“You know how many times of the day I answer questions about poop?”

October 16, 2023 7:56 AM

Though hot dog eating isn’t immune to any of the friction that greater American culture is—in some cases, it might even magnify it—none of this is enough to keep its passionate community out of the game. Despite their wildly different day-to-day lives, pro eaters remain close throughout the year, with the Nathan’s Contest as a cherished annual summit. from Everything You Never Knew About Competitive Eating
posted by chavenet (8 comments total)

"Is this written by Jamie Loftus?" I thought when I clicked on the link "ah, yep."

I read her recent book: Raw Dog last month. It solidified my feeling that I should really skip books written by comedians and/or podcasters. A huge chunk of the book is her going to Nathan's Contest and gushing over it.

She also hosted an episode of Behind the Bastards talking about George Shea, the MC, hypeman, and ghoul who runs Major League Eating.
posted by Neronomius at 8:18 AM on October 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

In a vague parallel to the competitive eating technique of consuming the dog and the bun separately, I get the feeling I’m reading Raw Dog one human interest story at a time.

That, or these are the offcuts that didn’t make it into the sausage.
posted by zamboni at 9:07 AM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Eh, I don’t think I’ve ever read or listened to something by Loftus that I didn’t enjoy and come away with some humanizing insight. She’s definitely got a “tone,” though, and if it doesn’t resonate, well, it’s not going to work. Like she goes into things with this surface naive enthusiasm, and, along the way, she reveals how much better, worse, or more interesting you thought it was. Saying that, I have not listened to Raw Dog yet, although it’s in my list.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:09 AM on October 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I just wrote a rant about Raw Dog but this post isn't about that book so I'll just say Jamie Loftus is not my cup of tea. Between Raw Dog and her Mensa podcast, I find her to be the opposite of humanizing.
posted by queensissy at 12:08 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm with queensissy on Loftus' writing.

Frankly, IMO humanizing this kind of thing is wrong, if not plain evil. This typical American conspicuous consumption shouldn't be normalized as some kind of entertainment. Maybe pulling out the 'people are starving' line is naive, but in a world facing environmental disaster, maybe attitudes need to shift a bit. Along with being naive, I'm a bleeding heart. Maybe we could take the, not inconsiderable, amount of money spent on this kind of tacky crap and put it toward food banks, school lunches, feeding immigrants ....
In addition to being judgmental and narrow-minded, I visualize the audience for this as being gun-toting, Kardashian-watching, book burning, anti-LGBTIQA+, Trumpists. Basically not folks I'd want to hang out with, even if Iwasn't disgusted by watching competitive eating.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:47 PM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Like it or not, competitive eating is America. It's got public spectacles featuring rampant overconsumption, racism, misogyny, and giant corporations controlling it all. You couldn't come up with a better confirmation of other countries' views of the US if you tried (okay, maybe pro wrestling).
posted by tommasz at 1:07 PM on October 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

I need to do some bucket list things, because I may die

did this realization happen before or after eating 83 hot dogs
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:50 PM on October 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

My, at the time, two teenage boys wanted me to bring home 100 McNuggets one day after work. They explained that they were going to have a McNugget eating contest. Like a good father (oops) I agreed to buy at least 100 of those things. (Turns out, when you order 5 20 packs they give you A LOT of packages of sauce. Straight up 10 minutes who could eat more. I have it on video. My older son, one who is in the military and works out 3x a day, he had more capacity but quit after 31. My younger son went the distance, the full 10 minutes. He wanted to eat at least 51, one more than half. 55. He ate 55 of those gross McNuggets in 10 minutes.

Btw, it was NOT 2 days. The son who "won", he has stomach issues. He was giving back the McNuggets in about 4 or 5 hours.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:18 PM on October 16, 2023 [6 favorites]