10.26.08

Sing a Song of Pig Puns, Pocket Full of Wry

Posted in humor, puns, wordplay at 3:51 pm by Bill Brohaugh

My wife and I are just back from 20th Annual Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue, a little disappointed—in the context of this blog, at least. I devoted a full chapter of my book The Grill of Victory: Hot Competition on the Barbecue Circuit to clever team names. With 60+ teams BBQ gathered in Lynchburg, Tennessee, for this prestigious competition, I fully expected to be collecting a pigpun full of additional daring, inventive BBQ team names. Especially considering that the teams hailed not only from across the continential U.S., but also from across the world—including Canada, England, Ireland, Estonia, Germany, Switzerland, Turkey and Poland.

There were a couple of inventive names I’d not seen before. “Moonswiners,” “Charlotte’s Rib,” “Pellet Envy” and “The Will Deal Catering and BBQ Co.” tested the limits of punning, and “Carcass Cookers” and “4 Legs Up BBQ” brought a bit of smokey poetry to the game. Other than those, and others I’ve already chronicled (such as “Natural Born Grillers”), the names weren’t nearly as delightful as I’d hoped. But then again, these teams were in Lynchburg to compete in Jack Daniel’s cooking competition, not my private wordplay competition. And 4 Legs Up BBQ won the competition they had set out from Great Bend, Kansas, to win.

Word-roasting aside, I was happy with our days visiting friends, sampling BBQ, quaffing beers (but no Jack Daniel’s—how did I let that happen?). How happy? Happy as one of the teams that’s been around for a while. Happy as:

By the by, you can read my chapter on competitive BBQ team names, at “Sing a Song of Pig Puns, Pocket Full of Wry.”

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