Where For Art Thou, Kobayashi?

If you do nothing else on the Fourth of July, Independence Day, make sure that you at least tune into ESPN around noon EST for the 95th (Yes! 95th!) annual Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest at Coney Island. I swear. But I don't recommend it for most reasons that you'd probably think of.

Watching a bunch of grown men and a few grown women shove dog after dog after dog down their gullet in an attempt to be proclaimed the champion and take possession of the coveted award, the Mustard Yellow Belt. Oh, it's quite a sight. The belt. The eating. The whole deal. Behold!
As a seasoned veteran spectator of this spectacle, I'll give you a crash course primer on the things to pay the most attention to. (Trust me. It's such a disgusting mess at times, you really don't know where to look and your only instinct is to look AWAY! But if you do that, you'll miss some real good eatin'!) Usually, there are really only two names that you need to know. One of those names is Takeru Kobayashi from Japan. Kobayashi came onto the scene in 2001 when the record from the year before was 25 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Kobayashi (pardon the pun) devoured that record by downing FIFTY dogs AND buns in 12 minutes. Why, yes, that's about one dog every 14.4 seconds, that is correct! He uses a technique I've dubbed the "Snap n'Cram" where he snaps the hot dog in half and as that's being crammed into his mouth, he's dunking the bun in water and then sucking that up. It could also be called the "Watch and Vomit", as that's how I feel every year when I view this eating spectacle.

But there might be a problem with Kobayashi competing this year...as in, he might not compete. It seems that the governing body that sanctions these eating competitions, the International Federation of Competitive Eating (of course) has some sort of a contract that these guys have to sign in order to compete. Kobayashi doesn't want to sign the contract because he feels that it will "limit" his choices in eating competitions. The IFOCE claims that they always have to sign the contract and he's never had a problem with it before. They also liken his not signing to a quarterback wanting to play in the Super Bowl, but not join the NFL. That's a pretty good analogy. I don't know if it's accurate, but it's still pretty darn good. Now, they had the weigh-in yesterday and Kobayashi wasn't there. (I have no idea why they're weighing these folks. It's not like they're separated into weigh categories. They have one category. The Gluttonous. That's it. No need for weighing. But if it makes them feel better, then have at it, I guess.) But I'm still holding out hope that he will be there. You should hold out hope, too. It can't hurt.

So if he's there, he's the first guy you're going to want to pay attention to. (With any luck, there will be a shot of him lifting up his shirt at some point. You wouldn't know it to look at the guy, as he looks a bit scrawny, but he is incredibly muscular. Six pack abs and all! He puts The Situation to shame. Behold!)

Then there's reigning champion Joey Chestnut who hails from practically right down the road from my walled compound here in San Jose, CA (otherwise known as "The Valley"). If Kobayashi's technique is the "Snap n'Cram" Joey's technique is "The Cram n'Jump". And it's executed just like it sounds. He crams the hot dog and bun into his mouth and then kind of jumps up and down a little bit. It's sort of like how you shake a bottle of ketchup when the ketchup is all stuck in the neck, only it's in reverse and it's with a hell of a lot of hot dogs. Joey first beat Kobayashi in 2007 by eating an absolutely sickening 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. If you think that's amazing, in 2008, after someone discovered some handwritten notes dating back to 1918 that had to contest as being for only 10 minutes, the International Federation OF Competitive Eating (I swear) wanted to be true to the roots of the contest and shortened the time by two minutes. So what happened? Joey and Kobayashi tied at 59 hot dogs and buns each and they had to go to a five dog eat off. Whoever could eat the five dogs the fastest wins.

While 5 hot dogs might not sound like much, you have to keep in mind that at this point, these guys just ATE 59 hot dogs. And they've stopped eating for at least five minutes before the dog-off starts. By then, I'm thinking that the chances for a, um, a reversal of fortune, shall we say, are more and more likely. I can't imagine you'd even want to look at another hot dog again for the rest of your life, let alone try and shove five more in your food hole. By the way, an eight pack of Nathan's dogs weighs 1 pound. Thus, not figuring in the weight of the buns, 64 hot dogs would weigh eight pounds! Add the buns and the water and you're easily cramming close to ten extra pounds INTO your body in ten minutes. That's a pound a minute for you folks out there too busy trying not to vomit to do the math. Gross.

So those are your two main players. But wait. There's more! You can't have an event such as this without someone calling the shots. You need an announcer. No, you need a color commentary guy. No, you need a guy with a love for literature. No, you need a wordsmith of the ages. A man who can take individual words and phrases and put them all in a proverbial hat, mix them up, pull them out and match 'em up as if they were Garanimals to construct and form the most utterly amazing sentences in the English language that you will ever hear in your entire life. You need George Shea.

George Shea is a national treasure. The man is brilliant. George Shea is the co-founder, along with his brother Richard, of the IFOCE and they both make the rounds on the competitive eating circuit announcing various events each year. And while I can't vouch for Richard's talents (and I have no reason to doubt that they're any less than formidable), I can vouch for George's skills and they are phenomenal. It's a combination between his love for language and love for watching and orchestrating competitive eating. The words that come out of his mouth are PURE poetry! A few examples from our national treasure, George Shea:

• They say that competitive eating is the battleground upon which God and Lucifer wage war for men's souls. (Um, WHO says that? WHEN do they say that?)
  
  
• For this is a battle of the ages. It's a battle of the titans. That man this is half God and half man and comes to earth only once!
  
  
• We arrive at this moment by the unswerving punctuality of chance! (I don't even know what in the hell that means, but I DO know that it's hilarious!)

• He is eating in an arena of pure emotion! This is about the triumph of the human spirit. It is nothing short of the triumph of the human spirit. As I said.
  
  
• It's like that song by David Bowie. Major Tom. You're enjoying it and then you realize how sad it is. Major Tom's not coming back. He's up in that tin can. He tells his wife he loves her very much! She knoooows. But it's very sad. Major Tom's not coming back. But the belt may be coming back to Brooklyn!
  

Finally. A wordsmith our country can be proud of! So, Sunday. 12 noon EST. ESPN. A bunch of guys and a couple of chicks eating hot dogs really fast with a guy doing beautiful and nutty commentary. It's sure to make you proud to be an American! But if you're still not convinced, there's an added bonus this year! Yes, an added incentive for you to tune in and feel your body awash from head to toe in American pride. According to the folks over there at CNN "As a lead-in to the main event, Major League Eating will hold a "cross-species" eating contest between three competitive eaters and three Asian elephants. Shea described it as the realization of one of his two lifelong dreams, the other being a scenario in which a dozen competitive eaters eat the entire contents of a convenience store."

God bless America! Land of the free! Home of the brave! And the place for eating competitions pitting humans against pachyderms! Two outta three ain't bad!

Sphere: Related Content

You Can't Outeat An Elephant

I said it was going to be a treat and it apparently was. As an added bonus out there at Coney Island before this year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, there was to be another contest. A contest that would pit man against beast in a competition that most of the world has thankfully never had to hear of nor experience.

And it's just as well at this point. That's because in what could one day be seen as the first definitive sign of devolution (aka, de-evolution. The de-evolving of a species. Yep, made that up.) and what will likely be seen as a huge step back for humans everywhere (but mostly in the US, as we seem to not only encourage, but willingly participate in this sort of event), three competitive eaters were out-eaten by a trio of Asian elephants.

Good Lord, when did it come to this? Actually, I don't know if I care so much because my hero, the God-like national treasure George Shea was on hand to witness and emcee the event. And just as I expected, he did not disappoint. When asked to comment on the debacle, he replied, “Am I embarrassed for my species? Of course I am. This is as dark a day for humanity as the evening of the Hindenberg crash. But this time, my heart is screaming, ‘Oh, the pachydermity! Oh, the pachydermity!" See?! How can you not LOVE that!

The three elephants were on loan the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I guess they gave them the day off from standing on one leg on those little multi-colored stools. How humane of them. The trio of Bunny, 42, Susie, 46, and Minnie, 48, weighed approximately nine tons. That stacks up fairly evenly to the weight of their three competitors which is right around 500 pounds. Sure. Totally even.

The News & Record gives us the lowdown on the three humans that mankind had selected to represent our species were a one Eric "Badlands" Booker, Tim "Gravy" Brown and Juliet Lee. Booker looks like he could have out eaten the elephants by himself. Even if you didn't know what the guy looked like, just perusing his list of records for eating obscene amounts of various foods in ridiculously short periods of time would be enough to have you wondering if maybe someone should have brought in an extra elephant just to keep up with this guy. He holds the record for eating things like:

Corned beef hash (4 pounds of hash in 1 minute and 58 seconds)

Doughnuts (49 glazed donuts in 8 minutes)

Peas (9.5 1 lb. bowls in 12 minutes)

Tim "Gravy" Brown can say that his claim to fame is eating 8.47 pounds of blueberry pie in eight-minutes. Hands free. Ugh. I don't even want to know how that's possible. I don't. Don't try to tell me!

And little (and kinda hot)Juliet Lee has proven that Gravy Brown isn't the only one that can set an eating record in only eight minutes. She is the cranberry sauce eating champion of the world. You earn a title like that one if you can eat (brace yourself) 13.23 pounds of cranberry sauce in eight minutes. And if you're not careful, pulling stunts like that will also earn you the title of "mentally ill".

But back to George Shea and the battle over which species could eat more hot dog buns in only six minutes. (That's right. Just the buns. Doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun there. Then again, none of this competitive eating stuff looks like a whole lot of fun. It looks absolutely disgusting.) Our friends of at The Brooklyn Paper remind us to consider than an elephant can eat an entire loaf of bread in under TWO SECONDS. With something like that you really need to psych yourself up to believe that your species even has half a chance at winning this thing. Enter George Shea for some encouraging words before the battle began.


"The humans are hoping that their superior intellect comes into play. For instance they can dunk the rolls in water...The human gustatory gladiators have another advantage over the gentle vegetarian giants. Perhaps the elephants won’t understand the word ‘Go.’”

And at first, Shea's speculation seemed rather accurate as the elephants seemed to get off to a slow start. Can you blame them? They were probably wondering what in the hell the humans had gotten themselves into this time. All of the pondering! It slows one down! (I should know!) At the halfway mark of three minutes, Shea screamed out, "They are eating with leisurely elan! Clearly, they do not have the competitive spirit of their human betters!” Oh, they were just toying with us, George.

I'm sure you will be shocked, just shocked, to learn that in the end the elephants won. And not by a little bit, either.

Hot dog eating pachyderms: 505 hot dog buns

Devolving humans: 143 pathetic buns.


Fortunately, George Shea took the loss as only a humble organizer could and lamented, "As you know, I have had two dreams in life. One is to see two competitive eaters enter a convenience store and eat it to the ground, with one starting in the chips aisle and the other starting at the Slushies. That dream remains unfulfilled. But my other dream was to have a sanctioned eating competition between man and another species — and today that dream became a reality.”

But don't think that he's done with the elephants and all of the eating. I have the feeling that this match-up will happen again. I base that solely on Shea expressing that "“When most people see elephants, they see the majesty of nature. To me, I see an arrogant animal that needs to be taken down a notch.”

Just don't let the elephants distract you from the REAL hot dog eating contest on the 4th. Whatever you do George, and you do it SO well, don't get distracted. Now, bring on the hot dogs!

Sphere: Related Content

The Untelevised George Shea

I mentioned the other day about how badly I thought ESPN screwed up with their coverage of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island on July 4th. Basically, they had the ESPN announcers trying to give their lame-ass commentary over the brilliant commentary of the great wordsmith (and chairman of Major League Eating) George Shea.

Fortunately, due to all of the tubes and wires that make up the Internet, footage of the Hot Dog Eating Contest and George's poetic verses were available online for all to relish and enjoy. But what wasn't contained in that coverage was the pre-introduction introductions of the contestants. It is thanks to Vidiot over yonder at telescreen.org (C-list blogging since last Tuesday.) that I became aware that George Shea was in rare form and that his genius had started shining through before the contest did. He even performed a marriage ceremony right there after some guy asked his girlfriend to marry him and she said yes! (Turns out, George had been ordained by the Universal Life Church. A revelation which I'm sure that the guy who proposed was NOT expecting. I hope you meant it, dude! Oh, and congratulations!) But it gets better!

Vidiot made a recording of the national treasure that is George Shea! And he has provided the link to this trove of auditory jewels! It's about 21 minutes long, but it's definitely worth giving a listen to. The words will become part of Americana. I guarantee it. Below is but a small, small sampling of what to expect on the MP3. He does not disappoint.

• "He is a cheese fry eating champion from Temecula, California. Five feet, eleven inches tall. And you know what he calls himself? He calls himself Double-Oh-Kevin. Kevin Ross! OH there he is! I sort of imagined him figuring that one out in his bedroom upstairs. At home with Mom and Dad."
  
  

  



• "He was once the bologna-eating champion of the world, but he lost that title and the prestige that went with it. And it burned him. He felt as does the old man who has lived long enough to watch his son hang from the gallows. And like that old man, he won't be shamed to remember that his life had no meaning, and no hope. But he is here today to reverse that trend. He has the sharpest incisors in the sport. Let me hear it for The Shredder, Allen Goldstein!"
  

  
• "He is a genius of competitive eating. He knows why they call it couscous, and not just cous. He remembers what he had for lunch on March 17, 1996: tuna salad." " This is a great eater who will use his brains to win this contest. "
  
  


• "I have seen dark visions of the future, signs of the apocalypse. Smoldering rubble. A tearful girl holding a limp doll. A monkey riding horseback on a poodle. My ears have been shredded by the mournful news they have heard, because I have witnessed the horses riding! I have witnessed the coming of the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Esophagus! He has a cloven tongue with which he eats the cloven hoof! He is the pig's-feet-eating champion of the WORLD!"
  
  


• "13.7 billion years ago, all matter and energy in the universe was compressed into one single infinitely small point, and the pressure was such that it created a singularity, an explosion that sent matter and energy outward, creating the universe, as it did. And as that matter cooled, it became gas, and as the gases cooled, they became planets. And as the planets cooled, chemicals combined on their surfaces, in ever more complex ways, until one day life was born. And one form of life climbed from the ocean, and gained it's self-consciousness, the ability to observe that the observer and the observed are one and the same. And as he stood on his wobbly hind legs and opened his round wide eyes, what did he see? He saw the frybread-eating champion of the WOOORRRRLD!"
  
  


• "He was first seen at the edge of the shore, between the ancient marks of the high and low tide. A place that is neither land nor sea. And as the blue lights of morning filter through the blackness it revealed a man who has tales from the far corners of the globe where the dark arts are still practiced. He has been to the beyond and has returned with the wisdom of life and death. He was buried alive under sixty cubic feet of popcorn and he ate his way OUT TO SURVIVAL! He is the pancake eating champion of the world! the lumberjack breakfast eating champion of the world. The David Blaine of the bowel! The Evil Knievel of the alimentary canal! The Houdini of linguini!"

40MB MP3 is available here

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I love that man. Thanks again, George.

Sphere: Related Content

George Shea Did Not Disappoint

Well how was that for a Fourth of July hot dog eating contest? It had everything you could want (in an event where grown adults try to cram an un-godly amount of food down their pipe in whatever fashion they choose in a very short amount of time)! It had drama! It had controversy! It had noise and crowds! It had euphemisms and hot dogs! But most importantly, it had George Shea.

George Shea is the co-founder of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (the IFCE), which changed its name recently to Major League Eating (forget the IFCE. Now it's MLE.) The change being due to the "rapid rise" of competitive eating " into the ranks of major American sports." Or, at least, so says the Rocky Mountain News. The man is an orator of competitive eating commentary like no other now or before him (as if there was one, and I really hope there wasn't). He takes phrases and words from here and there and then mixes them all up like they're Garanimals and somehow, by some miracle of the Word Gods, somehow they come out in a beautifully worded, slightly bizarre, somewhat confusing phrase that fits the moment and sets the scene perfectly.

As it turns out, George Shea is no slouch. The man's pretty smart. (He'd have to be to make a career and to make on heck of a living by turning competitive eating into a freaking sport.) At the very least, he's definitely well read. My favorite George Shea utterance has to be, "We arrive at this moment by the unswerving punctuality of chance!" Turns out, that phrase, according to George, is in reference to the works of William Gaddis, in which the phrase appears in every one of his five novels. (Gaddis got it from Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, published in 1929, as it reads, "Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of things done." Um, OK. I think.) OK, I wasn't even sure who William Gaddis was when I heard George explain that this is where that phrase originated. I'm still not sure who he is, other than an author who wrote very long, very difficult to understand novels that I'm sure George Shea and about five other people really enjoyed. I think that the point I'm trying to make is that George Shea is no idiot. Or something like that.

At the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island yesterday, defending champion, the holder of the Yellow Mustard Belt, Joey Chestnut, of San Jose,CA, was defending his title against his arch enemy in the hot dog eating world, Takeru Kobayashi, of Japan. And George Shea was there to hold our hand and guide us through the most disgusting, vomitous, gag-inducing ten minutes that you will ever have the extreme displeasure of watching. (Whenever I watch this thing, as soon as it's over, I always feel like I need to take a shower.)

ESPN, for some reason, felt the need to have it's own commentators for this event. WHY they felt the need to do that is beyond me. Have they never listened to George Shea? They must not have. The guys that were doing the ESPN coverage had clearly not done their homework. They seemed to assume that the things that George says were just a bunch of wacky words all thrown together that sounded funny and they figured they could do the same. That is the only explanation for some of the crap that I heard the ESPN guys churn out. Things such as:

• "They attack those hot dogs like Lindsay Lohan attacks a mini bar. It is completely reckless." (Lohan's too busy being a closeted lesbian these days to go after a mini bar, fellas. Try to keep up. May I suggest 'People' or 'Us' magazines?)
  
  
• "These guys are absolute magicians. Look, hybrid Yukon, Drillbit Taylor, bleach alternative. I don't have all the answers. But what I do know is Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut, they can eat." (Too many references to too many things that don't make sense. You're trying too hard guys. The hilarity must flow.)
  
  
• "There are certainties in sports. Tiger WILL win another Masters. Brady WILL win another Super Bowl. Lance Armstrong will, perhaps, start dating Jennifer Aniston. It's gotta be in the cards, right? And Kobayashi will win another mustard belt." (Note to self: Before rattling off the names of a bunch of sports guys who have won championships as the basis for your analogy, always make sure that they are STILL competing in the sport so you don't have to fall back on who they may or may not date at some point in the future.)


• "If you put all the hot dogs that Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut ate end to end it would be about the equivalent of the 1st and ten marker at an NFL game." (Hmm..so what's that? Oh, I know. TEN yards?! You can't just SAY 'TEN yards'? Morons.)


• "The passion is raw but the hot dogs are cooked." (OK, that one is actually pretty good.)

Thank God that some red blooded American was actually at Coney Island to witness this prime example of classic Americana take place and uploaded the video to that YouTube thing. It is because of that patriot that we are able to hear the great George Shea operate in an arena of pure emotion as he takes us through the competition, bit by bit.

A few of the highlights from George:

• "You can see the human struggle in every compression of the jaw. In every drop of saliva." (If you're wondering how much saliva was actually dropping, trust me. You don't want to know.)
  

• "It is the daughter of Cain versus the son of Abel." (In reference to the iconic Sonya Thomas, aka The Black Widow of competitive eating.)
  
  
• "This is Sosa-McGwire! This is Ali-Frazier! These two warriors! They are warriors! Spartans! Spar-Tans!" (Right. Just like Sosa-McGwire. Only not quite so 'roid-y.)


• "We are approaching the three minute mark. There will be 7 minutes! 7 seas! 7 shores! 7 heavens! 7 days! 7 minutes left in this contest!"
  
  
• "We stand here among the ghosts of the past! We have nothing left but to witness this history!"
  
  
• "Kobayashi is an injured animal. But his skeleton is titanium!" (Huh?)

And my two personal favorite George Shea utterances from Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island, 2008:

• "And Joey Chestnut is at fifty hot dogs. One hot dog for every state in this nation. One hot dog for every way to leave your lover. One hot dog for every hot dog for every hot dog in fifty hot dogs!" (Well, I guess if you're ever thinking of things to compare a certain number of things to and you run out of comparisons, you can always fall back on the thing itself to compare itself to. It worked for George, it can work for you!)
  
  
• "Like a city under seige, I know not which way to turn! I am at a loss. I am like an island whose trees have been snapped by a hurricane and the trees now lie scattered like the broken letters of a long forgotten language. I know not which way to turn!" (Well, you can't argue with that. Mainly because you don't know what in the hell it means.)
  

Below is the video with the George Shea commentary. And while the video isn't much to watch, it's definitely worth listening to.

And in what is sort of seeming like an afterthought that I'm just throwing in, (spoiler alert!) Joey Chestnut successfully defended the Yellow Mustard Belt and won the contest. but he had to do so in OT. Joey and Kobayashi were tied at the end of the regulatory 10 minutes, so they went to a 5-dog eat off and Joey Chestnut easily crushed his opponent, Takeru Kobayashi.

Congratulations, Joey!

And thank you, George Shea!

Sphere: Related Content

The Unswerving Punctuality of Chance

We arrive at this moment by the unswerving punctuality of chance! Wait. What?

Ah, the words of George Shea on a hot July afternoon. What's that? You don't know who George Shea is?! Seriously? You, my good friends, all six of you reading this, you are missing out on one of the great joys of summertime if you have yet to experience Mr. George Shea.

George Shea is the announcer guy (yes, I believe that's his official title) for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest that is held at Coney Island every year on July 4. He is also the chairman of Major League Eating (I swear).

George Shea is an announcer like no other I have ever heard. The man is a national treasure. Where he comes up with the euphemisms that he throws together is beyond me. I'd like to think that he's just making them up on the spot, but you never know. Some of the stuff that he says is pretty bizarre and he just might have thought of it earlier and made a mental note of it so that he'd have it ready during his commentary of the Major League Eating sanctioned gluttony occurring right before his very eyes. But even if that's true, he had to think it up in the first place. And that is where the genius shines through.

Just in case you didn't catch the poetic shouting that George was spreading, allow me....

• This is a battle of the Ages!
• This is a battle of the Titans!
• That being that is half God and half man and it comes to earth only once!
• In only one location!
• For only one purpose!
• And that is here at Coney Island for this historic contest!
• Ladies and gentlemen...STEP! WITH! ME! NOW! Onto the world stage!
• Step with me onto the Mount Sinai of Mastication!
• The Madison Square Garden of Gurgitation !
• The Sanctum Sanctorum of Salivation !
• The Colesium of Competitive Eating !
• So it is and so it shall be!
• LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!

Poetry. Sheer poetry, I tell you.

If you've never watched the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on the 4th of July at Coney Island, you are missing out. It is 12 minute of sheer gluttony like no other that you (hopefully) will ever witness in your lifetime. I guarantee it. Disgusting doesn't even come close to describing how gross this event is. Impossible and phenomenal are two other words that come to mind, but they run a very, very distant 2nd and 3rd, with "disgusting" having a huge lead and holding firm as the number one way to describe this contest.

Now, although I said it was 12 minutes of sheer gluttony, that won't be the case this year. No, this year it will be only 10 minutes of sheer gluttony. That's because someone unearthed some handwritten notes from 1917 (the second year of the contest) which said that the bout lasted for 10 minutes.

Shea said it's about preserving history. "Does this impact the most hotly contested rivalry since Ali-Frazier?" Wait. What? "That’s not the issue!” Oh. But, I... “The issue is history, and the preponderance of the evidence now suggests that the contest was always 10 minutes." Sure, but...“It’s like the Constitution. Are you a strict constructionist or not?” Are YOU a strict constructionist, George? “I don’t know. What’s a strict constructionist — is that Scalia? I’m not sure. But on this, I am a strict constructionist.” Well, OK then. There you have it. 10 minutes it is!

And who can know for sure until after the contest is over whether or not the number of hot dogs that are able to be crammed down one's gullet will be comparable to last year's astounding record by Joey Chestnut with SIXTY SIX hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes! (I don't think I could eat 66 hot dogs in a WEEK, let alone 12 minutes. Gross.) Because it seems to me, just judging from past records, that the number of hot dogs that are able to be consumed by one individual in a very short period of time varies greatly and for no apparent reason. Seriously, look at the crappy image of the chart below. Basically, from 1990 until 2000, the winner was hovering in the range of between 19-ish and 25 hot dogs. And I don't know what the hell happened in 2001 when Takeru Kobayashi came along and ingested double the number eaten in the previous year's contest.

After the first time that the 50 dog mark was broken, no one ever looked back. No, instead they looked forward to the 60 dog mark and beyond. 66 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. It's something that I highly doubt we will ever see again. If the 60 dog mark gets broken this year, it will be accompanied by a lingering sense of "What if?" Because if someone can inhale over 60 dogs in a time frame that is 2 minutes LESS than last years, well, that could end up feeling like we all missed out on something that would have shown us just what the human body was actually capable of.

But regardless as to whether the contest is 10 minutes or 12. Regardless as to whether the winner will have been able to consume more or less hot dogs than the 66 that were consumed last year. Regardless as to whether or not Joey Chestnut will be able to successfully defend his title and bring the Yellow Mustard Belt back home again. Regardless of all of those things, we will still have George Shea and his oddly poetic, surprisingly Shakespearean-esque commentary. Yes, we will still have that. Thank God.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes said by George Shea at the 2007 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. The man is a wordsmith like no other.

• "This is a triumph of the human spirit! It is nothing less than a triumph of the human spirit! As I said." (Ramming hot dogs down your gullet at the speed of approximately one every 10.9 seconds is the "triumph of the human spirit"? God, I hope not.)


• "For Americans to see the belt go to Japan every year, it's kind of depressing, as well! It's like that song by David Bowie "Major Tom". You're enjoying it and suddenly you realize how sad it is. Major Tom's not coming back. He's out in that tin can! He says to his wife, "I love you very much." She knows! But it's very sad! Major Tom's not coming back! But the BELT may be coming back to Brooklyn!"


• "His ancestors started on the shores of time looking up the wide white highway of history at this the culmination of his DNA!" ("The culmination of his DNA?" WTF?)


• "One minute to go!! One minute!! A hero arises to lead a broken planet to victory and that hero is Joey Chestnut! He is standing up like William Wallace! Like Donovan McNabb! Like Joan of Arc before him and he is bringing it forth! He is eating with incredible speed!" (A Scottish knight and patriot, a female teenage leader of French Armies and the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. Huh. Diverse.)

Good luck, Joey Chestnut.

And thank you, George Shea.

Sphere: Related Content