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In world news tonight, Illinois defeats Louisville 72-57.  In a related story, the blogger known as corndog owes me a can of something authentic.  As he said in comments on March 31 at 2:44 pm:

I’ll bet you a can of authentic Kentucky Burgoo against whatever soybean/corn abomination is considered native south-central Illinois cuisine that the innocuous but dangerous UL Cardinals defeat the Fighting Illini.

Y’see, corndog, “I’ll bet you” is one of them what-we-call “performative utterances,” and I’ll tell you what—that means I don’t have to whip you up any of Champaign’s distinctive east central Illinois ethanol casserole.  Au contraire, I stand ready to receive my can of authentic Kentucky Burgoo, whatever it is.

Next victim:  the erudite and cosmopolitan Idelber Avelar, who, for reasons that remain obscure to me, stopped by later on the 31st to say:

How about a 6 CD-R, 120-song homemade compilation of Brazilian music against signed copies of The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies and Life as We Know It (I’ve read and love the latter but don’t own it) that the Heels will slaughter the Illini by a double-digit lead on Monday night?

I’m thinking, that’s so cool!  I’m gonna get me a 6 CD-R compilation!  Now, just how long will it take me to learn all 120 songs?

Go Illini!  You play better without that nasty Chief, too.  After all, you can’t argue with 63 percent shooting in the second half.

Posted by on 04/02 at 08:13 PM

  1. Hey Michael, when you find out what “Burgoo” is, don’t forget to tell the rest of us!

    I have been away for a minute, and just noticed today the new photo of you on the home page. Yuck. I miss the old photo. It had a certain sexy je ne sais quoi kinda thing going on...ie, kinda cute for a White Boy! This new photo looks, um, not sexy at all.

    Also, please add The Black Commentator to your blogroll. Everyone should be hip to it - excellent stuff not to be missed. Thanks!

    http://www.blackcommentator.com/index.html

    Posted by  on  04/02  at  10:36 PM

  2. As a former Kentucky resident, I would like to point out that burgoo is essentially “road kill stew.”

    Enjoy!

    Posted by  on  04/02  at  10:37 PM

  3. Dude, you rock.
    Any thoughts in re Pope JPII?

    Posted by  on  04/02  at  10:57 PM

  4. Folderol-- Road kill stew?  Kewl!  Much better than east central Illinois ethanol casserole, I think.  Bring it on.  Does it go well with crow, do you think?

    And Oaktown Girl, I do have to apologize for the cheesy new photo.  I was simply trying to replace the old photo, and I wasn’t thinking about whether the one or the other would be “sexy”—since, to be honest, there are at least 23 out of 24 hours in the day when I am not sexy at all.  And this pic was taken during one of those 23.

    Posted by Michael  on  04/03  at  01:00 AM

  5. The new picture: pleasant, and yet not without a certain clumpy quality, n’est-ce pas?

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  01:02 AM

  6. You’re on, Dr. Bérubé! I will be expecting those two volumes in the mail on tuesday morning. I’d like to adjust my preferred score, though. I think I picked too high a final score. I am not going back on the double-digit provocation, but let us make it 77-66.

    PS: this humble Portuguese-language blogger has just hosted a party for the US Coalition to stop the Israeli Occupation, the New Orleans Palestine Solidarity Movement, and the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, associations that held a joint regional conference in the Big Easy this weekend. I’m happy to report that everyone was rooting for the Heels, and that all were happy the Illini didn’t choke. We want the showdown with the 27-1 team. Cheers,

    Posted by Idelber  on  04/03  at  03:19 AM

  7. Ah, that’s 37-1, I believe.

    Posted by Michael  on  04/03  at  11:18 AM

  8. Burgoo has squirrel meat in it, and corn, and gravy, and the usual stew stuff. After I ate it the one time (not bad, but tastes like beef stew), I read that squirrel is known to pass on mad cow disease, so I spent the next 5 years waiting for my brain to spongify. 

    I suspect the “authentic” means that it’s actually got squirrel and not just pork or beef.

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  11:24 AM

  9. Yeah, the Illini look pretty unstoppable. As much as I was kinda pulling for Michigan State, at least we’ve been spared an all-Big-10 final. Ugh - nobody wants to see that.

    As for the photo, the last 3 photos have clearly been of 3 different guys. Which one is the real Dr. B?

    Posted by Kathy  on  04/03  at  12:14 PM

  10. All this talk about the dang photo.  I’ll tell you what—how about I go back to the original photo that appeared here from January - July 2004?  Or the photo from my old U of Illinois website, a self-portrait at the Hoover Dam?  Or better yet, how about a photo of somebody else for a change?

    I don’t know if the Illini are unstoppable—those Tar Heels looked pretty good last night too.  Sian, wouldn’t you say so?  The Tar Heels looked pretty good, right?  Tar Heels Tar Heels Tar Heels?

    Posted by Michael  on  04/03  at  12:20 PM

  11. ::After all, you can’t argue with 63 percent shooting in the second half.
    ::

    ‘Heels were close to 70 percent....  But I’m not going to make any performative utterances.

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  12:50 PM

  12. Michael, your cybernetic voodoo will not work. Italians have a nice term for the avoidance of jinxing (?), scaramanzia, which is what I will be practicing. Therefore, They Who Shall Win the NCAA Tournament Shall Not Be Named. 

    In bocca al lupo!  (And where can I sign up for those free books?)

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  01:26 PM

  13. Ooops, 37-1 it is, my bad. No question it’s an impressive record, almost as impressive as going 31-4 out of a far superior conference....

    Posted by Idelber  on  04/03  at  02:08 PM

  14. Illinois 70, UNC 68. It will come down to defense, people. Defense.

    Michael, sorry to turn your comments section into an off-topic discussion board, but I’m hoping you or your readership can help me out with a project I’m working on. I read a passage once (I think it was in your class, but I’m not sure) that involved a father and son discussing the rain. Basically the point was that one person called it one thing; the other person called it something else.

    Long story short, I’m supposed to apply critical theory to a text - any text at all - and that passage has stuck with me for some reason so I’d like to take a closer look at it. I just can’t remember which particular text that was.

    Any thoughts? Anyone can feel free to email me with suggestions.

    Posted by Paul  on  04/03  at  02:08 PM

  15. At .

    Posted by Paul  on  04/03  at  02:09 PM

  16. White Noise, of course.  Beginning of chapter six.

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  02:22 PM

  17. Or better yet, how about a photo of somebody else for a change?

    I still like this one.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  04/03  at  03:08 PM

  18. I can’t believe I got three out the four Final Four teams correct. I’d like to thank Curveball, my NCAA basketball inside source, for the hook-up. This reedems him partially for all those crazy WMD claims.

    I have N. Carolina 81-78 over Illinois in overtime. Stranger things have happened. I have no regional interest, my academically depleted Longhorns lost in the first round to Nevada.

    Posted by norbizness  on  04/03  at  03:38 PM

  19. I gotta go with Illinois since they beat (or my guys collapsed, take your pick) Arizona in OT last week.

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  04/03  at  07:46 PM

  20. Burgoo=haggis with a KY twang (only regions whose taste buds have been deadened with years of whiskey consumption can eat this kind of stuff). 

    Burgoo alternate definition:  What you’ll find in Jim Bunning’s cranal cavity.

    Posted by  on  04/03  at  08:36 PM

  21. Kentucky burgoo is not remotely like haggis.  While it comes in different forms, the basic idea is a stew with vegetables and many different meats.  It may be apocryphal, but many Western Kentuckians say that authentic burgoo has seven different meats, although there is some disagreement as to which seven.  In some more rugged areas, road kill may indeed be part of the recipe.  My wife, originally from Whitesville, KY, tells me to be careful of her Uncle Bernard’s burgoo, both for the alcohol content (he tends to drink when he’s cooking.  Hell, he just tends to drink.) and the likelihood of possum and/or squirrel.  I don’t like burgoo enough to risk spongiform encephalopathy for it.  Anyway, Michael, what I’ll be sending you is civilized burgoo from the center of the burgoo and Bar-B-Q universe, Moonlite Bar-B-Q in Owensboro, KY.  My wife and I had our rehearsal dinner there.  You can tell we’re not exactly urban sophisticates.  But we had a great time.  As far as I can tell from the can, the only meats in there are mutton and beef.  And if all you pointy-headed intellectuals want to see arguments in their purest form, go to Western Kentucky during Catholic parish picnic season and ask the natives which parish makes the best burgoo.

    Posted by corndog  on  04/03  at  09:16 PM

  22. Burgoo sounds like a cousin of Brunswick stew, that Southern victual with squirrel and/or possum meat (depends on whether the cook is trying to cut back on fat).

    *Scaramanzia* indeed. (Cool word!) I almost fell for that Nittany Lion bait there. Luckily, however, after I quit running around the outside of the house cheering at full volume Saturday night, I took a double dose of caution chased by the memory of first-half turnovers. (As Stuart Hall put it once, “hegemony is hard work,” but damn, he should try sandbagging for a week to see what really takes the stuffing out of ya.) And then, just to make sure all the mojo’s flowing, I drove to Memphis last night and spit in the Mississippi River.

    Posted by  on  04/04  at  08:49 AM

  23. People! People! Hel-lo! Not all of us are country folk! If you’re gonna make a statement (sian!)regarding the respective fat contents of squirrel vs. oppossum, you need to let the rest of us know which meat has the higher fat content!

    Wake up, sheeple! It’s lapses like this that keep losing us the “red” states!

    Posted by  on  04/04  at  06:45 PM

  24. damn dude, at least he had the foolish conceit of giving you 9 points.

    Dave, who is weeping for the Webermen tonight.

    Posted by dbt  on  04/05  at  02:30 AM

  25. Squirrel is safe if you don’t eat the brains. Scrambled eggs with squirrel brains is the dish people are thinking about.

    The road kill I’ve had was fine. The trick is to get it before it’s been run over a bunch of times. Eating roadkill is part of nature’s great plan, adjusted for the internal combustion engine,

    Posted by John Emerson  on  04/08  at  12:22 AM

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