People in Tulsa Have Strange Customs...

I’ve long enjoyed roasting the Thanksgiving turkey on a Weber grill.  Been doing it every year for the past 19 years or so.  The first year I did the turkey on the grill, the wife took a pic of me gazing longingly at a perfectly browned bird while it was still on the grill.  She titled the picture, “A Boy and His Bird”…may enter that in the museum’s photo contest next year.  The turkey always comes out looking like something off the cover of a woman’s magazine.  It also tastes really great.  There’s a hint of smoke and very moist. 

In fact, over the years I’ve learned to grill just about anything.  Pork butt, pork and beef ribs, goose, duck, brisket, on and on…low heat over a long period of time is the only real secret. 

I have the art of Weber kettle grill cooking down, but I always seem to fall short when it comes to the carving.  Maybe I’m just not using a sharp enough knife.  I do know I get impatient and try to carve things up before they’ve cooled enough.  When I carve my Thanksgiving bird it comes out looking more like turkey chunks than anything else. 

So I suppose I suffer from carve-envy.  I hate it when I see someone on TV carving their turkey and the knife slices through the breast like, well…a hot knife through butter.  Perfectly sliced white meat falls in a perfect cascade of thinly sliced turkey that fans out on the serving platter like Martha Stewart herself was serving it and saying, “Now, that’s a good thing.”  Mine looks more like Betty Stewart, her evil not-so-twin sister, did it.

But I digress…

Since I suffer from chronic carve-envy, there was an article on the Huffington Post site over the weekend that caught my attention for two reasons:  1) It involved carving, and; 2) it took place in Oklahoma…well, okay, Tulsa, but that’s still sort of Oklahoma.

So it seems that a woman (we’ll call her Psycho Chick) in Tulsa entered the funeral home where a woman’s body was lying in state.  And, not just any woman, mind you.  This was the ex-girlfriend of Psycho Chick’s current boyfriend.  Are you with me so far? 

So imagine the scene.  Your dearly departed family member is lying there in her coffin.  She looks so peaceful.  The morticians have made her look as though she were asleep.  In walks a woman…unknown to most of the family.  Though she looks vaguely familiar to Cousin Penny who is certain she’s seen her somewhere before.  All just figure that she’s an old friend come to pay her respects to the dearly departed family member.

Psycho Chick walks over to the edge of the coffin as though contemplating her time with her friend.  The family turn away.  It’s all so harmless…just another acquaintance paying her respects.  Uh huh.

Then, the family notice that Psycho Chick has her hands inside the coffin and is making busy.  Something seems amiss here (thanks, Captain Obvious)!  Uncle Carl moves over to the casket to see what’s going on.  There he finds that Psycho Chick has smeared make-up all over Dearly Departed’s face and is in the process of making a vertical cut from Dearly Departed’s hairline to the end of her nose.  Sheesh…what do you bet that Psycho Chick was using a switchblade that Her Royal Highness Mary of Fallin had just made legal? I knew no good would come from that!

Now, let’s stop right there.  The reports of this have been all over Tulsa media, but none of it (including the piece on the Huffington Post site) have all the details.  So, let’s put on our Sherlock Holmes caps, puff our altogether too large pipes, and examine the facts (such that they are):

• One family member said that Psycho Chick even stole the shoes off Dearly Departed’s feet.  Hmmm, seems a bit of a stretch since the family (or at least in my scenario, Uncle Carl) caught her in the act of alternately painting and carving the face.  The shoe theft is a new mystery. 
• According to Tulsa PD, Psycho Chick and Dearly Departed were frenemies (look it up, I had to).
• There is no motive as yet for the assault, which technically, according to our disbarred and disgraced CCB legal counsel, isn’t really assault since you have to be technically alive for someone to assault you. I’m betting there was bad blood (with a little embalming fluid mixed in) between them over the boyfriend.
• Police found a folding knife (I knew HRH was behind this!) on Psycho Chick that contained hairs belonging to Dearly Departed. 
• In all of this, there is no mention of how Dearly Departed croaked.
• And…where the hell is the stupid boyfriend who likely caused all of this? 

Based on the foregoing, let’s build a hypothesis as what happened, shall we?  Perhaps Dearly Departed made some play for her former boyfriend and Psycho Chick found out about it?  Or…and given that it’s Tulsa…maybe Psycho Chick is a member of a secret cult that sends their dead off with face paint and deep gashes. 

I know, I know, more questions than frigging answers.  Interestingly, Psycho Chick was charged with illegal dissection of a human body.  Really?  That’s the best that Tulsa PD could come up with?  She remains in Tulsa County Jail on a $20,000 bond…half of which is tied to a previous assault and battery charge in April for which she received a deferred sentence.  Hmmmm…bet she’ll do some time now. 

Robin’s advice for the day:  Stay the hell out of Tulsa.