Before I even opened this book, which is about one of the fastest growing “sports” in America, competitive eating, I thought: ah, I know this scene. I remembered the mainstay of my school’s summer show: a cream-cracker-eating competition, which was always a hoot because you might see Reed, the German teacher, half choking to death on a load of crumbs. As it turns out, however, I knew not a thing. Horsemen of the Esophagus, which is nothing if not committed to its subject, takes you way, way beyond cream crackers. It takes you to a world where a ruptured stomach — which, should it be mistaken for chronic indigestion, leads to almost certain death — is a definite possibility. It takes you, in other words, to a place you might rather not visit. It made me feel sick.
Its author, Jason Fagone, is a magazine journalist from Philadelphia, the home of a chicken-wing-eating competition known as the Wing Bowl — and it was this feast of flesh and bones that first piqued his interest in competitive eating. But then, having surfed a few Web sites, he became inexplicably hooked on the whole culture of it — the Lord alone knows why. The only plausible reason I can come up with is that suitable subjects for gonzo journalism are pretty thin on the ground these days, and Fagone is an aspiring young disciple of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe (it is the latter whom he impersonates the most convincingly). Then again, he doesn’t actually indulge himself. The nearest he gets to dealing with 50 hot dogs in one sitting is when he mashes a load together with some water in a plastic container that has the same capacity, theoretically, as a human stomach. Yeuch!
Here are a few competitive eating facts. There are 75 official events — that is, sanctioned by the International Federation of Competitive Eating — on the sport’s US calendar, for which the total prize money in 2004 was US$60,000; by last year, this figure had swollen to more than US$160,000, a large proportion of which was picked up by a South Korean immigrant, Sonya Thomas. Many of the competitions are screened on the sports channel ESPN, and are watched by millions. But for the sport’s advocates and administrators, this is merely the tip of the iceberg: they would like competitive eating to take its rightful place at the Olympics. “I strongly believe that we have overtaken curling in the overall pantheon of sports,” says George Shea, the chairman of the Federation. “And I think tennis is next.” As a publicity stunt for a Spam-eating contest, Shea once organized an Olympic-style “torch run” using a can of Spam mounted on a chair leg.
Fagone is fascinated by this stuff — a little too fascinated — and travels across the US in hot pursuit of the champs he calls the “Four Horsemen of the Esophagus”: Bill “El Wingador” Simmons, David “Coondog” O’Karma, Eric “Badlands” Booker and, most surprisingly of all, a New York trader called Timothy “Eater X” Janus. During this odyssey, he is preoccupied by three burning questions. First, how do these men do it? A Japanese eater, Takeru Kobayashi, can eat 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes, yet he’s a slip of a thing. Where does all that meat go? Second, why do they do it? Why do they risk their health for ... well, the privilege of appearing on ESPN and getting to wear a silly crown that announces to the world just how much shoofly pie they’ve managed to consume? (Shoofly pie is an Amish delicacy; it’s coffee cake with a gooey molasses bottom, and a handy shortcut to type two diabetes). And third, what does this sport and its growing popularity, tell us about the US?
The first question is never really answered, though the gurgitators do reveal many of their lavatory habits (models can’t touch them when it comes to laxative abuse). Ditto the second.
Because not even they know what drives them. “I’m basically putting 11,000 calories into my body with the chance I could get hurt,” says Ed “Cookie” Jarvis. “What for? There’s gotta be a cause.” As for the third, Fagone grows too fond of his chomping, chewing, chowing mates; not admiring exactly, but painfully aware of their outsize (they are mostly outsize) humanity. So he shies away from a proper analysis of what it all means; that might involve disgust, and he doesn’t want to upset anyone. Instead, he makes do with pointing out that America is neither the first, nor the only, country to indulge in such spectacles of gorging (they date back to the Norse myths) — and with quoting Ralph Nader, the presidential candidate who, in 2003, named competitive eating as a major sign of “societal decay.” Fagone’s failure of distance renders his book a curiously bloated affair.
Like his new friends on the eating circuit, the author doggedly consumes an awful lot of rubbish — and then emits this great, big windy burp.
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
China’s military launched a record number of warplane incursions around Taiwan last year as it builds its ability to launch full-scale invasion, something a former chief of Taiwan’s armed forces said Beijing could be capable of within a decade. Analysts said China’s relentless harassment had taken a toll on Taiwan’s resources, but had failed to convince them to capitulate, largely because the threat of invasion was still an empty one, for now. Xi Jinping’s (習近平) determination to annex Taiwan under what the president terms “reunification” is no secret. He has publicly and stridently promised to bring it under Communist party (CCP) control,
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
On Sept. 27 last year, three climate activists were arrested for throwing soup over Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh at London’s National Gallery. The Just Stop Oil protest landed on international front pages. But will the action help further the activists’ cause to end fossil fuels? Scientists are beginning to find answers to this question. The number of protests more than tripled between 2006 and 2020 and researchers are working out which tactics are most likely to change public opinion, influence voting behavior, change policy or even overthrow political regimes. “We are experiencing the largest wave of protests in documented history,” says
RSS