Raw Dog is a wonderfully weird and wild mashup of history, social commentary, personal revelation and food journalism. All this while pursuing with alacrity the answer to an urgent question: “Are the people on the Wienermobile fucking?” In Baltimore, she “deep-throat a Maryland hot dog swaddled in deep-fried bologna,” and in Chicago, she reveled in a filet mignon steak dog. She traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, “to get diarrhea at ten in the morning at all costs” and therefore ordered a hot dog topped with onion rings and Spaghetti-Os. And while they’re the gleaming centerpiece of the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, she explains that the celebrated competition is actually tainted by “jingoistic marketing” and entrenched sexism.Īs for the hot dogs themselves, dozens of vendors are duly visited, sampled and reported on-from Costco and Home Depot to independent hot dog joints and even a few ballparks. After all, hot dogs are served at festive events but have long been made in places rife with animal abuse and worker exploitation. Loftus digs into those mixed messages with sharp wit and righteous anger. Along the way, she interrogates our national affection for the iconic tubed meat, noting that hot dogs are “high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food and they’re hangover food and they’re deeply American for reasons that few people can explain.” In the summer of 2021-aka “Hot Dog Summer”-Loftus, her boyfriend and their dog and cat left their home in Los Angeles and set off to eat and critique a ton of hot dogs. Now, with the release of Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs, the prolific creator and debut author takes readers on a cross-country road trip that is by turns eye-opening and gut-clenching, hilarious and poignant, scatological and existential. She’s joined MENSA as a joke, has seen Shrek the Musical 10-plus times and, in 2017, ate a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Jamie Loftus is a comedian, podcaster, animator, Emmy-nominated TV writer and performance artist.
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