Hyperbole: a writer’s greatest tool. This is wort (the stage of brewing beer that creates flavor) simmering away, just out of a pumpkin. And yes, Neal Pollack wrote this post on Epicurious.com claiming, “if you stare long enough into the pot, you'll see the Virgin Mary.” So, Pollack didn’t actually see Mary in the pumpkin, he wasn’t even the one making the beer. And, being the caustic wordsmith that he is, the reference is, presumably, made firmly with tongue in cheek (though there is a hint of a veil in the upper right-hand portion of the pot).
Thanks to the wonders of Google News, however, I read this acerbic aside and couldn’t help but throw it up here, because like so many of these stories, it relays the extent to which these happenings have permeated culture. From brewing beer to reality television to Constitutional law (as posited in Madonna of the Toast) the human tendency to recognize iconic forms serves as a wonderful point of entry into the human condition: humorous, somber, absurd, and all of it important.
Virgin Mary or not, I bet that’s some great beer.
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