Eat To Win

Tim Cavanaugh | April 16, 2006

Reader Fred Nolan invites you to take a bite out of Deadmaneating.com, a comprehensive guide to last meal requests by condemned prisoners. Get the skinny on Kevin Kincy, who was executed by lethal injection in Texas on March 29 (without, unfortunately, making any last-meal request; the site doesn't mention what the default last meal is).

Deadmaneating lacks the succinct authority of the conceptual artist Celia A. Shapiro's "Last Meals" project, which reconstructs each prisoner's menu on a serving tray—from Harry Charles Moore's healthful last request to Timothy McVeigh's final indulgence in empty calories to a smorgasbord of other prisoners' choices, some of which look pretty appetizing. Taschen ought to do a book of Shapiro's pics, but in the meantime you can get Ty Treadwell's Last Suppers or prison chef Brian Price's Meals to Die For.

And since this is the day Jesus comes back to finish up the leftover slices of pizza, choose your favorite version of the savior's last meal: Leonardo? Bassano? Master of the Housebook? Girbaud supermodels? David LaChapelle? Other?

What would Black Jesus choose for his last meal? Formerly controversial artist Renee Cox offers up her body in "Yo Mama's Last Supper." Other last meal requests?

Comments

|4.16.06 @ 11:43AM|#

Here is my impression of Jesus when he comes back in all His glory:

"None of those buildings used to be there."

|4.16.06 @ 12:09PM|#

W C Fields (in My Little Chickadee), as he was about to be lynched:

Q: Do you have any last requests?

Fields: Yes. I'd like to see Paris before I die.

Warren|4.16.06 @ 12:19PM|#

What may well have been the finest rendition of the Last Super (penultimate super?) is alas, not on display. Presumably it has been consigned to the ashes.

Ron Hardin|4.16.06 @ 1:14PM|#

You'd think last words on cockpit voice recorders would be of more interest to writers.

I believe the winner for most popular is ``Oh shit.''

Nothing you couldn't say any day. Evidently no planning has been done.

Thoreau managed ``Moose,'' and then ``Indians,'' but he wasn't pressed for time as an airplane plummeting does to you.

|4.16.06 @ 1:48PM|#

Additional Famous Last Words:

"Hold my beer, and watch this!"

|4.16.06 @ 4:37PM|#

"Last meal: Salazar had a final meal request of a dozen tamales, six brownies, refried beans with chorizo, two rollo candies, six hard shell tacos with lettuce, three big red sodas, ketchup, hot sauce, six jalapeno peppers, tomatoes, cheese, and extra ground beef."

No wonder he's dead!

|4.16.06 @ 7:57PM|#

I choose Bunuel's Last Supper, from Viridiana.

http://www.infocadiz.com/Rivadavia/Bunnuel/Viridiana.htm

|4.16.06 @ 8:00PM|#

I'd eat a Japanese-Indian fusion meal with chopsticks, and I'd chew the chewy items very long and languidly.
I'd like every condiment possible around my plate.
For dessert: fudge ripple ice cream topped with toasted, shredded coconut.
Ummm ummm.
Hey Grandma! What's fer dinner?

|4.16.06 @ 8:31PM|#

John?s last meal was a lot of fried chicken, cold beans and baby squash.

|4.16.06 @ 8:47PM|#

Tom T. Hall,
Here was a recent cartoon in the New Yorker.
The feet of a dead cowboy are seen by a cooking campfire. Standing over the body was another cowboy with the smoking rifle in his hands, explaining to a third cowboy:
"I had to do it. He was about to grill zuchini."

(Your comment about baby squash got me going. Down south, squash was just squash, and it was the yellow kind. Anyone eating any other kind almost needed to be killed.)

|4.16.06 @ 9:30PM|#

http://wtbw.net/wtbw/last-s/17.jpg

Holy shit, Mao as Jesus. This (mostly)athiest is offended.

80sfan|4.16.06 @ 9:38PM|#

Tim, truly you are the king of indiscriminate linKings

|4.17.06 @ 5:39AM|#

From the old so-so TV show, "When Things were Rotten":

Guard: What do you want for your last meal?

Prisoner: Give me a large bowl of chicken soup. . .and a fork.

|4.17.06 @ 12:37PM|#

There is also James Woods...

http://www.brandonbird.com/supper.html