Holla!!!

Gotta say it's been pretty hectic and fun the last few days. I've been working the promo tables at school overtime, and my worries about getting enough contestants are finally coming to ease. We're over our 64 person minimum and coming very close to fulfilling the 16 people needed per bracket. With 2 more days to at the promo table to go, I gotta say I think we'll be just fine... I hope. Now the fear is making sure everyone shows up... one concern after another... sigh, tis the life. On the brightside, one of the contestants who signed up yesterday decided to hang out with us at the promo table, and while he used it mainly to pick up girls, he did manage to rack in at least about 10 other contestants. Moreover, there was one thing he did that reminded me what we've been missing.... enthusiasm. It's hard to make yourself seem excited when you're worrying about campaigns and doing event stuff while running off only a couple hours of sleep, but sometimes you just have to put a mask on and act the part. I'll have to say, Kelly inspired me. While in some cases I would say some of his tactics were borderline harrassment, he make me remember what the college atmosphere was all about: being young and having fun. Letting loose, and exploring your new found freedoms. Anyway, enough of this old talk...

GOOD NEWS!
I finally found a proper time to talk to Eric Maynor today (timing's everything Adam), told him we were behind "The Eric Maynor Show" and he was very thankful for it (Hell, I'm thankful for such a great season, but that's besides the point.) So after talking for a little bit, I think I managed to get Eric Maynor and some of the basketball team to make an appearance on Sunday. If they make it, we'll do a special announcement thing for them on stage. They deserve it. Let's just hope Adam doesn't scare them away again...

TRAINING
- Apparently, my method of overeating with every meal has been working... I can eat a lot more than before, and at times it seems like I could go on forever. A concern i have is that I've been running around all day this week trying to get things done, and that leaves me with barely anytime to ever eat. It's usually little things and then I'll have one big meal for the day. Might not be a bad things, stretches my stomach out, and I'm probably taking in less calories this way. Who knows?

I've been working on an excel spreadsheet for the past 4 hours and finally just finished. Dave needs sleep... more to come tomorrow.

A little bribery gets you everywhere!

Well maybe not everywhere, but a couple MoonPie Mini's and free guest passes to Tiki Bobs and Have a Nice Day Cafe did prevent us from having to tear our poster down from an awesome spot. Thank you promises of satiety and young, nubile women. Anyway, things are going pretty well/hectic with setting things up so far. On the good side, we're up to 50+ registered contestants with I think about a dozen who promised to compete, so we'll see what happens with them. My biggest fear is to have a lack of contestants and not be able to properly follow the bracket. While it seems like getting 64 people for the tournament is very approachable now, we need to make sure there's 16 from each class so they can work through their divisions. At worst, maybe we can lump seniors and grad students.. I'll have to do a more specific tally tomorrow.

In other news, our vinyl banner finally came in, a week ahead of schedule (THANK YOU Big Image Graphics, Peter & Bill you rock!) So no more worries about getting that in, and maybe Adam will have one less thing to bug me about. One issue that's emerging is the availability of food other than MoonPies at the event (why people refuse to only eat chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow, I don't know), but we might at least have one vendor available. Depending on of course, if an off-premise lisence is suitable for catering, which it should be, but the campus has weird stipulations about such things. Anyone have an answer to this? I'd love it for people to be able to chow down on some fresh hand rolled sushi at the event.

On a side note, I found out that some people are having a hard time finding MoonPies to train for the event. For the Richmond area you should be able to find them at Food Lion, the Midlothean Walmart, and at the VCU Commons.


TRAINING
Since I'm competing in the exhibition, I've made it a thing to somewhat train over the past week and a half. I'll admit I've been half assing it, but I do make it a point to overeat everytime... which actually sucks. However, I do notice myself being able to eat much more, and I think I might actually take in less calories because I walk around full for the rest of the day. For the sake of my health, I should stop with the junk foods, and stick more to rice and noodles... or anything else not fried.

One misconception I want to clear up is that you have to be fat for an eating contest. That's bull. If you look at the top eaters in the world, Sonya Thomas, Kobayashi, Chestnutt, they're all very much in shape, and probably have significantly less body fat than the average person. Sonya Thomas is the one who continually amazes me for the sheer fact that she's only 5'5", 100lbs, and can eat like 20% of her body weight. That's like me eating 40lbs of food.... which will never happen. Just amazing. For you skinny folks who don't think you have a chance, take this note in perspective. The leaner you are, the more your stomach can expand. Fat restricts your intestines from expanding, therefore limiting how much you can gorge. All you need to do is train to expand your stomach, and will power. Sheer, sheer will power.

COOLNESS NOTE OF THE DAY
Will Fameni (of VCU basketball fame) walked by our table today, and he knew about our event. I don't know if he was all about competing, but he said he'd show up... which is awesome, cause I love our basketball team. Fameni's really cool too... everyone should meet this man. MoonPie Madness just might be your chance!

BTW - special thanks to Brenda Berson for making the Fameni MoonBall pic. You're so awesome, your Awesomenest!!!

Stickers are in!!!

Hellz yeah! The official MoonPie Madness stickers are in! Let me know if you want one or some. They're free cause we love you guys, and we wanna go gorilla with posting them!

What'd we get ourselves into???

Apparently, what was supposed to a simple plan to meet with one of our sponsors, Sticky Rice, (best effin rockin awesome sushi place in all the land!) turned into me and Adam being cast into a local Richmond event called CBR7, or formally, Cannon Ball Run Seven. From what we know it's a low budget show that's a mix of Road Rules meets Amazing Race. From what I've seen on youtube, it's pretty damn cool, but I have no idea if we're even able to do this. It's going on while we're still in school, and how will we get our precious campaigns done without pissing off our teammates? No clue. But... I will sincerely try to see if I can make it happen. The thought of Adam and I traveling across the country, going on missions, and possibly killing each other actually seems like a ton of fun! Or at least it will be for anyone watching because we're complete opposites... Hello odd couple of the show!

So yeah, the lesson here... I really don't know right now. Beware what an Asian tells you to do? You never know what you're gonna have to do for your sponsors? Beware John Yamashita??? I'm still traumatized by Adam feeding me black, 1,000 year old eggs.

Here's the other crazy fools who are in it: http://www.myspace.com/cbrseven

Effing Turnaround...

Going to the great VCU Adcenter (#1 ranked ad school by Creativity Magazine, take that Creative Circus, booyashaka!) you learn a lot of great things, such as "The Screw Theory", the peace and quiet of a 3rd floor bathroom, how to make your teachers fight each other in Fight Night, and every now and then some advertising. Actually, a lot of advertising, it just about dominates my life. However, while there's a lot of great concepts and campaigns we work on, projects are just that... projects. Things can always look great in theory, but it's the moment you put them in practice that you realize if it'll work or not. Even if it doesn't, at least you learn the mistakes which you made and how you could do it differently. The problem is, a lot of people don't take the initiative to actually take a theory and put it into practice. It's frightening, it's risky, and nowadays, who has the time? I don't. Jenny, Adam, Frank, Derek, and Stephanie certainly don't, but... we make time. We have a desire to try something risky, crazy, different, and to see how it'll all play out. MoonPie Madness is the product of that.

Besides being an awesome eating contest, MoonPie Madness is an experiment in advertising with no budget. No funds were outright given to us, and no company asked us to start this. We just had an idea for something fun and decided we were going to do it, whether we had the support or not. Fortunately enough, when we made the first call to the MoonPie company to try and score some free MoonPies for the event, Tory Johnston (much thanks btw!) was ecstatic about what we were doing and did what any agency would die for; leave the ideas to us, and provide any kind of support we needed when asked. From there on out, it's been a roller coaster ride visiting dozens of sponsors, writing documents that make us seem professional, staying up in the wee late hours of the night concepting, and basically figuring out how we're going to pull this off. In a sense, it's like throwing a huge party with a lot of media hype, and having no specific invitations to send. It's mind numbing. None of us have done anything like this before, but we keep going, confident that we'll work something out. We're committed to this, so there's no room for dropping out and saying, "I'm sorry." We're a family.

Cherry's Popped To Date:

- Adam's first website
- Adam's first MoonPie
- Jenny & Adam's first ad to have more than 500 hits on youtube (I'm guessing this, but let me know if I'm wrong!)
- Dave's first media buy
- Dave's first time asking for sponsors
- Derek's first "flier the city date"
- Adam's first time spanking an Asian ass with a belt
- Dave's first time eating 1,000 year old eggs (3 of them in fact!)
- Frank's first time actually applying his brand managers skills to something he cares about.
- OUR first time being called hero's by another student.

And so it begins...

MoonPie Madness is only a week away till launch, and I've finally started the blog which is way past due. I gotta thank my teammates for being so patient about it, and oddly enough worrying more about damn lanyards for the event. Anyway, if you haven't read the description I'll setup the first post by outlining what this is all about.

MoonPie Madness stands to be the largest MoonPie eating contest to ever be held. Ever. At VCU at least. But for the record, we haven't heard of any other eating contests to have over 64 people competiting on the same day, and we're estimating to have at least 84 "gurgataters" so I'd say we're safe in making that claim. 84 gurgataters! MoonPies!?! How's this all going down? Well, here's the deal:

There's 2 competitions going on the sacred day of April 1st. An exhibition (a classic eating contest where everyone has 5 minutes to out eat each other, and try to break the unofficial record of 15 in 5 minutes), and as I like to call it, The Grand Tourney" (a March Madness themed eating contest where 64 students will go through 6 - 2 minute rounds and work their way through the bracket.) For more info on the event just hit up www.moonpiemadness.com, or feel free to drop some letters in my Inbox.

Now enough orientating you on what the awesomeness of MoonPie Madness is. This blog isn't about describing the actual event, but the issues leading up to it, and some of my training experiences since I'm not only a co-founder, but a contestant. And for the sake of not having an uber long single post, I'll begin the cool stuff in another one. (Trust me, it's easier to read that way)