Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Thirty Hotdog Challenge

I was hanging out with some friends the other night, and we were talking about food and how hungry we all were. I’m not sure why, exactly, but somewhere during the conversation I made the claim that I could eat thirty hotdogs in an hour or less. Thinking back, I have no idea at what point in the discussion I felt triggered to issue a ridiculous challenge. Somebody must have said something about being hungry enough to eat five hotdogs. And not to be outdone, I raised the ante by a factor of six. Needless to say, everyone in the group assured me that, someday in the foreseeable future, we would all have an opportunity to see me fail.

But I’m not so sure that I couldn’t eat thirty hotdogs in an hour. Why not? I mean, I can finish one hotdog in two or three bites. And I’m very rarely satisfied. Even if I’m completely full from a day’s worth of eating, I’ll always have room for a hotdog if I pass a vendor on the street. In fact, I think I’ll be able to do it thirty times with sauerkraut and mustard added on each one. Actually, I think I’d have to eat them this way. Who likes just a plain hotdog? No condiments, nothing. That’s gross. There was this kid in my high school who was such a picky eater. He was the only person I’ve ever known that ate hotdogs totally dry. But that guy was crazy.

I know what everybody’s thinking, that even if I’m not full of shit, the accomplishment wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Those professional hotdog eaters do it every year at the Coney Island competition. And they eat much more than thirty. But I’m not a competitive eater, so I think that, when I do manage to eat thirty, it will be even bigger of a deal than when a professional sets a new world record. It’s like, nobody’s ever really impressed when some juiced out pro baseball player hits a homerun. But what if I, a regular nobody, walked up to the plate in a professional arena and somehow swatted it out of the park? Even if I only hit it to the wall, even if didn’t go over, it would still probably be the biggest news story of our generation.

I’m not even going to train for it. I’m just going to work up an appetite and sit down to eat. I’ve often heard that, right after you start eating something, right after you take the first bite, it takes the stomach about fifteen minutes to signal to the brain that the hunger has been satisfied. So I’m planning on sprinting right out of the gate and making sure that I can down as many franks as I can before my head even has any clue that I’m getting full. And that’s if I get full. I plan on getting myself really, really hungry.

But I’ve also heard that you’re not supposed to completely fast right before a big meal. Again, this could all be total pseudoscience, but the idea is that if you get used to not eating a lot, you can’t all of the sudden dump pounds and pounds of hotdogs inside and expect there not to be a negative reaction. No, now that I’m thinking about it a little more, I have to eat really big meals for at least a week before the challenge. I want to make sure my insides are all stretched out, prepared to receive the hotdog goodness.

When I was living in Ecuador, every six months or so a bunch of ex-pats would get together at the McDonald’s in the capital city and partake in what came to be known as “the McDonald’s Challenge.” It was always three large sandwiches, a large fries, a large drink, and a McFlurry. There was no time limit. It was just you versus the food. Even with no clock running, I always finished first. And it was never any big deal. Well, I’m sure it was a big deal for everyone else, because even though there wasn’t any time limit, they all still had to listen to me bragging for the rest of the day about how I finished first. I think that the hotdogs are going to go down the same way, if not easier.

One of my friends raised an interesting question: boiled or grilled? While I definitely prefer a grilled hotdog to one boiled in water, I’d have to say that, for the purposes of this challenge, I think that a boiled dog would go down a lot smoother than would a grilled one. Also, I think the choice of buns is going to have a pretty significant impact. I don’t want any of these artisanal nine-grain rolls. I need the softest, most processed white bread available. Something that, like cotton candy, basically starts to digest itself as soon as it comes into contact with water.

Seriously, I’m going to do this. I invite everyone to join me. I think that this summer should be the summer of the Thirty Hotdog Challenge. How many times can you challenge yourself? What if we set it up so we all did the Thirty Hotdog Challenge for thirty days in a row?

Also, turkey hotdogs don’t count, so don’t even think about it. Those hotdogs stuffed with cheese are optional, but I strongly recommend against it.

True Story

One time I was driving my car and I stopped at a red light. While I was waiting for it to turn green, this bum came out of nowhere and starting smearing some sort of grease all over my windshield. I had heard of this trick before – the guy expected me to hand over a dollar or two before he’d wipe the glass clean – but I thought that this practice had been largely phased out years ago when the city started cracking down on these street-side hustlers. Sure enough, the guy came around to the driver’s side window and held out his hand. I said to myself, you know what Rob? You’re not getting pushed around by anyone. Not today. And I told the guy to take a hike. The cars behind me started honking, so I assumed the light had turned green, but I couldn’t really tell, because that guy had done such a good job of greasing up the windshield and obscuring my view. I put my foot on the gas and immediately crashed into something.

Of all the things to crash into, it had to be a police horse. What a mess. I got out of the car. The horse was on the ground, clearly in agony. Its front leg was broken. These two cops were just staring at me, their mouths wide open. One of them started to cry and knelt down to try and comfort the horse. “Biscuit!” he wailed, “Oh my poor, precious Biscuit! You’ll be OK! Everything will be OK! Just hold on, I’ll …”

BAM! The other cop took out his pistol and put the horse down with one shot to the head.

“Joe! How could you?” the first officer was sobbing, “We could have saved him! We could have … Biscuit!”

“Jesus Johnny, I had to! You know police horse protocol. Broken leg. It’s the same as at the races. We had no choice!” the second cop said. Now he was starting to cry also.

“No! I could have saved him! I could have …” and they both collapsed into each others’ arms, hysterical.

Meanwhile, I had found a rag in the back of my car, which, surprisingly, hadn’t really sustained that much damage from the horse. I mean, yeah, there was a dent, but it was totally drivable. I was trying to wipe the windshield clear so I could make a subtle getaway while the cops consoled each other, but the grease was just way too thick and wasn’t coming off.

But then the officers both turned their attention towards me and said, in unison, “You!”

“Listen boys,” I raised my hands out in front of me, “I can explain.”

I turned to point at the homeless guy with the squeegee, but he was gone. The next thing I know I’m in handcuffs standing before a municipal judge. Some court appointed attorney was standing next to me, whispering in my ear something about a plea bargain. I tried to tell him about the windshield, how it wasn’t my fault, but he seemed totally overworked and completely disinterested. If I agreed to a deal, my license would be revoked and I’d have to pay a pretty hefty fine. But I said to myself, again, I said, Rob, you’re not getting pushed around. Not today you’re not.

I told the judge that I’d like to waive my right to an attorney, and that I’d be representing myself. The lawyer shrugged and walked away and I began immediately on setting up my defense. The judge banged his gavel and sentenced me to three months behind bars.

When I got out of jail, I discovered that I had been replaced at work. Since I had no way of paying my rent, my landlord busted into my place and threw out all of my stuff. I found myself wandering the streets, unable to come to terms with how my very normal life had taken such a bizarre twist. The days blurred into the nights and I feared that I was starting to lose my concept of time and date. I had a full beard. My one pair of clothes was reduced to rags. After days of begging on the streets, I finally saved up close to five bucks in spare change. I decided that I needed to turn things around. I used the five bucks to buy a squeegee and some Windex at a ninety-nine cent store. I figured I just needed to clean windshields for a while to save up some money for a new shirt and a razor.

The light turned red and I approached the car. I got the windshield all dirty and then walked around to the driver’s side window. But the guy in the front seat was shaking his head. He whispered to himself, “Not today Rob. Not today.” And I realized all too late what was going on. I tried to clean off his windshield, to get his attention, to tell him to hold on for just a second. There was still time to change everything. But the grease was too thick and wasn’t coming off. Somebody behind him honked, and he ran right through the light, right into Biscuit’s front leg, right into our twisted, broken future.

I freaked out and made a break for it, but I got stopped by some different cops a few blocks away. They told me that it wasn’t the 90s anymore. They told me I couldn’t go around bothering drivers with squeegees. I started freaking out, telling them about the horse, about the car, about the plea bargain, about how my landlord threw all of my stuff out. They told me to stop flailing around, to stop resisting arrest, to stop asking what the date was, to stop struggling so much. One of them took out a taser. I lost control of my bodily functions the second those barbs dug into my skin.

You guys ever think about?

You guys ever think about the economy? You guys ever worry about where the future is going to take all of us? All of our money? All of our security? You ever stay up late, shaking in your bed, sweating profusely, terrified that someday soon, all of the world’s currencies will simply lose all of their value at the same exact time, leaving humans to start bartering for their basic necessities? How much is a roll of toilet paper going to cost? How long will my comic book collection keep my fridge stocked? I guess I could always rent out my Xbox, but how am I going to pay for the electricity that I need to keep it running? And will Microsoft still honor my Xbox Live subscription even if the cash that I would normally use to pay for it is now completely worthless? What about all of those coins in all of those fountains scattered around the country? If dollars and cents don’t count for dollars or cents, what about all of those dreams and wishes people made when they threw them in there in the first place? Are they still going to come true? What if they already came true? Are they going to be reversed? Will the reversal be instantaneous or gradual?

You guys ever think about time travel? I’ve told myself a few times over the course of my life that, if time travel is ever invented while I’m still alive, I’ll travel back to this moment as proof. And then I’ll fold my arms and wait around for a minute or two to see if my future self will honor my commitment and visit me. But I never wind up showing up. And I get all depressed thinking that, maybe I’ll never be around to see humanity finally cross the time barrier. But then I think, well, I never really wrote it down, the exact date of when I told myself I’d come back. All I did was just tell myself that I’d visit myself right now, and then when it didn’t happen, I got so let down that I never committed to memory the exact date and time that I would have had to come back to. And so, maybe the whole exercise, maybe it’s all a little self-defeating. So maybe I should write it down. But then again, maybe time travel will exist while I’m alive, but the technology will be so protected that I’ll never have access to it. Because, people went to the moon, right? But it’s not like I ever got to go to the moon. And then I think, which would be worse, not having ever lived to see time travel get invented, or living to see it get invented, but not living long enough for it to become commercially accessible for everyone to use? I always think about my grandfather, who was in his late seventies by the time the Internet came out. He saw it and heard people talking about it, but by the time they were installing high-speed lines in everyone’s houses, it was way too late for him to really get into it. And he really would have loved Wikipedia.

You guys ever think about George W. Bush? What do you think he’s up to nowadays? I know he came out with that memoir and did laps around all the talk shows and everything, and I know he met up with Obama recently to unveil his White House portrait, but aside from a photo-op here and there he’s pretty much out of the public eye. What do you think he does everyday after he gets up and has a cup of coffee? What do you think it’s like if he just wants to go out and get a Slurpee? Do you think he can just take a drive over to Seven-Eleven and walk in like it’s no big deal? Or would he have to get one or two Secret Service agents to tag along? What if he really wants a Slurpee every day, but he feels stupid bothering his agents for something as trivial as a Slurpee run, and so he decides that, maybe he doesn’t need a Slurpee that bad after all? Maybe he’s grown so self-conscious about what his agents think about him that he never even wants to leave the house. And what if he does go to Seven-Eleven? He gets there, walks in, fills up his cup, goes to the register, and then what? This guy used to have the access codes to the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, and now he’s going to wait for some clerk to count out his spare change? What flavor do you think he’d pick anyway? My bet would be piña colada.

You guys ever think about watching that show Grey’s Anatomy? Yeah, me neither. (Zing!)

Tattoos are awesome

I’m trying to think of a cool tattoo. I really want to have one done, but I’m never able to think of anything cool enough. If I do think of something cool, I usually wind up thinking it’s cool only for maybe an hour or so, and I’ll get really hyped up about it, but the excitement eventually wears off, and I’m left with just a vague feeling that I had something great somewhere in my head but now I’ve lost it. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’ll never be happy with a tattoo idea because I’m constantly over-thinking it. A while ago I had this plan. The plan was that the next time I found myself really excited about a tattoo idea, I told myself that I would just seize the moment and run off to a tattoo parlor that second and have it tattooed immediately. Maybe just going for it, just actually going out and getting it done would prevent the inevitable diminishment of excitement. Maybe about a week or two later, I had it, a really great idea, and so I ran out the door. But I got stuck in heavy, heavy traffic on the way there, and while I was stopped at a light, a little voice popped inside my head somewhere and whispered, “Rob, is your idea really that cool?” And that was all it took to send my enthusiasm into a death spiral of self-doubt and eventual apathy.

A few years ago I decided that I would have my whole body tattooed. But it wouldn’t be a design or anything, it would just be a tattoo of a single color, and that color would be the color of a perfect tan. This wasn’t concept art or anything like that. I wasn’t really trying to make a statement either. My reasons were practical. Like many men of my generation, I found myself spending way too much time and money on spray tanning. Obviously committed to having a great natural looking tan all year round, I figured it would make a ton of sense to tattoo myself with a permanent spray tan.

The tattoo artist was skeptical, but at the same time really didn’t give a shit what I did to my body, and so she started on my back. But after an hour she had only completed an area about the size of a baseball. I didn’t anticipate it taking this long and I felt myself getting pretty bored. I started complaining and asking how much longer it would take until we’d be finished. She told me it would probably take several sessions over the course of a couple of months. “What?” I asked. “That’s totally crazy.” And then I asked how much all of these sessions might cost. And she told me how much, and I realized that I didn’t even have enough money to cover the session that I was currently in the middle of. So I did what I always do in situations like that: I faked a seizure until somebody called 911 and an ambulance came to take me away.

When I got to the hospital, I played dumb. The doctor checked me out and, obviously, couldn’t find anything wrong with me. “Except,” he said, “I’m a little concerned about a patch of skin on your back. I think we should perform a biopsy to make sure everything is OK.” And I started freaking out. Skin cancer? But I’m always so good about staying out of the sun. I told him that I spray tanned instead of real tanned and that’s when I realized that he must have been talking about my unfinished tan tattoo on my back. I started laughing and told him all about my permanent tattoo tan. He listened politely and then told me to abandon the plan, that he couldn’t in good conscience recommend me having every square inch of my body tattooed. I told him not to worry, that it wasn’t going to happen anyway, because I realized too late that I couldn’t afford the time or money necessary to complete the project. Then some hospital staff member came over, asking me to fill out some forms and to let him see my insurance card. “Insurance?” I said, “I don’t have any health insurance.” And the staff member said, “OK, well, we need your information so we can send you a bill.” And I said, “Bill?” So I did what I always do in situations like this and I faked another seizure. But nobody called an ambulance this time, because I forgot that I was already in a hospital, surrounded by doctors. They immediately grabbed my flailing limbs and belted me onto a stretcher.

“This is perfect timing,” I heard one doctor say, “Let’s run some tests while he’s having this seizure. We should be able to get to the bottom of it.” And I knew that I should have stopped at that moment, the flailing around, the making spit bubbles come out of my mouth, the urinating my pants, but I couldn’t think of a way out of the situation that didn’t involve a seizure within a seizure. They ran the tests and found out pretty quickly that I was faking the whole thing. I just kept denying everything. While I was faking the second seizure, they must have grabbed my wallet to notify my next of kin. They found my address and filled out all of the forms for me. Now tons of bills keep piling up on my door. My wages are being automatically garnished by the state. God damn big government. There’s also something about a fraud charge, but I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on with that.

I just had a great idea for a tattoo. It would be around my bicep. From a distance, it would look like a red ring around my arm, but if you moved in and took a closer look, it wouldn’t be a ring at all; it would be The Flash running supersonic laps around my arm. Excuse me for the abrupt ending, but I have to get to the tattoo parlor.

I wish I had giant hands

Sometimes I wish that I had giant hands, like five or six times the size they are right now. Whenever I tell this to anyone, they always give me a weird look. “Don’t you think it would be kind of freakish?” they might ask. “Wouldn’t it get in the way of living a normal life?” But who really wants a normal life anyway?

Freakish? Maybe. But probably not. I think it would all be determined by how I owned it. If I felt that my giant hands were something to be ashamed of, then I think that those feelings would be translated into how others might perceive me. For example, if I was embarrassed of them, I might walk down the street, my head hung low, trying to hide my hands in my pockets. But my hands would be so big that I’d rip the pockets right out of the pants as soon as I tried to stuff them in there. The only other possibility would be to have a tailor custom make several pairs of pants with giant pockets capable of holding my giant hands. But that would look equally as weird. Without being able to see my hands, passersby might wonder what the hell is going on with those two giant bulges at the sides of my hips. Also, if I ever wanted to take my hands out of the pockets, there would be this huge surplus of fabric hanging down from my sides. It would look crazy.

But like I said, I wouldn’t be ashamed. I would own it. If I were blessed with the giant hands of my wildest dreams, my life would most definitely be a lot better. I wouldn’t be embarrassed at all. I would walk down the street radiating confidence. I’d give out ridiculously oversized high-fives to anybody that thought they could handle one. A giant thumbs-up would be equally as glorious. And if anybody thought about teasing me or giving me a hard time, I think a well-timed foot-long middle finger might send any hecklers the perfect message.

Remember when the first Hulk movie came out and some toy manufacturer released those Hulk-Hands toys? They were so cool. They were giant green fists that you could wear over your hands. Whenever you pounded them together, they made some really cool sound effects. The only problem was, they were so incredibly popular that they all sold out nationwide. I never did get to realize my dream of holding the power of the Hulk in my hands. If I had actual giant hands, I wouldn’t need some stupid toy. I could just dip my hands in some green paint and I’d have real life Hulk-Hands. Everyone would be unbelievably jealous.

I’ll never forget the humiliation I experienced when I got cut from the volleyball team in high school. It’s not like I imagined myself to have any natural volleyball talent. No, I just happened to have a growth spurt early on and was taller than pretty much everybody else at school. The volleyball coach approached me about joining the team, not the other way around. I expressed my hesitation, telling him how I had never so much as ever handled a volleyball before. He assured me that, with my natural height, it would only be a matter of practice and training.

Needless to say, I didn’t make the volleyball team. The coach should have paid attention to the enormity of my self-doubt. But instead, he strung me along through all the rounds of cuts, making me humiliate myself in front of all the other would-be volleyballers as I spasmed and flailed around the court, rarely if ever making decent contact with the ball. Right before he posted the final team roster, he pulled me over and, clearly embarrassed at having ever encouraged me to try out, told me that I wouldn’t be a part of that year’s team. He couldn’t even bring himself to look me in the eye.

I’m almost positive that if I had a giant pair of hands, I would have saved myself two-weeks worth of unnecessary humiliation. I could have been a star blocker. What I lacked in physical ability and hand-eye coordination I would have more than made up for in sheer hand-size. All I would have had to do was to reach up. There would have been probably close to an eighty percent chance that I would have made at least some sort of contact with the ball. Whenever I think back to those unfortunate tryouts, I always find myself staring at my pathetic, regular sized hands, thinking about how they always let me down, how they’ll never reach the gigantic size that I’ve desperately fantasized about in my imagination.