"kinky friedman" news and stories

With celebrities having already collected Senate seats and governorships, Commissioner of Agriculture may emerge as the next hot office for wannabe politicos.

The trend is taking off in Texas, where satirist and sometime country music star Kinky Friedman -- fresh off a bruising gubernatorial campaign, which even his buddy Willie Nelson's fundraisers couldn't salvage -- has thrown his 10-gallon hat in the ring. Friedman has proposed putting more Texas-grown foods on school lunch lines, ramping up alternative-fuel programs and building on a farmer's market tradition established decades ago by former commissioner Jim Hightower.

"The last commissioner I really admired was Jim Hightower," Friedman says. "When he did farmer's markets, they said people would never buy from subsistence farmers. Now they're the hottest thing going."

Just as there are many types of barbecue (Eastern North Carolina-style, Western North Carolina-style, Kansas City-style, and Memphis-style, to name just a few), so too are there many types of barbecue documentary.

In addition to Barbecue is a Noun, the documentary made by North-Carolinians-turned-NYC-filmmakers, there's also Barbecue: A Texas Love Story.

The title may have tipped you off, this film chronicles the Lone Star State's abiding love for barbecue, from the Great Texas Mosquito Festival to a small east Texas church that raises money through sales of its "Holy BBQ."

Believe it or not, the film is narrated by former governor Ann Richards, and it features prominent barbecue-loving Texans like Dan Rather and Kinky Friedman.

Hot barbecue. A hot cast. What's else is there?