The Cobra Story: Gastronomical Snuff

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One evening, I was in a fix-it kind of mood, so I spent some quiet time at home repairing a guitar and a favorite videotape, whose casing had melted in a friend's overheated car.

Though I'm not a big TV watcher, I had received a free cable trial that week, so I tried some channel surfing before settling in with my tools and, er, bandaids. I clicked away and landed on a food and cooking show. Looked interesting. The theme: a tall skinny man, Anthony, travels to exotic locales and samples food you and I would probably never seek out willingly. He really gets obscure on your gastronomical ass, and is proud of it. He isn’t afraid to get dirty; he’ll try anything once, I gather. I innocently settle into a half hour of his culinary adventures in and around Asia.

I should tell you here, reader, I hadn't yet heard of the concept of "food porn." Have you? I mean, c'mon. That said, since I now know food porn indeed exists, I believe that on this night I stumbled upon a whole 'nother level of it: food snuff porn.

Foreplay?
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Anthony begins his conquest with a search for the perfect Vietnamese meat soups of the land. I suppose since I'm on the porn/snuff analogy, I should call this leg of his journey the foreplay. Mnnm, the soups do look delicious...and I know they are, from my own meat-eating Pho-slurping days of the past. Anthony ogles. Oh, the silky broths; the sweet succulents floating erect in a nest of languishing noodles...slurp, already. Anthony likes.

Then things begin to take a seedy turn. Our leading man is now bucking for some “special” little duck eggs (Balut) that you can get at steamy Filipino street spots. He eventually finds them after being directed by anonymous men on shadowy corners. He seats himself at a busy stand, where mature women present an array of young beaked flesh for sale, like madames in Nevada brothels at high noon. Anthony chooses a small cup that looks like a fucked-up western hard boiled egg at first glance. There is a half-grown fetus still curled up in there, feathers and all. He scoops 'em out and seems in a rapture as he masticates slowly.

Well. I am not impressed; I am not tantalized. Consuming half-cooked zygotes - there is something sociopathic about that. Eating them is not borne of necessity nor the joys of the palate, I think.

I re-absorb myself into my fix-it projects, twanging a G string here, mounting a delicate ribbon-wheel there.

But what this lanky motherfucker did next blew my mind and just froze my arts-and-crafts vibe.

Morbid Curiosity Wins
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I had zoned out for a few minutes while hot-gluing a guitar nut. Now, I was drawn back to the TV. Anthony had taken on the intimate vocal tone that nature show hosts get upon the births of rare wild creatures. But there wasn’t a birth. No. It was time to visit a restaurant that specializes in an ancient Vietnam delicacy known to keep men virile.

Something bad was gonna happen. I just knew it. Morbid curiosity got the better of me, yes. The inevitability of mortal danger tore me away from my zen-like absorption in hot glue, I admit.

Anthony arrives at the restaurant and is greeted by two shy and humble Vietnamese hosts. They seat him in an airy patio with white tablecloths. He orders a crisp beverage and his meal. He then approves his live cobra.

Yes, that’s right, his cobra. Live.

The cobra handlers - formerly two shy and humble Vietnamese hosts - proceed to prepare sophisticated Anthony's entree while he watches. First they taunt, grapple with, and slam the cobra onto a nearby ledge. They then brutally slice open its center, cut out its heart and plop the heart onto a pure white plate. It is immediately served to voyeur Anthony, still beating, in a pool of thin blood with a sprig of something green.

Anthony claps tenderly at this climax, saying “Bravo" as the once-again shy and humble hosts carry off the rubbery, twitching cobra carcass, the flaccid tube that an instant ago held raging life. And he eats the still-beating heart. He comments that he certainly feels virile. "It kind of pumps on the way down," he says.

Graciously, he doesn’t lick the plate.

I look down suddenly. There is a guitar nut glued to my thigh. I firmly close my jaws, which have been slackened in horror. I mean, like, I was traumatized. There wasn't even a warning to sensitive viewers at the opening credits of this psycho program.

I am not against violence as entertainment. Opponents of equal power (human ones, that is) in a bloody showdown is my cup of tea. I have found, however, that I disapprove of programs making it possible for me to stumble upon the gleeful vivisection of weaker things as a form of entertainment - nutritional as they may be - during primetime.

All I'm really saying today is this: one day, you may think you're gonna watch a TV cooking adventure, but you may instead, without warning, find yourself witnessing a man of entitlement eat a tortured cobra’s beating heart from a white plate.

And it's like being frozen in the headlights of an oncoming moral debate, I think. No?

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