What wouldn't we give for
That extra bit more --
That's all that we live for"
--Oliver
New York
May I be frank? I'm no fan of Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest.
Excuse me for sounding like a puritan -- or a vegan -- but is an event in which you are rewarded for eating your own vomit really a sport? And if so, shouldn't Joe Rogan be hosting it?
Look, I get it. I watched Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi ingest 66 and 63 wieners in 12 minutes, respectively (if not respectably) on the 4th of July. It's a spectacle. When ESPN color commentator Rich Shea declared, "Possibly tommorow you'll look up American Hero and find pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Neil Armstrong, Taylor Hicks and Joey Chestnut," I laughed.
Shea, who is also the president of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, had tongue firmly planted in cheek (and, in case you're wondering, the world record for tongue eating is held by Dominic Cardo, who ingested three pounds, three ounces of pickled beef tongue in 12 minutes).
But after witnessing Chestnut and Kobayashi both figuratively and literally make pigs of themselves on Wednesday, I have to ask: Are we a nation with a competitive eating disorder?
Baked beans. Brains (cow). Burritos. Doughnuts and dumplings. Turkey, chicken and even turducken. Meatballs and matzohs. Peas and pizza. Ham. And Spam. There's a competitive eating contest -- and corresponding record -- for every item in the pantry, an opportunity for some sweaty swallower to make a mark indelible on an item edible.
I don't want to regurgitate all the old beefs: that competitive eating contests only confirm the rest of the planet's worst assumptions of us; that it is immoral to mass-consume when half of the world is starving … and the other is obese; that gluttony is no more of a sport worthy to be televised than is onanism, the old mastication versus masturbation debate.
I do, however, want to ask why so many in the media, especially television broadcasters, seem to salivate at the very notion of discussing the Nathan's event. Why talking heads from ESPN to CNBC seemed to celebrate Chestnut's gustatory feat Thursday morning, as if he had accomplished something greater than simple gluttony.
Is it extraordinary, what Chestnut did? Of course. So is hawking a loogie 30 yards, or farting at a decibel-level that would drown out AC/DC performing "TNT" live (or, at the very least, compel Angus Young to flee the stage). Or pulling out your own Nathan's Famous and seeing what type of distance you can get with your own spray zone. All feats, I should mention, that I at least attempted in college. As did you, probably.
But, as competitive eating hurls toward its first ingesticide -- and I'm not including the 28 year-old Sacramento woman who died after imbibing too much water as part of a radio station competition earlier this year -- I just cannot stomach the Ken Brockman-esque approach that talking heads take to reporting this story. Is there even one anchor out there with the guts (all puns intended, of course) to say that binging, as an organized sport (check out IFOCE's or Major League Eating's websites), is just demented and sad? And, furter-more, that just because ESPN televises something does not mean it's a sport?
A few years ago my friend Adam and I found ourselves in South Bend, Indiana (home of the Fighting Irish), on St. Patrick's Day. To celebrate the occasion, we headed straight to McDonald's and challenged one another to a "Shamrock Shakedown." We purchased three super-sized shamrock shakes apiece and engaged in a seven-minute all-you-can-drink competition. Adam, a superior imbiber, should have won, but he was the hare to my tortoise. And so he fell prey to brain freeze.
As our competition was nearing its close, a McDonald's employee approached us. "Please leave," she said. "You're grossing out the other customers."
She was right, of course. The superlatives of human digestion, be it the size of one's appetite or the result of such ("Dude, look at the length of that loaf I just pinched!") are best left to your own, and your closest frat buddies', entertainment. But, as I watched Kobayashi place his hands over his mouth to cover his own vomit -- not out of any regard for your viewing pleasure, but simply so that he could force it back down his throat to avoid disqualification -- I wondered why that was any more fit for television than a Pee Wee Herman peep show visit.
Please, if you find yourself sitting in your dorm room and have the urge to 1) down a gallon of milk in one hour, 2) eat two pieces of white bread, unlubricated, in less than a minute or 3) swallow three packets of Saltine crackers in 60 seconds, by all means, do it. The experience is enhanced if you wager on it, and, more importantly, you are not sitting in your room alone.
But don't expect me to pat you on the back for it. Unless you're choking.
Great moments in pop culture gluttony:
M*A*S*H
Corporal Maxwell Klingler, in his most inspired attempt to earn a Section Eight discharge from the army, consumes an entire Jeep.
Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life"
A seriously obese diner is coaxed, after ingesting an egregiously sumptuous feast, into swallowing a tiny after-dinner mint. The diner explodes.
Stand By Me
Gordie relates the tale of Lardass Hogan, who exacts revenge on his tormentors by turning a pie-eating contest into a full-blown "barf-o-rama".
The Simpsons
Homer sues an all-you-can-eat restaurant after it runs out of food before his hunger has been sated. His attorney, the irrepressibly slimy Lionel Hutz, asks the jury, "Do those sound like the words of a man who's had ALL he can eat?"
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
A veritable parable against gluttony, avarice and ill-tempered brats.
The Great Outdoors
Chet Ripley (John Candy) visits a steakhouse and wolfs down "the ol' 96er," a 96-ounce steak, so that the rest of his family can dine for free.
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