Sunday Nights on the Lam: Cheese Curds, Booyah, and Beer Edition

Hello from sunny rainy flooded Wisconsin, where I have been happily lodged for most of the last month (fortunately, without any water damage). As anyone who has ever talked to me, walked past me when I have a Green Bay Packers logo attached to my person somewhere, or been within shouting distance when I am watching a football game is painfully aware, I love this place, almost as much as I love foisting every possible Wisconsin reference on unsuspecting passers-by. Sadly, I get fewer opportunities to do that when I'm actually in Wisconsin, since most of our unsuspecting passers-by already fully appreciate Brett Favre and frozen custard and have no need of my promotional comments. But it's come to my attention that tonight is Sunday night, and that I haven't offered an edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam for a long, lonely five-week stretch. So we're going to combine my two passions - Wisconsin and inexcusably belated blogging - for this live-from-Wisconsin edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam.

First, it's baseball season, and according to accuratebobbleheadlist.blogspot.com, my new second-favorite blog, that can only mean that the Brewers are giving away bobblehead dolls! For the uninitiated, these little figurines usually bear the likeness of some popular player, but here in Milwaukee, we honor the true stars - participants in the sausage race, in which people costumed as a bratwurst, a hot dog, a chorizo, an Italian sausage, and a kielbasa race around the field at the bottom of the sixth inning of every game. Consequently, fans who attended today's 7-3 beatdown of Sam Novey's beloved Orioles were rewarded with a bobblehead figure of a Polish sausage. As awesome as a bobble-sausage is, though, even I will admit that it can't quite top a Memorial Day Weekend bobblefoot day. Apparently the Saint Paul Saints, a minor-league team over yonder in the Land of Slightly Fewer Lakes, handed out this tribute to Larry Craig:

Now, if that doesn't make you appreciate baseball, I don't know what will.

On the subject of sports, folks here also do love their hunting, and not just the shooting at varmints that passes for hunting in Romney-land. The corresponding pro-gun attitudes have sometimes reached frightening extremes - for example, in 2005, we came dangerously close to passing a concealed-carry bill that would allow guns in daycare centers. However, happily, we haven't gone quite so far as the Missouri car dealer who gave away a free gun to everyone who bought a car. Perhaps another argument for alternative energy - with gas prices this high, people are really getting desperate to sell a car.

Finally, if you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a reference to a song from a fabulous musical called "Belgians in Heaven," by Fred Heide and James Kaplan; it was performed regularly during my childhood (and possibly still today) by the American Folklore Theatre in Door County, Wisconsin. (Where is that? If Wisconsin is shaped like a mitten - and no matter what Michiganders and Michigeese tell you, it is - Door County is about where the thumbnail starts. Picturesque, I know.) Sadly, they haven't yet hit YouTube, but it is an excellent show, and it features a hilarious song with the chorus:

Cheese curds, booyah, and beer
That's what I like to hear
I may be kinda pokey,
But I say, "Okey-dokey!"
To cheese curds, booyah, and beer.

I love this song not only because it's an awfully catchy polka, but also because it celebrates three of Wisconsin's greatest sources of calories, two of which you've probably never heard of (you can guess which two). Cheese curds, although they probably sound fairly artificial, are actually fresh cheddar cheese, before it's processed and aged; they are the only food product I know of that are fresh if they squeak in your teeth. Fresh curds are tasty raw, but as far as I'm concerned, they are infinitely better when fried - those of you lucky enough to have a Culver's nearby can experience that particular delicacy. Booyah is a chicken stew of probably Belgian origins whose name, long before it was a short-lived expression of triumph when I was in approximately the fifth grade, originated as a botched transcription of the French "bouillon," properly pronounced. And beer - well, you know. However, you may not know how John McCain feels about beer:

All we need to do is circulate that video, and Barack Obama will take Wisconsin by double-digit margins.

That's all for this week's (or, more probably, month's) edition of Sunday Nights on the Lam. Enjoy your summers, and visit Wisconsin!