Contests

A grotesque comparison of a steamy love affair to mist through a manhole cover has won a Washington man this year's grand prize in an annual contest of bad writing. Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer, took top honors in San Jose State University's 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this opening sentence to a nonexistent novel: "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros.

Lee Blair won a gold medal for the U.S. in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles without ever training in a gym, on a track or in a pool. Blair's event: watercolor painting. Although nearly forgotten, the Olympics held from 1912 through 1948 included arts competitions, with the winners receiving the same gold, silver and bronze medals as the athletes.

The bailiff was an earnest teenage boy. One attorney for the defendant was a 17-year-old girl. The witnesses were high-schoolers, their testimonies invented. But when Gabrielino High School of San Gabriel beat James Monroe High School of North Hills in the Los Angeles County Mock Trial Competition finals Thursday, the tears were real. "Our team completely flipped out, even the guys were crying, we were all so emotional," said Gabrielino team member Vanessa Menchaca, 17.

Hollywood Boulevard isn't the easiest place to attract attention, with the Cinderellas trolling for pictures and Darth Vaders fighting with Transformers for a spot on the pavement. But Matthew Doolan entranced a few dozen passersby Tuesday while promoting the nearby Virgin Megastore.As the crowd cheered, Doolan threw an arrow-shaped sign 10 feet in the air and caught it behind his back.

Toys R Us Inc. agreed to award a Chinese American infant a $25,000 prize in a New Year's baby contest after the company came under fire for disqualifying the girl because her mother was not a legal U.S. resident. Chinese American advocates said they were infuriated by Toys R Us and launched an e-mail campaign. The company responded by awarding each of the three babies in the grand prize pool of the "First Baby of the Year Sweepstakes" a $25,000 savings bond.

A 28-year-old woman found dead hours after taking part in a radio station's water-drinking contest died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday. Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death." Also known as hyponatremia, water intoxication occurs when the body's sodium level falls below normal.

Two participants in a radio station's water-drinking contest with a 28-year-old mother of three who later died said they were not warned they could be putting their health at risk, a newspaper reported Monday. Gina Sherrod said that family members listening to the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest on KDND-FM told her that a nurse called into the program to warn that drinking too much water was dangerous, but that she did not worry until she learned of Jennifer Lea Strange's death.

A radio station fired 10 employees Tuesday, including three morning disc jockeys, after a mother of three died following an on-air water-drinking contest last week at the station's studios. The hosts of KDND-FM's "Morning Rave" -- who go by the on-air names Trish, Maney and Lukas -- were fired a day after the Sacramento-area station announced it was suspending the show and investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Jennifer Lea Strange.

With public concern growing, law officers launched a formal inquiry Wednesday into the death of a 28-year-old mother after she drank nearly 2 gallons of water in a radio station's on-air contest. Jennifer Strange, a mother of three from suburban Rancho Cordova, died Friday of apparent water intoxication hours after a failed attempt to win a Nintendo Wii video game system for her children in a promotion dubbed "Hold Your Wee for a Wii."

The ending to Ben Waldrep's "Why I Want to Live in Manhattan Beach" essay contest has finally been written -- on refund checks made out to 1,716 entrants. That's a far cry from the $1-million house with an ocean view that Waldrep offered to the winner of the writing competition he commissioned in 2000 as a charity fundraiser when he decided to move from the California beach city after the death of his wife. Essayists paid a $195 entry fee.