Sunday, October 22, 2006
A Fair To Remember
Blogspot was being naughty last night, so I scolded it harshly and sent it to bed early. Hopefully it was play nice today. Here's last night's post: So a couple of weeks back I went to see the Square Regional Finals down at the GA National Fair in Perry. I had been there for Thursday and Friday, but missed Saturday. The first two days the numbers among the preliminary rounds were rather low, but on Saturday they apparently turned around. So Sunday's regional finalists included a few heavyweights (pun only slightly intended). I got into the park a little late as traffic was horrid and I wound up in a parking place that seemed to be 2 miles from the entrance. I was lucky enough to get a funnel cake and find a seat. For the finals they had about 15 eaters. The lower seeded eaters were at ground level and the higher seeds were up on the big stage. If you've never witnesses a Square Off then you've missed out. Obviously the eaters are worth watching, but until you've seen it live, you really haven't seen it all. I saw one of the qualifying rounds several years back, but those are nothing compared to the regional finals, and I can only imagine how the championship is. The staff who run the contest perform a choreographed dance as they ensure all cups are full of water, and the contestants always have plenty of burgers to eat. In the qualifing rounds where it's rare to see more than 10 or 12 eaten, they simply count the empty boxes. When it gets to the higher rounds, that would be impossible. You can't really imagine the number of Krystals that are put away until you see them being staged for the contest. ![]() This amazing dance of consumption lasts for 8 minutes. (Think the duration of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin.) All the while there's an announcer screaming out the current counts, water splashing everywhere, and of course all this is done in front of a large, live, rowdy audience. Simply amazing. Kenny, Brad, Kitty, and Keith do an amazing job, for sure! In case you haven't heard, you'll be able to witness this amazing dance, and of course the eating, next weekend as ESPN run the Square Off finals live on Saturday, with a replay the next day on ESPN2. I am trying to make it up there for the contest and perhaps the night before, but work is sort of getting in the way. Once the contest is done, the cleanup process begins. It is then that is really becomes clear just how much has been eaten: ![]() Anyway, once the stage was cleaned off, they returned to the locating that they'd been set up in for the previous 4 days and starting breaking down that set to move on to Jackson, MS. ![]() As for that nifty tent in the background of the picture, come back tomorrow and I'll tell you all about it. Lets just say: I gotta get me one of them! ![]() |