doktorvondoom:Thomas Blake, ladies and gentlemen.He's a...

doktorvondoom:

Thomas Blake, ladies and gentlemen.

He's a classy guy. 

This scene is one of my favorites, partly for Knockout's protectiveness of Scandal (it's one of the very first scenes of them interacting without Knockout being undercover, no pun intended), but also because it amuses me that Blake is eating his ribs like a messy jungle cat. One of  the weird things about Tarzan (and there are many) is that even though he was raised in the jungle, he was almost immediately able to go about in high society as Lord Greystoke (I know there's a story there, but I always thought it was an unconvincing bit).

The other thing I just remembered is that this scene was inspired by a true story.

I had been invited for the second time as a guest of an AMAZING, gay-friendly comics event in Dallas, called CAPE, put on by the great Zeus Comics, one of my favorite stores to this day. They also do the VARIANTS video series, which is really funny and you should check it all out.

Dallas is a weird town. We like to go to a place and walk everywhere, go see the city from street level, even when overseas. But in Dallas, there was nowhere to walk TO…everything was miles away, lots of things worth seeing had no real route to get to on foot, and this was only our second visit to Texas. We wanted to go SEE stuff and walk around.

They put us up in a lovely hotel, the event was magnificent. But we had no luck finding stuff to see, even after asking all the locals.

The only place nearby to eat was a barbecue place much like the one depicted in this scene. Homey, all raw wood materials everywhere, super informal, cartoon pigs as decor. That kind of stuff is common as mud in much of the country but I had never been anywhere quite like it, and we were kind of charmed.

I looked at the menu—I'm allergic to red meat, and I was in the mood for a salad.

They had no vegetarian dishes, understandably, and not much in the way of vegetables at all. People came there as carnivores. My husband was predictably delighted.

I ordered a salad, a large salad. The lady at the counter asked what kind of meat I wanted on it. They didn't have a meatless salad. :)

So I ordered the salad with bbq pork slices on it, thinking it would be kind of like a bbq chef's salad.

No.

It was this HUGE, mammoth plate, some cursory lettuce, covered in stacks and stacks of sliced bbq pork. I mean, you couldn't find the salad, it was like a garnish.

This sounds like I'm complaining, but I actually found it really funny, that in Dallas, you order a salad and you get half a wild boar. I want to stress, we ate at some fabulous restaurants, and we were escorted to some very cool clubs and a very artsy and fun gayborhood, but this was our first real taste of the BBQ culture in Texas. It made me laugh, and Scandal's salad in this scene comes directly from that.

By the way, I admit it was completely delicious (and enough for three meals, I kid you not).

I just realized this story is vaguely pointless. I AM TELLING IT ANYWAY!

:)