You'd have to be nutty as a fruitcake to eat a sentient dessert
Or incomplete fruitcakes as the case may be. Me, personally? I love the stuff, but I realize I am alone.
So, so very alone.
Are you alone and different from me and stuck with a mouldering or pickled lump of brownish carbs, fats, and assorted undigestables, covered in some unnamed and unnameable sticky substance, the whole Shoggoth-like agglomeration wrapped in hideously toxic-looking red or green “festive” plastic?
What you have there, my friend, is a fruitcake. And if you still have one lying around, and it’s not one you’re going to be feeding and watering (with booze, please, and none of your foofy white zin either) and then devouring once it’s achieved that peak of perfect pickleosity, then I’m assuming it’s not #1 on your favorite foods list.
But there is hope.
You don’t have to consume it at all! The ingenious folks in Manitou Springs, Colorado have found a way to turn what’s basically a brick made of calories and cholesterol into an extreme sport. This, my friends, is true genius: co-opting a seasonal calorie source and transforming it, simply by sheer can-do-ism, into an athletic activity.
Behold the annual Manitou Springs Fruitcake Toss.
Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.” In Manitou Springs the local Chamber of Commerce encourages people to throw cake. Each January the community hosts its Great Fruitcake Toss, the strangely compelling spectacle in which participants fling fruitcakes through the air, competing in events that emphasize distance, accuracy, and showmanship. While the contest does nothing to improve the reputation of the much-maligned fruitcake, it has succeeded in attracting media attention to a town best known for its natural mineral springs and proximity to Pikes Peak.
Behold as well, the Manitou Springs Fruitcake Launch (trebuchets, what looks like a potato gun, and a crossbow are among the launchers). Behold, finally, the Manitou Springs Fruitcake CATCH. And behold, lastly, well, I won’t spoil the surprise. But it combines two of the most disliked physical objects of our time and only one of those is fruitcake.
Thanks! Good article
Comment by Alexandrine — January 9, 2011 @ 10:52 am