A Chilly Day for Chili

Today Was Middlebury’s 3^rd annual Chili Festival. For those of you number loving folks:

10^th:  top winter activity in Vermont

50: vendors from here to Montpelier selling chili

80: different types of Chili

Obviously and luckily I didn’t get to try everything, even on an empty stomach, or I’d be writing this from a hospital bed with an IV stuck up one arm. But boy I tried a lot.

Some of my favorites were: the Swift House Inn’s venison chili – great meat. Inception Studios vegetarian saffron chili – subtle and satisfying. Middlebury Bagel’s “kitchen sink” chili – best chili flavor but so hard to describe, with a soft piece of cornbread plopped on top. But what was probably my most favorite was Costello’s Market’s red wine and chocolate Chili. Delightful, surprising harmony, with a smooth aftertaste.

I made the executive decision that chili by itself is a no-no. Please be creative, have a bowl of sour cream to dollop, a sprinkling of queso fresco or parmesan, and hand me one of those warm corn-bread cupcakes, please.  (And thank you Woodchuck cider, for the free chapstick).

But I promise this wasn’t all about the food. The Middlebury Mamajamas were singing on the bridge around 2pm when I got there, sounding pretty snazzy. Props to the one kid on the side eating chili while singing.

With

Main Street

so lively, I suddenly understood what it feels like to be Rory Gilmore at a Star’s Hollow festival, with Taylor Doose directing traffic and Kirk selling pumpkin popsicles to kids in a pilgrim costume...

Some pretty interesting townsies turned up. One girl in a chili costume. A group of punks, including, I’m pretty sure, Bucky, the kid who kept stealing laptops from campus last year. Fire-twirlers. Lots of folks in Mardi Gras beads, which turned into a flash mob, breaking out some dance moves to Billie Jean. And two guys near the Two Brother’s Tavern tent with pigs on leashes. Which only begs the question: were they sampling the pork chili?

Go West, Young Alien

The politics of Roswell seemed to derive from the old-fashioned idea of what “America” really is. The America that taught a young boy how to be a man by saddling up, going west, and claiming his own land. Yes, I am talking about Cowboys.

Maybe this is a stretch, but tonight I made a lot of connections between the good ol’ Western film – which incidentally is probably one of our countries greatest contributions to history at this point – and the contemporary TV series Roswell.

First of all, the show is set in New Mexico, the desert, with cactus and tex-mex lunches. The two Sheriffs represents the law. They come barging in after two men shoot a gun off in the café (read: two hooligans in a gunfight at the saloon) and try to bring order. But like some Westerns show, the “good” guy isn’t always so good. Sometimes the “bad” guy is the one who understands real justice.

Here the “bad” guys, who are really the good guys, (read: cowboy hero) are the aliens, because they come from outer space (read: out of town) and need to pretend to be normal in order to remain undetected. The law isn’t trustworthy, because they want to dig up the aliens, simply because they are different. And in a town like this, where girls date jerks with shiny sunglasses and wear shiny eye shadow and get shiny alien scars, difference is a threat. The law even does things unlawful, like asking Liz Parker to lift her shirt up to see her midriff. The sheriffs befriend the bountyhunter-esq alien fanatics, furthering their bad character.

To top it all off, like every good Western, there arises an impossible love: Girl likes Boy who is Alien, so it will never work out, and he may end up leaving her as he rides off into the sunset on his horse, or UFO. Oh, and there is a curfew.

Although I felt like the show was too speedy and too slow at the same time, and the music really hurt my ears, and the mystery was tiring to watch since as the viewer I already understood half of it and didn’t have to do any work, I can see some interesting politics behind the idea of the show:

Westerns represent the best and the worst of stereotypes. Character, having true grit, makes a man, and being weak hearted, cruel, or dishonest makes an evil, cowardly villain. As a teen TV show, we can see these personas projected onto teenagers, who are all pretty good. They push authority because they support diversity, and want to make a better world.