Beautiful Brian Seiken has announced that he will host a competitive television show in 2006 available for viewing on his website which will have interviews with competitive eaters, eating stunts and commentary. He also has a New Year’s video message for his fans.

The East Valley Tribune has an article about a 7 pound burger eating contest between teams of consisting of three fans from Notre Dame and Ohio State. Both teams failed to finish the burger, (which is smaller than the burger that Sonya Thomas finished in 48 minutes in the Barrick burger contest) but the Notre Dame team was awarded victory because it finished more of the burger.

An ice cream contest was held in New Delhi. This display of Indian overconsumption is extremely insensitive at a time when many Americans, such as Mary-Kate Olsen and Nicole Ritchie, do not get enough to eat

Lisa, a South Jersey resident who goes to graduate school in Canada, was extremely impressed by Joey Chestnut’s Wing Bowl qualifying stunt of drinking a gallon of milk in under a minute. Lisa’s father has tickets to the Wing Bowl.

In this AP article from November, Jaqueline Mariash, who hopes to make the US triathlon team in the 2008 Olympics, explains how she decreased her race times by radically increasing the amount she eats.

After a hiatus of more than a week, Sonya Thomas’ web site has been restored with a new picture of her and Washington Redskin Renaldo Wynn (along with a very nice compliment for this site - Thanks Sonya.) Sonya apparently had an eating contest with the defensive lineman televised on local cable televesion. Sonya vs. the entire Redskins offensive or defensive line would probably be a more evenly matched competition.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus and all other and all other holidays celebrated this time of year. In an infinitely less signficant Dec 25 anniversary, Sonya Thomas started her attempts at competitive eating on December 25, 2002 according to this San Francisco Chronicle interview from May by practicing for Nathan’s. She failed to eat one hot dog in less than a minute.

The Hartford Courant has an article about holiday overindulgence with some references to competitive eating and the “belt of fat” theory.

Trencherwomen.com wishes all members of the competitive eating community and their fans a happy holiday season.

katestelnick.com has a video clip (2.4 MB 4:27 low quality) from Food TV’s Unwrapped about the Ye Olde 96er burger from Denny’s Beer Pub in Clearfield, PA. That sandwich is generally listed at 11 pounds, but it actually weighs in at 10 pounds when it is placed on a scale. The clip shows how the 96er is constructed and it also has footage of an AICE contest held at Denny’s in the summer of 2004 that in which “Chowhound” Chapman and Coondog O’Karma participated. Seeing the clip last January reportedly inspired Kate Stelnick to be the first person to complete it in under three hours several days later.

I have updated the Wikipedia entry for Sonya Thomas to include the second half of 2005. Feel free to make any additional changes to it.

This blog entry has a brief mention of Sonya Thomas’ Radar Magazine interview, but it has a long comment by someone who met Sonya at the 2004 Bacci Pizza contest in Chicago and also chauffeured the LeFevres during that event.

While the San Francisco Bay area will not produce a Super Bowl winner in 2006 (or apparently many years into the future), the odds that of that region producing a champion in Wing Bowl 14 greatly increased when San Jose State student Joey “Jaws” Chestnut qualified by drinking a gallon of milk in 41 seconds Monday morning (philly.com video) . (The other favorite for the Wing Bowl, Rich LeFevre, lived in suburban San Francisco before retiring to Las Vegas several years ago). Chestnut has made five trips to the eastern time zone since the start of November to pursue his competitive eating career. It will be interesting to see if Wing Bowl 15 has geographic restrictions in addition to prohibiting previous competitors to ensure that a local wins the contest.

from competitiveeaters.com/news.htm

Zan’s Deli, Lake Grove, Long Island, NY

1st - Ian “The Invader” Hickman, 21 latkes in 8 minutes
2nd - “Skinny” Scott Soifer
3rd - Chris “The American” Schlesinger
4th - Mike “The Real Skinny” Hoffman
5th - Elihu “Cissy” Godbolt (African-American female from Omaha)

No sign of Angela Michaud from the contest pictures.

I have added polls to the site and the first question deals with how many competitors should be listed in the contest results. From “Beautiful” Brian Seiken’s comment from the meatball contest post:

I have requested official stats from the powers that be in regard to the contestants that finished out of the money 6 and up . However in the past my requests have gone unanswered with my assumption that if i post these stats it might cause friction amongst eaters that finished out of the money.

It is hard for me to see how accurately reported results could cause friction unless someone is ultra-thinskinned, in which case he/she should probably not be involved in competitive events. I am curious to see how widespread the desire for more complete contest results is for both competitors and fans.

I hope to have a new poll question about every two weeks.

AICE has updated their rankings (only the top 23 have been changed, #24 and below are exactly the same as the October rankings) and eaters to watch with profiles of Michael “The Mongoose” Dodd and Angela Michaud. Ms. Michaud was the only female to crack the top 3 of an IFOCE or AICE event in 2005 (at last month’s hot dog contest in Ontario) other than Sonya Thomas and Carlene LeFevre and she will compete in tommorow’s latke contest in Long Island. There is also a profile of Joel “The Cannon” Podelsky from the New Jersey Jewish News.

Joe Menchetti will not appear at the latke contest (he will be reselling tickets for the UConn-UNH game) or the zucchini contest next month and casts doubt on whether he will compete in any AICE event in the future.

The Telegraph reports that Anthony “The Anaconda” Danson won the World Pie Eating Championship in Wigan, England Thursday by eating 7 meat and potato pies in 3 minutes. The contest shows that overstating the geographic scope of a contest is not solely a US phenomenon; all competitors in the “world” championship were from Wigan or nearby towns.

WIP announced that the Wing Bowl ticket revenues will be used to help construct a basketball court for the Sonny Hill Community Involvement Basketball League. The location of the court has not been determined.

Competitive eating websites appear to be an endangered species, first Kobayashi’s site disappears, then Sonya’s is redirected to a generic page and now Brian Seiken’s blog produces a 404 error.

In other Brian Seiken website news, he now has several video clips available on his main website.

Update 6:32 pm, the blog is back up, but only the first post is online.

Two new articles in the Rockford Squire and the Advance about Balinda Gould’s feat of eating 43 chili dogs in 4 hours, which beat the 23 year old record set by Sharon Scholten/VanDuinen, are now available.

As of 11:55 pm sonyatheblackwidow.com produces a generic page for register.com which promises that the website is coming soon. The domain name does not expire until September, so there is no apparent reason why the domain should not work.

Duncan Scott Davidson, a writer for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, has a report of his experience as a competitor in the San Francisco Verizon VoiceWing buffalo wing qualifier held at Knuckle’s sports bar in October. In that contest, Rich LeFevre defeated Cookie Jarvis in double overtime. Davidson managed 1.97 pounds of meat in 10 minutes. If you are interested in who won the $250 third prize, which was never listed at IFOCE.com, it was triathlete Chris Coble.

updated 6:03 - URL fixed, thanks Andrew Lane

Two books detailing life on the competitive eating circuit are now available for sale on amazon.com despite the fact that they will not be released until the second quarter of 2006. Ryan Nerz’s Eat This Book : A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit will be released April 4. Jason Fagone’s Insatiable Appetites : Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream will hit the stores on June 6. The length of both books is given, so the manuscripts must be finished.

I have updated the links on the right side of this blog. Please let me know if there are any competitive eating websites I have omitted.

I have just discovered the blog written by Andrew “Skinnyboy” Lane (3rd place finisher at the Albuquerque golden.palace grilled cheese qualifier) which can be found at http://dogsarefunyes.blogspot.com/

(from competitiveeaters.com/news.htm) Balinda Gould, a 41 year old single mother who works part-time in at deli counter, broke Sharon Scholten’s 23 year old record of 42.5 chili dogs in 4 hours by a half a hot dog at the Rockford Corner Bar in Rockford, Michigan. Ms. Gould had apparently not eaten competitively before except for two attempts at the record in November in which she consumed 20 and 28 hot dogs.