• by Michael Williams , July 2, 2009

There I was, celebrating our nation's birthday, lightly powdered in Cheetos dust and harassing the last bubbles of a warm beer. Flipping through the channels, in search of some mind-numbing static to equalize the previous night's hangover, I came across what appeared to be an especially festive event.

There, on national TV was the Hot Dog Eating Championship of the world. Live, from Nathan's Hot Dogs on Coney Island. Live I tell you ... live. A hot dog-eating championship ... live. Did I mention they were live? Yes, folks, the results of this gall bladder-busting battle held such consequence to western civilization, it defied taping. Some network executive made that decision. No, really.

I shouldn't be surprised, given we live in a society where a man's social status is gauged by the genre of underwear he slips over his hairy arse, but what in the name of Oscar Mayer is going on in the world where 12 humans, thrusting god-knows-what ground parts of swine into their gullets, rate being on live TV?

Like millions of others, my disdain was soon battered into submission by my schadenfreude, and I eschewed another "South Park" marathon to learn the results. An hour later, a guy was crowned the Duke of Dyspepsia and compared to the likes of the Boston Celtics and New York Yankees. Yeah, right. The only thing that guy has in common with those storied franchises is a cumulative cholesterol level which must measure somewhere in the "custard" strata.

The winner was 170 pounds of MSG-processing sinew. If you're not a close follower of Major League Eating (and who's not?), you probably think the typical hot dog bon vivant is a heaving 400-pound leviathan mere breaths from his last. Not so. He was a little fellow, as are most of the competitors delusional in the dynamics of their duodenum. The lone female in the contest weighed in at a startling 100 pounds. Not that I'm a skeptic, but something tells me there is a feather and a bucket hidden somewhere in her doublewide.

For 12 minutes of mustard-laden mayhem, this event had it all. There was a carnival barker and a mascot that vaguely resembled a hot dog. They had scantily clad hot dog counter "babes." Heck, they even had a midget dressed as Uncle Sam! Gawd bless 'merica!

In spite of the best efforts of the crack announcing team (who must wonder where their careers go from here) to drum up excitement, the real drama did not start until the mini-bus carrying the aforementioned contestants arrived. The miracle of the day was that the eventual winner did not consume his opponents (and bus driver) before they got the doors open. This guy was like the Tasmanian devil with a crack pipe.

One by one, they strode off the bus, each of them elite-level eaters. There was the asparagus-eating world champion. There was the egg-eating champion (where's Cool Hand Luke when you need him?), the Oreo-eating champion, the clam-eating champion. According to the announcers, each of these is a separate "circuit" in the MLE. It's kind of like the truck-racing circuit in NASCAR. Last, but not least, there was the jalapeno-eating champion, who must be the only human above the poverty level with his own outhouse. I swear to god, Charmin is whiffing on one of the all-time great marketing opportunities with that guy.

Anyway, the winner was awarded a championship belt that looked as if it'd been crafted from a hub cap. He also received ... and this is the kicker ... a year's supply of Nathan's Hot Dogs. That's kind of like giving the winner of the Boston Marathon a treadmill. Isn't it?

I don't know about you, but I've already marked my calendar for Saturday's event, when an American will hopefully again reclaim our rightful place at the apex of Frank-ville on the Fourth of July. After years of professional athletes' steroid-induced superlatives, you have to love a sport where Ex-Lax is listed as a performance-enhancing drug.

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