A funeral for Aquaman

Tonight, I went to the Punderdome. A real, live show where competitors battle in a 2 minute drill of puns. All seats were taken 45 minutes before the show began, and the groupies were loud and proud.

Every competitor had a punny name—Lexi Kahn, InstaGrammar, Lingo Star.

My favorite experience of this whole evening was not the puns—some of which were short and sweet, "Quit lion around" (Animals), others were sad, "It's not fun watching Dad Tsu-mommy" ("Weather" + divorce), and others downright brilliant, "A funeral for Aquaman... he will be mist." ("Bodies of Water")

No, my favorite experience of the whole evening was how their judging system was to blindfold an audience member and have them rate the loudness of cheers on a scale from 1-10. Often times, the real scales are widespread. Maybe in an evening people get scored 6-10. This evening, however, the scores ranged from 8 to 10, and more often from 9.5 to 10.

For a game going on as long as this one, this flaw was the most entertaining part of the whole show. It lead some competitors from including it in their puns—"..., but [name of judge] knows what a ten-nis" (Sports).

Nobody keeps prized art in their bathroom. Why do we let one small broken piece disrupt an entire well-oiled machine?