by Ryan Nerz
For Audree and Clifford Perrine
and for
Dale Pontoosh
Contents
Prologue: Bedlam in Philly
1 A Carnival Barker in Training
2 The Gentle Gigantic Warrior
3 Meat Pies in Natchitoches
4 The Eruption of Dale Boone
5 A Not-So-Brief History of Competitive Eating
6 The Mardi Gras Maneuver
7 Ed Krachie and the Belt of Fat Theory
8 Corned Beef, Cabbage, and Characters
9 Moses of the Alimentary Canal
10 The Emperor of Ice Cream
11 Downing Deep-Fried Asparagus
12 The Nader Dispute: For and Against Competitive Eating as a Sport
13Escape from the Popcorn Sarcophagus
14 The Secessionists
15 Noodles and the Roman Incident
16 The First Couple of Competitive Eating
17 On the Wing Tour with the Black Widow
18 The Big Daddy of Them All: Nathan’s Famous on the Fourth of July
19 Lunch with the Greatest Eater Alive
20 Soaring on the Wings of a Buffalo
21 The Godfather
22 Training for Gurgitory Greatness
23 Downing Sliders on the Krystal Circuit
Epilogue: Wing Bowl XIII: The End of the Line
Appendix: IFOCE Competitive Eating Records
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Bedlam In Philly
It’s an important event in American culture. There’s probably nothing in America that speaks to the average American guy as much as Wing Bowl…. What you have here is an Olympic event for the couch potato.
—Al Morganti, WIP Morning Show
JANUARY 30, 2004
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
It’s 4:00 A.M., pitch-black and frigid out. The only people left on the roads are truck drivers, cabbies, and those with suspicious motives. Even the partyers have grabbed their last Philly cheesesteaks and headed home. And yet the parking lot outside the Wachovia Center is jam-packed. Hordes of young men in hooded sweatshirts and stocking caps are raising plastic cups into the air, woo-hoo-ing and cackling like madmen. They gather in clumps around cars and bonfires, chanting and dancing and drinking, always drinking. There’s one on top of a truck, ripping off his shirt. There’s one tossing a full beer into a fire. Over there, between those cars—there’s one pissing on a tire.
A Jeep full of teenage girls drives by and is instantly besieged by rabid, dead-eyed guys on all sides. Most of them are wearing green jerseys, so it looks like the formation of an organized mob. Hard rock music—an anthem for mayhem—blares from someone’s car, and one begins to wonder whether there’s something more than beer in all those plastic cups.
What the hell is going on? Who is running the show, and at what point should the riot police be called in? Why are all these people here? The answer comes in the form of a rebel yell, performed spontaneously by three sloshed revelers. “Wing Bowl! Wing Bowl! Wing Bowl!”
Meanwhile, at the arena’s back gate, nine workers start unloading nearly seven thousand chicken wings from a fleet of trucks. As 4:30 A.M. approaches, the masses begin to migrate. A line has formed, beginning at the arena’s entrance and slithering around the perimeter of the parking lot like a snake. At 5:30, the doors open. People squeeze through the turnstiles and sprint into the arena. With free admission and minimal door security, the entrance vomits forth a steady stream of humanity.
Once inside, the meaning behind the hysteria doesn’t immediately reveal itself. The infield is a hockey rink without the ice, Plexiglas boards separating fans from whatever show awaits. Twenty thousand people are hurrying to get the best seats. A row of empty tables faces a host of reporters and bystanders, but nothing is happening. The few dozen young ladies prancing about onstage, half-dressed in outfits that don’t much test the imagination, are the only evidence of things to come.
At 7:20 A.M., the show finally starts. A man wearing a vest and some undies, flanked by two curvaceous coeds and holding a caged live chicken, enters the stadium and does a lap around the circular promenade. Then an odd procession begins—what cynics might call a parade of freaks. The central characters have names like Totally Apauling and Wingo Starr. They are surrounded by entourages packed with friends and scantily clad dames called Wingettes—a nice way of saying “strippers.” Each character’s approach has a concept behind it, the depths of which vary greatly.
Dan the Cop, who qualified for the contest by eating fourteen hundred cheese balls, pushes a wheelbarrow filled with giant cheese balls, two of which hang from his groin. His T-shirt reads EAT THESE. Johnny Huevos makes a grand entrance in his Lord of the Wings outfit. A hole in the suit shows off his hairy paunch, a sight that can only be described as unpleasant. A rubber chicken dangles just out of the reach of Chitlins Chuck, who is held back by a half dozen ropes. The aptly named Dough Boy, a 390-pound ball of pudge, comes out with his hands pressed together in prayer, dressed like Friar Tuck. An emcee explains that this is his last Wing Bowl because afterward he’s getting gastric bypass surgery. “So in honor of the fact that this is technically his last meal,” she says, “he is coming in as the Last Supper.”
The eater known as Coondog enters the arena entourageless, wearing a smug smile, a Mohawk, and a Green Bay Packers jersey. With a jolt, he lifts a pair of signs that show the score of the Philadelphia Eagles’ recent loss to the Panthers in the NFC Championship game. The shower of cups and cans is so violent that he’s forced to cower next to the Plexiglas in the fetal position. Apparently prepared for the assault, Coondog uses his signs as shields. Dear Lord. Whatever happened to the city of brotherly love?
The reception of the “New York eaters,” as they’re contemptuously called, isn’t much warmer. Their approach is decidedly different from that of the other eaters. They seem to be a team, and they don’t have concepts. They do, however, wear the same navy blue T-shirts, each one emblazoned with an obscure combination of letters: IFOCE. One of them, an enormous black man with a boyish smile, named Badlands, grabs the microphone and dedicates a rap to the crowd. His lyrics are drowned out by boos. The last and most noteworthy of the IFOCE eaters is a hundred-pound Asian woman named the Black Widow, who’s wearing lavender eye shadow and a black boa around her neck. Contradicting her nickname, she smiles and waves at the crowd as if this were a bake sale.
A competitive eater, his cheeks stained by wing sauce and lipstick, chews while being cheered on by an entourage of Wingettes.
When the Rocky theme starts playing, the mood suddenly shifts. Before the announcer even utters a word, fans stand up and lift their cups in homage. “One of the all-time best,” says the announcer. “Our reigning champion, at 314 pounds, from Woodbury Heights, New Jersey, at two-to-one odds, it’s El Wingador!” The place goes bananas, but the entourage is so massive it’s hard to see whom all the ruckus is for. Finally, a man in a white satin boxer’s robe emerges from the tunnel. The roar from the crowd is so epic, the emotion so pure, you would’ve thought Rocky Balboa himself had just entered the building. A truck driver by profession, El Wingador is a demigod here, worshiped like a hybrid of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the heavyweight champion of the world.
8:00 A.M. Time for the main event. As Wingettes start setting paper plates stacked high with wings before their assigned contestants, two blond dominatrices pose for pictures with a man in a chicken mascot costume. A stirring rendition of “God Bless America” is sung. Bathing in a shower o
f confetti, one dominatrix climbs a ladder and tosses an egg to the arena floor. Splat. “Three…two…one!” And they’re off.
At first, the actual eating contest seems somewhat anticlimactic for the wasted crowd. Because the competition takes place between plate and mouth, the masses depend on the JumboTron to see what’s going on. The images on the giant screen are arresting—large men eating chicken as fast as they can, surrounded by bare midriffs, hot shorts, and fake breasts. But attention spans being what they are, the crowd soon starts watching itself. A fight breaks out and people swarm toward it, standing on their seats for a better look. Every few minutes some anonymous booze-soaked woman gets up on someone shoulder’s and shows off her tits for several thousand leering men. The crowd’s attention is briefly recaptured by the halftime show, which consists of two men crushing a twelve-pack of beer cans against their foreheads until they are ribboned with bloody, beer-drenched cuts.
What is this? What’s happening here? To call it a wing-eating competition is in no way satisfying. It’s a cultural dramedy of some sort, but celebrating what? Its origins shed a little light on the subject. Wing Bowl began in 1991 as a publicity stunt, the brainchild of Al Morganti and Angelo Cataldi, on-air personalities at the WIP Morning Show, a popular radio sports show in Philadelphia. In the early nineties, as the Super Bowl approached each January, Philadelphia Eagles fans found themselves left out. To simultaneously lift the community spirit and mock the Buffalo Bills fans who kept cheering their team to annual Super Bowl losses, the WIP crew decided to do what they do best—mock them. Stealing Buffalo’s signature foodstuff, the buffalo wing, and borrowing heavily from professional wrestling, they created a cultural event that, while undeniably American, defies explanation.
Angelo Cataldi describes it as “Fellini meets Hells Angels at a family picnic.” Others call it a frat-party-gone-awry meets pro wrestling event meets Girls Gone Wild video. Whatever it is, even the most gifted fortune-teller couldn’t have predicted that a stunt with two contestants in a hotel lobby would blossom within a decade into a madcap bacchanal that packs a sports arena.
An even better question is: Why? What does it mean that Americans choose this as entertainment? Maybe the answer is self-evident: tits and ass, gorging and binge drinking. It sounds superficially like Everyman’s dream of the perfect party—paradise through the lens of the average Howard Stern listener. But as the event moves forward and the mob’s attention grows more focused on the actual wingeating competition, it seems that there’s something more to it. These people are here, at least in part, to answer that age-old question: How much can you eat? Just as part of the appeal of NASCAR is that everyone drives, the appeal here is that everyone eats. So the competitors are not larger-than-life athletes but regular Joes like themselves, competing at an event that they participate in every day—eating.
It seems significant that four of the final five eaters weigh over three hundred pounds. This is the fat man’s revenge, his chance to be lionized by thousands and surrounded by beautiful women. The second fourteen-minute round ends in a tie for first between two IFOCE eaters—Cookie Jarvis, a 410-pound man, and Sonya Thomas, a waiflike woman, both of whom have downed a staggering 153 wings in twenty-eight minutes. At stake is not only a $17,000 Suzuki Verona automobile, but the last dominion of Everyman.
The two-minute overtime eat-off is pure Darwinism. Both eaters shred meat from bones in a carnivorous frenzy. The image seems like a tangible metaphor for America’s rampant consumerism, but that’s not the point. The speed-eating itself is legitimately entertaining, so much so that thousands of drunken men are no longer focused on all the breasts and midriffs. They appreciate the speed, the rhythm, the technique, even the talent involved here. A commentator notes that Sonya is eating mainly drumsticks, wheeling them around in her mouth like corn on the cob, while Cookie is attacking the wings. Could this be the deciding factor? “Cookie Jarvis is eating with abandon, but he is facing a master!” says George Shea, one of the emcees. “This man has his back against the wall and there is only one thing that is standing between him and victory, and that is chicken wings!”
The buzzer sounds. Judges grab the plates and start tallying. The fans seem impatient for the outcome. This is real drama. “We have a winner!” the emcee yells. It’s Sonya Thomas, 167 wings to 165. Confetti rains down. Sonya is wrapped in a gold lamé cape like a superhero. Somebody places a crown on her head, but it’s too big and keeps falling down. The eater known as Badlands hoists her onto his shoulder with one hand. He sets her down, and she climbs atop her new car and smiles for the flashing cameras.
The crowd cheers heartily, but one senses an undercurrent of disappointment at the crowning of the first female champion. This is supposed to be for fat guys! With all the objectification of women going on, the fact that a tiny, pretty woman has won the eating competition throws everything out of whack. Things are not as they’re supposed to be. Everyman’s hope is dashed. The fat guy has lost at his own game and been replaced by a pretty little princess.
1
A Carnival Barker in Training
Observe the Shea brothers, press agents by trade, carnival barkers in spirit, as they do, in tandem, the most exquisite deadpan in both businesses.
—Joyce Wadler, The New York Times
George Shea (right) chuckles at a comment made by his brother, Rich Shea, during the introduction of the September 2003 Cannoli Eating Contest, part of the Feast of San Gennaro in New York’s Little Italy. (Courtesy of Matt Roberts/IFOCE)
Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve wanted to be a competitive-eating emcee. Okay, that’s a lie, but it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. When I moved to New York after graduating from an Ivy League college in 1997, I wanted to become a writer. My first job was as an editor of children’s books, but I grew tired of editing other people’s material and quit. I began writing whatever the world would pay me to write—pseudonymous contributions to the Sweet Valley High series, unauthorized biographies of teen stars, restaurant and music reviews. I used my friends’ names for characters in steamy teen-romance novels, which amused them greatly. As the author of a character guide to Digimon, a popular Japanimation TV show on the Fox Kids network, I found myself almost disturbingly excited to sit around watching cartoons each afternoon. The pay wasn’t overwhelming, but I was having a blast in New York and my job provided priceless conversation at parties and on dates.
To pay the bills, I took odd jobs. I waited tables, conducted exit polls, edited personal essays for college applicants, and even modeled for the covers of young-adult novels. On the side, I wrote short stories and screenplays, all the while filling notebooks with ideas for my big breakthrough in the glamorous world of media—but it never came. In the fall of 2001, I fled New York for Berlin to improve my German and write a “real” novel.
Upon my return to the Big Apple in 2002, I decided that “entertainer” was a more apt description of what I wanted to be. I took acting classes and got headshots made. While acting in a dreadful off-off-Broadway play, I found myself reading a novel backstage instead of focusing on my lines. For reasons that eluded everyone but me, I charged a $700 wolf mascot costume to my credit card. It arrived in a giant box, and I immediately began planning my debut as a performance artist.
After e-mailing dozens of friends, I showed up in the costume on the corner of Prince and Broadway, in Manhattan’s chic SoHo district. I placed my cassette player on the ground and pushed play. The idea was to do a sort of live music video that would turn heads and shake up all those dead-serious downtown fashionistas. Despite a particularly moving flute solo, the Wolf garnered a total of $5 for his efforts. Sadly, this performance felt more on-point than anything else I’d done to date. It was at the very least original and felt like a step toward one of my major life goals—getting paid to play.
In June of 2003, I met for drinks with an old buddy, Dave Baer, who shares my interest in all things absurd. He was working for a company called the International Feder
ation of Competitive Eating. I was aware of his offbeat job, having accompanied him back in 1997 to a hot-dog-eating contest in the food court of a mall in upstate New York. My only memory was that Dave, in an attempt to recruit competitors, had played a song from the Boogie Nights sound track. The song was “You Sexy Thing,” by Hot Chocolate, and the chorus began as follows: “I believe in miracles / Where you from? / You sexy thing.” When it came around to the chorus, Dave crooned his own falsetto version into the microphone: “I believe in…hot dogs!” The mallgoers stared up from their food trays, confused, while I doubled over with laughter.
Over drinks, Dave explained that the IFOCE, or the “circuit,” as he called it, was growing at an improbably fast rate. He described one of his favorite “gurgitators,” Eric “Badlands” Booker, an affable subway conductor on New York’s 7 line, who trained by meditating and eating huge portions of cabbage. I was intrigued. The next day, I pitched the idea of chronicling a “training meal” for the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot-dog-eating contest to an editor at the Village Voice. Within a few hours, they offered to pay me fifty cents a word for the piece.
A few months later, I received an e-mail from Dave that changed my life. Would I be interested in hosting a Meat Pie Eating Competition in Natchitoches, Louisiana? They would pick up my travel expenses and pay me fairly handsomely for a few hours of work. It was a no-brainer. Frankly, I would have considered such an undertaking pro bono. My only questions were, What in the Sam Hill is a meat pie? And how do you pronounce Natchitoches?