Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest 2007

Image of the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest 2007

Images courtesy of acordova

I saw a link on digg.com this morning for the results of the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, a particularly intense competition this year which was televised on ESPN. Now it goes without saying that I am extremely proud that the gold has finally been brought back to US soil, for it has been a long, difficult six years in which we have had to tolerate the foreign hot dog eating prowess of Takeru Kobayashi. Congratulations Joey Chestnut -what a name, what a guy!
Sign that reads Eat Joey Eat

Beyond the intense nationalistic pride I derive from one of this country’s most important sporting events held in its most important city by the sea, I actually got a fun reminder of the wikipedia-as-journalism phenomenon that the New York Times talked about recently here. The digg.com link was to wikipedia wherein I found such a wealth of information about the contest with the most up-to-date information along with an in-depth history of the event that I started to realize yet again, just how much I love wikipedia. I mean come on, Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi already have their own articles, and they are both extremely substantial. We live in interesting times, indeed.

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8 Responses to Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest 2007

  1. Amanda says:

    Hey Jim!

    I hope you’re having a great summer…I just checked your blog (duh!) and I feel compelled to admit that I watched the entire hour coverage of the hot dog eating competition on ESPN yesterday-Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions! While I think it was overkill for the announcer to proclaim the victory “the greatest moment in sports history” I do think that someone eating sixy-six hot dogs in twelve minutes deserves something…

    To further complicate my feelings about this event…the previous evening I’d gone to see Michael Moore’s new documentary “Sicko”…I have to say that based on the state of our country’s health care system, i’m not sure that anyone should try to top 66 hot dogs.

    -now i’m going to go check the wikipedia entries because I want to know the biology behind the phenomenon

    talk to you later!

  2. jimgroom says:

    hey Amanda,

    Very cool that you watched the ESPn live coverage. Hot Dog eating has finally arrived 🙂 Now what’s going on with our Virginia Woolf reading group? No updates from Facebook -and longingly wanting to talk about modernist poetics.

    Maybe we can even make it bbq with ribs, burgers, and plenty of hot dogs!

  3. Brian says:

    Not to dampen your nationalistic pride (and I’m feeling very, very pro-Brooklyn lately), but didn’t Kobayashi have a jaw injury? And he still didn’t lose by much… In the spirit of human fellowship, can we set aside differences and acknowledge that the dude is the Wayne Gretzky (or the Babe Ruth, have it your way) of colon-distending faux-food consumption?

    BBQ and high modernism, y’all do it right…

  4. jimgroom says:

    Brian,

    I’m still trying to digest your previous awesome comment here -man that is a sick one. You nail Kubrick and Sellers, and part of why I singled out Kubrick for auteur theory has so much to do with the very things you articulated so well there. Why does it feel like I am blogging for you on regular basis, like a distended conversation? More on that shortly…

    As for the weiners, well -you blow me away, baby! I love the fact that you might actually know whether or not Kobayashi really had a jaw injury, and if he didn’t and you’re having fun with me then that makes you double the genius. Guess I’m gonna have to look that fact up on wikipedia. As for Gretzky, hmmm, isn’t he the guy who…

  5. Matt says:

    Legend has it that, circa 1999, a mysterious man wearing large black spectacles and a Thurman Munson jersey downed ninety-seven dirty-water dogs in five minutes while sitting in the right-field bleachers at Yankee Stadium. Sadly, cameras failed to capture the feat, but locals swear that “Big Jim”, as they call him, will return one day to reclaim his rightful crown.

  6. jimgroom says:

    Ya know, I think I heard that legend too, Matt. We may just have to head over to the Cathedral and ask some of the bleacher creatures if they have any recollection of such a feat. or such an unbelievable attractive marvel 🙂

  7. Brian says:

    Kobayashi citation here:

    http://www.cantstopthebleeding.com/?p=10445

    Man, if there is a genre where bloggers kick establishment media’s sorry ass around more soundly than in sports…

    Oh wait, there’s rock and roll.

    As ever, I will strive to ignore your jibe at the Great One, and blush at your extravagant praise. I can barely keep up reading you these days, much less match you blow for rhetorical blow…

    Let’s make sure we talk lots of Kubrick and Sellers next time we see each other. I won’t go for quantity — I ain’t the binge eater I used to be, the occasional late-night pizza session excepted — but we can score some primo sausage and serve it up on Portuguese buns with hot mustard. Hopefully Dr. Glu will be there in some form to keep us aloft.

  8. Kobayshi succeeds Joey Chestnut this time. That’s captivating in order to discover exactly how they consume satay, not sure just what satay is actually?

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