Sweetie would probably prefer I carve a Butter Jamie Bamber: (The Third Of The Best Foods Shaped Like Other Things!)

It's a MiniBest!

If crunchy saviors and Commerce Radishes cannot help me retire in style -- and retire now, so that I could properly prepare to watch the last-ever Battlestar Galactica (Titled: "Maybe They'll Forget All Those Teasers We've Planted For Years If We Have A Big Fight?"), then I might have found the next best thing: A Giant Butter Elvis:

"Butter Elvis" is definitely going to be my ticket to riches and fame and retirement, provided that (a) I learn how to sculpt, and (b) federal copyright law is inapplicable to food-based sculptures.

That last is particularly important, given that Butter Elvis was first created by The Butter Cow Lady, who is not a lady made out of butter cows (false advertising!) but is, instead, the world's most renowned butter sculptor.

The Butter Cow Lady's real name is Norma Lyon, and Norma Lyon became famous (?) for sculpting, for 45 years, the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. From 1960-2005, Norma sculpted Iowa's annual cow, as well as other butter sculptures -- the pictures shown here are all hers, including her buttery endorsement of Barack Obama -- retiring in 2005 and passing the torch to her apprentice, Sarah Pratt.

Sarah Pratt is no novice to butter sculpting: she apprenticed for 15 years before getting the prestigious post of Official Iowa Butter Sculptor. How prestious is that? Really prestigious: Consider this. There've been 43 presidents in US history. (That number is right. Barack is not the 44th president, as has been widely misreported. He's the 43rd.) There have been 27 Superbowl-winning quarterbacks. There have even been five people who have run a mile in 4:20 or less (curiously, three of those people were named William).

But there have only been four Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptors in all of history. So your children have a better chance of growing up to become the first super-fast, Superbowl-winning quarterback/President than they do of growing up to become the Official Iowa State Fair Butter Sculptor.

As for me, I'm not interested in apprenticing 15 years to get that post, and I can't count on Sarah Pratt to retire and hand it to me. But I don't need to, because Butter Elvis sculpting is obviously big business and a key to fame and fortune: Norma may have created the first one, but there is a hue and cry out for Butter Elvises, and a dearth of Butter Artists fulfilling that need. Sure, people like Sharon BuMann have stepped in to create Butter Elvises for the Texas State Fair and the Oklahoma State Fair, but that's only three state fairs, total, meaning there are at least... a lot of other state fairs out there, just waiting for me to wheel my own Butter Elvis in there and reap the rewards that naturally flow from combining two things that America loves.




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