American Beat: Tune In, Drop Out, Make Sauce

R.J. Samuels, another hot sauce maker, thinks the reason so many dissatisfied boomers are hitting the sauce because, well, they can. "If you've got $100 and a kitchen stove, you can be in the hot sauce business," said Samuels, maker of Da Bomb: The Final Answer (a sauce that is so toxic that it was kept under lock and key at last week's trade show, lest a small child accidentally knock it over and ignite the entire Jacob Javits Convention Center). "It's really easy to make hot sauce," he said.

And it's really easy to market it. In fact, the most important ingredient in this recipe for the American Dream (a dream of mixed metaphors, apparently) is a 13-year-old boy's sense of humor. That explains why bottles frequently feature naked women or why CaJohn's offers such sauces as "Butt Twister" and "Sir Fartalot." Sauciness sells sauce.

"We like anything that has to do with the rear end," said Hard, whose competition includes (and neither I, nor Dave Barry, is making this up) "ANALyze This," "Bayou Butt Burner," "Blazin' Saddle," "Cyanide DOA Sure Death," "Hot Buns at the Beach," "Kiss Your A- Goodbye," "Lawyer's Breath," or "Toxic Waste" hot sauces. And I'm only naming a few.

An economy that can support such a wide array of nearly identical, totally superfluous and anally fixated products can't be in such bad shape, right Mr. Greenspan?

Lest you believe that sexy come-ons are unnecessary to attract the most discriminating sauce gourmet, consider that Hard's "Sir Fartalot," a delightful mix of jalapeno, honey and tequila with a label picturing clouds of gas emerging from beneath a knight's armor, outsells his "El's Red Eye" sauce by a 40-1 ratio-even though both sauces are comprised of the exact same mouth-watering formula.

"Some of this stuff gets more provocative than men's magazines," said Samuels. "It's a macho thing. The implication is that if you can eat this hot sauce, you can really [satisfy] a woman."