The Chicago Maroon brings you up to the hour Scav Hunt coverage
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Mischa mentioned earlier the bounty placed upon this fine literary institution by the Scav judges. Snell–Hitchcock succeeded in taking down Claire McNear’s Bartlett balloon Thursday morning, but I hardly think their effort here qualifies as “taking down the Maroon”:
Fourth-year Tim Froh of Broover, Fourth-year David Pisano of Snell–Hitchcock, and sociology graduate student Dan Kimmell of G.A.S.H. proudly display items #6 and #10.
On judgment day, the first floor of Ida Noyes Hall resembles either a middle-school science fair gone horribly awry, or, alternatively, an episode of Antiques Roadshow, also gone horribly awry. By the open door of the ORCSA office, an exhausted scavvie catches a few winks, but for the most part, they’re all wired, bounding to and fro with last-minute errands. A member of Audacity of Pope is frantically sent back to headquarters to fetch a missing item, and others scamper about in preparation for upcoming presentations and events.
Even amid the spectacle, fourth-year Tim Froh stands out. He’s decked out in a bright yellow t-shirt with big red lettering—which almost makes you forget the fact that he’s also sporting a white feather boa and a floppy, turquoise-tinted hat that would make Dumbledore blush. The words on the t-shirt, however, speak louder than the hat: “Girls direct to you in 20 minutes.”
He’s just returned from Vegas. Read the rest of this entry »
For her team’s Bedouin feast, Broadview second-year Toby Schwartz has assembled one roasted duck, steamed fish, two boiled chickens, 30 or so fried frogs, and what she describes as a camel unicorn skull. If camel unicorns do exist, they have at least never been seen before in the wild, but Schwartz has done her best to prove the skeptics wrong with her creation. Constructed in large part out of baked bread dough with salt sprinkled copiously for structural support, the skull is covered with bacon bits, creating the effect of raw meat. Inside is the piece de resistance: a bread bowl filled with cooked corned beef hash to simulate the creature’s brains.
Schwartz provided chopped mint and parsely as pallet cleansers—sorely needed after a few bites of corned beef—and served cous-cous as well. Judges were asked to eat with their hands and, in keeping with Bedouin culture, the men and women sat separately. Like the B–J squad, Broadview bought most of its supplies in Chinatown, which unlike, say, Treasure Island, sells its animals whole, with heads intact (the judges award points for complete vertebrae).
This year’s scav has not been without its share of trauma for Broadview’s Top Chef. At yesterday’s contest on the Eckhart quad, Schwartz nearly lost two fingers in the knife-skills competition.
“The judges concluded afterward that it was a bad idea,” she says of their decision to have sleep-deprived students handle knives.
Schwartz holds up two bandaged fingers now as evidence of her trials. She avoided a trip to the emergency room only because one scavvie’s mother, a doctor, happened to be in attendance and was able to treat her on the spot.
Speaking of B–J, here’s a video of their “Potato Silencer” (item #65):
For those who like to look their food in the eye as they eat it, B–J’s Bedouin wedding feast (item #154) is a dream come true. In a glass dish, second-year Christine Buras has assembled a smattering of silver-dollar-sized lion fish, a row of butterfish, and one, long, winding, Barracuda—all with a putrid, grayish–brown hue, and all with distant expressions in their oven-baked eyes.
Buras’s idea was the result of a google search, which she says revealed a Bedouin fondness for mixing and matching animals. This also explains her second creation: a de-boned squab stuffed inside of a de-boned chicken, stuffed inside of a de-boned duck, all with the heads and feet lopped off and roasted. For good measure, Buras added in two pigs legs, which tasted, at least to this reporter, suspiciously like chicken. Because spices are an integral part of any Bedouin feast, and because duck heads alone would probably be unpalatable, the roast is complemented by sunny paris seasoning and Mediterranean sea salt.
In preparation for today’s judging, Buras put in a solid 12-hour shift, starting in the kitchen at 10 P.M. on Saturday and finishing up this morning. The ingredients, she says, were all purchased by a team member in Chinatown, and took up three-shelves of her refrigerator for a few long days before being cooked.
Some Scav Hunt items are more obvious than others. Item 214 simply says, “22818877@N06” with no mention of points, while #140 invites you to Journey to the center of GoogleEarth (Mac Edition). [3 points].
Item # 108 is a bit more straightforward, if still daunting: “Mummify something. Properly, with documentation of each step” [15 points]. It is this task that has fourth-year Janelle Pisarik slaving awaying in the kitchen of the Max West commons, working to embalm a five-inch rat.
The rat, which Pisarik bought and disembowled, is currently sitting on a pan in the oven, buried under a healthy helping of salt. Next to it, in smaller clumps, are the creature’s intestines, liver, stomach, and lungs. As per custom, these will be embalmed separately in placed in jars for the after-life. She has interpreted the item as requiring proper Egyptian mummification, and so when the embalming is complete, she will painstakingly wrap the rat in strips of cloth.
For now, the heat will help the salt “suck up the juices,” she says. More specifically, it will dry up the corpse for proper preservation. Without the benefit of the fierce Saharan sun, an oven will have to suffice.
Even the most mundane tasks can net unforeseen treasures in scav. Ben Shapiro entered Kerstens Physics Teaching Center in search of some helium and left 30 minutes later with a Tesla coil, a cooler filled with dry ice, and item #133 (“A Nixie clock”)—but no helium.
Shapiro and a band of Palevskyites set out for KPTC at around 4:00 this afternoon hoping for a few helium tanks with which to power item #18, a parade balloon of the team’s favorite “cartoon dog.” At 150 points, it’s comparatively more important than even item #17 “Have a beer with a candidate for POTUS.” The final product “must be up to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade standards,” according to The List, and as such Shapiro has acquired three 30-inch balloons and plans to fix a wire frame on top of the inflatable base. For the balloon’s exterior, he and his team have opted to construct a giant caricature of Snoop Dogg, thus ensuring that while the balloon may meet all requirements, it will never, ever, make an appearance at the actual Macy’s Day Parade. Read the rest of this entry »
At 4:20 A.M., approximately 80 minutes after Hillary Clinton answered her phone, one hour before the sun rises over the Point, and 28 hours since the list—The List—was first unveiled, all is quiet in the halls of Max West. The only sign of life, incidentally, exhibits few signs of life: A particularly fatigued scavvie lies face-first in the hallway, passed-out. The writing on his sweatshirt is clear for all to see: “Where fun goes to die.”