Okay, so this one takes a little bit of explaining.

for the past two years I've gone to a music camp for a Double Bass Masterclass. At the end of the session, we have the El Perro Competition. It's a $20 buy in, and $5 to buy back in if you get knocked out.

El Perro is a technical exercise that is included in the daily exercises at the camp. It involves a complicated chromatic/semichromatic pattern in the left hand with bowing variations in the right. For non-music people, that means it's complicated. There is one bowing variation in particular, the "Paganini" bowing variation, which we use for the competition as it is generally agreed upon to be the most difficult, involving a three-note bowing pattern over a 4-note left hand fingering pattern. For you non-music people, that means it's the hard kind of complicated.

And so everyone who's interested buys in, and there are three judges who decided whether or not you have played the exercise accurately at the given tempo in the given key. It starts out seriously enough, but eventually distractions are added in for the competitor, and for the entertainment of the "potent potable" imbibing audience. the only rule to the distraction is that you are not allowed to physically touch the competitor, so it gets pretty hairy.

Anyways, by the end of it, it's a bit of a circus, with someone doing slap bass accompaniment (á la country and western music) and someone doing stool-riding while someone is attempting to play this complicated exercise at the appropriate tempo, appropriate key with no errors.

Best $40 I've ever lost. I think the winner ended up with like, $250