The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic by Kinky Friedman

you can safely pat another man on the ass is the gridiron.
    High school football is an animating force here in Texas, whether you want it to be or not. You might not know the difference between a quarterback and a wet-back, but that doesn’t matter, football will still affect you. Just try to drive anywhere on a Friday night between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., and you’ll see what I mean. Few things in life are worse then getting bogged down in the testosterone frenzy that is the post-game traffic jam. The best you can do if you find yourself in that predicament is park, let the oversized man-children thunder past, and inhale the musky scent of steroids they leave in their wake.

    WHEN THEY AREN’T GOING to football games, Austinites like to celebrate with festivals, but in keeping with its penchant for the weird and eccentric, Austin usually chooses to celebrate weird and eccentric things. Spamarama is an excellent example of a festival that is uniquely Austin.
    SPAMARAMA
(The Official Pandemonious Potted Pork Party)
Annual Spam Cook-off, Spamalympics, and SpamJam
www.spamarama.com
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    SPAMARAMA, sanctioned by Spam’s manufacturer, the Hormel company, is Austin’s premier bar party, where the lowly spam loaf takes center stage. The national media loves this festival. CNN first covered it in 1984, giving it international attention. The two founders of SPAMARAMA, Dick Terry and David Arnsberger, thought of the event in 1978 while discussing the sacred Texas tradition, the chili cook-off. Terry mused, “Anyone can cook chili. . . . Now if someone could make Spam edible, that would be a challenge. We ought to have a Spam-off.” And so they did.
    First held in 1980, SPAMARAMA has become one of the traditional rites of spring, like Eeyore’s Birthday Party or cramming thirty people into a Kia Sportage for a drive to the coast. The Spam cook-off doesn’t attract as many competitors as the ubiquitous Barbecue and Chili cook-offs around Texas, but it always did attract a broad cross-section of amateur and professional Spam-slingers from all over the country who come to Austin to compete with such dishes as Spambrosia, Jurassic Pork, and Spama-LamaDingdong (by Spam king “Chef Spam” John Meyers, who has won more SPAMARAMA cook-off trophies than anyone else in the world).
    SPAMARAMA has gained a great amount of respect since its inception over twenty years ago. Famed Austin artists Jim Franklin, Micael Priest, Danny Garrett, Sam Yeates, Eddie Canada, and Guy Juke, among others, have created poster art for this porky festival.
Austin American-Statesman
humor columnist John Kelso has written about it; Austin swing band Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel have performed at the SpamJam, as have Alvin Crow, Flaco Jimenez, Greezy Wheels, Austin Lounge Lizards, and Ponty Bone. Past judges have included the likes of Liz Carpenter and various government officials. The Silver Anniversary of SPAMARAMA was in 2003; that year the festival was held at Waterloo Park. Even the Hormel company has begrudgingly given its official okay; it provides the official T-shirts, ball caps, and other Spam memorabilia. In an interview that Dave Arnsberger gave to the
Weekly
Wire
in 2000, he told Margaret Moser, “Every year they [Hormel] try to stop me from doing something else. Last year they complained about the ‘Pork Pull.’ Remember when they took Jim Henson to court over the Spam character in that Muppet movie? Hormel spent days in court claiming this, that, and the other. When Henson’s lawyer got up, he said they only had two words to say to Hormel: ‘Lighten up.’ The judge ruled in favor of Henson.”
    EEYORE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
Pease District Park and Wading Pool
1100 Kingsbury Street
512-448-5160
Last Saturday in April, 11:00 a.m. until dark
Free admission
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    I like donkeys. I have two and a half donkeys living at my ranch in Texas (the half-donkey is a tiny menace that my friend