Saturday, July 04, 2009

happy independence day

The July 4th eating contest occurred this morning.



My brother claims to be the biggest fan of Joey Chestnut, the American eating contest chmapion.

Tom: "Experts said the 60 hot dog barrier couldn't be broken by humans! It was like the four-minute mile. Joey Chestnut proved them wrong. He's really a symbol of human achievement."


The Japanese champion, shown here after eating almost six pounds of pizza to win a Pizza Hut eating contest.

8 comments:

ArC said...

Wait, didn't Kobayashi break the 50 dog barrier first? {checks Wikipedia} Yes, in 2001, his first year there, he did 50 where the previous record had been 25.

In recent years, Chestnut has challenged Kobayashi and beaten him three straight years... Dear lord, Chestnut ate 68 hot dogs this year, and in 10 minutes. All hot dog contests prior to 2008 had 12 minute durations. We can therefore suggest that Chestnut might have been able to break the _70_ dog limit if he'd had 12 minutes...

N said...

Maybe it was the 60 hot dog barrier, and I misremembered.

Yishan said...

Why is Tom a fan of Joey Chestnut and not Takeru Kobayashi? Is it due to the famous Chinese racism against the Japanese, who have never apologized for their WW2 atrocities?

N said...

Tom said: "After this year, joey has proven he is the best eater in the world, hands and buns down!"

Unknown said...

@writer - maybe Tom is cheering for the hometown hero... Joey Chestnut is from San Jose and appears to have lived in the Bay Area his whole life.

ArC said...

Chestnut does have that 'local boy' thing, as he's a San Jose resident... As well, he's an American (like Niniane and Tom) _and_ he's now taken the crown three straight years. So there's a few reasons to root for him. OTOH, Kobayashi revolutionized the, uh, "sport".

Hey Niniane, have you heard of the 'Black Widow' - Sonya Thomas? She's like Kobayashi - small & thin, but a champion eater.

Unknown said...

@ArC - if you watched the competition live, you saw that ESPN interviewed two Asian American female competitive eaters - Korean American Sonya Thomas ('Black Widow') who as her day job manages a Burger King and Chinese American "The Lovely" Juliet Lee, former Ninjing University chemistry professor and current hair salon owner.

Maybe Niniane and Tom can be an unstoppable sister-brother competitive eating circuit...

ArC said...

JKL - I watched a competitive eating contest once and have no desire to ever do so again. The concept is amusing in abstract, but kinda disgusting when seen in action.