Somewhat remarkable moments (part 1 of a series)

I used to post this blog at myspace.com. I generally travel light, but I've decided to bring a few of the best posts of the last nine months along with me. Over the next week or so I'll be posting selections from The Best of Man of Constant Leisure.

Not long after we arrived in Durham, NC, the local free alternative weekly ran a contest that asked readers to write haikus expressing their desire to sumo wrestle. The prize awarded the two best submissions: the privilege of sumo wrestling between the 6th and 7th innings of an upcoming Durham Bulls game. Those unfamiliar with the game of baseball may not know that sumo wrestling is integral to the pagentry of the contest, as too are Ants in the Pants/Termites in the Trousers, Baby Buggy Derby and Wool E. Bull Fires T-Shirts Out of a Giant Hot Dog and into the Stands. At least they are in Durham, NC.

I enjoy a good haiku as much as the next fellow, so I immediately set pencil to paper and composed the following:

My bland, pudgy frame
Shrouds a feral endomorph
Aching to sumo

This was deemed one of the two best haikus submitted, and so it was that I suited up and tangled with another bespectacled, underexercised, typical-reader-of-free-weekly-alternative-newspapers-and-occasional-haiku-writer guy like myself, whom I dispatched two falls to one. The best part of the event was when the on-field announcer read the two winning haikus over the PA. You could actually hear the sound of 5,000 people scratching their heads simultaneously when he read my entry. None of us, myself included, was entirely sure how to pronounce feral.

Here I am on that night of glory. This photo was taken before the bout, hence the intimidating grimace.


photo by the missus