We shy away from nationalism as a general rule, but we were nevertheless heartened by the news that one Joey Chestnut has broken the world record for number of hot dogs eaten in twelve minutes by shoving 59.5 hot dogs (and their buns) into his craw during the allotted time. And this wasn’t just any hot dog eating contest - Joey’s feat of gluttony was performed at the Tempe, AZ Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest regional qualifier this past Saturday. The Contest, which takes place on July 4th (remember nationalism?) at the original Nathan’s in Coney Island, Brooklyn, will be an epic showdown between Mr. Chestnut and the heretofore indomitable current champion, Mr. Kobayashi. What do we have against Kobayashi? Just the sneaking suspicion that he’s an experimental project of the Japanese government, because have you seen how skinny he is? And to his credit, Chestnut is not even some huge fat American - just a normal guy, a few months younger than us (oh, how we’ve wasted our youth when we could have been eating competitively!) Anyway, the YouTube evidence:
Kobayashi is not going to take this challenge lying down - expect someone to crack 60 on the big day. We will be paying attention.
Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest [Official Site]
Joey Chestnut breaks all-time hotdog eating record [YouTube]
