If you have ever wanted to respond to something that “Beautiful” Brian Seiken has written on his website, you now have the opportunity. Seiken has set up a blog at beautifulbrian.blogs.com, but he intends for it to be primarily used as a message board for commenters.

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The Eagle Tribune of Massachusetts has an article debating whether occasional holiday gorging can be justified featuring quotes from Massachusetts native “Crazy Legs” Conti and Joey Chestnut. Conti mentions that he intends to go to Japan at the end of the month to train with Kobayashi.

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The Philly Cheese Steak Shoppe, with two locations on the northern California coast, has a challenge involving a three foot long cheesesteak . Eaters who succesfully finish the sandwich in under two hours will qualify for a contest to be held at the end of the year. (It is not mentioned if the meal is free for those who finish it in time.) The winner of that competition will be awarded free cheesesteaks for a year and be featured in the restaurant’s advertising. The best time recorded in the challenge so far is 40 minutes by Bill Telnes.

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The IFOCE announced today that the only “marathon” event on its slate, the nine pound Barrick burger contest, will be held in January at the Plaza hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Sonya Thomas considers the Barrick burger her hardest contest ever and the only contest in which she utilized all her stomach capacity. She ate the bun first last year but plans to eat the meat first the next contest.

In this forum thread, a Florida resident, swtpup, boasts about his 119 pound girlfriend’s eating ability and it is suggested that she try the Barrick burger as a suitable test for her appetite on their next trip to Las Vegas.

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The Daily Pennysylvanian has a contest write up of the first “Wing 5″ collegiate qualifer which was won by Tim “Dr. Slob” Cusice of West Chester College with 61 chicken wings in 10 minutes.

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The local cable news channel NY1 has their entire archive of articles and video clips freely available including their coverage of the last six Nathan’s hot dog eating contests, of which the five most recent were dominated by Kobayashi. Other Japanese eaters swept the top 3 slots of the 2000 contest, including Takako Akasaka who smashed the female record. The 2000 contest clip has a flashback to the 1999 contest in which Steve Keiner (now residing in Prague) was not penalized for an early start. Other covered contests include Brian Seiken’s 2002 pickle contest victory, the AICE foot long contest held Memorial Day weekend and several contests won by Eric “Badlands” Booker and Ed “Cookie” Jarvis. (Real Player is required to view the videos)

NY1 eating contest clips/articles June 2003-December 2005
NY1 eating contest clips/articles January 2000-June 2003

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After only 2 of the first 6 or 7 hopeful competitors successfully completed their qualifying stunts (and one of those two was Rich LeFevre) it appears that the degree of difficulty of the qualifying stunts has been loosened. A recent successful stunt involved eating a pound of cookie dough in four minutes and another required eating two meatball subs in five minutes.

Beautiful Brian Seiken has an article about the degree of difficulty for Wing Bowl 14 qualifying stunts.

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Radar Online has an interview with Sonya Thomas. She says that her worst contest experience was the event with overheated baked beans won by Dale Boone and that her dream remains owning her own Burger King franchise.

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(Thanks Patrick Bertoletti) The Krystal Square Off website has been updated with a photo gallery of the finals. (Click on events, then World Championship) “The Whaler” apparently has competition for the title of #1 Eater X fan; some spectators wore facepaint in the style of their hero.

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A hot dog eating contest for Duke University students Tuesday was won by senior Tom Eberly who defeated last year’s champion Adedayo Adeniran with a result of 15 hot dogs in 4:21. Ms. Adeniran (who shows that great petite eaters do not need to be Asian) consumed 11 hot dogs in that time, a considerable improvement from last year’s result of 10 hot dogs in 6:22. Eberly’s graduation will give Adedayo the opportunity to regain the title next year.

There is no word on whether the champion will face off with the best hot dog eater from UNC.

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I have modified the site so that most comments made by users who have registered and logged in will appear immediately and not need to be personally approved before they are publicly visible. Unregistered comments still need to pass through moderation before they show up.

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Sonya Thomas can be found in armchair hack’s list of Seven Athletes that You Probably Don’t Know about but Should

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Several days past the official release date of December 1, Eric “Badlands” Booker second rap CD, Hungry & Focused II – the Ingestion Engine, is now available for purchase at IFOCE’s store. Booker’s own web site has yet to be updated with the new CD information.

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In other news about apparently defunct competitive eating websites, the home page for Kobayashi’s competitive eating group, the United Food Fighters Organization, located at food-fighter.com has not appeared any time I have attempted to load it for at least one month and food-fighter.com is apparently no longer registered.

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The Whaler’s Tim Janus / Eater X fan blog located at http://eaterx.blogspot.com/ has apparently been deleted. It is too bad if its removal is permanent, as I found it one of the more humorous sites on the internet.

Yahoo search has the first two posts in its cache.

Updated 12/6 11:20 am – the Whaler’s blog is back up.

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It has been over two days since the meatball contest in Atlantic City and I have yet to find any media coverage of the event other than one AP photo, but that is irrelevant because Liz Kellermeyer and Krista Overby of the urbanhonking.com food blog attended that event and their contest write up is vastly better than any competition coverage I have ever seen in the mainstream media. They interviewed most of the competitors, including the non-favorites and gained access to the counting room where the amounts eaten were tallied. They also have a photo gallery with 99 pictures of the contest. Their post contest pictures of Sonya Thomas will make you wonder where she puts it all, as Bubba Yarbrough did in a comment in the previous post.

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From IFOCE.com & sonyatheblackwidow.com & Bubba Yarbrough

Meatballs, Carmine’s at the Tropicana, Atlantic City, NJ
1. Sonya Thomas 10.3 lb
2. Joey Chestnut 8.3
3. Bob Shoudt 7.6
4. Tim Janus 7.0
5. Rich Lefevre 6.8
6. Chip Simpson 6.0
7.Bubba Yarbrough 5.3
8. Larry McNeil 5.1
9. Allen Goldstein 5.0
10. Ken from MD (bouncer) 4.0
11. Brian Seiken 3.3
12.Kevin Lipsitz N3.1
13. Adam Leffler 1.9 – retired afterward
14. Crazy Legs Conti DQ

12/7 12:42 am results updated from writeup on beautifulbrian.com – Brian’s gallery

If there was any debate on whether Sonya Thomas should be ranked #2 going into 2006, she removed it with a dominating performance which gave her a 2 contest winning streak to offset her 2 contest losing streak from November. She almost doubled her amount from the 6 pounds which won her the title in 2004. “Humble” Bob Shoudt continues his strong drive for a top 5 ranking.

Links to articles will be added as they come online. Brian Seiken will probably have a more complete list of finishers.

Updated 8:43 pm iirraa has already uploaded a 6 picture photo gallery of the contest.

Updated 12/4 10:55 pm Yahoo news has an AP photo of the contest

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(from beautifulbrian.com) On the Opie and Anthony radio show this morning, Eric “Badlands” Booker defeated Pat “from Moonachie” Philbin in an Egg Nog drinking contest. Both Philbin and Booker vomited after drinking 71 double shots of the holiday beverage, but Philbin suffered a reversal of fortune first, giving Booker the victory. If you missed the contest, you can relive it through an 800+ post thread on the Opie and Anthony message board.

I am surprised that IFOCE endorsed this event (I am assuming that the IFOCE contract would require approval for a contest like this) as I don’t think it promotes the image of competitive eating they would like portrayed.

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Philly.com’s Wing Bowl page mentions that Rich “The Locust” LeFevre qualified for the Wing Bowl this morning by eating 12 cans of Vienna sausage in 5 minutes at the Borgata casino in Atlantic City. A video of Rich’s qualification is available on that page. I am not sure that the Wing Bowl organizers expected a skinny ex-accountant from Las Vegas to be the favorite (assuming Joey Chestnut does not attempt to qualify) when they barred previous competitors from entering.

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“Humble” Bob Shoudt and “Eater X” Tim Janus were the first to conquer the “Pauliesaurus” megapizza from Paulie’s Pizza in New Brunswick, NJ, winning them a prize of $350. Beautiful Brian has a writeup of their evening on his website.

With the vanquishing of the Pauliesaurus, notable unconquered eating challenges include:

• Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub’s 15 pound Belly Buster burger
• Clinton Station Diner’s 50 pound (4 person team) Mount Olympus burger and 12 pound Zeus burger
• The Rockford (MI) Corner bar’s 42.5 chili dogs in 4 hours. The current record has been held by Sharon Scholten, a 110 pound woman, for almost a quarter century. If this mark is bested, it is debatable if the victor should have an asterisk if he/she does not eat a giant Mexican lunch before like Sharon did. (As far as I know, Ms. Scholten’s mark is the most hot dogs ever eaten by a woman in a single session, but Sonya Thomas might change that on July 4, 2006)

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If you have ever wondered what happened to Steve Keiner, the 1999 Nathan’s Hot Dog Champion who is currently the last non-Japanese to win that title, he is currently in Prague in the Czech republic. (It is not clear if he has moved there or is just vacationing) The Prague Post has an article (in English) describing Keiner’s eating a Czech sausage called a parek. (He finds the parek wanting.) Keiner has been able to cut his weight almost in half from the 416 pounds he weighed when he competed.

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(from competitiveeaters.com/news.htm) Thanksgiving weekend, AICE held a series of three contests in pumpkin pie, spaghetti & meatballs and large hotdogs at the Casino Niagra in Ontario which were won by Joe Menchetti, Coondog O’Karma and Mark Lyle respectively. Massachusetts resident Angie Michaud made a strong entrance into competitive eating at that event, taking third place in hot dogs and performing strongly in spaghetti, but finishing out of the money. She will compete in her first contest in the United States at the potato latke contest in New York City later this month.

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Qualifying for Wing Bowl 14 has begun with T Bone Tony’s attempt to eat 3 pounds of sirloin in 9 minutes 30 seconds. Philly.com’s Wing Bowl Page will have information and videos of all the qualifying attempts. Philadelphia area college students can qualify without performing a stunt by winning one of several contests to be held near Philadelphia area colleges. (Could this be Kate Stelnick’s opportunity to return to competitive eating?)

The Wing Bowl Rules explicitly ban AICE members. It is difficult to discern what the Wing Bowl gains from its association with IFOCE, as its most popular members are prevented from competing by the ban on previous entrants and all the publicity and qualifying for the event is handled by WIP.

Chip Simpson is probably the favorite if he decides to qualify. Brian Subich and Pat Philbin are other IFOCE members to watch. (This assumes that no IFOCE members from outside the northeast enter.)

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Hungry & Focused II – Ingestion Engine Samples mp3 file (3.6 MB 4 minutes)

Sampled songs include:
“Back in the Flesh” George Shea
“Buffet Crashers feat ” Crazy Legs, Eater X , Godfather
“That Eating thing they do” (pays homage to Carlene Lefevre & Sonya Thomas)

I was quite impressed with the production values of the samples. I was expecting something like the 1985 Chicago Bears “Super Bowl Shuffle” rap, but the quality is vastly higher than that.

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