This is getting as embarrassing as Australia's run of America's Cup victories in the 1980s:
For the fifth straight year, it was a victory Takeru Kobayashi could truly relish. Kobayashi, 27, captured the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest Monday, gobbling a nauseating 49 dogs in 12 minutes — but missing his own world record of 53 1/2, set at last year's July Fourth competition.
The win means the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt will return to Japan for the ninth year out of the past 10. New Jersey's Steve Keiner, who won in 1999, is the only American to capture the title in the past decade.
Kobayashi, of Nagano, stands 5 feet 7 inches and weighs just 144 pounds.
Shameful, my countrymen, utterly shameful. As if it wasn't bad enough that our technical and scientific prowess has succumbed to "brain drain" and the encroachment of fundametalist dogma masquerading as biology and paleontology, now a nation that once proudly held the title of "world's fattest" can't even seize the hot dog eating crown for some scrawny Japanese guy?
The runner-up was Sonya Thomas of Alexandria, Va. — known as The Black Widow on the competitive-eating circuit — who set an American record by downing 37 hot dogs in the same 12 minutes.
[...]
Thomas, who weighs a remarkable 105 pounds, is a rising speed-eating star. Last December in Atlantic City, N.J., she finished off 89 meatballs — about six pounds' worth — in 12 minutes. And in August, she captured a lobster-eating contest in Maine by consuming 38 of the creatures in 12 minutes.
I absolutely love the coverage this shit gets. Even better is getting to watch something like this on ESPN, which gave up being a "sports" channel when it started running poker tournaments 18 hours a day. For the record, anything you can do as well or better while drunk is not a sport, and binge eating certainly falls into that category[1].
If they insist on showing this crap on sports stations (and not, say, the Food Network), the least they could do is air a follow-up program on Discovery Health or TLC where the contestants can go to the next logical step and have a Puke-Off or something similar. In the interest of being thorough, they really owe it to us to provide full coverage.
It's nothing less than these role models deserve.
[1] As do bowling, darts, billiards, cards, dogsled racing, and golf.
Move over Kung Fu Hussle, here comes Snow White Hussle. Smile, you're on Commie camera (via ESWN, who's got a photo montage example) Experts who support China's currency position. But China's currency controls are hitting one group hard: private equit......
| --Posted to Simon World on Jul 6, 2005 9:45 PM:. |
LOL, I nearly spewed a lung when I saw the weiner coverage on ESPN. What's next? Speed corn shucking?
It's not so much worse than Hit me baby or the real gilligans island. i mean, if we're gonna watch shit...this is pretty cheap to produce. by the way, did you see the espn produced ball of cud that they claimed was what 50 hot dogs would look like inside the stomach? truly hideous.