Time to Start Smoking

With all due respect to the Colbert Report, the Robb Report, and of course, the Dalembert Report, this is the only report you're gonna need from here on out. Why the Rib Report? Because everything of any cultural significance in America, be it politics, sports, music, race, literature, class, even interpretive dance, has roots in the American south. (Actually, upon further research, it turns out interpretive dance is neither culturally significant nor rooted in the south.) But for all the rest, the liquid that has nourished these roots oh so many years has been barbeque sauce. Be it the tart vinegar of the Carolinas, the tomato tang of Memphis and the Midwest, even the mustard hybrid of Georgia and the elusive white sauce of northern Alabama, barbeque sauce is the fluid that hydrates our cultural body. And what's more important to the composition of our body than the rib? It is the center, the core. Hell, the Bible tells us that without the rib Adam would still be posting up in the garden all by his lonesome.

A little hyperbolic? Perhaps. Well, definitely. But I do think there's something to say for using barbeque, and the various iterations thereof, as a cultural touchstone. Some days I'll give you guys restaurant reviews and recipes; others I'll veer off into more tangential BBQ territory, maybe talking about Barack Obama's trip to Orangeburg S.C., where in 1968 three black students were murdered trying to integrate a bowling alley, and where today "reformed" segregationist and Confederate apologist Maurice Bessinger has an outpost of his BBQ chain. But many a day I'll completely abandon any pretense of pork prose, choosing instead to link to this Mike Wise column on Caron Butler, just because Wise and Butler are two up and comers really finding their footing in their respective professions, and because it's the All-Star break and the Wizards are still relevant, and for a boy like me that's big news.

So read, comment, enjoy. I hope to learn tricks along the way that'll make this a more engaging, technically advanced site. If you have any tips or ideas, let me know. And to my boys at the Dalembert Report, I apologize for the name-jacking, but maybe all this free publicity will send 2 or 3 more sets of eyeballs over your way. And yo, Sammy, I need you to hook my readers up with a bangin BBQ goat recipe. I'll be looking out for that.