'eu' meaning good? 'onym' meaning name?

13 year old Katharine Close from Spring Lake, New Jersey was crowned the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion last night. Usually I tune in to ESPN for at least a portion of the competition, but I totally forgot this year.

Spelling bees have gotten their fair share of press lately. I mean, first there was the documentary (hilarious by the way). Then there’s the Broadway musical (also hilarious) – and recently there have been two films – Bee Season in 2005 and Akeelah and the Bee in 2006.

For real though, where is Rebecca Sealfon in all of this? She totally needs to go on tour or something. You remember her – the champion from 1997… the one that went bat shit crazy when she won. Don’t remember? You’re in luck…

Rebecca’s victory in ’97 really was a defining moment for me. You know how your parents can easily recall exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot? My mother was in her 8^th grade English class - and my father was in Phys Ed... in case anyone was wondering. Well when my foreverboo, Rebecca sealed the deal with euonym, I was standing in my kitchen – and loving every fucking second of it.

So much the bomb was this girl that she inspired the Mary Katherine Gallagher character on Saturday Night Live – which was so popular that it was turned into a movie. Hell, she was even a character on South Park… Rebecca Cutswald.

With many thanks to my dear friend Google, I have intermittently checked up on Miss Sealfon – who graduated from Princeton in 2005. Here’s an article that she wrote for The Brooklynite about the bi-weekly spelling bee at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg. Fuck, even the hipsters have the spelling bee fever…