Monday, May 11, 2009

The Stranger Gong Show 2009: Dancing Bellies, Comic Robotics, Avant-Garde Oxygen Deprivation, Judgmental Screeches, and Award-Winning Carving of Air | Slog | The Stranger:

Relegated to second place but claiming first place in my heart: These guys, whose act involved a long table placed center stage, at one end of which was an aquarium full of water. The act commenced when one of the men submerged his head in the aquarium while the other stripped off his shirt, laid back on the table, and began eating cereal out of his oddly concave chest cavity. This cereal-eating involved pouring cereal from the box, pouring milk over the cereal, eating the milky cereal with a spoon, then sucking up the remaining milk with a long straw. This was all done quite leisurely, while music played, and when the cereal eater was done with his first serving, he poured another: cereal, milk, spoon, straw, the whole process again. Throughout all of this, the other guy's head was underwater. After two and a half minutes (!), the cereal guy stood up, the other guy pulled his head from the aquarium, and the act was complete. The properly awed judges gave the act almost straight 10s, marred only by judge Jen Zeyl's title-denying 9, which came with a wisecrack that was easily worth $300: "I loved it, but you really could've taken the time to slice a banana."

1:24 PM