NASCAR, basketball...and spelling bees

On a recent visit to Florida, we hit the local Wal-Mart. When you live in New York City, where there's no Wal-Mart or Target, you too will make them high-priority stops on your vacation.

This recent visit has only furthered my amazement at the fascination people have with spelling bees. I've posted twice about this phenomenom twice before I know, but I still have to show you this:

That's right, ESPN presents to you "The Best of The National Spelling Bee". Do you know what this means? I don't know what's scarier - that ESPN has produced this dreck or that a spelling bee video with the words "Best of..." in it implies that this is not the only one.

And it gets better. Better than the cover photo of those three kids, looking all hopeful and poignant, almost touching the soul. Almost. Then you remember that right there are three no-hope suckers, who probably get noogied on the playground and like sitting over a dictionary, spelling like it's going out of style.

It gets better when you read the back cover and realize that someone in Copywriting got a wee bit carried away. Just a touch.

"Watch with bated breath as you relive all the best moments from the last seven years of the National...Spelling...zzzzz....zzzzz...what? Oh, sorry."

I mean, you don't want to miss those controversial moments, right? The human drah-ma. Pit the English kid against the American kid in trying to spell favorite/favourite and it's better than anything the WWF has to offer.

This beatdown has been brought to you by the letter U

Cladam, I think I've found your Christmas gift.