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Many of you know Chef Who Dat (note: click here for essential viewing) and the cavalcade of characters that inhabit section 641 of the Superdome. Here’s the Chef before last season’s Monday Night game versus Atlanta:

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Like many (if not all) stadium secions, the season-ticket holding patrons at “Cafe 641″ have developed a tight-knit community that’s led to silliness, some bike crawls, and now, a cancer fundraiser with a twist. Per the e-mail I received today:

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A Cafe 641 patron and season-ticket holder, Sean Niehus, is raising money for St. Baldrick’s, a foundation that raises money for children’s cancer research. Sean has agreed to shave his head at the annual St. Baldrick’s shave-a-thon AND to grow a mustache. To help him raise money, we’re auctioning off a pair of tickets to the 2010 Saints/Bucs game in Section 641, Row 40, Seats 13-14.

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I like how not only is Niehus shaving his head, but that he’s also growing a mustache in the tradition of Cafe 641’s Patron Saint. Check out his picture, going from long blonde hair to a shaved head and a mustache would be a stark transformation. Gotta give to a guy willing to do that for a good cause.

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Bid’s can be made on the tickets on eBay here or you can donate directly to St. Baldricks by clicking here. And yes, that is Chef Who Dat in a wedding dress on that eBay listing. Not sure how that will help with the bidding.

As we reported yesterday, Rep. Tim Johnson (R-Ill.) was the only member of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote against congratulating the New Orleans Saints on their Super Bowl victory. Well, it turns out Johnson has an opponent vying for his 15th Congressional District seat in Illinois: Dr. David Gill, an E/R physician, a Democrat, and — most important — a good sport. In many ways. In many, many ways, as it turns out.

We put in a call to Dr. Gill yesterday to seek comment, and he got back to us today … not because he was blowing us off, but because he had been working in the emergency room, heroically saving lives, instead of voting against the Saints on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Here is Dr. Gill’s official statement on the Black and Gold Super Bowl victory:

I watched the game. I’m a football nut, and the New Orleans Saints receive my heartiest congratulations. And kudos to Drew Brees! I used to watch him at Purdue.

Dr. Gill took the time for a brief interview about the differences between him and his opponent:

GAMBIT: When you are not busy heroically saving people’s lives, what other impressive feats do you perform that Rep. Tim Johnson does not?

GILL: Hmm. I still play a mean game of tennis. I don’t know he’s capable of that. I can play sports trivia like a champ. And I still read out loud every night to my youngest if I’m not working in the emergency room.

GAMBIT: That is so nice! Dr. Gill, several of our readers have suggested your opponent is — and I quote — a “douche.” Do you have any comment on that?

GILL: [laughing] Uh… I … I can understand why they’d come up with that thought. I try to be more diplomatic about it. There are many people here in central illlnois who would agree with that.

GAMBIT: Thank you, sir. One last question: Is someone who doesn’t congratulate the winners of the Super Bowl a filthy Communist, or simply un-American in his beliefs?

GILL: [laughing] I’ll go with un-American.

Thank you, Dr. David Gill! To learn more about Dr. Gill and his platform, visit his Web site.

DR. DAVID GILL: HEROIC AMERICAN … AND SAINTS FAN.

You probably wouldn’t want to meet Guliano Stroe in a dark alley…or a kindergarten class. This five-year-old Romanian kid possesses the kind of power and muscles that any steroid-crunching bodybuilding wannabe would envy. He just set the world record for air press ups (believe me, I had to look this up). With his feet in the air, he pushes his body from a horizontal position into a handstand — and he did it 20 times!

Check out his abs and these aren’t photo shopped.

And of course, the accompanying video:

Questionland: Question of the Day

Have you ever swam in Lake Pontchartrain?

Everyone at Gambit World HQ is either: really sick, just getting over being sick, or on the cusp of getting incredibly sick…

… and all in time for Mardi Gras!

Is it just us? Feel free to whine and kvetch (or point and laugh) in the comments.

The United Kingdom’s premier medical journal The Lancet has retracted a 1998 paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Ever since it was published, the study, which was led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, has caused widespread panic over whether or not parents should have their children vaccinated. Great Britain does not require compulsory immunizations, and when the percentage of kids receiving measles vaccinations dropped, the number of measles cases soared.

In Wakefield’s paper, a team of researchers studied 12 children and suggested the MMR vaccine could have contributed to the development of autism in 8 of the 12 kids. The results of Wakefield’s study have never been replicated.

Charmaine Allesandro, director of The Greater New Orleans Immunization Network, hopes the retraction will finally put the immunization controversy to rest.

“This is good news,” Allesandro says in a statement released to Gambit “Hopefully, parents who have not vaccinated their children will realize that there is no scientific proof linking autism and immunizations, get their children immunized and make the community safer.”

Questionland is a new place for Gambit readers to ask questions, get answers, and share your infinite knowledge with the New Orleans community.

Where is the best place to go for a birthday dinner?

Where would you take a crazy friend coming to town?

Where is the best place to watch the Superbowl besides Miami?

Gambit has our answers- but now we want to hear yours!

Coming soon: Prizes for the best questions, and the “know-it-all” who answer the most in a time period.

So ASK. ANSWER. And feel free to let your curiosity carry you away.

Move over penicillin, there could be a cure for alcohol intolerance, or alcohol flush. Researchers have discovered a compound that repairs a defective enzyme, which normally is responsible for metabolizing alcohol.

An estimated one billion people have the faulty enzyme, and when they drink beer or wine, they experience facial flushing as well as other possible symptoms including nausea, vomiting and rapid heartbeat. The intolerance is also known colloquially as the “Asian Flush,” because 40 percent of people of East Asian descent suffer from this reaction.

Repairing the enzyme through a molecule, known as Alda-1, won’t only allow people to drink, it could also help save lives. Initially, researchers were investigating how moderate red wine drinking may lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. The scientists isolated an enzyme, ALDH2, which can possibly lessen heart tissue damage during a heart attack. Furthering the study, the researchers then found that Alda-1enhances ALDH2, and fixed the defective alcohol enzyme. It’s also thought that Alda-1 could assist with hangovers.

But if you suffer from this reaction, don’t get your hopes up too high. Alda-1 is still in the testing stage, and as the lead researcher, molecular biology professor Thomas D. Hurley, told Wine Spectator, “It’s a double-edged sword. We could correct the defect but then that increases the risk of other health problems if people are not drinking moderately. If they drink moderately, it’s great, but must be tempered with the fact that some people don’t.”

12,811,400 pounds. That’s how many toxic chemicals are choking Louisiana waterways, according to Environment America’s latest report “Wasting Our Waterways: Industrial Toxic Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act.” Louisiana ranks as having the fifth most toxic waterways. No state was spared — all 50 states and 1,900 waterways were found to have toxic chemicals.

The biggest culprit in Louisiana is ExxonMobil, responsible for 4,211,142 pounds of chemical waste in the Mississippi. Its facility was the largest reported polluter in 2007. And the biggest victim is the Mississippi River, ranked as the third highest polluted waterway in the nation with a total toxic discharge of 12,717,205 pounds of waste. These chemical cocktails contain lead, mercury and dioxin, among others, including chemicals links to reproductive problems, birth defects and cancer (industrial facilities dumped 87,896 pounds of cancer-linked chemicals into the Mississippi). This is the water from which we fish our fish, mind you.

Learn more about local water quality here, or look inside Gambit for a story on pollution on school grounds.

What is your New Year’s Resolution?