A sugary waste of time

I can't believe I did it again.

I can't believe I started out break with grand plans to run on a treadmill four times every day while knitting textbook covers out of my notes from last quarter. And by Saturday I was already lying on the couch, watching The Surreal Life and eating croutons straight out of the box.

It was just downhill from there.

"Why does this always happen?" I asked myself. This year I blame it on the DVR.

DVRs make it so easy to tape TV shows, it's almost a joke.

My girlfriend Stefanie and I record anything that looks remotely interesting and then have to watch because there are only 60 hours per disc and we have to make room.

Take, for example, The Fifth National Christmas Cake Decorating Competition.

Yes, this is an actual television show and, yes, we actually sat down and watched it. And not just part of it. We didn't start it as a lark, laugh a little and turn it off then tell our friends about it. We sat down, made some snacks and watched the whole thing.

The Fifth National Christmas Cake Decorating Competition is everything you look for in a television show.

It's A Christmas Carol meets Fear Factor. It's the icing on a cake that is itself made of icing. On a plate made out of pure sugar.

Six teams of professional wedding cake decorators from around the nation spent months designing and practicing massive Christmas cakes. One team actually had their cakes shipped from Iowa where they baked them in special ovens. They have seven hours to make intricate icing holly and blown-sugar ornaments.

They are scared and they are ready.

But no one is more freaked out than the video editors, because they have to make the slow, deliberate process of cake decorating look fast-paced and furious.

They accomplish this mostly by constantly changing camera angles every 10 seconds. So we're watching someone use a tiny brush to paint a sugar bow and then BAM!! someone's trying to balance two layers of cake then BAM!! close-up on a tiny snowman made out of homemade marshmallows.

The drama is heightened by commentators who retired from golf when it got too exciting. They pop in with little tidbits of information like, "Andre, our youngest decorator, is actually improvising his cake" or "Susan didn't even place last year, so she really has to prove herself today."

But what amazed me the most was that there was a studio audience.

These are people who paid to sit in an auditorium for seven hours and watch people slowly and meticulously decorate cakes.

The real excitement comes at the end when each team is responsible for moving its cake from the preparation area to the staging area two feet away. Now, these cakes are mammoth and precariously balanced. One is a Jack-in-the-Box with a large head balanced on a thin neck all made of cake.

My girlfriend and I spent the last 10 minutes on the edge of our seats, or rather, leaning slightly forward on the couch.

Each team would pick up their cake like a giant, icing-covered baby and slowly inch across the floor. Then suddenly one person would let the cake drop an inch and the audience would gasp. "Oh my God," Stefanie would whisper, and I would nod gravely.

The awards were done quickly with almost no explanation. It was oddly unsatisfying.

Almost as unsatisfying, I imagine, as reading a column about watching cake decorating on television.

Reach Daily columnist Elizabeth Holman at [url='mailto:elizabethholman@thedaily.washington.edu']elizabethholman@thedaily.washington.edu[/url]