Name of the Game

Eric Wilder's Book Covers

Sex, Football, and Chicken Wings

Last night on Nightline there was a segment on the world's hottest pepper. The pepper comes from a remote part of India and one restaurant in Chicago uses it to make what they advertise as the world's hottest chicken wings. A Nightline reporter interviewed the chef who informed him they made their customers sign a waiver before serving them their specialty hot wings. This is because the Indian pepper is 2000 times hotter than a jalapeno on the SHU scale, a scale for measuring the caipusun content (the chemical that makes it hot) in a pepper.

The Nightline reporter mentioned that humans are the only creatures that will eat a pepper. Supposedly, not even a rat can be trained to eat one. Why then are hot, spicy foods so ingrained in the diets of many cultures, Americans as well?

A psychologist interviewed by Nightline said that hot wings prepared with the super-hot pepper was probably consumed mostly by young men, often as a challenge and often during a televised sporting event such as Sunday's Super Bowl. Hot spicy foods do have at least one benefit. They cause the release of endorphins and provide the effect of something similar to a runner's high. When couples consume the spicy fare together, they are often more sexually attracted to each other. This, I guess, should make hot wings and other hot, spicy foods the date food of choice.

The report got me to thinking what else that humans do that other creatures don't. For one, only humans run marathons and play team sports, such as football. There is an important connection here that I haven't yet grasped but one thing is sure - Americans, Nightline reports, will consume 90 million pounds of hot wings during the Super Bowl. That's right, 90 million pounds!

That brings me to the Super Bowl tomorrow. The most watched television event of the year has little to do with whether the Patriots or the Giants are the best football team. It's really all about peppers, team sports and sex, and you can bet there won't be a single rat watching the event.

http://www.ericwilder.com/

Here’s a pic taken a few years back at a motorcycle race in Houston at the Astrodome. Pictured are Eric Wilder, friend John Callaway, and a gorgeous model (I believe she is a Denver Bronchos cheerleader).

http://www.ericwilder.com

Other Inhabitants

My new pup Princess sees ghosts. I have no doubt that there are ghosts in the house. Marilyn and I have both seen the evidence. A few nights ago, Marilyn heard a loud crash. When she investigated she found nothing.

Neither Marilyn nor I are afraid. Ghosts are rarely, if ever, harmful beings. I think they just subsist, alongside of the people that are presently alive.

The house that we live in was built in 1975 and I am aware of only three spirits that might inhabit it – Anne, my wife that died of lung cancer; my mother that died of lymphoma, and Randy, the man that Anne and I bought the house from that killed himself three days later. There could be easily be others.

I admit that I don’t understand the afterlife. I barely understand the present life! Still, my pup sees spirits. When she does, she barks and carries on. She’s just a baby but even she isn’t really afraid of the other inhabitants of our house.

http://www.ericwilder.com

Heroes

I'm watching the LSU - Ohio State championship football game. As I watch, I think of two things: the game is in the Superdome of New Orleans. My thoughts return to 2005, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Geraldo Rivera is reporting from outside the Superdome. The building resembles a giant sarcophagus, the gray people in the background little more than eerie wraiths all but devoid of life.

My second thought goes further back, to the fifties. When I was a boy, my family and I would listen to the LSU games on the radio, enraptured by the running of Billy Cannon. He always somehow found a way to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. Listenting to our scratchy old radio, I always felt that Billy would break a tackle, put his shoulder down and run for a touchdown. I was never disappointed.

Seeing the two grand teams playing tonight in the Superdome, I get the same feeling about the people of New Orleans.

Go Louisiana!!
http://www.ericwilder.com

Shops on Chartre Street, New Orleans

Marilyn and I visited New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina and parts of the visit are chronicled in my book Murder Etouffee. I came across this picture today while looking at some of the photo files on my computer. It was taken on a street in the French Quarter, Chartre Street I believe, although I’m not sure.

http://www.ericwilder.com