Grown humans cram hot dogs down their gullets in quest for snug championship belt

Nothing says America better than a well-attended, sweat-filled display of gluttony. That's why I spent part of my Fourth of July holiday quelling my gag reflex and watching ESPN's coverage of the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. As promised, the competition turned into a true clash of the titans with six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi and his bad jaw going head-to-head with Joey Chestnut and his freakishly expandable stomach. Kobayashi is Japanese. Chestnut is American. In case you didn't know that, ESPN was there to say it a whole lot during the broadcast. There was even a helpful graphic showing past battles between the U.S. and Japan, thankfully stopping short of World War II.

It was an impressive field of competitors with champions who specialized in all sorts of competitive eating, including the intimidating, bad-ass field of strawberry shortcake consumption. Chestnut himself is a champion waffle eater and recently downed more than seven pounds of medium-hot hot wings in 12 minutes. Sure, I just get weird looks when I try to do that, but these guys get trophies. It's sexism, I tell you!!

Kobayashi and Chestnut proved to be well-matched, with the two leading the pack for the entire competition. At one point, Chestnut had a five dog lead over Kobayashi, who mounted an impressive comeback, taking the lead at one point and looking as though he might re-take the title...until the last seconds when he suffered what competitive eaters (or at least ESPN) refer to as "a reversal of fortune." And yes, it was disgusting. There's nothing like watching a sweaty man slap his hands over his mouth to try and hold back an explosively vomitous mass of hot dog and wet bun. Chestnut won the contest with a new record of 66 dogs swallowed. Kobayashi came in second with 63. Our victory over Japan was complete, and the ghost of General MacArthur could rest once more.

Back to the whole "reversal of fortune" thing. I can't believe this competition helps Nathan's sell hot dogs. Who finds the sight of men and women with pulsating forehead veins and gobs of hot dog juice streaming out of their mouths attractive? Does that make me want to eat? No. In fact, it makes me want to remove my stomach and never ever think about food, let alone Coney Island pork products, again.

Now if we were talking pie, that'd be totally different.

Self-taught, self-graded, self-graduated

Did you ever take a class in college and think, "Jeez, I could teach better than this tweed-wearing bloke." (One assumes you were British when you thought this.) Well, now's your chance, thanks to MIT OpenCourseWare which offers almost all the tools you need to take an MIT class without actually taking an MIT class. You get access to the course syllabus, a list of reading materials, downloadable lecture notes, homework assignments and in a number of cases, access to discussion groups so you can talk over the material with other self-learners as you go. The only thing missing? Teachers and grades. There are a ton of classes from which to choose, including political science, poetry and literature, aeronautics, nuclear science, music and roughly 200 others. All you've got to do is hunt down the textbooks, which may or may not be difficult depending on how good your local library is. For anyone who would still be in school if not for those ungodly tuition costs, this is a cool higher-ed toy. And just think, now's your chance to create your own sorority. I intend on hazing my cat mercilessly.

I get to throw things at Dawn!

This Friday night, my local art house movie theater is debuting the Buffy Musical Sing-Along. I am thrilled to the tips of my little pink toes. I understand this has grown to near Rocky Horror Picture Show proportions, and I've also heard that I get to shout rude things at Dawn, both of which please me equally.

Have any of you been to the Buffy Sing-Along? What can I expect? Should I wear a helmet of any sort? And most importantly, should I bring my action figures?

I'd raise up my lighter but my hand might freeze off

Forget U2. Forget The Police. Forget Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol, even Spinal Tap. I hereby proclaim Nunatek to be the world's greatest band. Friend of the penguin, comrade of the long-dead Captain Scott, foe to global warming, this five-man band hails from Antarctica and is comprised of research scientists studying evolutionary biology, global warming and ass-kicking rock and roll. They'll be performing, via tape delay, at this Saturday's Live Earth concert, fulfilling the organizers' hope of having at least one band perform on each continent.

"You've got to remember, although we've got a very big following within the British Antarctic Survey — and in particular, Rothera station — we may not have the worldwide renown that some of the other acts have," said my new rock star crush Tristan Thorne in a great, tongue-in-cheek interview on NPR yesterday.

Nunatek, which is a Greenlandic word for mountain peaks protruding through ice sheets, will start their concert outside at around three o'clock in the afternoon in dull Antarctic light and a balmy temperature of around 10 degrees below zero Celsius before moving indoors to a venue that Thorne calls "very popular venue known as the 'sledge stall.'" The audience will be filled with hard-core fans, i.e., seventeen members of the Rothera Research Station, all crazed and PhD holding.

Check out their performance the day after the concert at liveearth.msn.com. In the meantime, you can check out a video of the band rehearsing:


Rock on, Tristan. Rock on, Nunatek. Whoooooooo!

Bathroom humor, international and classy-like

You know how sometimes important things are really funny? Like if you're a member of the United Nations, you probably giggle every time Ban Ki-Moon's name is mentioned because even though he's an important guy, it still sounds like he was named after a Vegas stripper. It's the same thing with the World Toilet Organization. My dear friend Ray, who I've always thought of as "the sophisticated one," lifted the lid on this organization for me the other day. It's undoubtedly a very, very important group because they're fighting for improved sanitation for people all over the world. The thing is, though, it's called the World Toilet Organization and their logo looks like this:


It's a space age toilet seat, for cryin' out loud. Really. I don't think they're trying too hard for dignity here. Also, there's a toilet entertainment section which turns out to be more than just old copies of Entertainment Weekly stacked against the plunger. They're real games...kinda. There are quizzes like What Kind of Toilet Paper Are You? I'm an "over-dispensing toilet paper, the kind that dangles over the roll and is usually folded into a little triangle, like at hotels. I'm generous and hospitable. People admire me for my emotional availability. And I don't mind if my friends need to unload on me every once in a while." Given the context of the quiz, I find that phrase "unload on me every once in a while" very unsettling and frankly, disturbing. There are games, too, like Toilet Quest, where you have to find toilet paper and a stall. If you lose, there's an unfortunate flood of urine. Or so I've heard. There's also the Urgent Game and, I'm not kidding you, the Catch a Shit game. Honestly, these guys gave up on respectability eons ago.

I urge you (no pun intended...well, maybe a little pun) to visit the site. If you really get into it, you can attend World Toilet College. (Diplomas supplied by Charmin.) In the meantime, let's all prepare for World Toilet Day on November 19, upon which day we will all be flush with pride.

Sorry.