You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating championship.
It’s crazy. it’s sickening. It’s America.
“You wanna watch the hot dog eating contest?” I ask a buddy.
“No way, man. I can’t watch that,” he says grimacing. “It’s too disgusting.”
And there you have it.
A televised debacle that some people can’t watch.
It’s one part little girl in the exorcist, head spinning on shoulders combined with cows being herded into the slaughter house.
Disgusting as hell, yet there it is. Year after year.
A disgusting swallow of half chewed processed meat, dipped in luke warm water and pushed down your throat.
I tune in. For just a few minutes. Even the pre-eat is tough to stomach.
It’s live from Coney Island. It’s raining, skies are grey. Umbrellas are out.
ESPN is covering this made for television event like it’s the NFL.
“Let’s go to the green room,” the announcer spews.
A reporter is interviewing some long-haired kid. His nick name is Mega Toad.
I don’t even know what that means.
“You gonna beat Joey?” she asks.
“Yeah, just in here getting psyched up,” he says, referring to 7 time eating champion, Joey Chestnut.
“Back to you,Jim,” she says.
Then they toss to a Sports Science segment.
Unfortunately it’s about hot dog eating.
I feel a churning in my stomach.
There’s a quick montage of contestants explaining why they dip the hot dogs in liquid.
“Everyone dunks,” a female competitor says. “it’s easier to eat fast.”
“It helps get the air out of the bun,” Mega Toad spews.
Then the sheer disgust of the sport becomes evident.
The host says “during last year’s Nathan’s Hot dog Eating Contest, seven time champ joey chestnut ate 69 hot dogs in 10 minutes.”
I’m about to turn the channel when he says.
“to put it in perspective, we have a hot dog stuffer.”
He shows me a medical mannequin. You know the kind of half torso plastic thing you see in a doctor’s office.
It’s cut in half so you can see the neck and the esophagus and the stomach which has been replaced with an elastic sack.
The host begins cramming moist hot dogs and buns into the top of the neck hole.
The hot dogs jam in the throat, so he uses a stick that he calls the Hot Dog stuffer.
He shoves the liquified goo down the mannequin’s throat and into the elastic bag which simulates a stomach.
“A human can put 1 liter of food into his stomach before becoming nauseous,” he says. “It’s what tells us to stop eating. But competitive eaters have trained themselves to disregard this feeling.”
A graphic appears showing a stomach that can hold four times the amount of a regular human.
“Competitive eaters eat so many hotdogs your stomach expands and pushes other organs out-of-the-way,” he says.
The video dissolves to a stomach that is bigger than a basketball. It is literally protruding out of the mannequin like a trash bag that is filled from a frat party.
The graphic indicates the competitive eating stomach is holding 69 hot dogs, buns and 2 quarts of water.
“zero to nine months pregnant in 10 minutes,” he says
It’s foul. It’s a mess of disgusting meat products churned into a liquified stew.
“69 hot dogs is 20 thousand calories,” he says plunging the esophagus with the hot dog crammer.
“A person could survive for 4 months,” on that,” he smiles.
The segment concludes and I wince. It is horrible. It’s like stepping in fresh dog poop in your bare feet.
The visual squishes between my toes and wraps around my foot like a warm moist burrito.
Joey Chestnut will win his 8th Mustard Belt. Yes they give him a mustard colored yellow belt.
8 Time champ. That’s pretty awesome. It’s also very disgusting.
Before the match, he proposes to his fiance.
She accepts.
How they will consummate the wedding night?
Well that’s probably going to be just as sickening.
Life’s Crazy™