The Chicken Baron Of Devil’s Tower

As Paloma will attest, I will drive into the hinterlands for fried chicken.

And though I saw them on what seemed like every corner of Kuching while traveling in Borneo, visiting our nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken is a trip into the urban hinterlands – a twenty-minute drive to a dodgy part of town.

About two or three times a year the lure will be too strong and I’ll make the trek.

It’s also seared into my memory to hear The Drunken Frenchman quite drunkenly hoist a glass to toast, “Colonel Sanders – a great American!”

That inexplicable, wholly random declaration – completely unrelated to any conversation at our table of friends that night – has baffled me for nearly twenty years.

Perhaps it was a message from the cosmos that I must unravel to achieve enlightenment.

Perhaps the Frenchman was merely very, very drunk.

So when I happened across a bio about the chicken mogul, I watched.

I don’t think that I would have wanted to have a drink with The Colonel.

He seemed like a bit of a douche.

But, that aside, there’s no debate that the man made a pretty strong bird.

The universe, through The Drunken Frenchman, might have been telling me that the path to enlightenment is to become a fried chicken mogul.

Perhaps I was just craving fried chicken.

I’m going to put aside the need for perfecting a strong bird of my own for the moment. Obviously a culinarily masterful, palatte-pleasing recipe will be integral to achieving moguldom, but I turned my attention to another important element.

Location.

Col. Sanders first restaurant was located strategically on a highway in a rural part of Kentucky. That left forty-nine states and howevermany territories and protecterates from which to choose.

A few nights later, I finally popped in the DVD of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind that I’d purchased several weeks before. As I watched the breathtaking classic film, the universe nudged me again.

The volcanic outcropping known as Devil’s Tower – where the climax of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind takes place – is located in a national state park in the northeastern corner of Wyoming and nearly half a million tourists visit each year.

There would be no shortage of travellers wanting nothing more than to finger lick chicken from their phalanges.

And, if the aliens do show up at Devil’s Tower as they do in the movie…well, I’d have to think that fried chicken favored by our interstellar overlords trumps eleven herbs and spices proffered by a Colonel who wasn’t even a colonel.

Perhaps somewhere on US 90, leading to Devil’s Tower, is my Kentucky and my shot at fried chicken moguldom.

One more sign from the universe and Paloma and I will be packing up the animals and heading for Hulett.

Perhaps I should get started concocting a recipe.

In December, it will be thirty years since The Colonel hung up his mortal apron and headed for some kitchen in the afterlife. Here are four songs from albums that had recently been released and might have been added to his collection…

The Police – De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
from Zenyattà Mondatta

Three albums in and the British trio broke through with Zenyattà Mondatta which took them to the Top Ten on the album chart as well as the singles chart with the deceptively insightful and ridiculously catchy De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.

I know that, at the time, I was unfamiliar with earlier hits that The Police had notched with Roxanne and Message In A Bottle, but I took to De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da the first time I heard the song. It wouldn’t be long before I was a devoted fan and knew their catalog inside and out.

(I’d like to imagine The Colonel singing along as De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da blared from a transistor radio in the kitchen)

Harry Chapin – Sequel
from Sequel

I knew little of singer/songwriter Harry Chapin’s music aside from a few songs (one being, obviously, his enduring hit Cat’s In The Cradle, a song whose bad rap I never quite understood).

However, the late singer is a favorite over at The Revue Review, though, and over the course of a number of posts there, I’ve become far more familiar with Chapin and increasingly fascinated by both the man and his underappreciated music.

I don’t recall hearing Sequel when it became Chapin’s final hit in 1980 – a year before his tragic death – but the song is a poignant and satisfying follow-up to the tale Chapin had recounted almost a decade earlier with his hit Taxi.

Suzi Quatro – Lipstick
from Rock Hard

Leather-clad rocker Suzi Quatro, who had portrayed leather-clad rocker Leather Tuscadero on the television series Happy Days, is another act that has existed mostly under my radar. I knew the name, but I had heard nothing by the singer aside from Stumblin’ In, her smash duet with Smokie’s Chris Norman from 1978.

In Lipstick, I hear an engaging fusion of Blondie, Joan Jett, and Them’s classic Gloria . I also hear a scorned woman whose affections I’d be hesitant to trifle with.

Dire Straits – Skateaway
from Making Movies

Other than Sultans Of Swing, this was the second song I think I ever knew by Dire Straits. I’m not sure where – as we didn’t have MTV in our town at the time – but I saw the video. Probably on Night Flights which we got a year or two before MTV.

Anyhow, Skateaway has always been one of my favorites by them.

Col. Sanders Would Have Never Been Such A Slave To Vanity…Would He?

Has plastic surgery now become the norm, nothing more than regular maintenance for every other person I see? I caught Mary Tyler Moore while channel-surfing recently and she frightened me – truly, deeply, profoundly. She’d probably be a perfectly, attractive woman for her age, growing old with grace and style. Instead, she frightened me and made me think she and Joan Rivers should go bowling together.

And then, there’s Kenny Rogers. A friend once used to joke about having calculated some formula for projecting the age of his next wife. The wives and girlfriends kept getting younger. Hey, older guys have always gotten the cool, younger chicks since junior high, right? Summer of eighth grade, Kate, a girl with whom I (and most of our class) was smitten) was dating some high school junior from our hated, rival high school. Drove a Trans-Am, as I recall (him, not her).

But I digress. I saw a picture of The Gambler online last week and…well…There are guys on the website, Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers that look more like Kenny than Kenny these days. I think that he should have gotten a Trans-Am. I don’t want Kenny to give me the heebee jeebees when I see a picture of him because, like Kramer and Newman, I thought the man made a mean bird. Do Kenny Rogers’ Roasters still exist?

The point is that aging is a natural thing and I’m not quite sure who all of these people think that they are fooling with their nips and tucks, additives and preservatives. I want to see Mary Tyler Moore and think what a brilliant comedic foil she was for Dick Van Dyke, how lovely she looked in Capri pants, and wonder if Morey Amsterdam ever tapped that. I don’t want to recoil, aghast with fear. I want to see Kenny Rogers and deeply ponder the life lessons he taught us as The Gambler, speculate if it was the wood that made that chicken so good, and not be concerned that, if he smiles too broadly, his eyes might burst from his head as though they were spring-loaded.

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition – Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees

Cibo Matto – Know Your Chicken

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – Love Is All Around (Theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show)