Vylar Kaftan makes the following recommendation for the Nebula award:

Short Story: Black, Holly: A Reversal of Fortune (Coyote Road, Trickster Tales, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Ed., Viking Juvenile, Jul07) After I read this, I walked into the living room where my husband was sitting. My expression was slightly dazed. “Honey,” I said, “I just read an awesome story where a girl challenges the devil to… a gummi-frog eating contest.” Without missing a beat, he said, “That’s strange and wonderful. But if Kelly Link didn’t write it, and neither did you, I don’t know who could have!” (Husband scores points. He gets fresh chocolate chip cookies today.) But seriously, Holly Black–who wrote the terrific twisted faerie tale Tithe–has turned out a delightfully clever tale about a girl who tricks the devil himself. Witty, charming, and fun. Plus, it was great to read a story which didn’t have a rocks-fall-everyone-dies ending. Even though I like that sort of thing.

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In a recent blog entry, Pat Bertoletti offers diet advice to “Sweet” Jill Stoler.

In more diet news, Don “Moses” Lerman reports that he is satisfied with his weight loss and expects to weigh between 170 lb. and 200 lb. by spring.

Jill Stoler also has uploaded some videos from the recent latke contest on her youtube page.

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The current top 10 in ESPN’s All-SportsNation Team of 2007

64.7% Randy Couture
30.2% Floyd Mayweather Jr.
17.7% Tom Brady
12.9% Alex Rodriguez
12.7% Brett Favre
11.2% Tiger Woods
8.6% LeBron James
7.9% Randy Moss
5.3% Joey Chestnut
5.3% Kobe Bryant

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Paul Barlow won a egg nog drinking contest held at 99x, defeating Intern Joey. A youtube video and podcast of the contest are available.

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Beautiful Brian has produced an album consisting of 10 holiday classics which can be listened to on his website. The track listing is available after the jump:
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Austin360.com reports that there will be three showings of “Harold & Kumar” this week at the Alamo Drafthouse which will include all you can eat mini-burgers. Mini-burger eating contests will be held before the screenings.

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(from mosesnews.com) Joey Chestnut’s victory over Takeru Kobayashi is listed as one of the best 10 sports stories of 2007 in a column by Jeff Gordon (not the NASCAR driver) on msn.foxsports.com. Other entries in the list include Brett Farve’s resurgence, the Colorado Rockies end of season run and Appalachian State’s upset over Michigan.

In another end of year accolade, George Shea has been named one of the mockingwords blog’s favorite people of 2007.

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Joey Chestnut is a choice in ESPN.com’s online poll to determine the 5 members of the 2007 All-SportsNation Team. If the poll is like last year’s, voters will be able to vote an unlimited number of times.

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Jill Stoler has some pictures and a travelog (with no results) of her trip to Japan on her myspace page.

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The basementmusing blog reports on television offerings at a bowling alley:

So he changed the chanel to good old TSN. To his shegrin what was on was the Krystal burger eating competition. What we began to see unfold was dudes by the name of Crazy Legs Conti eating burgers in front of thousands of screaming hillbillies from Tennessee.

TSN is the Canadian sports channel. It is interesting that this year’s finals would be rerun on Canadian televison, but has not been shown (to the best of my knowledge) on ESPN / ESPN2 since it originally aired in October.

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NPR has an article about the effect of American internment and occupation on Japanese and Japanese-American cuisine:

Shousei Hanayama, the priest at the Buddhist Temple in Watsonville, Calif., remembered that after the war, American soldiers in Okinawa brought hot dogs and introduced them into the island culture.

Hanayama noted that hot dogs are still a part of the Japanese culture, pointing to the story of Takeru Kobayashi, who can eat 63 hot dogs in under 12 minutes. The winner of six consecutive Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contests, Kobayashi revolutionized and popularized competitive eating with a technique called “Japanesing,” separating hot dog from bun as he crams to victory.

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Kana Kanisawa, a member of the three person team competing against three Americans has released a DVD apparently consisting of her posing in bathing suits. She did an interview about the DVD and there is also some pictures from the press conference announcing the release.

There is no nudity in the links above, but they may not be safe for all workplaces.

In other news from the 3 person team contest, Jill Stoler says she is back from Japan in her myspace page.

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A video of an “Empire State Burger” eating contest held in Tampere, Finland is available on youtube. The sandwich is claimed to be the largest commercially available burger in Europe. huviopas.net has an article about the burger (online translation from Finnish to English is not available) The “Empire State Burger” appears to be composed of several conventionally sized hamburgers stacked on top of each other.

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The new poll asks how many eaters living in the United States would be found in a unified ranking of all the world’s top competitive eaters.

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Peter Czerwinski (DedicatedForLif/FuriousPete123), winner of the most recent video based eating contest on bodybuilding.com, has uploaded some videos of his eating challenges to his youtube page (page 2). He has eaten a 72 ounce steak in 12 minutes and a 106 ounce steak in a half an hour. Most recently, he attempted to consume 25 cups of rice (he managed to finish 18).

In another international steak eating challenge video, a blonde woman consumes a large steak of unlisted size in Argentina.

And in another bodybuilding / competitive eating video, Juris “Dr. Big Time” Shibayama has uploaded a video of him bench pressing 500 pounds.

update In more Dr. Big Time news, he says that his Wing Bowl stunt suggestion has been accepted and he will attempt it on January 8. The person he talked to at WIP did not mention any geographic restrictions for Wing Bowl 16 stunt attempters, so non-Philly residents who want to compete might consider submitting a stunt request. I have not been able to find any online Wing Bowl 16 rules.

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cocostd111s has uploaded two new videos from Food Battle Club to youtube: the introduction to “King of Masters” and a bottle drinking race.

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Here is the blogroll for the team of Japanese eaters competing against AICE eaters this week in case anyone wants to follow the contests by looking at Japanese blogs. I do not believe any entries about the competitions have been posted yet.

Natsuko “Gal” Sone
Tomoko Miyake
Taku “Artist” Izumi
Saori Nakayama
Kana Kanisawa
Hatsuyo Sugawara (no blog)
Takuya Yamamoto

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Alex from Panama, a one time commenter on this site, has uploaded two videos to youtube. In one video, he drinks a half gallon of milk in 18 seconds, in the other, he consumes a whole gallon in two minutes.

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The blog for Popular Science magazine has an entry analyzing Ken Domon drinking the contents of a plastic bottle in less than five seconds on Food Battle Club. The blog believes he would not have been able to repeat the stunt using a glass bottle:

The plastic bottle is critical. If he were just holding it upside down, gravity would be doing most of the work, and that’s just not fast enough. Instead, he squeezes the plastic bottle, forcing half the water out. Next, he wisely pauses for a moment there in the middle of his chug, allowing air to creep up through the water and into the space between the new, lower water level and the interior bottom of the bottle.

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A list of Major League Baseball players expected by “a team of Competitive Eating News reporters and one CEN web editor” to be in the Mitchell report about performance enhancing drugs in baseball appears on CompetitiveEatingNews.com. Some of the players, such as Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettite actually appear in the report, but some, including Albert Pujols, Jeff Bagwell and Johnny Damon, are not present.

update Note the similarity of the CE News list with the list in comment #2 of this baseballthinkfactory thread

update #2 AOL FanHouse has more on the bogus list.
The full CE News list follows after the jump:
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A new blog called Wet The Buns has been launched with the following introduction:

For a long time, I have been intrigued by competitive eating… not as a participant and not really as a spectator… I am more interested in its shear [sic] stupidity. I find it ludicrous that it’s considered by many to be a sport… yes, they actually have a governing body (The International Federation of Competitive Eating… www.ifoce.com) complete with rules, regulations, rankings, and record-keeping. And it’s even more ridiculous that this shit is televised.

Anyway, one night while eating (not competitively) with friends, the conversation turned to the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. One friend questioned how the competitors could consume so much bread in addition to the hot dogs. Without thinking, I replied “When in doubt, wet the buns” in reference to a technique used by the competitors where they dunk the buns in water for easier consumption. It all sounded so ridiculous, that the phrase stuck… a catchphrase, of sorts, representing all that I find stupid.

So, that’s what this site is all about… those things that I find stupid.

Before commenting on the stupidity of others, it would probably be advisable to learn the difference between sheer and shear

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New Year’s Day is probably a more appropriate holiday for a televised eating contest than Christmas, but the Spike TV schedule now extends to January 1, and the ham & eggs contest is not listed on that date or on December 31.

BestOnCable still reports that the ham & eggs contest will be televised today.

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The Shreveport Times has an article about director Gregory Kallenberg, whose first film was “Eating Levi”, a documentary about Levi Oliver. That movie was recently shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).Kallenberg hopes his film is accepted by the South by Southwest multimedia festival in Austin, TX.

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“Sweet” Jill Stoler has a blog entry and information on her myspace page about recording segments that will be televised during the AICE vs. Japan contest.

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On the home page of beautifulbrian.com, Brian sings “White Christmas” while playing piano.

Brian also has a “director’s cut” of last year’s Christmas episode featuring extended interviews with Juliet Lee and Seaver Miller and a commentary about what goes on behind the scenes in producing an episode along with an excerpt of the Charles Hardy / Dale Boone verbal fracas on youtube.

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