Scavhunt 2006, Post #7. Saturday.

CONCEPT

Also known as Trip to Chicago, Part 13.

Photos here do not represent the most extensive documentation of these events.
For a more comprehensive catalogue, please see the Offical Scavhunt Gallery.

Later in the Hunt, I started forgetting to take my camera to events. As a result, my photos become more sporadic.

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And actually, I didn't have my camera with me during most of the day, so there will be practically no photos here.

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SCAV OLYMPICS

For about the fourth year in a row, Scav Olympics were not six hours of torture (they were about six hours long last year, but not a particularly torturous six).

Please check out the photos for this. More than anything else in Scavhunt, perhaps, Olympics are something you have to see to really understand.

10. _____ Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. Come on Scavvies, it's bobsledding time! You provide the five-man team and we'll provide the bobsled.

There was no bobsled. Teams sat on their asses in the grass/mud, looped their legs around each others waist, and made a fifty foot "sprint" for the finish line.

Considering how awful I expected this event to be, it was one of the most beautiful things I saw all week. If you don't think athletics are an emotional experience, you haven't seen forty kids, some dressed in underwear as and brown shirts as quail dragging themselves with clenched-teeth one wet and mulchy foot at a time. Spectacular.

1. _____ SUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGE!!!!!!!!! Bring one can of Surge and get ready to feel the rush.

One of the most photograph-worthy moments of the whole Hunt, and just like a Surge add. Especially when Gerbil tried to jump over a wooden bench, caught his shin on the crosspiece, and went flying onto his face. Remarkably, nobody was killed injured.

3. _____ I cried because I had no gloves, until I met a man with no hands... then I laughed because that no-hands guy had to make fire. [Bonus points if it's for s'mores]

As with a sneaky minority of items, simplicity works much better with complexity. Some teams duct taped matches and flighters to various parts of team members bodies. About half were unable to light the fire in three (five?) minutes. The winning time, however, was five second. Before starting, she put her toe on a lighter nested in a pile of crumpled Maroons. They caught at once.

12. _____ Spread. No, you don't have to flow. We'll provide cards if you provide your most resolute orator, and that's our policy.

They had to read from "Jessica's" LiveJournal, which is itself notable for utter lack of punctuation. They had to read as fast as possible, and some of them read pretty damn fast.

7. Show us your all star cast! You better know your line, because this thing's for reel. One pole. One sinker. One target. One try.

Didn't really see this one.

2. _____ The afternoon sun glints off of your cardboard armor as you enter the field of battle astride your mighty broomstick steed. Have at thee! Ye Olde Stock 'Em Bopper Jouste!

"Two men enter, one man leaves!" This was another tense one. Teams with inflatable gloves and shields and cardboard armor colliding with each-other at full tilt. Of course, it did ratchet up the tension somewhat when Jabob entered round two, his face seeming to say: "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh wait, I'll punch him in the face!" But Pranks wasn't hurt, and in fact, went on to the final where he was abruptly flattened by the Shoreland player, who wore spiked shoulder pads and ran over every opponent like a tank. He was Asteroth, in fact.

5. _____ Juggling contest. Bring a kick-ass routine to impress us, and then see what we throw at you.

I didn't see all of this one. But we've got some pretty impressive jugglers at the U of C, and in general eggs didn't break. Nor were we killed by hourglass shaped plastic things mistakenly flung through us at 30+ miles per hour.

That is to say, they were all caught.

11. _____ You can't watch your weight if you can't see. No starts to Helen Keller jokes here, just donuts on a string. B.Y.O.Blindfold.

This, on the other hand, felt dirty to watch.

8. _____ Triangle Toss is a game for people with pointed heads. Harry, Fred, and Richard are all invited. We think it's alright if Obilo and Arrow compete as a team, even if the Count's kid doesn't. Your ringer should bring three triangles.

I didn't see much, but what I did see was funny.

9. _____ What color is this food? What color isn't this food? I don't know, you tell me.

Yeah, I still think the goldfish were a little cheap. ;)

13. _____ The mysterious dictator M. Bison has come to our fair town to organize a tournament for the ultimate thumb war Street Fighter. Each team will be given a champion to support, and they must appear in the quad at the appropriate time, in appropriate dress, for a single elimination thumb-war tournament to the death. Winner take the points and the right to challenge Bison for everlasting fame.

We crowded around the stairs of Ryerson and watched the drama play out. Cammi had a look of profound frustration up against an unusually spry Vega. Ryu won the day, even triumphing over Tricky's M. Bison... he looked a little deflated. He'd spent all morning striding regally about the quads with his cape and cap, scorning the futile efforts of the puny fools.

4. _____ Hungry, hungry hippos, it's time to feed your face! Hungry, hungry hippos, they're in an eating race! Bring your shopping cart-based hippo, hippo operator, and 8 balls of a satiating size. Operators shall guide their hippos and the hippos self-collect as many balls as they can chomp in their metallic, metallic mouths.

More simplicity rocked. The Vegans cleaned up here, cutting the bottom of a shopping cart that they raced and dropped on the balls and fruit rolling over the drive. Shoreland had the most authentic model, with an extendible, down-turned mouth. Nobody was hurt surprisingly. Except the F.I.S.T. cart which, facing the penalty for failure, was tossed on its head (and only mildly bruised in the process).

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After scav olympics, we returned to HQ and several hours later headed out to judge two more items. I only arrived in time for the tail end of the first:

135. _____ Will it float? Bring an object that will stump Judge Letterman & Crew. 5:00 PM Saturday at the Law School Fountain.

We were stumped about 50% of the time.

214. _____ Reinstate Project Habbakuk. Construct a floating fortress of pykrete that won't sink in the Law School fountain at 5:00 PM on 13 May 2006. [32 frozen points]

Pycrete is a mixture of ice and sawdust investigated by the Navy during World War II as potention building materials. Some teams did exceptionally well at this item: not only did their blocks float, but several wouldn't break even when hurled full force against the pavement. They can be seen today, guarding the law school students as they return their books.

The third and last official event of the night was the Iron Chef competition, something that we've hosted off and on over the last several years.

286. _____ The triumphant return of Iron Chev Scav! Think you can really cook? Prepare us a feast worthy of a viceroy or marquess in a quest to capture the coveted title of Scav Saucier. First course: a salad featuring the signature foodstuffs of Chairman Kaga, Carlito Caribbean Cool (minus the saliva, of course), and Farfetch'd. Second course: The entrèe (with fixins) featuring our Secret Theme Ingredient (to be revealed at Scav Captains and the Meeting of Tomorrow). Third course: the bloodfeast. By which I mean dessert. Seriously, forget I ever even mentioned the bloodfeast. Just make a great dessert. Be creative, be daring, but above all be delicious. Also, you'd better bring enough to share. Dining will begin promptly at 7:00 PM on Saturday in eX Libris. The heat will be on! [o-licious points]

The secret ingredient was breakfast meats. We stopped briefly at HQ before heading over to the Reg, cleared up, and arranged the tables in an interrobang. Teams arrived and set up their feasts, which smelled wonderful and were almost innumerable. I felt stuff before I'd barely scratched the surface of sausage wrapped in bacon, of grits and eggs, of blood wine, and, and... Aughgh!

This year, however, the even was the best its ever been. We've always hurried through it on the way to something else, and for whatever reason, we had a more leasurely approach this time. It gave me a chance to really sit and talk to scavvies and hear what they were doing. As much as this item was a competition as much as any item is a competition, it felt as though that had been set aside. It was a nice rest.

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Which was nice, because immediately after, we had our annual contentious judging debate. Which we resolved, and moved on to visiting team HQs.

For this we splint into two groups.
One group (the estrogen group) visited the Vegans, Shoreland, Broadview, McPierce, Max, and Snell. The second group (the testosterone group, plus Lisa) visited Broover, Max, Snell, F.I.S.T., and BJ.

This is the only part of the day for which I really have photographs.

Since I was tired at this point, teams were tired as they settled into their last night of arduous pre-judgment construction, and I'm tired now from spending all eternity on this blog, I'll provide the pictures with a minimum of commentary.

Are these judges,
or is the Mighty Mighty Bosstones Reunion tour?


Behold: The Panopticon.


Broover... this year's dark horse. In the end they'd come within a few hundred points of F.I.S.T. for third place. They only advanced one place rankwise from last year, but I think we all felt that they'd amped up their participation a lot.


And here we are on the set of Day of the Dead.


"Tricky heard something... a creature? Something shuffled on the platform above..."


I NEVER KNEW THIS EXISTED!!!

Headquarters of Max Palevsky, Wombat for Great Justice. They're the powerhouse team these days.

137. _____ A one-man band playing the Scav Hunt theme song. Only one player, minimum 4 instruments. [42 points. 2 bonus points for each extra instrument. 11 bonus points for a unicycle. Maximum 10 instruments]

241. _____ It's a zany action, a crazy Quad-traption, the fun is catchin': it's a Man-trap! [100 points]

A Joe makes a play for the keg, and he's punished for his weak attempt.

The instrument of entrapment.

I respect the pumpkin.

Outside Snell.

Inside Snell.

3. _____ A superconductor. Must superconduct. [73 points]

And from there, we moved onto F.I.S.T.

277. _____ A work of art that would stop Julian Beever dead in his tracks. [57 points]

The F.I.S.T.'s HQ. F.I.S.T. has a long and fascinating tradition, and it's a later incarnation of both teams I played on. When I came to the U of C in 1997, there were several "powerhouse" teams: Shoreland and Snell, closely followed by McPierce and BJ. For whatever reason, my house, Mathews, has schizmed from the larger BJ team. It was that team that came in second after BJ and built the Breeder Reactor in 1999. I captained that team in 2000 (and did an inferior job, all around, compared to my co-captain, Jen Kennedy of ORCSA fame today). In 2001, however, I'd moved out of BJ and was disappointed to hear of a reunion between the two teams. So Jess and I started a team from the a University Theater production of Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, and called ourselves the "Lush Puppies." The following year, I became a judge, and the Lush Puppies merged with Mathew House to form F.I.S.T. in more or less, its current version.

F.I.S.T. is the self-styled rowdy underdog of scavhunt, but I've five years distance at this point, and that's a debate for others to settle.

Still, their HQ this year was the Pit, an underground snack shop that I managed from 1999 to mid-2000.

BJ's bike, Pimp provided.

After BJ's merger then separation from Mathews House, they shrank a lot, but they've had a resurgence in the last few years, very similar to Pierce. These two teams, while they haven't been tight pointwise for the past few years, have become experts on selecting items they enjoy and then flawlessly executing. In fact, BJ has acquired some fame for their music videos, which sometimes have a strong and sometimes a not-so-strong connection to anything on the list. This year's prime example is available --

48. _____ It was hard to study for midterms without an inspirational 80s montage. Film one. [19.81 points]

-- here.

A few words on the teams I did not visit:

McPierce (this year, a synthesis of Pierce and McLean, and captained once more by Austin) follows less of a pattern in the items they nail. They forever captured my heart, however, in 2004 when they alone of all road-trips nailed the "Megaitem," giving the center quads of Princeton a U of C "tattoo" with sand, and not even being interrupted by questions in the process.

Shoreland was a dynamo in years past, winning scavhunt several times in a row. They were to the late eighties what Max P has been today, so lookout Max, when the new dorm comes along. Josh Mercer led his team in a banner year in 2003, and present judge 2004 gave his team a quirky makeover the next year. Their kaleidoscope was the rockingest of them all, as I'll show tomorrow.

The Vegans are actually merged with several other groups, including a co-op. The mounted a road trip with the help of the Broadview team. The Vegans actively started a team to discourage use of animals in scavhunt, and while I'm a proud, meat-eating Michigander, they've done some stellar work in the last few years, sometimes making up for lack of numbers with aggressiveness and energy. The Broadview is a dorm team that has persistantly hung onto the Hunt even though their numbers, also are small. These small teams are essential to the spirit of the thing; they make events more noisy and diverse, they bring unconventional resources to bear, and their existence influences the creation of the list in a way that probably brings about a more colorful diversity of items, year after year.

The U of C Dems used scavhunt as a front to promote their event. Which is why the Republicans beat them. Not because we disapprove of Democrats. Or maybe it's, not because we approve of Republicans. Whatever. They played scavhunt, and you play scavhunt you get bruised.

They didn't have an HQ and so we didn't visit.

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Back at the HQ, I watched the old Batman movie. You know, the one from the sixties. When Jess got back, at about 3 AM, we went back to Tom's for a quiet night before Justice Sunday.

END OF POST.