Someone sent me a video on Maxim Online of a dude eating 10 Slim Jims in 10 minutes. He barely didn't finish, having two inches of the last beef stick left. When the camera whipped around and revealed that the entire office of about 30 people was watching this contest, I realized that not just in college, people are obsessed with eating contests.
It really got me thinking- what is the point? I mean, I know that it's fun and hilarious and masochistic and all that. I understand how much fun it is. But beyond that, what's the allure? Are you looking for a gastrointestinal hero? Unique bragging rights? Is it engaged out of soul-searing boredom?
The last eating contest I was a part of was when Kristal, an employee here, had started with us no more than five days before, when she was challenged to eat the remaining pizza from lunch. It equaled one full size large(huge) pizza plus two additional pieces, and a mixture of toppings and crusts. She had one hour to down about 14 huge pieces of pizza. Oh yeah! And like any good competition, if Kristal finishes, she gets a hundred bucks.
Just like all competitions that don't exist in Sci-Fi movies, the competitor KNOWS what he or she is getting into- in this case, Kristal knows she's going to throw up today. To her credit, she powered through 12 pieces, an entire large pizza, before going down to tossing-cookies-town. And she got fifty bucks.
When I lived in the dorms at school I remember saltine contests, cake eating contets, numerous accounts of the infamous milk challenge, and many more.
Is this an international occurrence, or is this only an American thing? Do european kids come home from studying abroad and tell their friends how they watched some kids drink a gallon of milk in under an hour? There HAS to be an explanation for this retarded phenomenon and I'm determined to get to the bottom of it.
The grossest thing that I have ever witnessed someone eat was on Fear Factor. No surprise there right? I mean, they have people eating ANIMAL DICKS, so of course that's going to be the grossest thing that I ever see eaten. Bugs, brains, smegma from a hippopotamus- all disgusting but not the most horrific thing I've ever seen: That title belongs to the episode where two girls drank OSTRICH EGGS. I've never dry heaved to such an extent, it was horrible.
Do we want these people to succeed, or is the pleasure distilled from the inherent disaster that lurks under the idea of every one of these contests? What do you think?
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