Corn Smut and Paul Rodriguez

Comedian Paul Rodriguez was in ICU, and turns out a fungus might have been the reason-- and get this ... it may have been  an appetizer he ordere.

Dinning at a Mexican restaurant he ordered a a dish containing huitlacoche -- a corn fungus also known as "corn smut" -- and that's what may have made him sick.

It's a Mexican delicacy, it's also is a disease of corn, it's a fungus. Weird looking tumors, something like mushrooms are made up of much-enlarged cells of the infected plant, fungal threads, and blue-black spores.

This delicacy is considered a pest in most farmers but in Mexico corn smut is called huitlacoche. 
For culinary use, the tumors are harvested while still immature, still moist, and, when cooked it has a flavor described as mushroom-like, sweet, savory, woody, and earthy.
In 1989 the James Beard Foundation held a high-profile huitlacoche dinner.
This dinner famously tried to get Americans to eat more of it by renaming it the Mexican truffle.
Yeah right, just look at the photo above.
The bottom line? Corn smut is caused by fungus, case closed.