Bull

Eight.  The total this year came to eight. Four Spaniards, two Australians and two Americans.

No, we're not talking about winners of the Nobel Prize or the Academy Awards or even the Teen Choice Award. This motley crew of eight fools comprises all the people who were gored this year during the weeklong funfest known as the San Fermin festival, held annually in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.

On the final day of the gala bloodarama Sunday, a chocolate-colored bull named Rabanero let the other five he had been running with go on ahead while he, playful as ever, hung back and started a commotion all on his own. Rabanero flipped a guy over his horns, slamming him into the cobblestone street, and then clipped two other runners, forcing them into a wall like Stork did to the marching band in "Animal House."

All over Spain, admirers are filling out applications to join the Rabanero Fan Club.

Ernest Hemingway popularized all this San Fermin foolishness in his 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.” People travel to Spain and drink  stay up all night to be on the scene when the rooster caws the bulls to action. The, runners dressed in white outfits with a red sash run like thieves in the night as animals weighing around 2,400 lbs  - who are slightly peevish about the whole thing - chase after them like Joey Chestnut chases hot dogs.

Festival organizers fell all over themselves to share the news that there has not been a fatality in this insanity since 2009.