I’m the Best Speller!

After I awoke from my slumber today I was hoping to get my daily fill of sporting news from ESPN.  I was expecting to get some pointless updates about how Manny Ramirez can start practicing with the team again as long as he clears the field before fans arrive, or maybe some pointless speculation over whether or not Brett Favre is returning this year.  Better yet a recap of last nights Nuggets and Lakers game, or a preview of tonights match up of the Cavaliers and Magic.  You may be saying, what’s the big deal?  Why don’t you just switch over to ESPN2?  The French Open is dominating that channel right now, so sports updates are gone there as well.

Whatever you do, just keep your composure and don’t faint, or that damn keyboard cat will make a fool of you.

What do I get from ESPN today?  The Scripps National Spelling Bee.  How this qualifies as a sport I have no idea.  I decided to watch in hopes there would be a contestant say something like, “do chickens have large talons?”, or the kids being asked to spell sardoodledom or numbnuts (check out the videos below).

This year started with 293 contestants.  I don’t understand this obsession with spelling useless words correctly (probably has something to do with prize money).  I think it would be more impressive if they knew what these words meant as opposed to just being able to spell them.  Each of the spellers repeatedly ask the judges for the language of origin, alternate pronunciations, the definition, the etymology, part of speech, and for the word to be used in a sentence.

Regardless, if you made it to the final stages this year you would have seen words like: epicrisis, senryu, imprimus, caliche, moloch, foudroyant, austausch, escritoire, unakite, talipot, nisus (this one was a homonym, I think that’s bull shit), dauerlauf, clotrimazole, fedelini, piqueur, grenache and alastor.

For those of you out there with and iPhone or iTouch, there is a new application available called the ESPN Arcade Spelling Bee.  With this you will be able to see how you rate against the world’s best spellers.  Well there you have it, I never thought I would cover a spelling bee, but that just happened.

You can tune in for the shocking conclusion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee tonight on ABC at 8ET.

-Reginald Blackstone

Image [msnbc]

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