Thursday, March 5, 2009

Tales from the Freak Show: Vol. 2 - Doughnut Challenge


Everybody loves a doughnut, right? We had some real mayhem in the Half-Dozen Challenge... but it didn't even start there. You see, before the Big Six squared off at the feeding tables, we had a preliminary match up to fill in an empty spot. It turns out Sweet Grimace Slim, the slick talking manager of Ronald McFondle was a diabetic and was ordered not to compete by his physician. He wanted to risk it all though, but in the end I advised him not to.

Thus the preliminary match up saw many familiar faces compete for the open spot in the invitational. Amongst the hopefuls were local rapper M Sea, Seattle Hip-Hop Super fan Charles, Doug from Wake Up and Smell the Hip-Hop fame and a buddy of mine, a 6'6" ringer named Sam. The goal was for the competitors to eat 6 mini donettes the fastest. The problem was they were powdered doughnuts and the competitors were not allowed any beverage. This slowed them down tremendously.

I couldn't believe how slow they were going, then I popped three of the tiny doughnuts in my mouth and it dried up like a desert. Saliva simply can't penetrate the powder. I spit out about a doughnut's worth of chew and was able to get the rest down. Still, the combatants fought it out. My buddy, Sam, ended up getting the six down first... winning the chance to eat six more doughnuts!

After about 20 minutes of rest, he was back at the tables, neck and neck with Seattle rapper Wizdom, DJ Nphared, rock fan and columnist "Downtown" Matt Brown, SSP Superstar Ronald McFondle and Pearl Dragon from Champagne Champagne. It was a gnarly, yet colorful group of competitors. Matt Brown psyched the crowd out by devouring a Dick's cheeseburger before the contest. Every one squared up ready to consume calories.

Then they were off. It was a complete frenzy. Water was being thrown. Doughnuts were being smashed, soaked and even chopped up into fine lines and snorted by Ronald McFondle. Completely ridiculous and ultimately hilarious. A truly entertaining site. However, it was a race to finish the half dozen and snorting didn't seem effective enough. There would be no second place, the first to finish his six doughnuts would be the winner.

DJ Nphared seemed to be close, but it wasn't quite his match. You see, I brought in some of Capitol Hill's premiere mouthpieces to help me judge the event... Deevious Silvertounge and Evil Kimmel from Seattle Semi-Pro. They weren't familiar enough with the rules of competitive eating and awarded the match to Pearl Dragon when he had chipmunk'd his 6 doughnuts (chipmunking in competitive eating is stuffing the food in your mouth, so that it fills your cheeks like a chipmunk stuffing nuts). It's a valid technique in some forms of the sport, but I was looking for a clear finish.

Amidst the ruckus, like George W. Bush's premature Presidential victory call of Florida in 2000, Pearl was declared the winner. This caused the other competitors to cease combat and basically give it up to the Pearl Dragon as he finished the doughnuts in his mouth. Regardless of how he won, he was the victor in the Half-Dozen Challenge. I really think had the match not been called by the other judges, we may have seen two of the other five competitors leave the winner, but that just wasn't in the cards.

Then after some quick words exchanged between Pearl and myself, we deemed it prudent to have a head to head match up in the future... and me being the professional I am, I offered him the choice of food. He chose TACOS! If you know any good Mexican restaurants in the area that may want to sponsor a competition between two local celebs such as Pearl and myself, let me know. This encounter will be epic!