A Fistful of Losers

I didn't make it to Bumbershoot this weekend. I'd planned on going Saturday -- had tickets and a wizard suit reserved for me, even -- but a strange bout with influenza relegated me to a Pigeon Ridge couch for the day. Fortunately, I was able to make it to Demolition Derby night at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe on Sunday.

The crown jewel of the annual Evergreen State Fair, the demolition derby featured a round of dashes around the oval and a couple hairpin hornet (racing parlance for four-cylinder cars) heats sandwiched amidst four destruction-centric events: midget car rolling, in which three drivers took turns seeing how many times they could roll a super-small car after sideswiping a ramp; a figure-eight bus "race," which was more an excuse for a half-dozen school buses to T-bone one another at top speed; a figure-eight "boat race," which featured old hoopties towing and plowing into old rowboats (way more awesome than it sounds); and the demo derby itself, which, while entertaining, was almost anticlimactic after the unbridled giddiness of the bus mash-up and boat race.

Monday afternoon, I took in a screening of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a Rocky Balboa-like documentary in which a humble Redmond resident, Steve Wiebe, overcomes a multitude of devilish roadblocks set up by Billy Mitchell and his legion of nerds to set the world record in Donkey Kong. Without spoiling the flick -- whicih is a must-see -- let's just say that a great screenwriter such as Larry McMurtry couldn't invent an antagonist as loathesome as Mitchell. Douchebags that vile only exist in real life.

Mitchell made me want to get up and set fire to the screen, but he wasn't the only creature of sport who got my ire up over the weekend. On Friday night, I was annoyed by shirtless Syracuse fans -- seeing as going sans shirt in a domed stadium lacks the novelty that doing the same in, say, Cleveland has. I was also annoyed by the announcers at Evergreen Speedway, who never ceased cluttering their microphones with inside jokes between races. Then there was Steve Wiebe, the Redmond underdog who ultimately emasculates Mitchell through sheer force of perseverance in King of Kong. Wiebe just wanted truth and nobility to prevail, even if it wasn't him doing the prevailing. I wish I was more like Steve Wiebe. Heck, I wish everyone was.