by Ryan Nerz
Though he was generally a good kid, Badlands admits to having “fractured a law or two.” He was heavily into hip-hop culture, which in those days meant tagging his name on the trains, “doin’ graffiti in the yards. I guess it’s poetic justice, because now I’m a conductor on the 7 train,” he says with a laugh, referring to his job of thirteen years.
He wrote rhymes from an early age and credits lunchroom rap battles for his fearlessly competitive attitude. One particular battle sticks out in his mind. To test his verbal mettle, Badlands arranged a lunchroom battle with “one of the nicest cats in school,” a kid who went by the name Royal Rich. Word got around the school, and soon enough kids were talking about cutting their classes to check out the battle.
Badlands borrowed two of his dad’s Kangol hats—one for himself, and one for his man providing the beat box. The lunchroom was packed. Badlands went first, spitting out one of his go-to battle rhymes. Royal Rich responded with an all-out verbal assault, lines like: “Why’d you even waste yo time and go cut yo class? So I could sit here and just whip yo ass?” The lunchroom exploded in “Ohhhh!” As Royal Rich went on to exploit the standard battle-rhyme topic—yo mama—Badlands felt his head sinking lower and lower. By the time Rich had finished, the cafeteria was filled with taunts. “You just got roasted!” “Yo, it’s a wrap for you.”
Despite the odds, Badlands persevered. He forced his friend to do one last beat box and went off on Royal Rich, and his mama, and any other weakness he could think of. The tide turned ever so slightly, and the cafeteria started to cheer him on. Ultimately, Badlands lost the battle, but he gained the respect of his peers. He compares his brave yet hopeless stand to that of Rocky Balboa getting pummeled by Apollo Creed but springing up from the mat and winning the respect of both Apollo and the crowd.
Throughout high school, Booker worked hard to secure a record contract. He made demos and shopped them to hip-hop labels. In return, he received a stream of rejection letters that conceded that he had talent but wasn’t what they were looking for. Still, Badlands kept writing rhymes and perfecting his product—“I kept pitchin’,” he says—biding his time and waiting for an opportunity.
In 1997, while dining with his son near his home in Long Island, Booker spotted Frankster, the Nathan’s Famous mascot, hyping a contest. He had watched the Fourth of July contest results for years, and had always wanted to compete. “And I was like, this must be fate, because things happen for a reason.” He was too late to sign up for the contest, but when George Shea got a look at him, he saw potential. “Don’t worry. We’re gonna find a spot for you,” George said. With no style or technique, Badlands put down seventeen and a half dogs and buns. “I was putting mustard on them and everything,” Badlands says. “I won. I got a big trophy and sixty pounds of hot dogs to train with.”
Over the next few years, Eric Booker developed an alter ego. New York Post reporter Gersh Kuntzman contributed the first brushstroke by providing the nickname Badlands in one of his articles. (Booker still isn’t sure what led to the name, but he likes to say it’s because he comes from the “bad lands of New York.”) “I was always pretty shy and reserved,” Booker admits. “But then Gersh gave me the name Badlands, and George saw something in me that needed to come out. So all my charisma and everything you see in me today, I gotta give it up to them. They awakened the sleeping giant, and the rest is history.”
When Booker is in an eating contest, he becomes Badlands. The transformation, he says, is not unlike that of Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, carefully pointing out that even when Bruce Banner is the Hulk, he still remains Bruce Banner.
Yeah, superhero with a fork and spoon
Train like X-Men in the danger room
Like a pirate, lower epicurean booms
Quicker than soon, bring masticating doom
The first appearance of Badlands as we now know him was at the taping of the two-hour Fox special The Glutton Bowl. After extensive interrogations about his food preferences, he was told that he would be eating hard-boiled eggs in the first round. The producers sent him a ticket, and he boarded a plane for the first time in his life, bound for California. Once there, he asked Takeru Kobayashi for advice on eating eggs, having heard that Kobayashi once downed eighty-seven emu eggs in a contest. Kobayashi graciously offered his technique, which was to bite the egg in half, take a drink, and finish the egg with the next bite. The essential part was to establish a bite-and-drink rhythm, in tune to his favorite hip-hop tune if that helped. Armed with this wisdom, Badlands put down thirty-eight eggs in eight minutes to set the record and take the title.
Afterward, the producers encouraged him to ham it up a bit. Talk some trash, they said, act as if you’re going to Disneyland. Booker puffed up, and out came Badlands. “I was like, ‘Bring it on! I can eat thirty, forty, fifty more eggs! I’m in the Zone! This is Badlands’ contest! What? What?’ ” When the director said, “Cut!” Badlands exhaled and transformed back into Eric Booker. Holding his turgid, aching belly, he vowed not to touch another hard-boiled egg for years.
Though he is by no means a pushover, Eric Booker is one of the nicest, most positive people I’ve ever met. George Shea once described him as “blessed with a serotonin-rich brain.” Whenever you meet up with him, his first question is almost always “What’s good?” He has a bit of a stutter, peppering his conversations with “yi-yi-you know” and “right?” and “you know what I’m sayin’?” This lends his speech a mellifluous singsong quality that almost echoes the rhythm of hip-hop.
But when Badlands raps, there isn’t the slightest trace of a stutter. His quiet confidence morphs into something a bit more explosive and cocky, a quality that he likes to call “lightning in a bottle.” So if you want to hang out with Eric Booker, you can catch him on the 7 train, or at home playing video games with his kids. If you want to hang with Badlands, go check him out at an eating contest. Or better yet, go to his Web site and order yourself a copy of Hungry and Focused, where the Badlands bravado is at its best.
Put a hurting on a food establishment
Owner sees me and the man is adamant
To put up the closed sign in a hurry
And call his supply trucks kinda early
And I know I’m about to be banned
When he’s like, “Don’t come back, understand?
You eat like a sumo, can’t feed ya, man!”
Around the fifth plate realized who I am
They call me Badlands Booker
Superfly like Ron O’Neal and Snuka
Putting the pressure on eaters like cookers
Put on a show for press and onlookers
3
Meat Pies in Natchitoches
It just blew the man’s mind the way I did the six-pound burger and a pound of french fries in twenty-two minutes, because nobody had ever done it before. So I decided to blow his mind a little more and I ordered a thirty-piece chicken wings after that, and I ate that, too.
—“Bayou” Boyd Bulot
Bayou Boyd Bulot (foreground) contemplates the essence of the meat pie, mid-competition, while Dave “the Masticator” May (far end, bushy hair) gauges his rival’s progress. (Courtesy of Keri Fidelak)
SEPTEMBER 19, 2003
I arrived in Natchitoches (pronounced NACK-uh-tish), Louisiana, the night before the competition. The town, which was the setting for the movie Steel Magnolias, was dubbed by Oprah Winfrey “the best little town in the whole USA!” I don’t know if it’s the best town, but it is pretty. The thirty-three-block Natchitoches Historic District, a cluster of restored nineteenth-century colonial, late Victorian, and Greek Revival buildings, has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Driving down historic Jefferson Street in my rented OldsmoBuick, I was shrouded by weeping willows from above, flanked by the banks of the Cane River Lake on one side and the verandas of bed-and-breakfasts on the other. If not for the cars, I could almost imagine myself clodhopping in a horse-drawn buggy through the antebellum South.
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sp; I needed a beer. It was a long flight, half of it spent on one of those claustrophobic propeller planes, and then a forty-minute ride from the airport. Following the sound of music, I discovered that the meat pie festival was already under way. Lines of cars were cruising Jefferson Street at a sleepy crawl. Locals sauntered along a promenade that ran parallel to the river, lined by trailers filled with meat pies and beer. In the middle of the promenade was the main stage, where a zydeco band was playing.
I bought a Budweiser and a meat pie, seizing the opportunity to size up the competitive foodstuff. The crescent-shaped pastry was tasty, even delicious, but all the elements that provided its flavor could be hindrances in competition. While the crispy outer shell of yellowish dough allowed for a satisfying crunch, I sensed that without sufficient moisture it could cause painful mouth injuries when eaten briskly. The interior was a rich, oily mélange of ground beef, onions, and spices—again, tasty, but perhaps a recipe for indigestion in a ten-minute speed-eating format. Despite my gnawing hunger, I was full after one meat pie.
Keri Fidelak, the festival organizer and proprietor of Maison Louisiane, the bed-and-breakfast where I would stay, wasn’t answering her phone. So I drank more beer, watched people, and eavesdropped. As a twenty-nine-year-old loner prowling the festival with no apparent destination, I was regarded with curiosity bordering on suspicion by the locals. It was a sensation with which I would soon become familiar.
Finally, I heard the name “Fidelak” spoken aloud, as if cast down from the heavens. I looked to the stage, where a young woman was giving out thank-yous. When she finished, I introduced myself. Immediately, I went from outsider to insider, thanks to that elegant institution known as Southern hospitality. I met her husband, Ben, and other friendly folks with accents that made mine sound coarse in comparison. As the festival began to wind down for the evening, some friendly couple drove me back to the bed-and-breakfast on their motorboat.
The next morning, I woke up early for a formal catered breakfast in the dining room of Maison Louisiane. The cast of characters included a lawyer and a doctor from “N’awlins,” their wives, a young couple with a literary bent, and a New Agey college student. They had all driven up for the Meat Pie Tri, a triathlon that would be held Sunday morning. Though meat pie and triathlon seemed like a contradiction in terms, I decided after some internal debate not to bring this up at breakfast. The only other lodger was the one I hadn’t yet met—Boyd Bulot, a gregarious bear of a man with a boyish smile and a soft Southern twang, who looked every bit the part of world oyster-eating champion. Without hesitation, he regaled the breakfast table with the story that I’d been told he would likely tell….
It was the one about the last time he’d drunk alcohol, back at Southeastern Louisiana University. It goes like this: Boyd’s been drinking with his college buddies when one of them challenges him to a tequila shot duel. But Boyd’s buddy dupes him by taking shots of water. So Boyd drinks himself into a state where it seems only natural to march down to the train tracks, climb on top of a car, and start throwing stuff at his boys below. The next morning Boyd wakes up on top of a train, half-naked. It’s cold out. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and looks out. There are mountains. This ain’t naw L’isiana. He scuttles off to some local business. The secretary, surprised to see a large, half-naked man stumble in from the cold, tells him he’s in Tennessee. Eight hours from home. Boyd calls his boys back at the frat house, and they charter a bus to fetch ole Boyd. The ride home is one tremendous party, but Boyd learns his lesson and hasn’t had a drop to drink since.
After breakfast, I asked Boyd how he got into competitive eating. Turned out he had stumbled onto the circuit through one of the more conventional vehicles—a restaurant challenge. One night in the spring of 2003, he drove with a group of six buddies up to the French Quarter in New Orleans. While eating at the ACME Oyster House, Boyd’s friends noticed the Wall of Fame, which displayed the oyster-eating record of “Crazy Legs” Conti, a New York native, who had eaten thirty-three dozen oysters in three and a half hours in 2001. “That ain’t nothin’,” Boyd told his friends. Within minutes, the table was flush with cash, his friends having donated around $300 toward the cause. The bet was on. “All right, start crackin’,” Boyd said. His buddies started shucking oysters, the whole time hyping to other diners about what Bulot was about to do to the record. In less than two hours, he siphoned down forty-eight dozen slimy bivalves. Had it not been closing time, he was sure the damage would’ve been greater. He eventually visited three other ACME restaurants, doubling the record at each venue. In Orange Beach, Alabama, he ate his personal best, fifty-six dozen, or a total of 672 oysters.
His talent recognized, Boyd was encouraged to return for ACME’s ten-minute speed-eating competition in April 2003, at the French Quarter Festival. That year, he ate eighteen dozen oysters in ten minutes to take Crazy Legs’ crown, and he claims he basically stopped after six minutes. “I was just teasin’ people, standin’ up, drinkin’ bottles of root beer and hot sauce.”
Bulot is an interesting combination of shy guy and gifted showman. Despite his prodigious girth, he claims he’s not that big of an eater. His favorite aspect of competitive eating is what he calls “trippin’ people out.” Trippin’ people out is simply a matter of shocking bystanders with his superhuman eating abilities. His most common stunt is the postcontest I-ain’t-full-yet ploy. At a pregame show for the LSU-Oklahoma Sugar Bowl matchup, Boyd decimated twenty-one dozen oysters in four minutes. After his victory, he grabbed a bottle of Tabasco sauce and downed it. When asked how his stomach could handle such intensity, Boyd scoffed. “I’m used to eatin’ jabanero peppers right off the bush.”
Not unlike most professional gurgitators, it was a matter of time before Hollywood took notice. Impressed by his oyster exploits, the producers of Ripley’s Believe It or Not invited Boyd out to Los Angeles to do a hot dog stunt. He ate forty-one barely cooked hot dogs in ten minutes on the show. Then he showed up three hours later at the Los Angeles Nathan’s Famous qualifier and downed seventeen dogs and buns in twelve minutes for a decisive victory over Krazy Kevin Lipsitz (who had flown from Staten Island for the only kosher hot dog contest in the country). Later that week, Bulot was spotted at the Playboy mansion accompanied by a hot blonde. A day later, while eating at Café Piazza on Rodeo Drive, Boyd struck up a conversation with the actor and comedian Ben Stein, who wrote about the experience on the E! network Web site. Though Mr. Stein’s account of the conversation was clearly not fact-checked (“AFOCE”?), it did include one useful insight about Boyd: “This man is such a natural for show business it is insane.”
Right before the contest, I found myself caught up in a heavy conversation about infidelity with Boyd Bulot and Maison Louisiane’s maid, a young woman named Heather. Boyd had recently cut off his engagement with his fiancée, the love of his life. He had caught her cheating on him with a nongurgitator and was still suffering from a broken heart. Heather encouraged him to vent his feelings and provided details of her own boy problems. Feeling eternally petty, I kept checking my watch. As bad as I felt for the big fella, I was nervous as hell about my first contest, and this wasn’t exactly a psych-up session. When I finally found an opening to slip away, I made Boyd promise to leave soon. He had meat pies to eat.
I arrived at the festival later than planned and sweating profusely in my wool suit. To give off the impression of responsibility, I advised Keri Fidelak to make an announcement for all eaters to come sign up. I found the festival’s EMT and advised him to stand by. I checked on the meat pies, provided in abundance by the Natchitoches Meat Pie Company. The local competitors introduced themselves and signed waivers. Among them were a sturdy woman, a college student, and a nice farmer with a Cajun accent who apologized for being unable to sign his name.
No less than ten minutes before the competition, Boyd Bulot finally showed. I exhaled and stepped up to the mic. In my best “Let’s get ready to rrrrrumble!” voice, I said, “Welcome to the 2003 Natch
itoches Meat Pie Eating Championship!” The crowd responded with, well, not quite a roar, but not bad either. I could get used to this.
I introduced myself and gave a few facts about the league, stressing the historic significance of the world record we were about to witness. I discussed the fabled (read: fictional) turkey-eating contest that Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, the founder of the city, had staged against the Natchitoches Indians in 1715. Then I did my rendition of the old street-vendor chant that I’d found online: “Hotta meat pies! Get your hotta meat pies right here!” I threw out a few of the league’s most impressive statistics, most notably the world mayonnaise-eating record, eight pounds in eight minutes, by Oleg Zhornitskiy. The crowd let out a collective groan. When the loudspeakers started playing the theme from Rocky, it felt like my cue to call out the contestants.
I did my best to improvise competitive eating nicknames and credentials. There was “Hungry” Shawn Hornsby, who had his picture posted in Pizza Huts around the state and was banned for life from their lunch buffet. There was Kenny “Steel Stomach” Simmons, who had been training daily with boudin, a type of Cajun spicy sausage. The IFOCE is an equal opportunity league, I said, so naturally there was a woman in the contest. “Please welcome, the lovely Ms. Vern “the Gurgitator” Guidroc!” The crowd of about four hundred fans went nuts for the lone female contestant.
“What we are about to witness is a classic David and Goliath affair,” I said. In this case, our David was a literal one—David “the Masticator” May, a 185-pound rower on the local Northwestern State University crew team, who would be competing in the Meat Pie Tri tomorrow. The moment I said his name, four college guys in the front row peeled off their shirts and yelled, “Go, Dave!” His name was painted across their chests in big black letters—D-A-V-E. “I assure you that Dave isn’t just here for the carbo loading, folks,” I said. “He understands that the weight of Natchitoches’ hopes and dreams rests squarely on his shoulders.”