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7-11-2002 - 21:50
Hot Dog! Move over Tiger, Forget Serena, Forget Lance. The Tsunami is the strangest champ of them all From USA Today: Hot Dog Champ: Japan's Takeru 'the Tsunami' Kobayashi defended his title by eating 50.5 hot dogs in 12 minutes at Nathan's 87th annual July 4th hot dog contest at New York's Coney Island. The champ weighs a mere 132 pounds. Long Island, NY, resident Eric Booker, who weighs 410, came in a distant second, eating 26 dogs.
But that isn't the whole story, my friends, not by far. This is the 3rd year some skinny Japanese kid took the coveted yellow mustard belt away from hungry Americans on their special day of Independence. Rumors of foul play, muscle relaxers and vomiting are flying. Now Justin, you may be asking, how do you know so much about this event? You've never been to Coney Island and you don't eat hot dogs. True enough, but a few weeks ago I watching a feature on FoodTV about competitive eating. It was called Big Eats and this hot dog gobbling binge was heavily featured. This documentary was frankly bizarre, even for Food TV, not because people were stuffing hot dogs into their faces at a rapid pace, but because of the total seriousness with which the subject matter was presented. Have you seen the mockumentary called Best in Show about the strange world of dog people? It was like that, except I kept waiting for the punch line or the little wink that let me know that this was all a big joke. It never happened Gluttony ain't pretty, folks.
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