September 1998: Vol. 77, No. 4September 1998: Vol. 77, No. 4 | |
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 "One of the big thrills," says Kudon, "is that when you cook mealworms, you throw them in a frying pan while they're alive."  |
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As a graduate student in entomology, Lou Kudon couldn't find many folks willing to taste his signature dish, the Hushpuppy Surprise. "It had sundried tomatoes, peppers, onions, and corn meal," says Kudon (MS '74, PhD '79). "The surprise was a nice cricket abdomen."
These days, Kudon gets more appreciation for his gourmet fare, especially at the State Botanical Garden's annual summer Insect-ival. This year's Cafe Insecta menu featured Buffalo Crickets, which are, of course, crickets marinated in hot sauce, and then battered and grilled. "I can see them at theaters--you just get a big tub and chew on them throughout the movie," says Kudon, a planner for Georgia's Northeast health district. "They're high in protein, and have no cholesterol."
Rounding out the menu were roasted cricket pizzas, chirpy cookies, and Kudon's current signature dish, Risotto Con Due Insecta. This dish calls for two cups raw arborio rice, four cups chicken stock, 1/3 cup sweet red peppers, 1/3 cup fresh chopped basil, 1/2 cup dry white wine, 200 crickets, and two cups live mealworms.
Facial hair leads to fifteen seconds of fame
When English professor James Kilgo was featured on "Live with Regis and Kathy Lee" on June 30, it wasn't for his first novel, Daughter of My People, recently published to critical acclaim by the UGA Press.
It was for his facial hair.
Kilgo, who says he's always scorned "dumb studio audiences clapping and squealing on cue," was roped into attending the talk show by a friend. Much to his chagrin, the friend's ties to Kathy Lee scored Kilgo and his wife front row seats in the New York studio audience.
"I told my wife I hoped they didn't scan the audience," says Kilgo.
Not only did they scan, they stopped and focused on Kilgo.
About three minutes into his opening routine, Regis began talking about beards, and the meticulous grooming they require. Kathy looked out in the audience and said, "There's a gentleman in the front row with a neatly trimmed beard. Let's ask him."
So commenced Kilgo's 15 seconds of fame, in which he was hit with a grueling question: "Is it hard to eat corn-on-the-cob with a beard?"
"Yes, it is," admitted Kilgo. "Corn-on-the-cob is hard."
A few days after his debut, Kilgo walked into the English Department office in Park Hall, and the secretaries started clapping. They had all seen the show.
"It was just crazy," says Kilgo's wife, Jane. "When people heard we were on TV, they thought it was to promote the new book. No. It was to talk about eating corn-on-the-cob with a beard!"
It's a bird, it's a plane
Places, everyone.
That's what 246 of the world's best skydivers were thinking as they joined hands in the thin air 19,900 feet above Ottawa, Ill., on July 24.
UGA senior Lindsay Cherry knows. She helped organize the attempt to break the world's record for the largest skydiving formation, which stood previously at a paltry 200.
Once the 12 planes expelled the skydivers, they had 65 seconds to meet in the air. All 246 had to stay joined for at least three seconds in a formation which looked, from the ground, like a flattened flower or a lace doily.
Between record-breaking attempts, skydivers "boogied" through the air--some "free flying" (headfirst) and others "sky surfing" (with a board, dude).
"I do a lot of the free-flying, but I don't do any sky-surfing," says Cherry, an outdoor recreation major who started UGA's Skydiving Club and helped organize Georgia's successful record-breaking skydive last summer. "It's actually really safe. I get hurt doing everything else I do, but not this."
Go, Team, Go! Raise my testosterone!
The night Georgia's men's basketball team played Georgia Tech at Atlanta's Omni Arena in 1992, Paul Bernhardt was in the stands with empty spit bottles and chewing gum.
Before tip-off, Bernhardt, then a graduate student at Georgia State University, asked four UGA fans and four Tech fans--all males--to spit in the bottles. Then he handed out the chewing gum and more bottles, and asked each guy to do a repeat performance after the game.
The Dogs won. But Bernhardt, a 1982 Tech grad, had a way to ease the pain of the loss. When he tested the spit, he discovered something exciting: the post-game testosterone levels of the UGA fans rose on average by 20 percent, and the testosterone levels of the Tech fans dropped by 20 percent.
Bernhardt, now a doctoral student at the University of Utah, published these findings, along with his study of World Cup soccer fans, in the May issue of Physiology and Behavior. Basically, he says, his study shows that the testosterone surge (or depletion) athletes experience is mirrored by their male fans.
But, Bernhardt says, such changes in testosterone levels are short-lived. That means, thankfully, that a winning season for the Dogs doesn't produce a collectively higher testosterone level on campus. Nor would a losing streak markedly deplete the University's collective testosterone supply.
"It's nothing particular to UGA fans," Bernhardt is also quick to point out. "They just won the game that night. Believe me, I wish it had gone the other way."
Jena McGregor