Travels with My Ant Journal entry date: 05.08.03 © 2003 by David George Gordon This is the fourth in a series of field reports, filed by the world-renowned insect chef, David George Gordon. For more adventures, please visit the Index of prior reports. Further installments depicting Gordon's real-life adventures in the world of entomophagy (That's bug-eating to you) will be added as the author sees fit. Part IV: The Weirdest Thing That Freak's Ever Seen This is Part 2 of a previously posted essay. To Begin at the beginning, click here. On a warm Wednesday evening in July 2000, I was at last ready to deliver the goods -- the 400 oven-baked cockroaches (described in the previous installment of Travels With My Ant), lovingly prepared by you-know-who. These morsels would be doled out, 20 per contestant, at a series of four cockroach-eating contests, sponsored by the USA Network to promote the premier of their summer feel-gross movie, They Nest. Contestants had been recruited by local alternative radio stations prior to each event. They had to be ready, willing and able to eat bugs. As an incentive, the first person to clean their plate of 20 cooked roaches would win $5,000. Did I mention that each eater would have their hands tied behind his or her back? Prior to each contest, I was scheduled to conduct a bug-cooking demonstration, showcasing recipes from The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook. Our first stop was Chicago's Sports Corner, a popular Northside tavern across from Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs. People were truly psyched for the contest -- a bit too much so, perhaps, because of the combination of beer and bugs. At one point during my cooking demo, a soused observer strode up and helped himself to one of the grasshoppers, popping the uncooked morsel into his mouth and merrily munching away. Another slightly looped audience member swallowed the scorpion I'd just prepared. At other events, I've had to convince folks to try a weensy bit of the scorpion's tail. Yet here was someone more than willing to wolf down the entire critter-- head, thorax, abdomen, 10 hairy legs and all! If things were getting out of hand during the contest pre-show, one could imagine how the actual $5,000 cockroach challenge would progress! The emcee for this event was a nice guy named Freak, a dee-jay from a Howard Stern-esque talk radio show. Like Howard, Freak had probably seen and heard more than his share of sleaze. But even he was amazed by what went down outside Wrigley Field . . . so get your flight distress bags ready, folks. During the contest, one guy polished off the 20 roaches on his plate in record time-- well under one minute. But closer examination revealed the chap hadn't actually swallowed any of the now chomped-up fare. Instead, his cheeks were bulging with what can best be described as cockroach chowder. Contestants prepare to die -- I mean dine -- in Boston. The winners in Chicago . . . . . . and New York. The aftermath: a plateful of cockroach "chowder" in Chicago. Freak informed the guy that he'd have to finish the deed before he could be proclaimed Chicago's champion roach-eater. But the poor fella had so much food in his mouth that he couldn't gulp it all down. I watched as he took a sip of water through a straw, then tried again to no avail. That's when his plumbing backed up. . . . . and the cockroaches started to dribble out of his nose. As they say in Mad magazine, "Bleeech!" The guy spit out the rest of the roaches onto his plate. "This is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen," Freak hooted repeatedly. (Later I made the mistake of asking Freak what WAS the weirdest thing he'd ever seen. What he described could possibly qualify as the subject of another book. I'm pleased to report that I'm ready to write that one, ladies and gents.) I should also add that a syndicated TV crew captured the entire sequence on videotape. "There's no way we can air that bit," the cameraman later confessed. Freak, on the other hand, couldn't wait to get his hands on the B roll. Apparently his radio show was also being presented on local TV. "We'd run that footage every night for a week," he boasted to me. Way to go, Chicagoland -- the city that brought us fine prime-time fare like Garfield Goose and Bozo the Clown. A few other stories from that four-city tour deserve to be shared. In Boston, for instance, a gent from the health department went ballistic, refusing to grant us permits to serve cooked arthropods to the public at large. So I can now say my act's been banned in Boston -- another personal best. In Seattle, the local health inspectors required us to erect a canopy over the cooking area "to prevent any bugs from falling into the food." Honestly! In New York, the USA Network supplied me with a three-man security crew of off-duty cops to keep any skeptical and possibly unscrupulous fans at a respectable distance. The cops looked tough; their mere presence was enough to keep the crowd at bay. The New York competition was memorable for yet another reason. The winner, a beefy black man in his 20s, told me before the contest that he needed to win, because his family, having failed to pay the rent, was about to be evicted from their Bronx home. Now with the $5,000 prize from the USA Network, they could keep a roof over their heads for a while. See? I actually made a difference in at least one family's lives. Now why would I make up something like that?