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I'm going to discuss an article from a Wall Street Journal again today. But I swear it's not a trend. I don't really read the Wall Street Journal. But the company that I work for has a subscription and whoever DOES read it leaves it on the lunch room table everyday. Then when I go to the refrigerator to get one of my many Diet Cokes of the day, I get sucked in by the headlines. Today, it wasn't a headline the caught my eye this time but a picture. Actually it wasn't even a picture, it was a drawing. You know how the Wall Street Journal has those nifty little drawings of people instead of photos? The drawings made up of all those little dots? I've always liked those little pictures and wondered how an artist gets that gig. I mean, it's just dots. You'd think that anyone could really do it. Does the Help Wanted ad say ability to draw portraits in dot form a plus? (and before you get all worked up, yes, I know everything in a newspaper is just dots. Even the photos. Just stop it, you know what I mean). Where was I?
Oh, yeah. The dot drawing that caught my eye was of a really rotund, grinning gentleman. Then I looked at the headline above him: To Eat 50 Hot Dogs in 12 Mintues, You Have to Be in Shape. How can you turn away from that story. I couldn't just take my Diet Coke and leave that article unread. I'm not going to rehash the whole article, but basically it talks about how really fat U.S. competitors are getting their big asses kicked by 110 pound Japanese dudes in various eating competitions. So the fat contestants are trying to slim down in order to get back in the running. There were two quotes in the article that really stand out for me.
The first is regarding 132 pound, 24-year-old Takeru Kobayashi who won this year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest by consuming 50.5 (that .5 must be important) in 12 minutes. I wonder why they left that .5 out of the actual article headline. The quote is as follows:
Mr. Kobayashi's certified win was the subject of controversy because some of what he ate started coming out of his nose after the final whisle. A contestant who throws up is disqualified, but Mr. Kobayashi snorted what came out back in, and that made it OK.
Doesn't that make it all OK? God, I love those two sentances. I mean the first sentence is great in it's level of gross out-osity. But the second one comes along and conjures up the most vile image possible. Imagine having hot dog coming out your nose? You know that he didn't chew these hot dogs very well, he couldn't have. So it had to be a pretty big chunk that came out his nose. And you would think that having a chunk go his nose once would be enough, right? Nope. He "snorted" it right back in. Gah... so nasty.
Great quote number two is from 6-foot-5, 400-pound, Eric "Badlands" Booker. "Badlands" was the second-place winner at Coney Island this past year. Not only is he trying to lose weight (130 pounds is his target), but he is discovering other techniques that help him in his eating contests.
Mr. Booker, a New York City subway conductor, has also been training by doing competitive judo for the past 2 1/2 years. The intricate hand movements and sharp focus judo requires translate into faster eating, he says.....
....From 1997 to 1999, I just showed up and ate. But right now I'm learning so much, and there's so much I want to shoot for. I'm getting to a level of concentration where it's just me and the dogs.
The "intricate hand movements" help him eat faster? What the hell was he doing before the judo? I've never been in an eating competition, but if I were in the Nathan's Hot Dog Contest I think my technique would be something like this.
1. Reach down and grab hot dog.
2. Bring hot dog up to mouth.
3. Repeat 50.5 times.
Was he swinging the dogs around with a flourish before eating them? Was he wiggling them over his mouth before dropping them down his throat? Was he tossing them in the air and then trying to catch them in his mouth? I don't get it. But I'm not a professional eater. I am a pretty good amateur though.
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