The Triple Crown of Nerdom

Waikiki is very much the way I left it.  It is still on fire. 

You will be happy to know there are still big fiery torches every three feet, and a tiki bar ever two feet, you do the math.  Keep in mind that sarongs, beach mats, and grass skirts are all flammable, mahalo.





So if you thought I’d do something really cool and exotic on my first full night back in my old stomping grounds, let’s be serious.  Don’t you know who you’re dealing with?  Of course, I had every intention of putting on an appropriately slinky black dress and reacquainting myself with my old bars.  I had every intention of doing that until I saw the following sign on the way back to my condo: 

Speed Eating Contest, tonight at 8 PM. 

For those of you who know me, the question isn’t whether I go, it’s whether I can sit in the front row.  You see, I’m a member of the IFOCE.  IFOCE.  The International Federation of Competitive Eating.  Yeah, you know those people who watch the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest every year on the 4^th of July?  I’m like that only I get the IFOCE newsletters, own an IFOCE member t-shirt and stream all the events of their website.  It’s not just hotdogs either.  Chili, chicken wings, meatballs, tacos, jalapeno peppers etc.  If it can be eaten, it has been.  Sidebar: It’s a secret dream of mine to enter the solid chocolate heart eating contest held right before Valentine’s Day.  In case you were wondering the current record is 1 lb, 15.5 oz Chicago Chocolate Hearts, consumed in 7 minutes on Feb. 13, 2006 by Mohawk sporting bad boy Patrick Bertoletti.  Yup.  I got it bad for the IFOCE.

First I considered entering, however after checking out the qualifying event, I take a pass and decide to watch instead.  It’s not that I can’t eat either.  Not to rest on my laurels or anything, but I once put down 69.5 McDonalds chicken nuggets against Big Samarel’s 72 (and Phil, Amanda, and my ex-roomie can all attest to this).  I’m just saying, girl can eat.  The problem is to qualify you have to eat a Loco Moco.  The Loco Moco is a traditional island delicacy that consists of a hamburger patty (or sometimes a spam patty) over a bed of white rice and topped with a fried egg and brown gravy. I hate eggs, I cannot gag down a fried egg, even in the name of competitive eating.  So alas, to the seats I head. 

The competition opens on a dozen competitors, the first two to finish a giant sized Loco Moco move onto the main event.  The only table worth watching is the center table where an octogenarian named Minnie is giving local boy, Tavida, a run for his money.  See pic in case you were wondering what an 80 year old looks like going house on a hamburger patty.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Sadly, Minnie loses by seconds to Tavida.  He’s going to be joined in the Main Event by a John Deere hat wearing hick named John from Spokane, Washington.  I suspect that he owns guns and a pick up truck.  I like him immediately.  Now the host asks us each to take a colored piece of paper, green for the Tavida and gold for John.  If we pick right we win a coupon off a breakfast buffet.  Now most times you take the island boy hands down, but there’s something about John that just screams, I go the distance.  I go the distance because I ride a tractor and shoot stuff.  I choose gold.

Now keep in mind this is held in a large food court so none of the food is really traditional Hawaiian except for Pearl’s (excellent BBQ), this is shamelessly sponsored by the eateries so what they must eat is: a roast beef sandwich from Arby’s, a Supreme Taco from Taco Bell, an entire personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut and a full BBQ box from Pearl’s BBQ of Hawaii, which consists of half a BBQ’ed chicken and 3 scoops of rice. 

The competition is neck and neck and well, it’s just good gross fun, because Tavida decides his strategy with the Taco is to end up wearing most of it by smearing it on his beard and shirt.  Johnny Hick decides to go mouth diving in the BBQ plate.  I take a look at his girlfriend.  Lucky girl.  Hick pulls ahead on the pizza, Tavida rallys on the roast beef sandwich. 

It’s looking like it’s going to be a photo finish until Tavida starts gagging and has a reversal of fortune.  A reversal of fortune, for those of you non IFOCE members, is when a contestant doesn’t keep his or her food down.  Now, I snapped a pic about 2 seconds before he lost it.  Island boy is disqualified and Hick takes down the main prize: 100 dollars, a disgusted look from his girlfriend, and indigestion for the rest of the evening.  It’s very amateur as compared with IFOCE standards, but it was worth watching an 80 year old pound down a Loco Moco.  And because I backed the right pony, I get a coupon for an all you can eat breakfast buffet.  This is a dangerous thing.

Now, it’s still too early to don the little black dress and go out for the evening yet (remember no one in Hawaii really gets going until midnight), so I stroll along Waikiki Beach and find myself at the chess huts.  Yup, 3000 miles away from home and this is all I want to do.  I wait awhile, normally it’s notoriously hard to get a game, even at night, but I’m a blond in a jean skirt showing some leg so if I stand around and look interested, some guy will eventually offer me a game.  Which is exactly how it happens.  I like the look of this guy because he is very tan and smokes cigars as he plays.  I ask him if I can take his picture for my blog.  He says if I can take a game off him (3 games is standard), I can take his picture.  Fair deal. 

A couple of the bystanders come over to watch and one says to my opponent, “you can’t lose to a girl, man.  Even a pretty one like this.”  This makes me smile, I will take compliments wherever I can get them, even from a 300 pound Samoan chess player.  I lose the first game.  I make a stupid play with a bishop and wind up losing a rook and then I get all flustered and tank the game.  Waikiki is the ultimate ego stroke.  And then after I lose the first game, the same behemoth says, “She sucks.”  Waikiki guys: giveth and taketh.

The second game I’m playing white and I open strong and then somewhere in the middle game I set up a trap, only I don’t realize how good the trap actually is.  I thought I was getting a rook out of it, but he really blew it and I wound up with his queen.  He’s not happy because now he’s being teased by the other guys in a big way.  Clearly, he’s a better chess player than I am (he’s the New York Yankees and I’m the freaking Nationals).  Leagues above me, but he still made a sloppy play and I got lucky.  I win this game so I get to snap his picture.  See how happy he looks?  

He destroys me in the third game.  Absolutely obliterates me.  But as I’m leaving, the 300 pound Samoan says “hey blondie, you ever want a game, you come back and find me.”  I reason this isn’t a bad offer so it would be easy to find this guy in a crowd again. 

Now, it was getting close to an acceptable hour to go out (it was somewhere between 10 & 11), so I donned the slinky black dress and had every intention of going out to an old bar I liked called the Shack.  However, I stop en route in front of a dive bar with a small sign on which the words “karaoke” is scrawled in chalk. 

Now ask yourself the following: have you ever seen me do karaoke?  The answer depends on whether you’ve ever shared a bed, class or a job with me.  If you can answer yes to any of these, then the answer is no.  This should be everyone except for strangers.  You see Snarky is gonna let you in on a dirty secret and here it is: I’m a total closet Karaoke singer and my god, am I atrocious at karaoke. 

I slip into the bar and for those of you who have ever been in a bar doing karaoke, you know it’s full of Japanese business guys.  I’m not being racist, this is just the way it is.  These Japanese business guys aren’t in their traditional suits, no no, they are in brash Hawaiian print shirts and not the soft muted ones that actual Hawaiian business men wear.  No I’m talking about the ones with vivid green palm trees and rollicking blue waves.  The sight of so many colors is quite visually arresting, imagine a Crayola factory exploding and the colors went all over your shirt.  When I walk in a slim gentleman is butchering Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You Been Gone.”  In a word…amazing.

Now, does Snarky sing or not?  If Snarky were to sing, it would go something like this: she would make friends at the bar, pretending to be shy and demurring away from singing, claiming she wasn’t much of a karaoke singer (this is a half truth at best.  I sure as heck can’t sing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do karaoke).  Then Snarky would probably have chosen something like “All the Things She Said” by T.A.T.U., or something equally fun, if Snarky had sang.  Hypothetically speaking.   

So for those of you keeping score, that’s pretty much a perfect nerd trifecta for the first evening: watching a speed eating contest, playing chess, and visiting a karaoke bar.  Hopefully, I'll do you all proud on Saturday night (but whether I blog about it remains to be seen).