Yes, it’s one big promotional hullabaloo for the National Pork Board, but there is one nice benefit: for every entry in the No. 1 Pork Fan contest, the organization will donate 10 pounds of pork to the Mid-South Food Bank.

If you want to enter, go by The Other White Meat Tour exhibit from 3-5 p.m. today or tomorrow and sign up. You’ll get to take the stage and dance or sing or declaim or whatever about the wonderfulness that is pork.

The winner will be announced at 6 p.m. Saturday and gets a $500 Sam’s Club gift card and a chance to win a trip to New York City and meet Guy Fieri.

–Jon W. Sparks

Before you visit the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, there are some things you will need to know. We’ve tried to sum them up for you in the following:

1. This is a competition. Local health regulations prohibit teams from serving barbecue to the general public. There are barbecue vendors, as well as other food vendors that can sell to the public.
2. There are two programs for our patrons that allow them to experience the World Championship as a team or judge would: People’s Choice Contest allows John “Que” Public to taste and judge championship barbecue. In this tent, you will receive 5 samples of barbecue each visit and you judge your favorite of those five samples. You may judge as often as you like and the judging fee is $4 per visit. The Cooker’s Caravan takes you on a guided tour of the teams and lets you hear first-hand about the team’s passion for pork. The team’s will tell you about their secrets for grilling championship barbecue, show you their rigs and explain the process of cooking at Memphis in May. There is no charge for the tours and you may tour as often as you like. The tours are available Thursday and Friday every thirty minutes from 11:30am - 3:30pm.
3. The park is about a mile from end to end. Wear comfortable shoes!
4. No beverages, bicycles, cans, containers, coolers, food, glass bottles, laser pointers, lawn chairs, oversized umbrellas, pets, roller blades, roller skates, water guns, no thrown objects such as baseballs, footballs, frisbees-etc., or weapons. Food and beverages, including beer, are available from the concessionaires.
5. All packages and purses are subject to inspection.
6. Picture I.D.’s will be required from everyone purchasing alcohol.
7. All food must be purchased with cash. ATM’s are available within the Festival site for your convenience.
8. We welcome many out-of-town visitors. Please let our guest services volunteers know you are our visitor and they will explain all of the rib-tickling entertainment offered.

–Jon W. Sparks

In all my years covering the music festival, I have never seen the mud so deep, even on the rainier weekends. One of the reasons, I think, is because the rainfall never let up. Typically, festival operators will send in big vacuum trucks in the middle of the night that suck the excess water from the surface after a downpour. Then they fill in the pits with dirt and drop extra plywood down in the slippery areas.

None of that happened after Saturday’s concert because it rained hard all night. Executive vice president Diane Hampton hoped it would let up by 11 a.m. But it didn’t. Then it rained all day, constantly, and by Sunday evening, the entire landscape looked like this:

Basically, a vast field of mud. I wear a big pair of army combat boots which have generally kept my feetsies dry, like they did back when I was in ‘Nam (not really). They did not work this time around. My feet are cold and wet.

Remember the good old days when a storm would come, make a mud puddle, and crazy kids would go sliding around in the puddles and become Mud People? That didn’t happen this year that I saw. Everyone saw the mud and recoiled. They tried to stay on the concrete paths, until the concrete paths turned into rivers of mud.

Most people just wanted to stay on top of it, rather than sink down into it. These women (pictured above) are wearing inflatable ponchos which allowed them to sail across the surface of the muck, using their feet as paddles. They were moving fast, too, so I was unable to get their names or the place you can buy a poncho like this.

It’s two weeks until barbecue fest, so we hope the vacuum trucks stick around a while. There’s a lot of muck to suck. And if anyone can help a poor Chilean boy get a ride back to Santiago, please contact Memphis in May headquarters. Thank you.

–Christopher Blank

For the past 8 years, providing hot food to the host of hungry roadies has been the job of Winfrey’s Catering out of Somerville, TN.

With a crew of 10 to 12 full time workers, the caterers pull up their truck the week before the festival and start prep work on the 1,400 meals that they’ll serve over three days.

From their large mobile kitchen, the crew delivers the meals to the hospitality tents behind each stage.

“Most of what we do is based around barbeque,” said specialty chef Randy Wright. “Keep in mind that this is a music fest, and a lot of musicians these days are vegetarians.”

Not every band gets specialty treatment, but the top acts can request individualized meals delivered to their trailers, as specified in the artists’ contract riders. Wright said that there weren’t any particularly strange demands this year.

The Steve Miller Band, for example, got a vegetarian soup, brown rice, guacamole and salsa, and some specialty chicken. Band members for 311 asked for fish, so Wright served them catfish. For the vegetarians, Wright made a tamale pie.

“We’re seeing people requesting healthier menus in the riders these days,” Wright said. “There are more vegans and vegetarians, but a lot less weirdness.”

Outside the mobile kitchen a dry erase board displays the amounts and variety of food that is being delivered to the serving lines.

Wright says that most musicians eat from the buffet. Winfrey’s Catering got its start about two decades ago as a competitive barbecue cooking team. After winning some awards, owner Hunter Winfrey decided to cater full time.

So what is the food like backstage? Wright treated us to a taste.

The menu: Pulled pork with a sweet sauce, ribs with a tasty dry rub, green beans, baked beans, potato salad, corn on the cob, dinner roll, and a creamy banana pudding for dessert.

Click here to watch a  video by Jon W. Sparks of what the food prep area looks like. Bon apetit!

–Christopher Blank

–Video by Jon W. Sparks

He did and here’s the result. NB: His claims about the CA giving away money and drinks cannot be confirmed at this time.

–Jon W. Sparks

Those who have seen George Clinton & P Funk know that the band is more than just a band. It’s a surreal pageant of weirdness. The guy in the underwear. The guy in the wedding dress. The list goes on.

Fronting the band is the unclassifiable George Clinton. Backstage, onlookers played a game of figuring out what Clinton was going for in his couture. To put in another way: from what vault of stoner/cultural iconography has the man assembled his wardrobe?

Note that when Clinton took off his hoodie (pictured), he was wearing a red, military style shirt. Boy Scout or Buffalo Soldier? Is the flourescent hairpiece a homage to a kind of psychedelic rooster, or perhaps the sacred plume of a witch doctor?

The school of study devoted to Clintonian ontology, or “Parliamentary Funkology” as it is listed in the course schedule, meets off-campus, daily, at 4:20, or  whenever. Bring something to munch on, and a hackey sack. Please call Funk University’s enhanced learning program for more information.

–Christopher Blank

Many of you will go home tonight and look over the crowd photos you took with your cell phones. If you look close enough, you will probably see Elvis Costello in the picture. Not sure what he looks like?

This was from my first Elvis Costello sighting this afternoon in the blues tent, when he jumped up onstage for one tune with the great blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin (on the right). Great tune. Crowd went crazy.

We noticed that Elvis’ right hand was covered in what looked like Sanskrit writing. He reluctantly allowed us to take a photo of the said hand.

“You won’t be able to read it,” he informed us. Then after a few minutes he came back over to add: “I’ve only had to write down the lyrics twice — here, and Live Aid.”

Really, we just wanted to see the bling bling.

Click here for the video, which for some reason isn’t embedding.

For serious, y’all, if you missed Chancho en Piedra’s set today, try to check them out tomorrow on the Cellular South Stage at 3:50.

— Lindsey

The eloquent and colorful stylings of the singular Muck Sticky brought a decent crowd to the aptly named “Bud” tent this afternoon to start off a soggy festival. Here’s a video of Muck discoursing a few minutes before going on stage where he had his fans in full thrall.

–Jon W. Sparks

When a man walks around shirtless with a large patch on his belly, we have to wonder what is that patch for? Perhaps a recent surgery? We wish him a speedy recovery. We ALL wish him a speedy recovery. And we remind him to use SPF 80 or else that patch is going to leave a very strange tan line.

–Christopher Blank