AUSTIN, Texas — Michael Myers worked on his Spam dish for a couple of weeks.
In the end, he came up with "Three Pigs," a meats extravaganza with pork belly on the bottom, Spam in the middle and pork loin on top.
He then drove a day and a half to get to Austin – all to make Spamarama 2019, the first Spam festival in several years.
"I came here just for a chance to win that cup," Myers said.
Myers is referring to the Spamerica Cup, named for his brother, John Myers. John won more Spamarama cook-offs than any other person in the history of the festival, with a total of seven wins. John has since passed away.
Myers said winning the Spamerica Cup this year would mean a lot to him.
"There's no words, none. It'd be really great," Myers said. "The cup has to come back every year. It's a traveling trophy. So I'll take it back to Iowa for a year and come back next year to defend it."
Myers was one of 27 or so contestants who sparred for the Spamerica Cup or battled for one of the amateur trophies at this year's event.
Rusti Tisdale fell into the latter category.
"I love a good cook-off. I've never done a Spam cookout so it sounded like a lot of fun, very Austin and if I'm going to be an Austinite, like you said, I better be in the Spamarama," Tisdale told KVUE's Jenni Lee.
Spamarama was first started as a joke in 1978 by David Arnsberger. He moved away in 2007 and continued to run the event long distance for a couple more years.
A couple of others took over before Arnsberger agreed to bring back Spamarama this year.
He only did so because he decided Moontower Saloon in South Austin would be the perfect location.
"One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because Austin is getting so out of control of what Austin used to be and, you know, the 'Keep Austin Weird' thing – people thought Leslie was weird...This is weird. This is Spamarama," Arnsberger said.
The event also featured Spam-related events like Spamalympics, a music festival and games.
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