Tag Archives: Hotdogs

Sorry, I can’t eat all of those hotdogs

I want to make it clear that, when I had said months ago that I would eat a hotdog for every person that donated to my race fund, I honestly wasn’t expecting such an outpouring of generosity from my family members, my friends, the friends of friends, it’s really funny how Facebook just kind of decides for you which of your posts will languish in obscurity while others, it’s like everybody sees them, your cousin, you cousin’s roommate’s mom, that mom’s sister, her kids.

Again, to all of those people that freely gave, I’m humbled, I truly appreciate it. But nobody could’ve expected that to go viral, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to eat all of those hotdogs, it’s not physically possible. So everyone, thank you, but it’s not going to happen. And the money’s already gone, the foundation cashed everything in once the race was over.

I get it, it is kind of a let down. If I were in your position, I’d feel cheated too. You saw something on the Internet, a random guy promising to eat a hotdog for every donation, you thought, that’s something I’d like to see, something I’d like my money to help finance. So thanks, and I’m just looking at the list here, Mike B. from Chicago, I really appreciate the two dollars you donated, that was cool of you, but just try to picture those two dollars going to help some poor kids somewhere, some poor, sick kids.

And, you know, I’m not trying to take away from your donation, but how far did you think that two dollars was going to go? I mean, if you’re donating two dollars to charity, and part of that donation comes with a hot dog, it’s not like I’m doubting your intentions. Or, you know what? Maybe I am doubting your intentions. You weren’t in it for the charity at all, were you?

Whenever you make a donation that comes with a gift, it’s never worth it. Like donate one hundred dollars and we’ll give you this charity t-shirt. If it were really about the t-shirt, I could’ve gone online had them screen printed. So stop harassing me about the money, OK? Because I’ve already told you, it’s gone.

And no, I wasn’t totally full of shit, I was planning on eating some hot dogs. Obviously, like I’ve said, I couldn’t have imagined my plea for donations to go viral. You think I chose for this to happen? Come on, in terms of stuff that I’ve put on the Internet, this “hotdog for every donation” campaign ranks probably in the bottom tier of things that I would’ve wished to have gone viral.

Like maybe some of my writing, some of these blog posts, I would’ve picked any one of these to have gotten even a fraction of the attention as my hotdog stunt kicked up. Maybe some publishing house could’ve gotten in touch with me, “Wow Rob, you’re a great writer, here’s a book deal.” But no, I’m stuck here getting threatened with a class-action lawsuit from a bunch of Internet strangers that paid an average of a dollar-thirteen to see another Internet stranger get himself sick from eating too many hotdogs.

Except for that one donor who gave over a grand. I don’t understand your angle, pal. I mean, maybe if I was super, mega rich, this might seem like a really twisted way at buying a laugh. Was it a mistake? Did your credit card get charged and you haven’t figured it out yet? Because even if it was on purpose, my original bet was one hotdog per donation, regardless of how much you donated.

Or maybe you really care about the kids, I have no idea. Look, I ran the race, you guys all donated. Can’t we just leave it at that? Is it really necessary for me to shovel down over four thousand hot dogs? Where would I get four thousand hotdogs anyway? I wouldn’t be logistically capable of cooking them all, serving them, let alone getting them down my throat. Just, I’m going to change my email address, OK? Just, leave me alone, I’m off the Internet for a while, all right?

Meatless Mondays

I wanted to try out Meatless Mondays, but I work on Mondays at a restaurant, and so while I made myself this super healthy breakfast, well, I don’t know if it was super healthy, but it was definitely meatless, just a bunch of cereal, just like three bowls of cereal, I just kept eating bowl after bowl until I was full, and then when I got into work, my boss was like, “Hey everybody, I made hotdogs for lunch!” and you know I say lunch loosely, because it was like four, but when you start work in the afternoon and keep on trucking until close to midnight, four is kind of like lunchtime, especially when you consider my breakfast, my box of Frosted Mini Wheats, what time did I eat that, like eleven? Eleven thirty? It’s all off, everything skewed toward a little later in the day.

And there was this tray of hotdogs and I was like, fuck Meatless Mondays, I’ll do Meatless Tuesday this week, because I seriously love hotdogs. One time last summer I ate thirty of them in less than ninety minutes. It’s kind of a long story, or, I guess it’s really not that long of a story, I just have this habit of saying, “It’s kind of a long story,” whenever I want to beef up something boring, you know, when I’m talking about one thing and I get sidetracked and I start talking about another thing. But it was just this regular day last year, I think I had hotdogs for lunch and I was talking about how good it was, I said something like, “Man I fucking love hotdogs, I could eat hotdogs forever, no limit, I could eat thirty hotdogs in an hour.”

I don’t know why I said that. Sometimes when I start talking, especially if I’m talking about something that I like, like if I’m getting really excited about it, I won’t stop, I’ll keep going, I started thinking about Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi and all the great hotdog eating champs. That’s not so hard, I thought to myself, if they could do it, I could totally do it too.

My proclamation was met with an immediate rebuttal, and I doubled down, “I absolutely can do it, thirty hotdogs in an hour,” before eventually scaling back slightly, “Ninety minutes,” never having admitting that I ever said an hour in the first place. Whatever, they gave me the extra half-hour, everybody came over my house, one of my friends tried to be a wise guy and he bought these really doughy potato buns. “No way pal,” I pointed toward the door, “I want real hotdog buns.”

And I did it, even though I felt like shit right after, my fingers were tingling, I thought I saw Jesus coming down from the clouds, he was holding this tray with even more hotdogs, he was like, “My son, eat more hotdogs. For hotdogs are the kingdom of heaven,” yeah, like a bunch of nonsense, total hallucinatory garbage, but I’ve got to say, his hotdogs looked a lot better than mine, and even though for strategic purposes I decided to forgo any condiments on mine, the Lord’s wieners were perfectly dressed, just the right amount of sauerkraut and relish, the buns were these artfully crafted artisanal loaves, they almost looked like mini pretzels, garnished with coarse sea salt, brown on the outside, fluffy on the inside.

But that only lasted like fifteen seconds, then I kind of snapped out of it, people were throwing water on my head, drawing stuff on my face with permanent marker. I never got to bottom of just who drew that hotdog on my cheek, but whatever, permanent marker, you’ve just got to keep scrubbing, it comes out eventually.

So I woke up today and I got myself a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. And right after my first bite I was like, shit, what about Meatless Tuesday? But one, I already ate a bite of sandwich, so I’m not about to throw it away, and two, again I already ate a bite of sandwich, so whatever I wound up doing from here on out, regardless of how little meat I ate for the rest of the day, it would never be a true meatless day.

Meatless Wednesday it was, I guess. I figured, let’s enjoy the rest of the day. I ate the rest of that sandwich with gusto. I got to work extra early that night, licking my lips on the way in, man, hotdogs yesterday, I wonder what’s on the menu tonight. But it was this lentil salad. Totally vegetarian. And then after work I grabbed a slice of pizza. If only I hadn’t had that breakfast sandwich I really could have had a meatless day. I thought, OK, maybe tomorrow will be better. But it was tuna melts. Does that count? What kind of a meatless day are we talking about? How can I really commit to something like this when I haven’t even explored all of the guidelines? And what about that Clamato I had on the way into work? Does clam juice count as a meat? Why can’t I get this right?

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.