Reverend Butter

This weekend I went on a date to go see this ice sculpture competition in Houston's newest downtown park, Discovery Green. Weird events are always good ideas for dates as there are plenty of things to talk about. Apparently ice sculpting is a sub-culture that I did not know existed. I muswt admit that most of my ice sculpture experience is limited to cruises. I have a feeling that these guys look down on the cruise sculptors. It seemed like most of the spectators were regular folk like us. There were a few groupie-ish angst-ridden teens. Some of them were wearing chainsaw t-shirts. Yay!

The sculptors themselves looked a bit like carnies, though some had stage names or personas. They gave the winner a trophy that looked like some sort of old bowling trophy that they covered in glitter and mardi gras beads. Talk about classy! After 8 hours of back-breaking ice sculpting, the winner got a trashy trophy. Well, and a $2000 check. The winning sculpture was called "Marlin and Me" and featured a large marlin being ridden by a cowboy. I liked the punny title.

After the winner was announced, they brought out Reverend Butter. Apparently he is a wannabe rockstar ice sculptor. There was a heavy metal-esque band on stage playing behind him as he... uh... performed. I felt bad for one of the guitar players who was one of those guy/girl rocker types with the coiffed hair and tight jeans. The guy was down wind of the sculpting and was basically getting soaked. I was freezing in my sweater and coat and this poor guy is being spritzed with ice water in a rocker t-shirt.

Reverend Butter took his art form seriously. His moves seemed choreographed to the band's set as if they had practiced in advance. He kept doing extreme pelvic thrusts at the block of ice with his chainsaw. I must say I had never seen that before. It was really cold but we wanted to see what Reverend Butter was making. In the end, we left before he was finished but we could tell he was making some sort of giant wings. So, I highly recommend that everyone witness Reverend Butter's magic sometime in your life. You'll never look at ice sculptures the same way.