Like grits on fire, the South is smokin' hot

Feeling good about yourself?

This may be why: A recent story in Business Week called The South "A Red Hot Brand."

"Southern style is a big business way beyond the Mason-Dixon line."

To which the proper response is a Foghorn Leghorn-like, "Honey, please. It's always been hot here. Humid, too. Tell me something I doooown't know."

Followed by, "Pass the grits, darlin'."

But what we didn't know is that we are The Hotness.

To which the proper response is "About time." But also, "Did you even put any butter in this?"

People from around the globe, from London to Lebanon, want to buy southern products, live a southern lifestyle and experience "down home." And I don't mean folks from New London, Va., and Lebanon, Va. The story claims that people in Morocco, Bahrain and Jordan love our Southern feng shui.

According to the magazine, they want poofy hair and eccentric leopard-print outfits. They admire a slow southern drawl, not the speed-reading chatter that permeates New England and makes everyone sound like an Aaron Sorkin character. They have seen Paula Deen and her fatty-fat-fat macaroni and cheese with Smithfield ham, made with six cows' worth of butter and then deep-fried. And they want to eat it, too, maybe even with overcooked collard greens. And they want to ask, "C'mon now, did you even put any butter on this?"

The South's newfound fame means no more waiting for years before the hippest trends make their way here. No more waiting for jeggings and fake chunky framed glasses and T-shirts with hummingbirds on them to reach our boutique shops.

According to those arbiters of high fashion at Business Week, the people and products of the South are the trendsetters. We, the good people of The South, just need to keep doing what we want, and the world's boutiques will emulate us.

We're cool.

Just imagine when the people in Thailand find out that the amphitheater in Virginia Beach is called Farm Bureau Live. They'll get their authentically worn overalls - worn as a statement of agrarian irony - all in a bunch. Even cooler.

But this opportunity should not go to waste. It's time to cash in. Taste is fickle. (See: your tie. Before you picked this up? Seriously out. Now? Because you live in the South? Totally in.)

Perhaps our overseas admirers could share our obsession with all things Jeffersonian and buy the excess coffee-table books about Monticello that inevitably crowd our bookshelves.

Perhaps they could purchase a few of our now-ill-fitting seersucker suits, no longer quite so leisurely - in fact, a bit constricting after we've sampled the fare from Paula Deen's cookbooks.

Perhaps the convention and visitors bureau should give up on luring people from Pennsylvania and Maryland and concentrate on attracting the overseas crowd that wants real country music with fiddles and banjos. Perfect! Norfolk just passed an ordinance encouraging street musicians. I have neighbors who play banjos.

The best part? If we act like our normal goofy selves, we're super hip.

And as a precaution, I'm going to stock up on Reggie Rodgers' delicious banana pudding sauce, which is made locally, but could be huge in Abu Dhabi any day now.

Besides, when everyone else is ordering it by the gross in a few months, like any good snooty hipster, I want to say I had it first.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com