So, here we are again. A year has passed and the legend has grown. Last year's king, Dennis Gross, got more goddamned press than any one man is legally entitled to (and not all of it by Ms. Amy Paris). People keep asking about it: when the hell is it? Is it on this year? Hell, I had a friend's father, a retired engineer who lives up in Rancho Murietta, mull over coming down to compete.

The puckish Archbishop Dave Smith (peeps page) once again organized this years fete, though with a little less pre-show hype than last year. Hell, we all had to sit around until five to wait for his ass to come out of some "welding class".

Peeps in the Press

Just in case you didn't think that either Dennis or Dave's ego got stroked enough in the last 12 months, Salon magazine (the hipster digerati journal now that Wired went all big-corporate on us) did a piece on Peeps, including a couple of lines about our own Sacto Peep Off.

Sheya. Like anybody welds anything anymore. And despite his pronouncements, insiders knew that Dennis and Richard weren't talking all that smack that had been attributed to them. Was the event out of steam? Would it live up to the glory?

Oh yes, my children, oh yes.

The reigining Peep Queen Miss Vicki and I came rolling up to Amy Paris's house about fifteen minutes before the event was scheduled to start to find quite the crowd already there. Dennis was already there too, holding court and looking cool and composed. Now, while both the King and Queen are friends of mine, I was really hoping that they'd be unseated. You see, both of them are not usually very ego-centric, but they were both so damned cocky about the event. I scanned the crowd for the Great [insert ethnicity here] Hope that might be lurking in the crowd. Several had boasted that they'd give the high rulers a run for their money this year, but none were in attendance.

Well, not until about fifteen minutes in to when the event was supposed to have started--that's when Richard Hansen, the 1997 & Champion showed up. And goddamned if he didn't look like the gunslinger walking into town in every spaghetti western I'd ever seen.

Got Peeps?

Got photos, contest stories or other nonsense that would look good here? Drop me a line: charlybil@lanset.com

I could almost hear the twang of a hollowbody guitar and see the tumbleweeds crossing his path. The event was on.

You see, Richard had carried the first two Sacramento events handily. He beat his opposition handily: in the second year no one even came close to reaching his previous record. The qeustion remained: had Richard been sandbagging it? Was he really reaching his highest potential in those earlier years, or had he really put forth his best effort. In failing to defend his title in the third annual contest, those assembled were cheated of that knowledge. Dennis's victory was great, but was he really shooting as high as he could? He did, in fact, slow down towards the last bit of the competition when it was clear that no one could even come near his total.

The crowd seemed bigger this year than last. Perhaps as the legend grows so too will the crowd. The field also seemed bigger: around twenty competitors duking it out in a race for peep supremacy. Some, like Dennis and Richard, came to take home the glory. Others came just to reach their personal best. I, like many, came just to watch somebody puke.

The event finally cooked off at 6:00 with much fanfare as the contestants fell to their peep consumption. The competitors were certainly much more scattered than last year's "mush pot"--folks chomped peeps on the stoop, under trees and lounging against cars in the street.

For those of you not familiar with the rules, the primary ones are these:

1. The contest runs for 30 minutes.
2. At the end of 30 minutes there is a 5-minute "cooling-off" period, during which contestants must hold down their previously ingested peeps. Anyone puking during this period is disqualified.
3. Puking peeps is a disqualification unless the contestant re-ingests the puked peeps.
4. The original contest organizers specified that nothing could be consumed in addition to the peeps--no washing them down, in other words. Dave Smith got a special Sacramento addition whereupon the contestants could drink Pabst. Over time this particular rule has seen the most backsliding. Dennis, for example, has used Diet Pepsi in the last two years--not to wash them down per se but to cleanse the palete.

It didn't take long for the contest to claim its first victim: organizer Dave Smith fell to 11 or 12 peeps in the first twelve minutes of the competition. Despite his fairly ruthless attempts to make himself puke more, his first puddle behind his truck was the bulk of his purging.

Richard Hansen claims that as Dave Smith bent over, hand down his throat attempting to make himself vomit, he hatched an idea to puke on Dave Smith. Whether it was that

Linkage

If you came looking for Peep information, this is the wrong place to do it. You might want to check out these other sites: The official Just Born page A big-ass list of peep links

or Dave's retching that set Richard off, a half-ingested peep sailed out of his mouth and landed on the ground between Dave and Richard. There was a pregnant moment as everyone stopped to look at the peep. Dave extracted his fist from his mouth and said: "You've got to eat that again, you know."

A pained look crossed Richard's face, but he stooped down to pick the peep off the ground. He rinsed the peep off as best he could with a nearby can of Pabst and then, with a shrug, choked the peep down for a second time. While Richard would not carry the day, I believe that he certainly won in the spirit of the competition.

Dennis once again carried the competition with some 88 peeps ingested. Richard put up a valiant effort, topping his earlier record but falling short, ingesting 75 peeps. Miss Vicki kept her crown as Peep Queen for a second year, downing 42 of the little bastards. A bunch of other people ate a bunch of other peeps, but that bastard Smith hasn't gotten around to sending me the results yet, so you'll either have to email 'em to me yourself or pester Dave.

The real fun came towards the end of the competition as a growing peep fight overwhelmed the competition. It started out early on between noncompetitors for the most part, but degenerated into an all out battle as the competition came to an end. The second image from that day that will stay with me was of Miss Vicki, sitting in what seemed like a protected shell as peeps whizzed about her, calmily eating peeps in the manner befit the event's Queen.

The battle raged between three loose factions, two in the front yard and one on the porch. Peeps sailed between the three groups, often overshooting into the house, onto the roof, into the neighbors yard and out into the street. Noncombatants fell back as far as they could to avoid the battle and still witness it. Every horizontal surface soon became clogged with a mass of peeps and it became impossible to take a step without trodding on the marshmallowy masses.

Its hard to tell whether the peeps, the crowd, or the neighbors drew the police to the scene, but from nowhere appeared first one, then a pair of cops. The first seemed allright, but the second seemed to be putting an extra (and unnessary) swagger into his step as they faced down the diminuitive Amy Paris. No sooner than the cruiser rolled up but a few people started to fall upon the mess and spirit it away. When the cops left, nearly everyone took to cleaning up the mass of peeps.

The cops circled the wagons in the Combat Albertsons facing Amy's house, trying to figure out what to do. After a few minutes, the majority of remaining peeps were well ground into the surface and cleanup became difficult and many folks let indifference fall upon them. Their bodies made it hard for those who were a bit more motivated to clean up, but its an understandable problem--just too many folks around to get the job done properly.

The cops came back and handled the situation somewhat poorly. While the crowd gave the officers some unneccessary grief (after all, a group who would have amassed thirty or so individual tickets if cited for every infraction has little ground on which to speak), the officers dignified the harassment with a response, which only served to agitate each side more. To her credit, Amy remained fairly cool during this whole thing and sent everyone inside. If this were my gig, everybody would have vanished after the first visit. Amy managed to get off with a written warning--a peculiarity of the Sac P.D. is their desire to get it in writing.

Not much to tell after that. I vamoosed back towards East Sac. The mass of people inside apparently retreated to the other Bill's house for a BBQ and that pretty much wrapped the thing up.

Theres a bit more content this year than last. Not only are the my photos from the event, but DeeAnn was nice enough to kick down her shots.

Though there's no peep content there, I'd be remiss if I didn't do a little self-promotion and point y'all at the rest of my shit. Can't have that Dave Smith fucker win again, can we?