here’s a guy who made an SNL career out of Reagan- and Bush I-bashing. Now he sounds like Barry Goldwater on the ‘64 campaign hustings. I thought about it when reading about Fleetwood Mac. Here are those notorious Clintonites now coming out "for the boys," like the Andrew Sisters.
I even thought about it with Charlie Daniels. True, he’s been waving the Republican Flag as heartily as Ted Nugent for years. But I can’t forget his first song ("Uneasy Rider"), where he boasts of sporting a peace sign on his car and slams rednecks as "green-teethed ... faithful followers of brother John Birch and belongers of the Antioch Baptist Church." Also, Charlie Daniels campaigned vociferously for Jimmy Carter for president.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still fond Charlie Daniels’ music, especially his early stuff. I’m no fuddy-duddy. Politics don’t dictate my entertainment. Just thought I’d point it out, along with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who, after the glorious "Sweet Home Alabama," made amends to the liberal establishment with the properly anti-gun "Mr. Saturday Night Special" and "Gimme Back My Bullets." What wusses.
And let’s not forget Elvis’ pathetic sop to the Beltway powers-that-be, his lame "In The Ghetto."
You’ll search Ted Nugent’s 35-year discography in vain for any such grovelings before the liberal establishment. You can call him lots of things (and many do), but "hypocrite" or "political opportunist" just ain’t gonna stick. Nugent was calling our soldiers heroes back when their standard name among his industry peers was "baby killers."
What will stick (especially to your ribs) are those recipes in "Kill It & Grill It."
Humberto Fontova is the author of "Helldiver's Rodeo," described as "An orgy of Political Incorrectness ... a big-hearted wonderful book!" by the New Orleans Times Picayune, as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher's Weekly, and as "A must-read!" by Booklist. His upcoming book, "The Hellpig Hunt: A Hunting /Fishing Adventure in the Wild Wetlands at the Mouth of the Mississippi by Middle-Aged Lunatics Who Refuse To Grow Up," will be out shortly and can be pre-ordered.
http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/7/171236.shtml
Humberto Fontova
Tuesday, July 8, 2003
The book came highly recommended by impressive sources and I finally picked it up: "Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy."
Here’s a book, they said, about animal rights by a passionate animal rightist and vegetarian – but a conservative one. Matthew Scully was a longtime National Review writer and a speechwriter for George W. Bush himself.
"Hmm," I thought. "Might be interesting. Might offer some fresh insights."
My annual slaughter of animals is not inconsiderable, thus my keen interest. From the scouting to the shooting to the skinning to the skillet – I delight in the entire process.
With rifle, shotgun and bow I take off after Bambi, Thumper, Daffy and several more of their woodland and wetland neighbors. From October through February the bullet-, shot- and arrow- riddled carcasses of one or the other hang on our swing set, to the scandal of my neighbors – but only those uninvited to our dinner parties.
Come warm weather and I grab a spear gun, treble-hook and gaff. Nemo and his neighbors now catch hell. As a result, my family (including two ravenous teenage boys) thrives primarily (but not exclusively) on the fruits of my blood-lust: fresh fish and wild game year-round. Our dinner parties also pack ‘em in.
It only took a couple of chapters to see I’d been royally rooked by the book. The "conservative" Scully branded hunters as "assassins! ... miscreants! ... bullies and cowards taking out their problems on animals!"
Our sport was simply "a debauchery! ... an abomination!"
Hunting magazines are "the pornography of blood-lust. … And like other obscenities today, a multi-million dollar industry. ... Sport hunters operate in a subculture like pornographers."
My wife noticed my reaction as I flipped the pages and became alarmed. "I can get this same c**p from PETA!" I snarled. Remember Mikey Corleone when he came back from the bathroom with the pistol Clemenza stashed for him? Remember his eyes right before he blows away Police Chief McCluskey?
That’s what my dear wife saw. My eyes bugged and twirled. My face twitched spastically. So she ran for an antidote. A powerful one was needed here. In seconds she stood before me, in one hand a cold brewskie, in the other Ted and Shemane Nugent’s new book "Kill It & Grill It" – my birthday present, as it turned out.
It was hard to tell which was better, the first frosty sip from the mug or the opening page of this rollicking book. "Meat is life!" proclaims Nugent right off the bat. "Praise and braise the flesh!"
(Seems a lot of medical folks are saying the same thing nowadays. Consider the Atkins Diet.)
"Nobody properly respects a critter," Nugent continues, " more than those whose lives are furthered and enriched with their life-giving flesh. Pure, real, Honest-to-God free-range protein is the rocketful for my spiritual campfire. Venison is free-range. Pheasant is free-range – I’m free-range!"
The maniac guitarist was just getting started. In seconds I was in bliss. My wife smiled and nodded in response. Amazingly, Ted and Shemane’s book is a "cookbook." Well, label it whatever you want. To me it’s a riot.
Good Cajun and Creole cooks (I live in New Orleans; I know a few) always say they never follow a recipe exactly as printed. They’ll curl up with a cookbook the way they curl up with an arresting novel, picking and gleaning from different recipes, reading it for the sheer joy.
If EVER a cookbook was designed for this, here it is. Between recipes for such as Jamaican Jerk Venison, Squirrel Casserole and Maple Bourbon Wild Boar, the Nugents’ book comes peppered with hunting stories and punchy aphorisms. "Vegetarians are cool! All I eat are vegetarians!"
A great cookbook by a great musician makes perfect sense. A good cook is neither mechanic nor craftsman. He (or she!) is more properly an artist, like a musician. And as we all know, all good artists are half crazy.
So who’s surprised that the same mind that came up with lyrics and notes to "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Wango Tango" also came up with makings for Pheasant Chow-mein and Rock ‘n Roll Hogmandoo?
But this book also gets pensive: "To witness the death of one’s own food will stay with you and reside deep in your heart. You will know intuitively that food gathering is serious business."
Interestingly, Madonna (of all people!) seems to agree with Ted Nugent. She’s become a big-time pheasant hunter and was recently quoted right here in NewsMax by Jim Hirsen himself: "Sure, I eat birds," she boasts. "You have more of a respect for the things you eat when you go through or see the process of killing them."
And did you catch John Kerry’s recent interview with the Washington Post? It was something to read. Kerry boasts of his love of blasting doves, ducks and deer. Then he details how he rips out their guts out and skins them himself. Too bad Hank Williams Jr. didn’t interview Kerry a coupla years ago. He mighta named his song "New England Boy Can Survive."
Heck, next to John Kerry, Hank’s Country Boy, the one "with a rifle, shotgun and a four-wheel drive," the one who "skins his buck and runs his trotline," comes across as a prissy little chump.
We live in crazy times, my friends. Scully’s book calls for an immediate outlawing of bow hunting (with perhaps an eventual outlawing of all hunting, from what I gathered) and gets ringing reviews from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator and the Wall Street Journal!
At the same time, Madonna boasts about blasting pheasant and the man who looks like the major Democratic presidential candidate boasts about blasting deer, then ripping out their heart and guts!
But ah! you say. Don’t forget that nowadays National Review represents a "hipper," more preppiefied type of urban conservatism. Recall that Ann Coulter herself called them "Girly boys" after they spiked her famous 9/11 column.
So maybe it’s not all that odd they’d endorse a book that calls the publishers of Field & Stream and The National Rifle Association’s The American Hunter "pornographers," and regards hunters as sadists, brain-damaged brutes and criminals.
OK, fine, but Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, which bills itself as representing an older, crankier, more "heartlandish," more "genuine" type conservatism gave Scully’s crazy compendium of hyperventilations and hot flashes an even bigger endorsement. Indeed, the American Conservative made it the cover story last November and excerpted a chapter!
Actually, it’s not crazy at all. What it shows is exactly what NewsMax showed with that red and blue election map. America’s divisions nowadays are more of a cultural thing. It’s a lifestyle thing.
Sure, the editors of NR or Weekly Standard might quibble about marginal tax rates or the length of the Iraqi occupation with the people they sit across from on CNN and Fox. And, sure, Buchanan disagrees with Press on NAFTA. But all these people have practically the identical lifestyle.
All the magazines that plugged Scully are headquartered smack in the Beltway. They’re mostly staffed by Beltwayers. Let’s get away from Scully’s value judgments for a second and go to what he regards as factual:
"Your typical trophy hunter today," he writes, "is hunting captive animals and for all the skill and manhood it requires might as well do his stalking in a zoo."
Does this guy realize how idiotic that sounds in Birmingham, for instance? Or Memphis? Or Charlotte? Or heck, in Houston, Nashville, Austin or Atlanta? Even crazier, doesn’t he have an old college chum, a brother-in-law, a cousin that might have pointed out this flamingly idiotic statement before it got into print?
Didn’t his editors at a tony New York publishing house think to crosscheck some of this? Of course not, because nothing in their lifestyles prompted them to dispute it. They don’t hunt. They probably don’t know anyone who hunts either. Still, checking it would have been a cinch.
Here in Louisiana, for instance, Wildlife Department statistics on public land show that barely one in thirty hunters gets a deer on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s ONE in THIRTY!! This is like "stalking in a zoo"?
As I always tell my bunny-hugging friends and relatives: "You wanna stop feeling sorry for animals? Hunt ‘em! That’ll cure ya fast! Come home bedraggled and half-frozen (and empty-handed) after three days in a duck blind or stalking deer and you’ll see these beasts are far from the cuddly, helpless little creatures you see on Disney or even the Discovery Channel!"
True, some trophy hunting ranches do exist. Equally true, any millionaire could probably "buy" himself an easy trophy with an easy hunt, just as any millionaire can probably buy himself a trophy wife.
To me those few (statistically insignificant, you might say) instances of the first don’t count against hunting any more than the instances of the second count against courtship.
Scully hyperventilates on: "The whole world is becoming an archipelago of game parks and shooting ranches!"
I’d bet no more than 8 percent of America’s 14 million hunters have ever set foot on a game ranch. Scully’s stuff is crazier than anything I’ve read from Ingrid Newkirk or Chrissie Hynde. At least these latter stick with shrill PMS-type value judgments. That stuff’s easy for any husband to handle.
The Nugents’ book really hit the spot for our Fourth of July barbecue bash. And what could be more appropriate than celebrating this patriotic holiday with Nugent recipes? Here’s a guy who opens his concerts with the Flag, who uses it as a backdrop on stage, who salutes our armed forces, who ... do I hear Pinks sniveling? ... Yes I do!
"Big DEAL!!" They snivel. "Nugent’s just jumping on the patriotic bandwagon, like everyone else these days!"
You know, Pinks, I agree with the last part. I thought about this myself, especially while watching the newly minted Dennis Miller. Here’s a guy who made an SNL career out of Reagan- and Bush I-bashing. Now he sounds like Barry Goldwater on the ‘64 campaign hustings. I thought about it when reading about Fleetwood Mac. Here are those notorious Clintonites now coming out "for the boys," like the Andrew Sisters.
I even thought about it with Charlie Daniels. True, he’s been waving the Republican Flag as heartily as Ted Nugent for years. But I can’t forget his first song ("Uneasy Rider"), where he boasts of sporting a peace sign on his car and slams rednecks as "green-teethed ... faithful followers of brother John Birch and belongers of the Antioch Baptist Church." Also, Charlie Daniels campaigned vociferously for Jimmy Carter for president.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still fond Charlie Daniels’ music, especially his early stuff. I’m no fuddy-duddy. Politics don’t dictate my entertainment. Just thought I’d point it out, along with Lynyrd Skynyrd, who, after the glorious "Sweet Home Alabama," made amends to the liberal establishment with the properly anti-gun "Mr. Saturday Night Special" and "Gimme Back My Bullets." What wusses.
And let’s not forget Elvis’ pathetic sop to the Beltway powers-that-be, his lame "In The Ghetto."
You’ll search Ted Nugent’s 35-year discography in vain for any such grovelings before the liberal establishment. You can call him lots of things (and many do), but "hypocrite" or "political opportunist" just ain’t gonna stick. Nugent was calling our soldiers heroes back when their standard name among his industry peers was "baby killers."
What will stick (especially to your ribs) are those recipes in "Kill It & Grill It."
Humberto Fontova is the author of "Helldiver's Rodeo," described as "An orgy of Political Incorrectness ... a big-hearted wonderful book!" by the New Orleans Times Picayune, as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher's Weekly, and as "A must-read!" by Booklist. His upcoming book, "The Hellpig Hunt: A Hunting /Fishing Adventure in the Wild Wetlands at the Mouth of the Mississippi by Middle-Aged Lunatics Who Refuse To Grow Up," will be out shortly and can be pre-ordered.
http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/7/7/171236.shtml
