The Spelling Bum

It is just amazing how the spelling bee has become a, highly popular, nationally televised event.  With every word that these kids have to spell I feel a little dumber.  Would you know how to spell words like…..aguinaldo, terribilita, ochidore, gyokuro, engysseismology, or stromuhr?  Would you even know what the definitions are? I didn’t.  One of the funniest things that I realized while writing this is that Microsoft word didn’t even recognize these words.  These kids are absolutely amazing.

Considering all the crap that is put on TV these days it is really nice to see something like this be recognized.  I’m still trying to figure out why any of the Kardashians are famous (other then, as Joel McHale on “The Soup” would say, Kim is famous because she has a big booty and a sex tape).   To most of us the spelling bee gives us memories of being in front of your class, or school, but ABC/ESPN has brought it to an all new level.  The whole thing has been produced like most any sporting event.  Dramatic hosts & camera angles, backstage interviews, highlight reels, and a huge trophy presentation.  This year it got even bigger, Shaquille O’Neal even walked onstage and challenged last year's winner, 14-year-old Kavya Shivashankar, to a spell-off for his show “Shaq vs.”, which is also on ABC.

This was the 83^rd National Spelling Bee, and ABC/ESPN has been televising it since 1994.  When ESPN started out they would broadcast some of the most unusual, and unwatched sporting events including darts, strongman competitions, wrestling, and Australian rules football.  So it wasn’t a surprise that they decided to start broadcasting the national spelling bee.

There is so much pressure on these kids.  You can see it in their face while they stand on stage, especially if they spell the word incorrectly.  Not only are they on national television, but you can also see the desperation in their parents eyes while their children are asking the moderator every question they can, so they can figure out the spelling of each outlandish word.  Most of which you will probably never use or even hear in your entire life.  I have also never seen that many mustaches on 13/14 year old kids in my life.  (Sorry, I had to put that in there somewhere, it’s just crazy).

So I congratulate this year’s winner, 14-year-old Anamika Veeramani from Cleveland, Oh, continuing the Indian-American domination of the spelling bee in recent years.  Indian-Americans have won the bee for the last three years, and for the last 8 out of 12 years.  She beat out 273 other competitors, over three days, to win the huge trophy, and $30,000 in cash, as well as a $2,500 savings bond, a reference library from Merriam-Webster, $3,800 in reference works from Encyclopedia Britanica, and a $5,000 cash prize from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Foundation.

The Spelling Bee is a wonderful thing to see get so popular in this pop culture hungry society.  So I figure that it’s only a matter of time before someone starts to broadcast the school science fair, or at least I hope so.