Über-fest is usually met with a reaction of hilarity when I describe it to someone for the first time. People usually assume it’s an ad hoc affair with a cool name. They couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the course five years, five über-fests and five über-noëls the event has been refined over a foundation of tradition, stamina and an enduring friendship.

A brief history

Mr James Ricketts and Mr Andrew Smith met while selling extortionately priced foam cubes in their Young Enterprise company “Sandstorm”. Throughout sixth form evenings at the boarding house usually consisted of watching downloaded movies and episodes of Buffy, Futurama and Family Guy. Such inactivity and decadence continued into the summer after A-Levels. Frequent visits to the Ster Century Cinema in Cardiff (knick named “The Mall” - don’t ask), where the purchase of a single ticket could yield an entire day of surreptitious film watching. The following Christmas break on an extended visit to the Ricketts household Andrew managed to watch 15 episodes of Buffy back-to-back while Ricketts was at work. After several days of continuous American tv James suggested that we should repeat the event the following summer. The event would be dubbed “Über-fest” as we had spent some time discussing how the concept of the übervamps in Buffy season 7 may relate to Nietzsche’s über-mensch.

Routine and Tradition

Über-fest takes place every summer. The festivities consist of a day of films at the cinema in Cardiff followed by a selection of TV and movies in Breacon, usually requiring 4-5 days to watch. We can be sure the line up is going to be good as the selection is vetted at über-noël, a similar, but more experimental fest, held over Christmas.

The first Fest began with a day of films at “The Mall”, then back to James’ for four days of Jack Bauer and Captain Jonathan Archer. Many of the traditions were born out of this first event. An official quote (in this case a line from family guy) was recorded for posterity. The traditional über-fest breakfast of pizza and garlic brad was consumed daily. And our annual squash game took place (James always wins).

Other traditions have developed throughout the following fests…

Time passes in blocks of 42.5 minutes, the length of an hour long American TV show stripped of adverts. We call this unit of time an “ep”. Über-festers become very attuned to this temporal unit. Once, when the show Rome was introduced to the über-fest line up we felt that the show was running on far to long. It turned out that the show lasted 50 minutes and only 44 minutes had expired.

The official quote should be a funny line from a show we’ve watched or something hilarious that either James or I have said. The quote contenders are recorded in über.txt, a text file on James’ computer and then voted on at the end. The current list of quotes stands as…

über-fest 2k3: Put down the fork…FACE!
über-noël 2k3: What’s next? Hinduism?
über-fest 2k4: Faux Shizzle
über-noël 2k4: Park and Ride
über-fest 2k5: über-sweats, über-shits, über-wit
über-noël 2k5: Who’s Tapping Whom?
über-fest 2k6: Rock on, Rock the FUCK ON!
über-noël 2k6: More or Snore?
über-fest 2k7: Dude, these are some perfectly good neck patches we’re wasting
über-noël 2k7: Don’t be such a vagine

While this file still exists for the quote documentation of each event is now recored in a leather bound book called: El Tomos Übero, or “The Tome” for short. The tome also contains a tally of 24 and lost predictions (btw, James’ long term prediction for Lost is that the island is purgatory), ratings for each film we see, and some lengthy pros written while drunk.

Recently the participant who has demonstrated himself as the most über has been recognised with the title of über cum lade. The inaugural award was bestowed on James Ricketts as Andrew fell asleep during The Matrix. James was also recognised the following year for organising tshirts. The title of El Tumos Übero Scribe is also awarded for excellence in documentation of the event, however this is usually considered to be a consolation prize for those who haven’t achieved über cum lade.

On official song for the event may be chosen. Past choices include Laidback - Backerman, Thom York - Black Swan, James Rickets feat. Andrew Smith - Bakerman (The Pool farm sessions ep) and Superman Lovers - Starlight.

This Year

Üf2k8 is fast approaching. We will be watching season 4 of Lost, season 5 of The Wire and Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. I think this is by far the best line-up we have had for an individual über-fest. All of the shows are quality and have matured over several seasons. Considering that the writers’ strike took place this year, I think we’re extremely lucky.