Is The Lawton Mac & Cheese Contest Real Or A Scam?

Since Google's YouTube suggestions are so misguidedly awful from time to time, out of sheer boredom, sometimes I'll go searching out the local stuff just to see what pops up. Apparently, there's some sort of mac & cheese competition coming to Lawton... maybe...

In a quick search for "Lawton Oklahoma," this contest promo pops up about macaroni and cheese. Honestly, who can resist clicking on something like that?

Off the initial gut instinct, a fellow production talent named DJ Say Whattt is looking to branch out, perhaps to get his Ruff Draff Productions company in front of more eyeballs. That's how small production companies become bigger production companies, respect the hustle, but there may be shenanigans afoot...

The idea is simple... If you can cook some bomb mac & cheese, you pay your $10 entry, cook up the cheesy goodness, swing it in for judging and the winner takes home a $100 cash prize... but the contest is April 1st... at a location to be determined.

If you're like me, your personal Spider-Man Peter-Tingle gets set off just at the mention of anything happening on April 1st... I've got so many epic April Fools radio pranks under my belt, I normally just take the day off and sleep in since you can't believe anything you hear or experience that day each year.

Second, how is any legit event supposed to happen in just ten days without an actual location booked for the fun "Judging" part yet?

From the official website:

Be A Part of Our First Local Annual Macaroni & Cheese Cook-Off in Lawton, Ok on April 1st, 2022. The location will be announced closer to the date. There is a $10 entry fee and a $100 cash prize. Register below to prove your Mac & Cheese is the best in Town! Or just come out and be a Mac & Cheese connoisseur and judge for Free!

I hesitate to assume this is all shenanigans because, you know, I want to believe the most perfect and legendary cook-off of all time is happening in our own back yard.... but there are the obvious red flags one would have to ignore.

All the same, if you do sign up because your mac & cheese is the bomb, the link takes you to a perfectly legit Squarespace checkout page to process your payment... but what if that $10 "entry" is just the "stupid" tax you have to pay to be in on the joke?

I want so desperately to believe, but I also know how the City of Lawton is with these food contests. They're a bunch of weiners and gonads about them... We used to host an epic chili cook-off until the city put a stop to it. Cook-off's now require permits, licensing, commercial kitchen inspections and requirements, etc... As if half the chili's in a traditional cook-off weren't going to send you to the port-a-johns instantly anyway.

Maybe that's why they haven't found a location for the Mac & Cheese Cook-Off... because it has to be outside the City of Lawton city limits due to their own idiotic bureaucracy of being a nanny-state.

But who does a cook-off on a Friday? Why not host such an event on a Saturday, April 2nd? When everyone and their dog is out looking for something to do for entertainment?

I'll have to do some more digging on this... as much as I want it to be legit, it walks like a duck.