Tag Archives: Coney Island

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Dog Fare

​Why the Large Fares Poorly
at Competitive Eating Shows

It’s always the skinny ones. No matter how poised to win, or driven to dominate their opponents, with a massive whale of a body to match the hype, the winner of the infamous Nathan’s Fourth of July hot-dog eating competition​ at Coney Island, New York City, has been always a size 30-32 regular type of body. The old Coney may be gone, but the winner of this or any year could fit right into its old glorious photos.
Hell, a diminutive Japanese man won it several times, and the former champion, whose family name is a nut, no less, won it eight times straight, only to be dethroned this year by, you guessed it, a smaller-sized man. What gives? The answer scratches dangerously close on the body stereotypes some use to put others down.
But if you can forget the PC etiquette for just a minute, you may wonder why this happens, that is, if a eating competition has even the clout to reflect the alimentary habits of the society at large which surrounds it, and promotes it as some kind of Roman circus, year in and year out. For more info on the subject, check Island, Coney, New York, et al.
Wouldn’t it be that fat people have already a ‘natural’ tendency to eat more than anyone else? And I mean, the ‘minority’ ones that are fat because indeed they love food as much as anybody else but can’t quite control the moment when hunger and food satisfaction switch to something more pathological and psychologically-tilted as a five-hour late night snacking binge and such.
Wouldn’t it be logical to expect that someone with a larger body type would be able to store more food at any moment’s notice, than a smaller person? Are we too far out of our depths to be puzzled at the fact that practice should make it at least more perfect the act of consuming calories and carbons and fat and proteins at a higher rate than those not er endowed with a larger stomach? We are.

EAT YOUR TROUBLES & SHAME AWAY
Finally, wouldn’t it be at least reasonable to expect that anyone with a taste for regularly downing a few burgers on a single sitting, along with several ounces of sugary soda, and maybe a pint or two of ice cream and cake, be somehow more capable of digesting it all at a quicker rate and, therefore, theoretically, be faster at getting ready for seconds?
Shouldn’t we be entitled to wonder that, at least for that reduced segment of fat people who do enjoy eating, or rather, eat it first, and maybe enjoy it after, and who seem capable to eat through happiness and grief at equal measures, would produce formidable professional eaters, impressing all those around them with the gargantuan amount of food that they can consume?
Well, apparently, not. As the fancy-named ‘industry’ of competitive eating has been showing, almost at the same Continue reading →

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Jose, Neda & John

The World’s Poorest President,
The Two Nedas & a Rogue McAfee

What happens when we skip a few days, and neglect to publish our daily stories? We get our files full of them, that’s what happens. So, you can just imagine what we’ve got in store, after a two weeks-plus stretch that included a major storm and a presidential election.
In the end, it’s all about people and their incredible tales. Jose Mojica, leader of four million Uruguayans, for instance, had $1,800 to his name in 2010. Millions of Iranians think Neda Soltani was killed in a public rally. And anti-virus mogul John McAfee is being sought for murder.
From the poignant, to the Kafkaesque, to the deeply disturbing, we’d be hard pressed to find commonality on these stories. That task we must leave to you, reader, to chew it up at your own discretion. In fact, they’re like what the cat would drag down to your door, after a night on the prowl.
Many of you may thank the cat and get rid of the carcasses. Others, however, may wish they had personally experienced some of the action, even if only as a fly on the wall. They may even get inspired to go out today and make their own lives count. One will never know. Short of that, you’ll do just fine reflecting about them, and chewing up some of that commonality.
After all, look at that beautiful antique children’s park toy, the Jane’s Carousel, that illustrates this post. It’s spent decades in some dusty storage space, and nothing ever seemed to happen to it. Then, after a 30-year restoration effort, it looked shiny and ready for another century of entertaining those young at heart.
But alas, it was not to last. Down hard came the storm to almost rip it out of its moorings. It got thrown and bounced a few times, and wound up eerily floating on a pool of dirty water. It survived, however, and Continue reading →

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Wooden Planks

After the Quirk and the Clown,
Time for Coney Island Boardwalk

When you think about the endangered Amazon forest, of which the biggest part is located in Brazil, thoughts about indigenous peoples, the environment, healing plants and the majestic Rainforest may come to your mind. But hardly ever the famed boardwalks of Coney Island, New York City.
In another one of those things you didn’t know, but now it hardly matters because it’s already on its way out, so it happens that the slabs of wood people have been stepping on and Continue reading →