Biscuit Friday: Random pizza and the Cheez-It Turkey Leg
Plus: tunes and reading for the weekend. Come hang!
Sending you off into the weekend with a round of music, news and strangeness from around the South. Contributions always welcome!
There’s an old quote attributed to Lon Chaney, the silent-film actor famous for early horror flicks like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. “A clown is funny in the circus ring,” he said, “but what would be the normal reaction to opening a door at midnight and finding the same clown standing there in the moonlight?”
It’s the essence of horror. Now, switch out “clown” for “dude seeking pizza” and you have the subject of a story out of … come on, you already know the state.
Scene: Jacksonville, Florida. Time: 11:48 p.m. Place: Some poor dude’s front doorstep. A Jacksonville resident answered the door at 12 minutes to midnight to find someone standing there with an odd request: Can you make me a pizza?
Look, there’s no better food at midnight than a slice, but you can’t just go around knocking on doors asking for pizza. (Trust me, I’ve tried.) The homeowner ran off the prospective customer … and then called the cops, who handled what was surely only the fourth or fifth weirdest call of the night.
“Officers talked to the resident and then looked for the pizza-seeking visitor,” the Jacksonville Journal-Courier notes. “They found him a short time later and he was advised not to return to the house, according to a police report.”
So this had a happy ending! Well, except for the guy not getting his pizza Good news. Thankfully. Because, just for a moment, consider all the ways a pizza-related interaction could have very easily gone wrong in Florida:
-The visitor could have not just asked, but ordered the homeowner to make the pizza
-The visitor could have made his order while brandishing a machete for emphasis
-And also, while naked
-The pizza could be topped with bits of household pet
-The pizza could be topped with bits of homeowner
Really, the possibilities are endless. We’re all fortunate it didn’t go in that direction. And now I want pizza.
Got a story, a pic or a tune I need to check out? Email me or — even better — leave a comment below.
F&AB’s Books, Beer & BBQ: Pappy’s Smokehouse, St. Louis
Does St. Louis count as the South? Probably not, but since the SEC and my friends at TrueSouth have embraced it, I have too. And damn, am I glad I did, because I had — no joke — some of the greatest ribs of my life at Pappy’s Smokehouse on Olive Street in St. Louis. This is one of those places where you can see where the line will wrap around the nondescript brick building on busy days, and when you get inside, you’ll see why. The ribs are slow-smoked over apple and cherry woods, the meat is damn near perfect, the sauce a flawless mix of sweet and savory. You’ll want to devour everything that came in contact with these beauties — bread, basket, napkins, everything. Don’t sleep on the Fire & Ice pickles, a mix of sugar, chili spice and other goodness that’ll sneak up on you. If you’re anywhere nearby, carve out the time for Pappy’s. You won’t regret it.
We’re building a comprehensive map of bookstores, breweries and barbecue pits all over the South. Suggestions always welcome.
Song of the Week: Zach Bryan, “Appetite”
So there’s this trend now in music to release not just albums, but absolute cascades of music, literal dozens of songs at once. I’m not sure how Zach Bryan is able to keep recording all the songs he puts out, much less write them, but the dude is cranking out product. He released his latest 75-minute, 25-song beast, With Heaven on Top, on Friday … and three days later put out the acoustic versions of every single song. That’s a hell of a lot of music to digest, and he’s probably written 14 more songs since I started typing this sentence.
Anyway, it’s good stuff, and part of the ever-growing Flashlight & A Biscuit playlist on Spotify:
Stunt Food of the Week: The Cheez-It Turkey Leg
If you’re not a college football sicko, you might not be aware that the season-ending slate of bowl games has transformed from a series of exhibition football games into branded anarchy. The most notable of these is the Pop-Tarts Bowl, which actually sacrifices its mascot at the end of the game. (Really.) I wrote about it all here, and today’s food selection is part of that same bizarre phenomenon.
The Cheez-It Bowl in Orlando this season leaned hard into the bizarre stunt-food trend, featuring a variety of Cheez-It-oriented offerings that included “Loaded Chili Cheez-It Crunch Dog,” “Mac N Cheez-It Walking Nachos,” “Cheez-It Bacon Cheez Burger,” and the behemoth you see above — the Cheez-It Turkey Leg.
Encrusted in Cheez-It dust, much like your fingers after a 1am Cheez-It binge, and served on a delicious bed of artisanal aged Cheez-Its (aged a full 3 minutes after bag opening), this turkey leg is … well, it’s something, I’m not sure what. Anyway, the eternal question:
Because what everyone needs is more me
Relatively quiet week this week in between college football and NFL playoffs, but that’ll change soon enough. The best story I covered this week for Yahoo Sports was Maxim Naumov, the 24-year-old figure skater who’s going to the Olympics just a year after losing both parents in a tragic plane crash. In much less weighty news, I wrote about the ridiculous college football calendar and the even-more-ridiculous ticket prices to get into the Indiana-Miami national championship game. If you’re a golf fan, I wrote about the pro golf world war heating back up again, and for NFL folks, I wrote about how, by the numbers, this past weekend was the best playoff round in history.
Have yourself a fine weekend. It’s frozen-lizard cold around most of the South right now — more on that term in a future Flashlight — so bundle up and I’ll see you right back here on Tuesday!
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
This is issue #175 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
Go watch Home Turn, our new show for NASCAR Studios
Hey, my new book is out!
Why Jimmy Buffett’s abandoned studio still matters
What we lose when we lose print newspapers
Talking Southern culture with the great John T. Edge
Our first documentary, on the famous Rama Jama’s diner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
What does “Flashlight & A Biscuit” mean, anyway?
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I’m familiar with the frozen lizards! Keep bundled!