Atmosphere:
The event took place in Tallulah's Cabaret, the bar adjoined to Buddies, which meant that both audience and participants were suitably fueled for a raucous evening. The place seats, oh, probably 150 people or so, and I'd say we were pretty much at comfortable capacity. Pretty much exactly the right amount of perversion in the air, too -- I mean, it's a room full of people who just paid money to attend a strip spelling bee, you know there's a decent lust quotient at work, but it never hit creepy. The vibe was pretty relentlessly positive and supportive, and the biggest cheers of the night were usually reserved for when somebody actually spelled something correctly. Good time had by all.
Contestants:
There were 13 brave souls who took part, 7 men and 6 women. (There was a moment when an unusual bulge seemed to indicate a transgendered contestant, but later visual evidence proved otherwise.) There were varying degrees of readiness for what lay in front of them -- a couple of them looked like they had just stopped by on their way home from the library, while others had some specialty lingerie going on underneath. One guy showed up in a luchador mask, and stayed in character by Hulkamaniac-ing his shirt off when the time came. The amount of disrobing was totally up to the individual participant, with one girl dropping out completely after the second round (to disappointed applause, if there is such a thing). Everyone who stayed after that would be expected to get down to their underwear or to naked, whatever they were comfortable with, and there was probably about a 75% conversion rate. Obviously, there wasn't a whole lot of shy on stage to begin with, but it's worth pointing out the little known fact that people become 64% more confident and attractive when they're on stage in front of a room full of wildly cheering people. It's been proven by science, or possibly Girls Gone Wild.
Words:
Well, there were 13 contestants who went through three rounds of one word each, plus a one-word spell-off at the end to determine the winner. Taking in to account the speller who dropped out, that means there were 39 words used in the competition. Four were spelled correctly.
The organizers were pretty up-front about it -- they're here for the skin, so they deliberately chose words that would mess people up. To be fair, I think the people on stage were more interested in the strip part of the equation, so if you were looking for spellers you'd probably have better luck in the audience. You could often hear a buzz as people whispered guesses to the person beside them, but I'm guessing the scores weren't too much better than they were on stage. I consider myself a pretty good speller, and I can remember 7 that I would definitely have gotten: choucroute, algorithm, nebuchadnezzar, gusset, flibbertigibbet, verisimilitude, and detumescence. There were probably a couple of others that I might have guessed right at, but there were also a whole lot of others I had never heard of -- nisi, nuchal, and autochthonic, to name a few. It's not for the faint of heart.
Verdict:
From a conversation overheard during a between-rounds break, it seems the organizer has done a few of these events in Montreal, but wasn't sure how it would go over in Toronto. Now that he's done one, and he's pretty confident that the cover charge will pay for the room rental and his train ticket back and forth, he'll almost certainly be reprising the event in the future. I could definitely be convinced to go again -- if it happens, I'll keep you posted.
Now, just for fun, I'll leave you with some spelling-related video.
UPDATE: I never really expected to be linking to the Toronto Sun in anything but an ironic way, but it's funny how life goes. We appear to have contrasting information on the size of the venue, but otherwise we're pretty in sync. Granted, she has a bit more biographical info/participant quotes, but I mean, come on, she was obviously cheating. She had a notepad.
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