There are a number of things in this world that mean business, that demand seriousness and are not to be trifled with. The top three, if I had to rank them, are, in no particular order, sleep, Star Wars, and chili.
Being a lover of the former two, I decided to give the latter a whirl with the help of Colon Blow, a chili cook-off sponsored by Phi Mu Alpha, the male music fraternity here on campus.
After arriving at the Botsford/Swinford lobby and surveying the scene, I can make only one generalization about the chili community: It is insane. They had crock-pots. They had aprons. All seven entries had names like "Ass-Grabbin' Chili," "Hell If I Know" and the vegetarian entree, "Girls' Night Out Chili: No Sausage Allowed."
Indeed, the chili community openly embraces and fondles corruption. And it is fantastic.
Among the taste-testers were the young, the old, the male, the female, the good, the bad, the ugly and Christian Zembower, officially "Dr. Z," Assistant Director of Bands in the School of Music who had unofficially been possessed by the senile spirit of Gene Siskel who seems to have mistaken chili for full-length feature films. It's an honest mistake.
Noticing that he was sitting alone in contemplation, some of us went to talk to him and gave us a rundown of everyone's entree. Through a long and complicated series of generalizations, he concluded that, among other things, Mother Nature hates chili with spaghetti in it. Of course, given the weather conditions recently, one could also conclude that Mother Nature is on some fairly expensive narcotics.
I, personally, do not care for chili. This is my roommate's fault, as my first and last experience with chili was when I went to her home in Cincinnati. It involved partaking of three cheese coneys and sitting nonchalantly while the festering chili molecules attacked my digestive system in the most unpleasant ways.
I am told that Cincinnati chili is different than any other kind of chili as it has special, unique indigestion-inducing elements, such as cinnamon, cocoa and plutonium. But I digress.
Putting all prejudice aside, I was tempted to try a bowl of Dr. Z's "two-thumbs-up" recommendation, but after hearing a story about how an actual explosion occurred when its creators added the cayenne pepper, I decided to curl back up into the fetal position and tried not to imagine what would've happened if the recipe were sold to the Russians.
The important thing to realize, though, is that a chili cook-off is like a sport rather than an election. The people who enter are filled with a fierce determination that can only be topped by the eagerness of the fans to bring their chosen team to victory. The only thing a chili cook-off has in common with an election is the large quantity of hot air lingering around each of the candidates.
And, like any community coming together, there was a certain something in the air. A twinge of intimacy, an aura of comfort and familiarity that expressed the happiness and peace that words cannot begin to describe.
It must have been the beans.
Write to Aleshia at bari_girl@hotmail.com
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