Slinky goes up stairs
Other videos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »You are currently browsing the archive for the Uncategorized category.
U of C Student Zaid Alawi wrote a fun story about a physics professor, Wikipedia, and breakfast cereal. Over on his blog there are a few other Scav stories as well. The best is his saga of getting physics professor Woowan Kang to explain “why kids love the great taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch TM.”Here’s the item:
“Item #80: This is Woowon Kang. . . he knows EVERYTHING. But does he know why kids love the great taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch TM? [6 points, 3 bonus points for his thoughts on 'How they cram all that graham']“
Read Alawi’s post here. Kang ended up answering the question for a bunch of teams at once. Videos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
With less than twelve hours to go before judgment, I decided to stop by the headquarters of the Max Palevsky Scav Hunt team. Pictures are below and continue after the jump.
Third-year Dan Wade sleeps on a couch inside headquarters.
Some people, such as Britney Spears, get a quickie Las Vegas marriage. Two “Army Dillo” teammates are getting a quickie Scav marriage to complete an item.
The couple, who is not dating and never has, procured the needed legal papers and will be married by another teammate, who became a priest online. The couple will get an annulment after the item has been judged, said first-year Anne Konig.
“It’s crazy. It’s a complete sign of madness,” she said. “Some Scav people go beyond what normal people would consider insane. I don’t get why people would sign legal documents for fun.”
Members of the Snell-Hitchcock Scav team danced to the infamous Bloodhound Gang song and more last night on the quads as Army Dillo, MacPierce, The Audacity of Pope and other teams entertained the judges with nautical-themed parties, food from the Top Chef Challenge (Last night’s face-off took place in Ex-Libris and featured some of the “Manliest” Nachos I’ve ever seen) and a recreation of Project Runway on the paved walkway leading from Ryerson to the center of the quad.
Snell-Hitchcock dressed up in sandals and togas to recreate scenes from the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, while Max P. wore period costumes to channel the movie “Titanic.” Another team marched by wearing Viking hats, and a group of camera-touting Chinese tourists also stopped to take photos with the costumed revelers and join the party. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
In the basement of Pierce tower, the TAANSTAFL snack bar has been transformed into the headquarters for MacPierce, Maclean and Pierce’s Scav team. It is scattered with boxes, bags, musical instruments and plenty of supplies for Scav.
Members of MacPierce’s “The University of Chicago School of Engineering” Scav team think fondly of their rival teams.
“We’re really big fans of the Snell-Hitchcock team. The captains are great,” said second-year Ezra Deutsch-Feldman, one of MacPierce’s team captains. “We don’t feel animosity towards the other teams. They want us to do well.”
“I’m really happy with the team this year. We’re energetic and creative,” he said.
According to Deutsch-Feldman, the team has completed Item 17d, have a beer with a current candidate for national office, but is keeping the identity of the candidate a secret for now.
Deutsch-Feldman especially enjoyed completing the “Stack-Man” item in the Regenstein Library last night. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
People keep asking me. If you’re going to hack the Maroon, you should at least do it right…don’t just ask us to take down the site…
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.”
Tonight, students looking to use the Regenstein’s stacks for, well, finding books, will have met with something of a revelation: Pac-Man in the library. Yet, instead of the familiar, two-dimensional video game interface, scavvies dressed as various personages from the classic arcade game ran through a maze of dusty grammars picking up pac-dots along the way.
I can only assume that there was some in-fighting amongst teams as to who got to participate; to many here at the University of Chicago, it must have been something of a dream come true: a video game made real… or at least sort of social.
Upon entering the stacks on the third floor, I soon noticed that something was off when a girl dressed all in red jogged casually by. I made a right and headed for my aisle, determined not to care or inquire–I have learned at least this much in my four years. Then, from ahead of me, a man with two home-fashioned googly eyes hanging from his breasts told me to “watch out”.
Earlier this afternoon, I traveled with third-year John Laycock and first-year Jacob Friedman on a trip to purchase two 55-gallon drums from a Jiffy Lube at 12th Street and Western Avenue. What would motivate two U of C students to drive so far for two barrels? Two words: Scav Hunt.
Item 191: “Mon, I gotta say dat dose steel pan drums you made are sweet. Wat’s dat you say? You can play ‘Misirlou’ on dem? Excellent, mon. [30 points]“
Images of my trip are below and continue after the jump.
Fourth-year Pat Lange (left) and John Laycock (right) wait for Jacob Friedman (center) as he dials AAA for roadside assistance. Pat’s car refused to start, preventing John and Jacob from departing and wasting precious time.
It has been less than a day since “Army Dillo”, Snell-Hitchcock’s 2008 Scav team, got the list but first-year “page assassin” Allen Linton has already convinced Governor Rod Blagojevich, Senator Dick Durbin, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger and a super delegate to help “Army Dillo”.
Linton has been working on the politically oriented items, Numbers 17 and 152:
“17. Have a beer with a. A former candidate for civic office (e.g. Larry Doody) [5 points] b. A current candidate for city-wide office (e.g. Barbara Currie) [10 points] c. A current candidate for state-wide office (e.g. Will Burns) [25 points] d. A current candidate for national office (e.g. Jesse Jackson, Jr.) [50 points] e. A current candidate for POTUS (e.g. Barack Obama) [100 points]”
“152. A Superdelegate. Must superdelegate.”
Linton called the politicians’ offices today and convinced the officials themselves—he spoke with Senator Durbin for a minute–or their staffers to help in any way possible.
“I called each office on the phone and said, ‘I am representing the University of Chicago. We are hosting participating in the world’s largest scavenger hunt and my team would like you to help.’ They.. were just like ‘Sure, we’ll help in any way if he’s in town,’” Linton said.
Claire McNear, an op-ed columnist for the Maroon, has once again proven her wide readership. She’s inspired a Scav Item.
On January 25′th McNear penned a classic article about that balloon in Bartlett dining hall.
“There it hangs, far, far above the center of the dining hall, lingering like an ominous red foil bird,” McNear explained, “forever perched and ready to dive down upon whatever student it deems unworthy of a spot in the hall.”
Now, a correspondent informs The Maroon that her prose has once again been immortalized in print–this time slightly differently:
(Posted at 11:15)
The University of Chicago’s 2008 Scavenger Hunt, affectionately referred to as “Scav Hunt,” officially begins at midnight when the judges release their ten-plus page list. But for third-year Ross Kelly, the scavenging began five weeks ago.
Kelly lives in Snell-Hitchcock, a dorm known both as last year’s winning team and as the most notoriously enthusiastic pair of houses in the competition. Kelly is one of dozens of team members who dug through campus dumpsters and dragged everything from rotting wood to PVC pipe through the rain last April in preparation for the ridiculously obscure, physically demanding and just plain absurd items that are sure to be on this year’s list.
“You never know what you’ll have to build,” said Kelly, who is also the team’s designated “ManlyCon,” and therefore in-charge of constructing items that require power-tools.
Some Scav squads shot videos to earn points in past competitions. Here are some of the more entertaining examples. Warning, some of these are a little bit inappropriate, and The Maroon does not at all take responsibility for their content.
Youtube description: “Ski’s been sexiled, so he’s moved into the Law School Library! Made for the 2007 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt. Brought to you by “Burton Judson and the Logical Phalluses.”
More videos after the jump.
This week, a team of Chicago Maroon reporters will embed themselves deep inside a few Scav hunt teams, in an effort to bring you breaking coverage of The Hunt.