Jamie Loftus is a comic, podcaster, animator, Emmy-nominated TV author and efficiency artist. She’s joined MENSA as a joke, has seen Shrek the Musical 10-plus instances and, in 2017, ate a duplicate of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Now, with the discharge of Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, the prolific creator and debut writer takes readers on a cross-country street journey that’s by turns eye-opening and gut-clenching, hilarious and poignant, scatological and existential.
In the summer season of 2021—aka “Hot Dog Summer”—Loftus, her boyfriend and their canine and cat left their residence in Los Angeles and set off to eat and critique a ton of scorching canine. Along the way in which, she interrogates our nationwide affection for the long-lasting tubed meat, noting that scorching canine are “high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food and they’re hangover food and they’re deeply American for reasons that few people can explain.”
Loftus digs into these blended messages with sharp wit and righteous anger. After all, scorching canine are served at festive occasions however have lengthy been made in locations rife with animal abuse and employee exploitation. And whereas they’re the gleaming centerpiece of the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, she explains that the celebrated competitors is definitely tainted by “jingoistic marketing” and entrenched sexism.
As for the recent canine themselves, dozens of distributors are duly visited, sampled and reported on—from Costco and Home Depot to impartial scorching canine joints and even just a few ballparks. She traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, “to get diarrhea at ten in the morning at all costs” and due to this fact ordered a scorching canine topped with onion rings and Spaghetti-Os. In Baltimore, she “deep-throat[ed] a Maryland hot dog swaddled in deep-fried bologna,” and in Chicago, she reveled in a filet mignon steak canine. All this whereas pursuing with alacrity the reply to an pressing query: “Are the people on the Wienermobile fucking?”
Raw Dog is a splendidly bizarre and wild mashup of historical past, social commentary, private revelation and meals journalism. The writer’s ardour for her work shines by as she makes a compelling case for extra knowledgeable scorching canine consumption whereas sustaining her love for the quintessential cookout meals.
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