As a kid I was a big fan of the Stephen King-written 1986 coming-of-age tale Stand By Me—-a movie that included one of the most intense on-screen vomit sessions ever to be committed to celluloid. So I’ll admit, accompanying Amanda Hess as she reported this week’s Show & Tell column about the “Spaghetti Bros”—-a performance-art piece by GWU grad students Gina Tibbott and Kenny George that involved the pair playing beer pong with ice-cold Spaghettios for three hours while listening to hair-metal—was a little bittersweet for me. On one hand, it was entertaining for much the same reasons I enjoyed this. On the other hand, it involved three hours of sitting in a room that smelled like the kitchen of Bucca Di Beppo might if the cooks had spent a whole day boiling Cheetos. Near the end it was almost like watching a particularly competitive basketball game. Every shot counted, the participants were pushed to their physical limits, and the last five minutes seemed to drag on for an eternity. But if there was a victor in the end, I can’t really say who it was. Honestly, it was all I could do to hold the video camera.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnowDvVCM_E]