Blog #6 4th of July at Nathan's

Coney island has a thick, awful smell to it.  Sweat, hot air and hard boiled eggs -  a lingering, unescapable odor, somewhere between some kind of gas leak and sweaty, stinky people eating kimchi.  I arrived in New York four months ago.  This would be my first time smelling or seeing Coney Island, NY.  I met up with a girlfriend of mine that I was pseudo dating for a couple months.  After a long and hot subway ride, we arrive at our destination.  This is my interpretation of the sights and sounds that I witnessed at Nathan's hot dog contest.  It is July 4th.  This great nations birthday.
The Crowd was massive, restless and braying; the weather was blistering.  I came home that night with the skin color of a fresh broiled lobster.  The contest is framed against a giant, semi-derelict amusement park, like a Carnival in one of Wes Craven's nightmare in which strains of fairground music mingle with the din of over priced-trinket merchants.  It's all a little like the county fairs that we have down south.
As my lady friend and I press our way as close to the hot dog spectacle as is safe, we hear Soulja Boy's music start thumping from the speakers onstage.

Hip-twirling cheerleaders in silver hot pants are greeted by largely male whistles.  A burly rapper with a faltering delivery joins them, and then a dwarf, clad in the Stars and Stripes.  Before the audience, now properly fired up, is treated to trampolining "sky-riders," acrobats, and a strange salsa-burlesque dance medley.  I'm hit in my bald head by a flying pink Pepto-Bismol blow up toy.  Pepto-Bismol is an official sponsor of the event.
Is this about food?  I'm bewildered and confused.  Then I realize this is how it's done:  Nathan's is a spectacle of American pride; the competitive-eating element is simply the very lean middle between two large, all-inclusive buns.  The wacky ringmaster, George Shea, wears a crazy straw hat and spats stomach acid-inducing, inflated commentary.  "He's so skinny he's almost two-dimensional, "he says.  Regarding defending champion and world record holder Joey Chestnut: "His DNA is the blueprint of an archangel's. "The audience loves George.  I love George.

I'm jammed up between a few of the fattest Americans in the world.  This is such a celebration of gluttony that I'm relishing every minute of it.

 Sorry about that mental image....  Here have some of this.

The idea of competitive eating isn't simply alien to people of other countries. It's America at it's most absurd.  All over the world people are starving, but here it is a form of combat.  A "sport" that strains the stomach muscles, it promotes gluttony and nausea simultaneously - is like a hearty lunch out with friends gone completely wrong.
The list of the competitors and their achievements, to my untrained eye, is not imposing so much as quit odd. A one-way ticket to Crazyland:squids, goat-balls, cow-brains, shoefly-pie, pickled jalapenos. Even hot dogs are turned into an alien object, tallied by the acronym "HDB," for Hot Dog and Bun. The ironies are so heavy they must be deliberate.  When not eating her weight in fast food, Larell Marie, nicknamed "The Real Deal," is a trainer at a gym.  The women go first but by the time it's the men's turn, I'm unashamedly relishing Shea's patter:  "Are you ready to sip from the cup of lava? To make love to the Dragon?"
"Yes!" I scream, as loud as I can.
The contest is serious stuff.  Each contestant has a judge to note any excess scraps and to anticipate any "breach of rules." Like the women, these men aren't the giants one might expect.  The petite six time champ Takeru Kobayashi, who transformed the event in 2001 by smashing the 50 HDB mark (prior to Kobayashi the record was around 20 HDB's, he came and doubled the record) is absent because of a contract dispute the press is trading rumors about his off-site protest-eating plans-but his legacy is obvious in the builds of the competitors.  The .Kobayashi story is a really great story in itself. Evidently he did break the record this year and ate 68 hot dogs.  It was not an official record though.
They begin to introduce all of the contestants, and what records they have broken.  Finally Chestnut arrives--a pretty ordinary-looking guy, though Shea announces that his "stomach is a cauldron." The crowd is massive, swaying completely locked into the spectacle they are about to witness.  The men stare at their hot dogs like lions circling their prey, psyching themselves up.  And then, like that, they're off pouncing on the meat like they are storming Normandy.  Final result: Chestnut ate 62 HDB in 10 minutes.  "He's half-man, half-god," Shea screams!
I'm glad I came to Coney Island.  On this particular day.  It was enjoyable to witness the satire of a hot dog eating contest.  My bald head took a major beating from the relentless sun.  Other than that though, it was an amazing time, simply bonkers.  The whole time I watched these warriors chow down on their hot dogs, I was thinking.  "I can do that".  So after watching Chestnut drop down his sixty second hot dog.

I walked over to the hod dog stand and had one hot dog... I was full.

After the furor died down, the euphoria of the day deflated to the crumpled inflatable toys underfoot, I yell at "Notorious B.O.B."

"But you have pie-eating contests in Oklahoma don't you? Don't you?" The girl I'm with says.  "Isn't that kinda the same?"
"They're nothing like this," I reply.