Thursday, June 01, 2006

k-i-c-k pronounced as kind

Anyone else watching the National Spelling Bee?

I've ignored it all day, but I just popped it on a moment ago to see a girl drop out on collyrium and a boy on paillon (French, dude! c'mon!). Man, are they INTENSE (and the girls are wearing a LOT of blusher and lip gloss). I took it as a positive omen that ESPN re-ran that Cheap Seats with Ned Andrews at the '94 Bee on it the other night so I could watch (and giggle) with sound this time around.

In related news, I've gotten worse at spelling as I've gotten older (not bad, mind you, but not as spot-on as I used to be--I'm more inclined to spell something phonetically, erase it and spell it correctly), so maybe there's something to be said about having kids in their early teens spell competitively. I shudder to think how a Senior Citizen Spelling Bee would go down--we gain a lot of wisdom in our waning years, but I doubt that spelling is part of it.

Ooh! Another kid bailed on sciolto! Sucker.

4 comments:

Cella Bella said...

I'd much rather see a definition bee. A more useful skill and more opportunity for players to pull things out of their ass. Good Times.

Anonymous said...

i think a full contact, pads on spelling bee competition would be more of the way to go. you'd get the key 18-34 demographic that people apparently drool over. or maybe give the kids a mild electrical shock if they spell it wrong. i just don't think those kids are under enough pressure...

Rent60 said...

They were showing the Canadian Bee on Global or something the other day and I watched for a few minutes. They were younger kinds and the words were too simple for it to be exciting enough to hold my attention for very long. After adding movies like Spellbound and Akeelah and the Bee to my favourites I must say that the real thing has become that much more intriguing.

^kat^ said...

Hey, the girl who came in second was Canadian! It cracked me up because she kept getting all these words of french origin, like "douane." What self-respecting Canadian can't spell douane? *I* could spell it just from a few trips across the US-Canada border! She lost on "weltschmerz," though--started with a "v" instead of a "w." At least she didn't stick a "t" before the "z" (grumble grumble pet peeve grumble)...