https://youtu.be/UjoaitEexAE

Ah, America. Anything can be turned into a contest in the good old United States, and usually is. That’s a good thing, within limits.

America has bad contests here and there. There are competitive cooking shows, for instance. The format makes no sense, and the rules even less. If you really wanted to have a cooking contest, you’d time how long it takes a blowsy waitress to bring you that glass of water you asked for fifteen minutes ago, and a clean fork. But no one likes a countdown clock with infinity on it, so we have to settle for contestants who form soup into a tower and mix drinks with dry ice and coriander in them.

Beauty pageants are another thing I don’t get. I don’t care for their bizarro world ranking system. Since only women and men who aren’t interested in women watch them, the rules are bent to assure the selection of the girl voted least likely to steal a boyfriend. Sophia Loren once came in second in a beauty contest, for example. I’m sure the judges conferred and agreed that if they selected her, their wives wouldn’t show them so much as an ankle for a calendar year. So some non-threatening contestant was chosen, and all the women watching agreed that she was the true beauty of the bunch. She had an inner beauty, surely. See: Andie MacDowell for the prototype.

No true blue Americans don’t want competitive cooking shows. They want pie eating contests. And roto-tiller racing, of course. The sport of kings (of the hill).