Before heading to school on Saturday, I watched all but the first 30 mins of Spellbound, an oscar-nominated documentary by Jeffrey Blitz of kids (ages 10 - 14) with their hearts set on winning the 1999 Scripp's Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. It was a good watch, and I was rather amazed at how diligently these kids studied to make it to the national competition of 249 spellers, and how much stress they must go through. The documentary follows 8 competitiors who make it to the "big show", and it's surprisingly fascinating and captivating.

One of the spellers' name is Harry Altman, and he's just about the most annoying kid you could imagine, but not in a mean-hearted way. Just about every review I've read has something interesting to say about him. Here's one of my favorite quotes: "Harry is an Uber-nerdy Jewish kid in New Jersey who, like many too-smart boys his age, thinks he's 1,000 percent funnier than he is." which is funny, because it echoed my thoughts as I watched Harry ask if the boom mic was edible and answer a question immitating a robot. To top off the documentary, Blitz also interviews some previous winners of the competition, including the first-ever Spelling Bee Champion (won in 1925). As I watched, I couldn't help but to try to test myself with some of the words given to the spellers to spell out. Anyway, it's worth a watch - although I wouldn't expect too much excitement or entertainment value out of it... it is, afterall, about spelling.

This reminds me of a Frasier episode where Fredrick (Frasier's son) won the National Spelling Bee and then had his title taken away accused of cheating. And they ended off the show with an implied spell-off in the alley between Fredrick and some other boy.