by Ryan Nerz
When Alaskan Cruncher, who weighs 1,089 pounds, is released from his cage, he stands up on his hind legs and growls, baring his formidable incisors. Kobayashi, wearing a gray muscle shirt and a rising-sun bandanna, looks smaller than ever. Behind his stage is a Japanese flag, and though Alaskan Cruncher doesn’t appear to be in this for patriotic reasons, the Stars and Stripes hangs behind him. We are told that the competition begins when the bear starts eating. Alaskan Cruncher waddles up the ramp to the table, sniffs the food, and deftly pulls a single hot dog toward him with his giant claws.
It’s on. Kobayashi starts feeding dogs into his mouth two at a time, watching the bear’s progress out of the corner of his eye. After the first dog, Alaskan Cruncher switches to an infinitely more efficient no-hands technique. Soon thereafter he gets distracted and stops eating. “See, he looks away and he takes a break,” Michael Buffer explains. “Because he doesn’t know it’s a competition.”
Alaskan Cruncher gets back into it and, after the first minute, starts pulling ahead. It’s a clear advantage that he doesn’t need to drink water. Between the first and second minute, it is truly a thrilling contest, but at the two-minute-fifteen-second mark the bear only has seven dogs left. He stops and looks over at Kobayashi with a certain tenderness, then finishes the last seven dogs in sixteen seconds flat. Krazy Kevin Lipsitz’s dream of a cross-species competition has finally been realized, though probably not in the way he’d hoped.
When Kobayashi realizes he has lost, he leans against the table, despondent and sad. It’s unbelievable. That he has eaten thirty-one and a half hot dogs in two and a half minutes is no consolation—he lost. I’ve never seen Kobayashi look so bummed, and I find myself wanting to pat him on the back. “Give yourself a break, man,” I want to say, “you just lost to a Kodiak bear! Besides, pound for pound, you’re clearly the better mammal.”
For Kobayashi, however, losing just doesn’t cut it. Listening to him talk makes me feel like a slacker. As our interview draws to a close, he says that he believes he can do anything he sets his mind to, and the moment he feels as if he’s stopped improving, he’ll quit. His sole motivation for returning to Coney Island is to beat his own record. His favorite accomplishment, he says, is the hot dog record he set two days before, because he outdid even his own expectations.
Once he thinks he’s maxed out his abilities, he’ll retire, which won’t be long from now, he claims. When he does retire, he’d like to work on the media side of the sport, as an emcee, a producer, or a consultant. In the end it’s not about the money, it’s about advancing the sport of competitive eating. For now, he’s just happy to see that the sport is progressing in America, and that ESPN is starting to cover the Nathan’s contest and other events. In fact, if the sport keeps booming in the States, Kobayashi would strongly consider moving stateside, but there is still a ways to go before his dreams for the sport are realized. “I would be proud if it were an event in the Olympics,” he says. “I want the Mustard Yellow Belt to turn into a gold medal.”
20
Soaring on the Wings of a Buffalo
Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.
—Satchel Paige
SEPTEMBER 3, 2004
The sight of Badlands and Hungry Charles in the front seat of a rented Toyota sedan is a study in proportions. It’s as if we’re driving a Tonka toy, and I feel like a twelve-year-old in the backseat. Are we there yet? We are. We pull into the VIP parking lot at Dunn Tire Park, the site of the National Buffalo Wing Festival. Charles, a.k.a. the Godfather, tells the parking attendant that we’re here for the eating contest. Access granted. The man would have to be a fool to deny the Godfather access.
Dunn Tire Park, home to the Buffalo Bisons, a triple-A minor league affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, is lined with stands dispensing wings from restaurants representing every region of the country. The pervading scent is exactly what you’d expect—hot sauce and chicken grease. It has a Pavlovian effect, my mouth already juiced up with saliva. A few thousand people are milling about, gnawing at wings from paper plates, their fingers and faces stained orange.
It doesn’t take long to spot the IFOCE crew. Our honing devices direct us to the circle of oversized humans standing near the news cameras. It’s Cookie, Don Lerman, Crazy Legs, the whole crew Hungry Charles tells Buffalo Jim Reeves he just met one of Reeves’s friends at Central Booking in New York. He hands Reeves a note from his buddy, who was picked up by NYPD for protesting the Republican National Convention.
Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Jammin’ Joe LaRue with the Footy’s Wing Ding Championship belt slung over his shoulder. The belt is from a competition in Miami that I co-emceed with Dan Marino, the former Dolphins quarterback, whom I recall being unnaturally tan and uncomfortable doing play-by-play for a wingeating contest. Lerman hands me a refrigerator magnet for his Web site that shows a picture of him as Moses and a slogan underneath, A COMPETITIVE EATER’S PARADISE. Crazy Legs tells me he’s exasperated, having been here since 4:00 A.M. for a media event that never materialized.
Cookie Jarvis pulls me away from the other eaters to tell me a semisecret: Some guy who owns a chain of wing restaurants wants him to be a spokesman and pay him untold thousands. Not sure how this involves me, but I say it sounds like a good deal. I notice that Cookie has a constellation of moles on the left side of his neck and wonder what would appear if you connected the dots. In general, the body of Cookie Jarvis is a source of endless wonder, the belly in particular. It hangs almost aggressively over his belt line in a way that illustrates the strength of gravity, stretching T-shirts to the breaking point. Cookie tells me that he’d like to make the leap from competitive eating to the entertainment world the way the Rock did from pro wrestling. I see some flaws in the analogy, but decide not to get into it.
Drew Cerza announces that the .5K Running of the Chickens is about to start. The Running of the Chickens is the festival’s token nod to fitness beyond the world of gobbling poultry. It’s the shortest road race sanctioned by the USA Track & Field association, equivalent in length to twenty-two driveways, four city blocks, or fifty-one Winnebagos parked end to end. Up on the JumboTron, I see a half dozen people in chicken mascot costumes leaning forward and ready to run. There’s a guy in a wheelchair dressed as a baby being pushed by a nurse with an exaggerated ass. The official shoots his gun, and the whole tribe of misfits takes off.
It’s a truly exhilarating race. After a few hundred yards, I recognize the runner in second place—Crazy Legs. Not far behind him is Buffalo Jim Reeves, being chased by a chicken. The first place guy is clearly the only real runner, and I’m assuming his imminent victory is some clever ploy to help establish his place in the USA Track & Field rankings. After the race, Crazy Legs, who finishes an impressive fourth, is absolutely spent, gasping for air as if he’s got emphysema. It makes me question the physical fitness of one of our most in-shape gurgitators, not that I—sitting on my ass drinking beer and eating deep-fried wings—am in any position to talk.
That evening, after getting situated in the hotel, I go out with a group of gurgitators to what is known on the circuit as a “cultural outing,” or in Dale Boone’s terminology, “the Canadian ballet.” These are code words for hitting up the strip clubs—specifically, the gentlemen’s establishments situated right over the Canadian border. It’s a relatively common form of group bonding between eaters while visiting random cities. Since I’ve heard that the Buffalo Wing Festival is widely considered one of the wildest stops on the circuit—one that has been known to feature competitive-eating groupies—it seems my duty as a responsible journalist to go along…strictly in an observational capacity, of course. Though nothing out of the ordinary occurs, let the record show that pre- and postcontest camaraderie among America’s top gurgitators is in stark contrast to their cutthroat competitiveness at the table.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2004
The next morning, we assemble in the hotel lobby for
a bleary-eyed brunch. When I step out of the elevator, I see Hardy and Booker talking to a wiry guy with a Mohawk haircut and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He’s bouncing around with this crazy energy like some manic cartoon kangaroo. This has to be Coondog O’Karma, the renegade secessionist eater from Ohio. I introduce myself and mention that I once e-mailed him. He apologizes for his rather aggressive reply e-mail, in which he accused me of being a scoundrel in cahoots with the Shea brothers. Then he hands me an article he wrote for Cleveland Magazine, entitled “Dog eat dog…after dog, after dog, after dog.”
Outside, in the hotel parking lot, we run into Don Lerman and Cookie. Lerman seems vaguely ill at ease, and I soon find out why. “Am I hostile?” Coondog suddenly says, to no one in particular. He turns to face Lerman. “Don, am I anti-Semitic?”
I have no idea what this is in reference to, but am stunned by Coondog’s candor. Hungry Charles later explains that there’s been an ongoing soap opera involving Coondog, Lerman, and Beautiful Brian Seiken. Seems that Beautiful Brian sent an instant message out to several eaters implying that Coondog had made an anti-Semitic remark. In response, Coondog generously offered to kick Beautiful Brian’s ass. When Beautiful Brian responded that he owned a gun, Hungry Charles decided to step in. “I had to get involved. I said, ‘What’s wrong with you guys? You’re acting like fucking kids.’ ” For the time being, the situation dissolves smoothly with a handshake between Coondog and Don Lerman.
On the walk to breakfast, the ever-present topic of Kobayashi comes up. “The way I see Kobayashi,” Coondog says, “it’s like my eighteen-inch-dick theory.” What? He explains that you always hear of some guy who’s got an eighteen-inch member, and this guy exists, but he is one in a billion. Kobayashi’s ability to speed-eat is like that, Coondog reasons. Sure, he trains, but he’s got something innate that the rest of us don’t, perhaps an abnormally large esophagus combined with some sort of Jedi-like mental power. It’s a decent theory, actually, one that almost lives up to its name.
Coondog explains that he, too, is genetically predisposed to be a competitive eater. In all of his early childhood photos, he says, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. During a standard checkup, his family doctor told O’Karma his tonsils were the biggest he’d ever seen and should immediately be removed. Coondog, who calls himself “the Satchel Paige of eating” because he won his first competition at age fifteen and then came out of retirement at age forty, extrapolates that the organs in his throat/pharynx/esophagus region are all generally oversized, which explains his ability from a young age to swallow large chunks of food.
“Guess what?” Coondog says. “I’ve got a plan to sneak into the qualifier this afternoon.” He turns to me. “You’ve got to promise you won’t tell George.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I say. “Just tell me.”
“All right. See, I made this chicken costume…”
He explains that he plans to use a Buffalo resident named Pat Maloney as a decoy. Pat will sign up for the local qualifier in the chicken costume, and then, right before the contest, Coondog will slip into the costume. He has even fashioned a hole in the mouth area of the chicken’s beak that will allow him to eat. It’s an elaborate ploy to gain admission to an eating contest, but you have to admire the man’s persistence. “I know it will work!” Coondog’s getting all animated again, arms flying everywhere. “You guys didn’t recognize me yesterday, did you?”
Coondog says he was wearing the chicken costume the day before and even ran in the .5K run. In fact, Pat the Buffalo Chicken, as his creation is called, won the prize for best costume. The only one who had recognized him was Cookie Jarvis, who spotted the trademark Coondog duck-footed bounce.
“Coondog,” I say, “I think you’re really naïve to believe George Shea won’t look behind the mask. He has already warned me to watch out for you signing up under fake names at three separate contests.”
It’s common knowledge that Coondog is a man of many aliases. At various contests, he has gone by Evad “the Inhaler” Amrako (his name backward), Forkless Dave (a reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson), and TEFKAC, an acronym for The Eater Formerly Known As Coondog. He has attempted, more than once, to sign up for IFOCE contests using fake e-mail addresses. With all this evidence stacked against him, I try to convince Coondog to apologize to George, who I sense has a bit of a soft spot for Coondog, but Coondog says he’s not too good at apologies. He’d rather pull the chicken costume bait and switch.
We eat breakfast at the Towne Restaurant, a Greek joint renowned for its rice pudding. Coondog’s decoy buddy, Pat Maloney, joins us for a protracted discussion about the most famous restaurant challenge on the circuit, the eleven-pound 96er Burger at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. (It’s the same challenge that earned Kate Stelnick, a 115-pound college student, national overnight semicelebrity, several talk show appearances, and a Web site dedicated to her, katestelnick.com.) The 96 part of the burger refers to the ounces of ground beef, exactly six pounds’ worth, but it’s the five pounds of fixin’s, I’m told, that really gets you. Badlands says he went at it bun first and found the toughest part to be the mayo. Coondog mentions a restaurant challenge he witnessed where Jammin’ Joe LaRue exceeded his capacity and started filling up multiple clear glasses with vomit. He adds, rather poetically, that it looked like a milk shake being made.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2004
The crowd gathered for the eating contest is the biggest I’ve ever seen outside of Wing Bowl. Well over a thousand are huddled around the stage, with at least three thousand in the stadium beyond. George Shea has been on the mic for countless hours over the past two days, announcing such events as the Miss Buffalo Wing Contest and Bobbing for Wings, in which local contestants wade through a kiddie pool filled with blue cheese to dig out chicken wings with their teeth. I sense that George is getting a little punchy, but it’s hard to tell. Over the years, he has developed the attitude while emceeing of You’re at my mercy, because I’m the one with the microphone. He feels in no way restrained to making his verbal flights of fancy relevant. After introducing me to the crowd as his cohost, he says, “Ryan, do you know what the wave of the future is?”
“What’s that, George?”
“Tagless comfort. For decades we have been irritated by tags—on the back of our T-shirts, our trousers, our undergarments. And not until now, at the dawn of a new millennium, are we finally beginning to break free of this brutal dermal discomfort.”
I look into the crowd and see hundreds of blank stares. “And how is it, George, that this relates to today’s wing-eating competition?”
George makes a surprisingly seamless transition into today’s big event. We start the introductions, Crazy Legs first, who gets big love from a group of young drunkards from Los Angeles known as the Wingy Dingys. Their official capacity at the festival remains unclear to me, but as far as the contest goes, their role is to heckle George and I with apparently good-natured cheers along the lines of “George sucks!” I introduce “Big” Brian Subich, only to have George immediately change his nickname.
“He is known as Yellowcake, ladies and gentlemen, not only because he is a champion corn bread eater, but because he does work with treated uranium, known as yellowcake in the industry. This man is a terrorist threat. He has high top-level security clearance. If you’re looking for yellowcake, this is your man.”
“George sucks! George sucks!” The Wingy Dingy crew is gathered at the front of the stage as if they’re at a Phish concert. They’ve taken to calling me “Mini-George,” which I interpret as a term of endearment. George introduces Tim Janus, his face painted with a superhero-like mask, as the future of our sport, a day trader who wants to be a house dad. I introduce Nate Matusiak, the guy I found in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the Wing Tour. When George brings up Oleg Zhomitskiy, I inform the crowd that he once ate eight pounds of mayonnaise in eight minutes, which elicits the standard huge gasp from the crowd.
When Hungry Charles appro
aches the table, it’s clear that he’s fully in the Zone, not smiling, and even looking a bit angry. It reminds me of what Badlands said in our interview about him. “If you notice, before every contest, he stops the socializin’, the hand-shakin’, the autographs, the talkin’ to the guys, the talkin’ to the other competitors…. You can’t disturb the man at that point.”
Badlands Booker takes the stage wearing a Frank’s Red Hot Sauce bib signed by all the eaters. He gives the crowd love, then does a rehearsal where he pretends to be bringing wings up to his mouth at a breakneck pace. George decides it’s an ideal time to try out his own rapping abilities. “He is Badlands from New York, one of the best with a spoon and a fork…. He’s got the eye of the tiger, the gangster walk. And when it’s time to chew, there is no time to talk, my friends.”
Sonya enters wearing white, baggy (how could they not be?) nylon shorts, and a red tank top. The crowd explodes and she responds with a big smile and her patented double-handed wave. Her entrance song is “Hells Bells,” by AC/DC, which strikes me as a somewhat morbid anthem. “You’re only young, but you’re gonna die!”
I look down at the Wingy Dingy crew, recognizable by their powder blue baseball jerseys. They are a sight to see. The leader of their crew has a video camera in his right hand, a beer in the other, and goggles pressed against his forehead. He’s yelling incomprehensibly up at the stage. Behind him is a skinny blonde in a bikini, looking sexy but sloshed beyond belief. “Crazy Legs!” she blurts out, apropos of nothing.
Cookie Jarvis, the defending champ, makes a grand entrance, carrying the Chicken Scepter through the crowd. George tells the crowd that the Chicken Scepter was created by the descendants of a Mayan prince. The last introduction is Jammin’ Joe, the Florida hot-dog- and wing-eating champ, because he’s been cooking the competition wings, and he’s clearly been meticulous about keeping them piping hot. So hot, in fact, that we have to delay the competition for a good five minutes for them to cool down.