A Blast From The Past

So, holy shishkabob, I had a really busy day. Family birthday party, entertaining guests, you know how it goes. And what do I do to relax when it's finally, finally over? I mean, what did I do to relax after I got done watching a documentary about hot dog joints across America? That's right. I started perusing photos over yonder at The White House Museum online. It's a pretty cool site. Lots of pictures of the White House (as the title might lead you to believe). Some old, some new. It's just a nice leisurely walk through some history. And it's also where I ran across this photo. Behold!

I don't know what it is about this that I find so fascinating. Obviously the fact that it's in color has something to do with the fascination. He appears to be a rather unkempt fellow. Why didn't he comb his hair? His tie looks crooked as well. He also looks exhausted and/or like he could drop dead any minute. (Here's to hoping this wasn't taken before he trotted off to Ford's Theater.) I don't know what about it that makes me just think. Maybe it's because this guy that I know has his whole family in Washington, DC right now and they're touring all of the memorials and remembering how cool it is that we are a (technically) free country. I don't know what it is. I just think it's cool. And I really want a hot dog right now.

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We Have A Wiener

I knew this would happen. I do a post about the world's most expensive beer and the next thing I know, there's another story in the news about the world's most expensive hot dog. Really? A hot dog? See, this is what I mean by people just making stuff up so that it can be the most expensive. Trust me. There isn't much expense that goes into hot dogs.

According to the newsy folks over there at the NY Daily News, a local restaurant called Serendipity 3 (I'm not sure what's up with Serendipities 1 and 2) created the world's most expensive hot dog at $69. Now, if you're wondering what goes into a $69 hot dog (which they call the "haute dog" in a failed effort at being cutesy), so was I. Seriously, it's a hot dog. Do you know what goes in a hot dog? Everything but the oink, that is correct. How are you going to have a $69 hot dog? Easy. The same way you could have a $89 hot dog or a $109 hot dog. You charge that much and then you get someone to buy it.

And that's pretty much what happened over there at Serendipity 3. The owner of said establishment, a one Stephen Bruce, came across an awfully gullible tourist, a one Trudy Tant of Rock Hill, South Carolina, and "...asked her to spend her dough on the pricey frankfurter." If someone had asked me to spend almost seventy bucks on a hot dog, my response wouldn't have been "Sure!" It would have been more along the lines of something that I'm not overly comfortable typing here. It would not have been pretty.

But this soft headed woman was all for the idea! "The publishing company worker said she relished the opportunity "to do something out of the ordinary." (I'm sure that "relished the opportunity" was not on purpose because I can't imagine that someone who is dense enough to fall for this would be so quick to make an appropriate pun such as that.) I can think of a whole bunch more things that would have been "out of the ordinary" that would have left her less seventy dollars in the end. Some legal, some possibly not so much. Most of them would have been money better spent than on a hot dog.

In case your a-clamoring to make your own $69 dog at home and see how many of your friends you can weasel into coughing up the dough for it, here's what you're going to need: Some truffle oil, a salted pretzel bed, truffle butter, duck foie gras, Dijon mustard, Vidalia onions and ketchup." Wait a minute. You're going to put ketchup on a dog that has foie gras on it? That's just gross. Foie gras in and of itself is gross, but to put ketchup on it? That's just wrong. But basically, the only thing worth anything on this dog is the truffle stuff and the duck liver. Other than that, you've got yourself some pretty basic hot dog fixin's. See what I mean? It's all just a ruse. And who wants their hot dog on a pretzel bun? No one. That's why it's supposed to be a pretzel and not a hot dog enclosure. Pay attention!

But here's the best (or worst) part of this dealio: "The restaurant racked up the priciest dog record right away; there was no previous titleholder." Wait. What now? There wasn't a record? So...basically, EVERY hot dog that was sold before this one technically WAS the titleholder?! This is why there can't be world records for things that you can just make up and put whatever price you want on them. I could take a Ball Park frank, sprinkle it with gold flakes and diamonds, say that it's a thousand dollars, and set it up with a friend ahead of time for them to "pay" me for the dog and then I have just sold the world's most expensive hot dog. Technically. Then again, I wouldn't want to be the world record holder of something so ridiculous. Not to mention so NOT world record-y.

Apparently, this isn't the first world record that Serendipity 3 holds and the other records are just as ridiculous as this one is. They hold the record for the the most expensive ice-cream sundae (which someone paid $1,000 for) and for the largest hot chocolate which was 4 gallons. No word on how much that was or how many morons paid for it. Back to you.

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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!

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Reshaping Food In America

To be filed in the category of "We're Too Stupid To Use Common Sense", we have this little gem from the folks over there at Times Online that tells us "Doctors in America call for 'safer' hot dog to prevent child choking deaths." Wait. What now?

Correct. It would seem that in the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics (I subscribe, do you?), hot dogs are responsible for "...causing nearly one in five food-related choking deaths among young children." Huh. OK. Didn't know. But one in five food-related choking deaths, well, that sounds serious. How many choking deaths are there per year? Let's see...oh, there it is. 77. "Up to 77 children die from choking in America each year" according to the article. One in five of those are choking on a hot dog, so that means that there are about 15 children that die each year from choking on a hot dog. No word on what the other 62 died choking on, but we're just going to focus on the 15 kids out of a country with a population of approximately 300 million. Why does that sound silly to me? Oh, that's right. Probably because it is.

So now what? Well, according to that article, “Food manufacturers should design new foods, and redesign existing foods, including meat products, to avoid shapes, sizes, texture and other characteristics that increase choking risk to children." Wait a minute. Do what now?

Redesign the...the...hot dog?? Like redesign it how exactly? It's a hot dog. There's really kind of only one shape for the damn things. What do they want it to look like? Well, the article (of course) doesn't specify that. They just say that's what should happen. Change it. Is society so dumb that it's come to this?

Wait. Before you answer that, let me hit you with this quote from the article: "...there are no food regulations comparable to those intended to stop children swallowing toys, even though “food is more likely to go into a child’s mouth than a toy.” ::: blink ::: ::: blink :::

Really?! You don't say?! Food is more likely to go into a child's mouth than a toy is?! Food? Are they sure about that?! For cryin' out loud, we KNOW! We know! You know what else we know that the article felt the need to state? That “stuffing large numbers of marshmallows in the mouth also may increase the risk of choking”. Whaa....?

Are they serious? Yes! Yes, I would imagine that stuffing a ton of marshmallows in your mouth would make it difficult to breathe and that it could possibly make choking more likely! I would also guess that stuffing a large number of, oh, anything in your mouth would increase the risk of choking! What is wrong with people?

Now, mind you that this choking risk is higher for children between the ages of 1 and 5. If you have a kid between the ages of 1 and 5, aren't you cutting up their food for them? Aren't you watching them eat? Aren't you mainly responsible for the well-being of your child? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that any child who has ever died due to choking on a piece of food did so at the fault of the parent. That's not it. I'm saying that this shouldn't be something that needs to be regulated. Some things just are what they are!

If I have to hear one more time about some group from somewhere overreacting about something and wanting a complete overhaul of some industry, I might just hang myself. Why can't common sense take care of this? I fear it's because we are out of common sense. And if that's the case, what say we focus on regaining a little bit of that as opposed to turning people into sheep (also known as sheeple) that just follow blindly because they can't think or figure things out for themselves.

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A Hot Dog Isn't News

I know I'm missing something here with this one. If anyone can help me figure it out, I'd be extremely grateful. The only thing is however, if the explanation for this which has me perplexed is simply that people are morons and will make a big deal over nothing just because they a) can, or b) want to, then I don't want to know that. I already fear that, I don't need to have it reaffirmed.

The Oakland Raiders of the NFL is a pathetic football organization. They are absolutely horrible. It is a team that is lacking in hap. That's right. They are hapless, if you will. And in Sunday's game against the New York Jets, the demonstrated once again just how lacking in hap they are. With their quarterback Jam-Orca Russell at the helm, they managed to finish the game with zero points. The Jets on the other hand, managed to finish the game with 38 points. Thus, the Jets won.

The Jets were up 24 to nothing at the half. Halfway through the fourth quarter is when the Jets scored their 38th point. All the way through the fourth quarter is when the Raiders scored none of their points. The Jets quarterback is an adorable lad by the name of Mark Sanchez. He's a rookie. But rookie or not, I don't know that anyone should have given a fat rat's ass about what he did on the sidelines of the game during the fourth quarter. But you'd think that he'd put on his helmet and forgot his pants with the amount of coverage that what he did was receiving on all of the sports shows. He did something that not only was noticed, was filmed and was shown over and over and over with the commentators who were calling the game mentioning it, but it was something that I guess because of the coverage, he felt he needed to say that he was sorry for and that he shouldn't have done. Intrigued yet? Just a wee bit curious as to what the naive little rookie QB did? I hope you're sitting down for this one. He ate a hot dog.

Wait. Is that it? A...a hot dog?

Correct. A hot dog. It seems as though the guy hadn't been feeling well for a few days and didn't eat before the game. Now, I cannot imagine playing a game in the NFL on an empty stomach. I mean, you've gotta run! If you can't run, you're gonna get tackled. It has to be hell to be tackled in the NFL as it is, but on an empty stomach? I think I'd be puking up my actual stomach. (They'd need a time out to take care of that!) You've gotta eat!

So he hadn't eaten before the game and, according to Hot Dog Sanchez (the ol' HDS) as quoted over there at the Huffington Post (who, by the way, went with the headline "Mark Sanchez Hot Dog Video: Jets QB Eats Hot Dog During Game" Good Lord, HuffPo....), he "wasn't feeling very good" and "a little queasy." And for some reason he thought that a stadium hot dog would make him feel less queasy. I don't know how that factors into the equation, but at least he didn't ask for nachos or something like that. (Hey! He wasn't Nate Newton playing for the Cowboys when he tackled someone and a Snickers bar popped out of his uniform! Give the guy a break!)

But taking the questionable medicinal purposes of a stadium wiener out of the equation, they're leading 38 to zero. I wouldn't care if the guy had a hot dog on the sidelines or a slab of prime rib with a side of horseradish! They're going to win! For all intents and purposes, they'd already won! The only reason they were still playing the game is because league rules state that you have to! But given the headline over at HuffPo and the coverage of the event (as the noshing of said dog was seen repeatedly on various evening sportscasts) you'd have thought this guy was eating explosives and planning to blow himself up when the final whistle blew. What the hell is wrong with people?

Clearly that question cannot be answered here or anywhere else for that matter, so we'll just do what we always do and chalk it up to folks being morons and in need of anything posing as either entertainment or controversial. (And really, this is kind of neither, so we're back to just folks being morons. It's not really OK with me, but it's expected.) Let's see how the scenario unfolded, shall we? The text of the flabbergasted commentators is below and the video is below that.

You know that life is good when you're the quarterback of the New York Jets and you can eat a hot dog on the sidelines. During the last TV time out, Mark Sanchez is trying his best to hide a hot dog...and eat it. Oh, wow!

Did that one guy really say "Oh, wow!" Good Lord, he did. ::: sigh ::: And apparently, life isn't good enough to whichever of those dough heads said that for one to just be the quarterback for the New York Jets. No, you have to be the quarterback AND eat a hot dog on the sideline. Only then will life be "good". ANNNNNyway....do you want to bet whether or not they could even control themselves so that they wouldn't ask him about it after the game? Please bet. Please bet and say that they could control themselves. Oh! Or better yet, please bet and say that they realized that a guy whose team is ahead 38 to nothing in the fourth quarter eating a hot dog during a TV time-out is not important. Please bet me that! The dialogue that wins me that bet is as follows:

Dumbass Commentator: "During TV time outs, we leave our cameras on..."

Hungry Mark Sanchez:"Yeah, I heard."

Dumbass Commentator: "Have you always been a mustard guy on your hot dog?"

Hungry Mark Sanchez: "Oh. Yeah, that was stupid. I didn't eat much before the game this morning. I couldn't eat. I had a terrible stomachache. And on the sideline I asked somebody for a hot dog and they got one. And I tried to eat it...and..."

Dumbass Commentator: So it was medicinal?"

Hungry Mark Sanchez:"Yeah, I wasn't feeling very good, but, uh, I'm going to get in trouble for that one, I bet. So, I'm sorry."

Dumbass Commentator: "Hey, Mark, have a good one!"

Hungry Mark Sanchez:"Thanks guys. You too!"

Did you read that? Did you get how they made him feel like he had to apologize for eating a hot dog on the sidelines? And he tells them that he's probably going to get in trouble for it and what do they say? "Have a good one!" They seem to gloss over the part about him getting in trouble. I can only imagine what he was thinking if, in fact, he really will "get in trouble" I'm guessing it would be something like: Thanks, asses! Thanks for pointing that out to the world. Appreciate it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat whatever I want without a camera on me and see if I have to keep talking about this.

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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!

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Hot Dogs and Asian Elephants to Celebrate the 4th

If you do nothing else tomorrow on the Fourth of July, Independence Day, make sure that you at least tune into ESPN around noon EST for the 94th (Yes! 94!) 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'!) There are really only two names that you need to know. There's 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.

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! 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 knows. 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, Saturday. 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 (who really screwed up the story about the Michael Jackson funeral, so I hope and pray that they got this story right) "As a lead-in to the main event, Major League Eating on Friday will hold a first-of-its-kind "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!

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