The Grill and the Glory

"We're sweet and tangy," Boggs says. "We're going for perfectly cooked mainstream. Some guys get desperate, cloves and stuff like that. That's not us."

Mixon, meanwhile, has his own daredevil cooking style. While most teams cook "low and slow" (15 hours at 220 degrees for a 10-pound beef brisket), the Madman of South Georgia is famous for going "hot and fast" (his brisket will take less than four hours at 325 degrees). The taste is unchanged, and it lets Myron sleep in a motel bed. But the risk of incineration is huge. Most pitmasters don't have the nerve.

By 10 a.m., the sun is bright, and the judges' pavilion is crowded. I sign in and find my table. There are 10 paper-covered tables, each equipped with pencils, water, paper towels, saltines (for palate cleansing) and chairs for six judges. The 60 judges will taste and evaluate more than 455 entries in seven categories (chicken, ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, as well as side categories in sauce, dessert and "cooking from the homeland," a non-barbecue regional entree).

It's finally time to don my knee-length judge's apron and the old-fashioned, oversize black ribbon that marks me as one of the day's jurists. In the minutes before the

contest begins, we mill around signing one

another's aprons. My table is all celebrity judges. They include former University of Tennessee football coach Johnny Majors, the state's commissioner of tourism, an Air Force brigadier general and a Food Network host named Guy Fieri, who blatantly ignores the no-sunglasses rule until our table captain insists firmly that he remove the shades.

With five minutes to go before the first meat deadline, I can only imagine how crazy the teams must be, preparing their chicken entries even as the ribs and other cuts come out of the smokers.

And then I see, past bleachers filled with spectators, a fully outfitted Canadian Mountie clearing a path through the crowd. Behind him, a man walks carefully to the check-in table with a closed Styrofoam box. Many of the teams use blockers like this, although not always costumed; at a contest in which every fraction of a point counts, getting jostled and dropping an entry would mean game over.

Soon a stack of cartons arrives at our table. We grow silent as our table captain, a well-known barbecue chef named Tony Stone, opens the first box and passes it under our solemn faces for a visual inspection. It's a nest of six glistening chunks of perfection. It's barbecued chicken as Leonardo da Vinci would have painted it, the Mona Lisa of chicken. It's chicken so flawless, so exquisitely primped and brushed and turned out that it should be walking up the red carpet at the Academy Awards. It's a Playgrill centerfold.

I inhale deeply, and the fragrance makes my eyelids droop.

We each take a piece and put it on square No. 1 of our cardboard tasting mat. Stone passes around the next entry and the next, until we each have five pieces in front of us. Only then do we begin to taste.

I start with No. 1.

Pinch. Sniff. Squint. Nibble. Chew.

Ponder.

It's transcendent. The flesh surrenders gracefully but not wantonly to my bite; there's a winning humility in the clear glistening juice of the meat, and just a whisper of sass -- a flirtation, really -- in the moist red char of the skin.

I give it a 9.

Time for No. 2.

Nibble, nibble.

It's transcendent. The flesh surrenders gracefully but not wantonly to my bite; there's a winning humility in the clear glistening juice of the meat, and just a whisper of sass -- a flirtation, really -- in the moist red char of the skin. I give this one a 9, too.

Uh-oh. It turns out that my amateur palate can't tell much difference between one nearly perfect piece of barbecue and another nearly perfect piece of barbecue. They're both just really, really good.

I'm in a mild panic as we continue. I can't give them all perfect scores. I pray to bite into a piece of kale or a toothpick. Anything that will let me flunk someone.

It's a huge relief when I run into an actual clunker. A piece of dry chicken breast that has been hammered flat like a cutlet. After the ballots are collected and we stand for a stretch (and Coach Majors signs autographs along the crowd barrier), we surmise that the cutlet must have come from one of the European teams.

Things settle down after that. After a dozen or so samples, the distinctions among them begin to stand out more clearly. This brisket is just a leeeeetle too eager to pull apart. This chopped pork doesn't quite engage the nose as much as one might hope. And is that a tiny afterburn of chili left by an otherwise unimpeachable rib?

Idiots!

Trust me, there's a little Simon Cowell in all of us.

I wonder, as the meat parades by, whether I'm tasting any of Mixon's.

And then it is over. Four hours and a pound of world-class meat later, I'm allowed to waddle down off my pedestal and return to civilian life. It feels good, and a little gassy, to be back to judge-not status.

It is going to take a couple of hours to tally the ballots, so I make a few turns around the park. While I was chained to the judges' table, a whole festival has sprung up. Thousands of day-trippers mill among booths selling roasted corn and lemonade and country crafts. Teams, free now from the pressure of the contest, hawk their rubs and sauces. A whole midway of barbecue vendors, some of them serious competitors at other contests, do a huge business in ribs and pulled pork. I pass.

At Mixon's tent, the mood was confident but wary.

"I'm not worried about the product we cooked," says Mixon's assistant, Doby. A restless, wiry man, Doby works four 10-hour days at a Georgia greeting cards printing plant to leave his weekends free for barbecue tournaments. "What we cooked was good. But I am worried about who's back there judging it."

I shuffle nervously.

At five o'clock, with the now-smokeless chimneys casting skinny shadows, I walk with Mixon and his entourage back to the judges' pavilion, where they linger at the edge of the crowd as the emcee begins to read out the results.

The dessert ribbon goes to a team from Pueblo, Colo. "Doesn't that just burn your ass," Mixon growls. "We stayed up all night cooking that damn cheesecake." His wife, Faye, chews the nail on her middle finger.

Chicken goes to Dirty Dick and the Legless Wonders from Norwell, Mass. They come screaming and shouting down the aisle to get their plaques and take their bows.

Beef brisket goes to Blazen BBQ from Hillsboro, Tex.

More hallelujahs.

Pork shoulder goes to Jumpin Joe's BarBQ, Leavenworth, Kan.

Doby clears his throat and jams his hands into the pocket of his Old Navy sweatshirt

Ribs go to Pork-n-Bones from Castor, La.

"It's going to be a long night drinkin'," Mixon says.

Technically, he's still in it. Because of the point system, a team can just miss on all the individual categories and still bag the grand prize. It's happened. But not often.

And, finally, here it is. The Grand Champion of the 2006 Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue, as decreed by me and my fellow judges, is . . .

Cancer Sucks Chicago.

Mixon claps twice, turns and walks back to camp.

HE ISN'T MAD.

When I show up at his trailer a half-hour later, after watching Scottie Johnson and his two little girls pose with that big whiskey-barrel trophy, Mixon has the Guns N' Roses going and the blender drinks flowing. There's a fire in the wire basket, and Doby is marinating steaks. The usual crowd is gathered around Mixon, and he accepts their baffled sympathy with grace. A few winners drop by -- they don't beat Mixon often -- and he's quick to shake their hands.

"You done good, my brother," he says to one. "You walk up on that stage, and you've done very well."

Later, standing away from the growing crowd, he shakes his head.

"This is some of the best [expletive] I've cooked this year," he says.

But that's as close to remorse as he comes.

"Hell, it's just one contest," he says in a firmer voice. "It won't break me."

He takes another sip and heads back to his people. "And I will be back next year," he says. "I've already qualified."

Steve Hendrix is a former travel writer and current Metro reporter for The Post.