When you head out into the independence fun you've planned for yourself today, please keep in mind that BBQs are a sacred long-standing tradition in the American culture. So, before you head to the store to do your BBQ shopping this morning, take a look at our epic fail list and adjust accordingly, disregarding your normal dietary habits. You'll thank us.



PROPANE GRILLS
If you're going to barbecue, you need a real fire. And here's a news flash: Propane doesn't count. If you want a real fire, you use wood or charcoal. When I'm going to cook meat to savory perfection, I want something on fire in my pit, not some invisible gas.

Also, part of the fun at a barbecue is hanging around chatting while the fire's getting ready. All that time goes bye-bye when you cheat by using propane. So, Hank Hill and all you propane men out there: FAIL!
-Jon Hunt

HOT DOGS
Now let’s be perfectly clear, hot dogs taste great. They’re an American tradition; we all grew up eating them, and chances are we’ll eat them until we die. This paragraph is a direct response to the choice of Soy Dogs as an epic fail (see below.)

Hot Dogs are not a fail for how they taste, but what they’re made of and what they do to your body (besides make your tummy happy). From Wikipedia - “Hot dogs are generally regarded as unhealthy insofar as most have high sodium, fat and nitrate content.” But who cares, right? We east stuff that’s bad for us all the time, that’s what being American is all about! We’ve all heard the “lips and a**holes” phrase about what’s in hot dogs, and that’s pretty much true. Hot dogs are usually the meat by-products left over from multiple factory slaughterhouses all ground up together in one homogenous mush, containing any number of meats from beef to pork to chicken and turkey. Kinda gross, but not a deal-breaker. What really clinches it for me is the skin. This “mystery meat mush” is then fed through a machine that pumps it into sheep intestine. You know that “snap” when you bite into a hot dog? That’s the small intestine of a sheep bursting in your mouth.

I’m really sorry if I’ve ruined your barbeque experience this 4th of July, but to be perfectly honest, hot dogs really gross me out.
-Patrick Roche-Sowa



SOY DOGS
Soy Dogs are the most epically fail barbeque foods ever. They’re generally eaten by Vegans, and Vegans are incredibly annoying people in the best of circumstances—when you’ve based your whole philosophy of life around denying yourself the visceral joy of eating the parts and issuances of animals, you obviously have something very wrong happening inside your head—but vegans at July 4th barbeques are double plus super-annoying to the 8th power.
 
The Fourth of July is a day set aside to celebrate America’s positions at the top of the historical food chain. It’s a day to bask in the joy of good old-fashioned carnivorous Americanism by exploding things, getting all weepy over Old Glory and shoving fifteen hamburgers down your maw and washing it down with lukewarm Schlitz. Soy Dog eating--and the mewly liberal-guilt whininess it usually comes with--have no place on the Fourth. Our American ancestors were awesome enough to land on a strange continent, rid it of hostile enemies, bend the earth itself to our whim and create the greatest civilization known to man in only a couple hundred years, and they didn’t do it by eating soy dogs. It was buffalo at every meal, and when the buffalo were all gone, no one cried and organized a protest rally. They just started eating the cows and pigs.
 
One thing I don’t need on my day of unapologetic Americanism is a skinny, pale-faced hippy laying a soy dog and guilt trip on the grill next to my precious meat. All that soy contaminates the purity of my dead animal products and blood just like limp-wristed health and morality consciousness contaminates the American thoughtscape. It’s a free country (only because our heroic, conquering ancestors were man enough to allow even the feebs their own opinions,) so you veginas can believe whatever you want, but wait until July 5th. Today’s not your day.
 
By the way, I know hot dogs are made of lips and buttholes. I like eating lips and buttholes. They’re delicious. And the crisp snap of a well-grilled intestine is one of the great joys of American life. Top of the food chain, baby!
 
What really clinches it for me: In a University of North Carolina study, excessive soy consumption was linked to nipple discharge, breast enlargement and decreases in testosterone in men. In other words, science proves that eating soy turns you into a woman.
-Stephen Johnson



THE WHOLE PIG
Every once in a while there’s a BBQ where some overzealous host gets it in his head that he’s gonna roast a whole pig, complete with the Apple-in-the-Mouth. Don’t do this.

I love consuming the cooked flesh of animals, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want to see the animal’s face. Just make some pork chops and move along.
-Brian Leahy



BBQ EGGPLANT
We've covered the blasphemy of a meat imposter at a BBQ in the form of the veggie dog, but just as equally a crime against humanity is the barbecued eggplant. If you're a vegetarian and going to a BBQ, EAT BEFORE YOU GO! You're showing up with that smug smile on your face thinking you've got the whole world figured out. Here's what's gonna happen: You're gonna try to slap that thing on the grill wrapped in foil so its delicate textures don't get blasted away by the manheat and manflames of my mangrill. It's gonna get dry and overcooked or undercooked and inexplicably to you it will still taste raw. I'll watch you on the bench nearby my mangrill as you try to stave off the friendly curiosity of friends. "Yeah, it's really good, actually." "It tastes just like meat." "My daddy loved me like normal," is just a sample of the various lies you will tell to them.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Fancyface, but BBQing is for meat. It's primal, it's instinctual, it's the food chain. If evolution had meant for us to bbq eggplants, it would have put feet on them and given them heartbeats.
-Ty Colfax



SPAM
We looked up the meaning of 'barbecue' at Dictionary.com and came across this:

Barbecue - pieces of beef, fowl, fish, or the like, roasted over an open hearth.

Now ask yourself, fellow Americans, what category would you put Spam in? Don't, please, do not put it under 'or the like' because as far as we know, Spam is neither beef, fowl, or fish....maybe foul. Folks, this thing is canned meat, packed with more preservatives and sodium than 10 pounds of beef jerky. Seriously, just don't even try and open it.
-John Manalang



AMBROSIA SALAD
Whoever invented this pile of crap masquerading as a salad should be forced to sit in the hot sun and eat it until they explode. A bunch of crappy fruit, bound by whipped cream and sour cream, and dotted with mini marshmallows, this looks and tastes like what happens in an unflushed angel’s toilet. Barbecues are supposed to be about meat and maybe beans. Congealed fruit salad with marshmallows is suspiciously Communist in its ideology and extreme white trash in its construction. Therefore, it is a fail. The only Ambrosia worth anything is the 70’s band who played “The Biggest Part of Me” and “Reminiscing.”
-Mike D'Alonzo


and our EPIC WIN: LOTS OF F***ING MEAT!
Enjoy your independence and eat whatever you want. It's inalienable!