1. The meatball contest sponsored by Bartolini’s restaurant has the following eligibility restriction (See May 2):
   

   Eaters competing in IFOCE-MLE sanctioned Food drinking contests within the past 12 months will not be eligible to participate in this event. Food Drinkers attempting to enter the Meatball qualifiers at Bartolini’s or fraudulently qualifying for the American Meatball Eating Championship will be immediately disqualified and forfeit any prize money.

2. Joe Menchetti is listed as one of the three eaters who will receive byes to that contest on Bartolini’s website.
3. The Krystal Square Off website reports that Joe Menchetti competed in a pre-qualifier in Nashville last September.

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Patrick Vandam, runner-up in the most recent Nathan’s qualifier, answers some questions on TwinCities.com. Vandam is planning to compete in Saturday’s Nathan’s qualifier in Chicago.

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The Harvard student newspaper has an article about the Chickwich Challenge, which entails eating 12 chickwich patties in 12 different dining halls on the Harvard campus (only one bun must be consumed). Two sophomore females, Katherine Tan and Michela DeSantis attempted the challenge and both finished in 2 hours and 43 minutes. As the challenge progressed, the rules were liberalized:

By the time the contestants reached Quincy, they were fading quickly, and a new rule was instituted: each is permitted to approach two strangers and ask them to take one bite out of her chickwich. Though both contestants hesitated to demand this favor of strangers, the thought of less chickwich ultimately won.

DeSantis walked to the end of the dining hall and patiently explained her predicament.

“Is this for some kind of experiment?” asked one doubtful diner.

“No,” DeSantis quickly assured, hoping that the kind soul would agree to her offer.

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“Humble” Bob Shoudt has resumed his thoughts page with an announcement that he will compete in the gyro contest in Houston this Saturday. His upcoming contest list also contains the Philadelphia Nathan’s qualifier on May 24 and the Three Brothers pizza contest at the end of the month.

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• Minnesota qualifier ABC News video
• Apparently no one was able to register for the Dallas Nathan’s qualifier after the food blog for D Magazine announced the contest (Nathan Biller and Jason Erb did get in)
• Video of “Furious” Pete eating 8 McD’s double cheeseburgers in 2.5 minutes for bodybuilding.com contest (thread #1, thread #2)
• Some pictures from last year’s Nathan’s finals on mosesnews
• 10 woman team attempts 15 pound Denny’s Beer Barrel Belly Buster
• Megamunch’s office cereal contest
• Mike Fitzgerald, the Apple Valley, MN 3rd place finisher, won last years amateur Sheboygan bratwurst contest
• Blog entry about Amos Wengler, the “Coney Island Songwriter”
• Wing Tut’s 5k race report
• Kobayashi leaves Japan for a while
• Cruise for Takuya Yamamoto and fans (Yama3’s event report)
• Blogger will vote for presidential candidate who will ban competitive eating

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The Fairfax Times has an article about Ian Hickman and his quest for a strawberry title.

Hickman said he first became interested in becoming a competitive eater after watching actor John Candy eat a huge steak in the movie “The Great Outdoors,” and later consumed his own 64-ounce porterhouse in a Lexington, Ky., steakhouse that offered the meal free to anyone who could finish it in less than 45 minutes. Hickman ate the steak – along with a side and a salad – in only 19 minutes.

“That’s when I knew I might have talent as a competitive eater,” he said.

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The new poll asks what duration do you think is the ideal length of a hot dog eating contest.

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Contrary to Darren Rovell’s blog entry, the Major League Eating video game was not among the inaugural batch of six WiiWare games released yesterday.

Wired.com’s video game blog reports that it is apparently Nintendo’s policy to not announce a release schedule for WiiWare games.

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The sidebar has been updated with finalists for the upcoming Nathan’s finals and the total cash winnings for this year. Joe Menchetti is currently the leader in cash prizes (Joey Chestnut’s Wing Bowl prizes would make him the overall winner in total value won)

I do not have the prize breakdown for the pig skin eating contest after first place. Please inform me of any incorrect or missing prizes. Here are the current top 10 cash winners for 2008:

$6200	“Gentleman” Joe Menchetti
$5250	Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti
$3000	Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas
$2500	Tim “Eater X” Janus
$2500	Joey “Jaws” Chestnut
$1000	Juliet Lee
$1000	J. D. Castile
$1000	Chris “The Big Cat”
$1000	“Furious” Pete Czerwinski
$1000	Erik “The Red” Denmark

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The date of the 2008 Shoo Fly Pie contest was announced as June 21 and some calendars still list that event, but the contest website says that no contest is currently scheduled.

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Galleries of the recent Nathan’s qualifiers held in Las Vegas and Apple Valley, Minnesota are now available. Captions for the Las Vegas gallery report that Rich LeFevre ate 32 hot dogs and not the 31 in the official report.

The Las Vegas Sun has an article containing a picture of Rich LeFevre and Sarah Jane from one of the galleries. Sarah Jane was the only female competitor and previously auditioned for “American Idol”. Like Ron Koch, she works as a casino photographer. She finished with 8.5 hot dogs, which puts her in the company of 8 females who are known to have broken the 8 HDB mark:

39 Sonya Thomas, 2007, 12 minutes
28 Juliet Lee, 2007, 12 minutes
25 Carlene LeFevre, 2005, 12 minutes
22.25 Takako Akasaka, 2000, 12 minutes
18 Miyuki Iwata, 2004, 12 minutes
12 Melody Andorfer, 1972, 5 minutes
9.5 Birgit Felden, 1984, 10 minutes
8.5 Sarah Jane, 2008, 10 minutes

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Darren Rovell reports in his CNBC blog that the Major League Eating video game is now available.

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• Beautiful Brian starts a “Bigger Bits” page
• Medical researcher Carl DeSelm wins Bar Louie’s national tater tot eating contest with 4.5 pounds in 6 minutes (video of another Bar Louie contest in which the winner ate almost 3 pounds)
• Youtube video from CBS about the Collegiate Nationals
• Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle defends competitive eating in a reader mailbag
• Tampa Bay Rays Fan Fest video, include Hall Hunt’s eating contest
• $10,000 to enter pie eating contest?
• Mango eating contest in India

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Three different dates have been announced for the Nathan’s qualifier in New Orleans:

• May 17 – Original announcement on majorleagueeating.com
• June 4 – Sam’s Club press release
• June 7 – IFOCE.com contests page

June 7 appears to be the most likely date because June 4 is a Wednesday and there would probably be more information if the qualifier was this weekend.

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107.7 FM will sponsor a hot dog eating contest and a pasta eating contest in Brunswick, GA on May 17. Both contests will have $1,000 prizes. Call the radio station starting May 12 to obtain one of the 10 slots for each contest.

(From the Hangman, who will serve as a guest judge)

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Local news video broadcast March 24 on KAMR about Joey Chestnut breaking the Big Texan’s 72 ounce steak record has been posted to youtube.

Andrew “Skinnyboy” Lane has a blog entry and gallery about his attempt at the Big Texan.

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“Furious” Pete has started a forum thread on bodybuilding.com titled “Ask a Competitive Eater Anything” which has already reached 8 pages in about a day.

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Beautiful Brian has posted a tribute video of Pat Philbin to his website which can also be seen on youtube. The video features the song, “Piggy in the Middle”, which is based on “I am the Walrus” and is sung by The Rutles, a parody of the Beatles.

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The morning show of KVBC.com has a video about El Toro showing him training with watermelon. There is also a video of Rich LeFevre competing in a one minute hot dog eating contest in the sidebar.

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From IFOCE.com via the Sicilian:

1) Pat Bertoletti 41 HDB in 10 minutes
2) Patrick Vandam 30
3) Mike Fitzgerald 23.5

update KARE11.com has a short article with a video

update #2 StarTribune.com also has an article

update #3 May 19 – Pat Bertoletti has posted a blog entry to his YardBarker blog about the contest

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Writeups of Pat Bertoletti appearances on the May 2 and May 9 episodes of the Steve Dahl show are available at dahl.com. Pat is planning to attend next weekend’s gyro contest in Houston.

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A press release on gonintendo.com announces that a watermelon eating contest between Tim Janus and Crazy Legs Conti will take place at the Nintendo World Store at Rockefeller Center in New York City on May 20.

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(from MosesNews) A press release about last month’s Big “A” burger contest at Andy’s Burgers, Shakes & Fries is now available at Carolina Newswire. The top 3 finishers:

1. Joe Menchetti, 5 minutes 15 seconds, $1000 prize
2. Joshua Currier, 5:45, Lumberton, NC, $500
3. Shayne Katrigis, 7:58, Charleston, SC, $250

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• York (PA) Revolution to offer all you can eat seats where you can enjoy the company of former Baltimore Orioles
• Japanese commercial featuring a ramen eating contest
• Pat Bertoletti posts a picture of a hot dog training session (see above) to a yardbarker comment (The Waffle House belt is to remind Pat that Joey can be beat)
• Kansas State Games to have a hot dog eating contest July 18
• UK hot dog eating contest May 23
• Twins closer Joe Nathan to appear (but not compete) at tomorrow’s Nathan’s qualifier
• Today is Cookie Jarvis’ birthday according to a comment
• Furious Pete has posted an article about the Collegiate Nationals to bodybuilding.com
• China and the Philippines ban conversion of rice paddies to golf courses (via Freakonomics)
• Chicago Nathan’s qualifier next weekend to take place in Matteson
  

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IFOCE.com reports that after discovery of “a document that suggests the original hot dog eating contest was 10 minutes in length”:

Major League Eating has elected to conduct all qualifying rounds of the 2008 multi-city Nathan’s Famous circuit tour as 10-minute competitions and may shift to this duration permanently, making it the official contest length.

While contests in the mid-1980s were 10 minutes (that length is mentioned in the New York Times 1986 contest report), contests in the first half of the 1970s ranged from 2 minutes to 5 minutes according to a Google News archive search. The July 4, 1974 contest, the only Independence Day contest found in the archives from that time period, was 3.5 minutes.

Results from the archive search are available after the jump:
Read the rest of this entry »

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