Taking a ribbing

Copied from my MySpace blog. Originally posted August 26, 2006.

The local Rotary Club puts on a ribfest every year in the park across from our house. This was our first summer in this house, so it was the first time we had heard of it. I like food, beer and music, so we went to check it out.

I had never been to a ribfest before, and when I saw the signs all over Scarborough advertising it, I pictured some old Rotary dudes standing over a BBQ, re-heating pre-cooked ribs they bought from GFS or Sysco or something.

It turns out that it's a big-ass party, with companies coming from all over to cook their ribs. They call them ribbers. Not to be confused with rubbers, which do not mix well with barbecue sauce. Apparently. (or so the Trojan company claimed when I asked them why their product failed).

Anyhow, we went a few times, since it was just across the street and we could just bring the grub home to eat, rather than sit there with the inbred folks who seem to frequent ribfests.

My favourite ribber was Blazin' BBQ. Because the girls working there were hot. Hot like the fire on which they cooked my Chicken 'n' Rib Combo. Yes, that hot.

Llittle Lloyd liked the ribs too. I apologize in advance if the following pictures make any vegetarians gag.

You think he's messy, you should have seen my sauce-glazed face!

So, the ribfest was pretty good. The problem is after the ribfest. It's been almost three weeks since this thing ended, and our park is still littered with rib bones and chicken bones. You try walking a dog under those conditions. It's like navigating a mine field.

Ivan has been called, by someone who dogsits him on occasion, a "nose on legs". He will find any piece of anything tasty within a one mile radius. Then he will eat it. And when that anything tasty happens to be a pork rib bone or a chicken bone, chances are, he will later puke it up in my house.

Or, even better, it will get lodged in his guts, backing everything up for a couple of days, until it works its way free, resulting in a spray of dog shit and rib bone, wherever the dog happens to be standing at the time.

Now, my dog is cute.

But no amount of cute is worth that.

Every walk, I find myself digging down his throat, fishing out someone else's table scraps. Nice. And if I'm lucky, he won't bite me too hard when I am doing it.

People see me doing it, and give me a look like "lighten up, man. Dogs have been eating food scraps for generations." Well, you come clean up the living room floor after he pukes it up and then see how much you can lighten up, buddy.

So, what I'm trying to say here is: please, do me a favour. BOYCOTT THE SCARBOROUGH RIBFEST NEXT YEAR! Unless, of course, you really want to check out the hotties working at the Blazin' BBQ stand. It's probably worth it.

Llove,

Lloyd