Crazy Legs Conti was interviewed by Midtown Lunch to promote his midtown lunch today at a watermelon eating contest at Rockefeller center:

Place you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch: Back to sushi – I relied on Midtown Lunch to give me the rundown on how fast the conveyer belt moved at Sakae Sushi (not fast enough for me) and the crowd at the Todai buffet. Regarding Todai, pickle eating champ Beautiful Brian Seiken is planning an outing to Todai’s plentiful buffet. You need a sizable guy like Beautiful Brian to anchor himself front and center at the sushi bar, then other NYC gurgiators like Nasty Nate Biller and me can form a wedge and really get behind the sneeze guard to take the buffet down. If the head chef isn’t crying into the steam table in an hour, we haven’t done justice to Midtown Lunch!

Given last year’s qualifier results, the 2007 Nathan’s finals would have had the following field if the eaters with the top 16 results made the finals regardless of their placement in a qualifier:

2007 Jun 2	1st	59.5	Joey “Jaws” Chestnut	Tempe, AZ
2007 May 3	1st	46	Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti	Las Vegas, NV
2007 May 19	1st	41.5	Tim “Eater X” Janus	East Hartford, CT
2007 Mar 24	1st	39.5	Chip “The Phenom” Simpson	Sunrise, FL
2007 May 26	1st	36	Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas	Philadelphia, PA
2007 Jun 23	1st	34	Rich “The Locust” LeFevre	San Francisco, CA
2007 May 26	2nd	33	“Humble” Bob Shoudt	Philadelphia, PA
2007 Jun 9	1st	28.75	Hall “Hoover” Hunt	Charlotte, NC
2007 Jun 9	2nd	28	Juliet Lee	Charlotte, NC
2007 Jun 27	1st	27.5	“The Natural” Arturo Rios, Jr.	Manhattan, NY
2007 Jun 22	1st	27	Pat “from Moonachie” Philbin	Cranbury, NJ
2007 May 26	3rd	27	“Big” Brian Subich	Philadelphia, PA
2007 Jun 28	2nd	26.5	Brad “The Lunatic” Sciullo	West Chester, PA
2007 Jun 3	1st	26.5	Erik “The Red” Denmark	Queens, NY
2007 Jun 27	2nd	26	Allen “Shredder” Goldstein	Manhattan, NY
2007 Jun 2	3rd	25	Tim “Gravy” Brown	Tempe, AZ

Brad Sciullo and Brian Subich would have replaced Crazy Legs Conti and Dale Boone.

The blog for Philly Burbs has a preview of Saturday’s Nathan’s qualifier that will be held at the Independence Hall Visitors Center. “Humble” Bob Shoudt, Russ Keeler, Pete Miernicki are listed as expected competitors along with the husband and wife team of Olivia and Reginald Pascual. If Sonya Thomas does not compete, it would break a two year winning streak at the Philadelphia Nathan’s qualifier.

The contest reports from May 17 (see below) have been updated with a slideshow of the Houston gyro contest, a gallery of the Chicago Nathan’s qualifier from Val Bromann and the longer Journal Inquirer writeup of the Hartford qualifier.

A blog entry from Pat Bertoletti has been added to the Minnesota qualifier post.

(Comments are closed for this post, use the original contest threads for comments)

Nintendo has put out a press release about the WiiWare games that will be released today. The Major League Eating game is not included in that document.

• Article about Portland mayoral race with coverage of doughnut contest for candidates
• Gothamist preview of Tuesdays promotional watermelon eating contest at Rockefeller Center
• Steakbellie on qualifying for Nathan’s
• Reporter attempts to set personal wing eating record during morning newscast
• Cheeseburger eating contest to be held at Jimmy Buffet night at Newark Bears game May 23.
• Cameron McKirdy uploads 3 new videos
• Jill Stoler gets into Wednesday’s pickle contest at the Carnegie Deli
• Gal Sone gets a haircut and a new hair color

A Creative Loafing blog entry from February 2007 has a picture of Dale Boone at a pizza eating contest with the following caption:

On Saturday, Atlanta’s best competitive eater, Dale Boone, won a pizza-eating contest at Nancy’s Pizza in Buckhead. Boone tried to conceal his identity with a mask and pseudonym, an effort that might have succeeded had he: a) kept his mask on, and b) not answered to Dale.

Dale Boone’s picture shares the page with a picture of a group called FTP, which does not stand for File Transfer Protocol.

There are also pictures of Dale Boone in this gallery of the dumpling contest held at the 2007 Dragon Boat Festival in Queens.

Here are the top Nathan’s debuts according to the eatfeats database:

A list of all initial values of 20 HDB or more follows after the jump. (Some of the initial values are probably not actual debuts due to missing results)
Read the rest of this entry »

NokiaUsers.net has a blog entry with an embedded commercial starring “Lisa Kissick”, a competitive eating fan who uses the Nokia N95 8GB to download competitive eating videos and receive instant contest results. One of the videos she downloads is a butter eating record, which is listed as seven sticks in 4 minutes.

update Don Lerman has posted his response to the video on mosesnews.com:

Nokia has put an add on the market that is a slap in the face to great Moses Lerman it belittles his title and discounts the truth and if you check the glutton bowl tape it is actually 71/2 sticks in 5 min

Results from today’s gyro contest in Houston from IFOCE.com

1. Pat Bertoletti, 12 gyros in 10 minutes, $2000
2. Joey Chestnut, 11 gyros, $1000
3. “Humble” Bob Shoudt 9.5 gyros, $700
4. Nathan Biller 6 gyros, $300

This ends Joey Chestnut’s winning streak at 6 contests (in which he defeated Pat Bertoletti 5 times)

update HoustonPress has a slideshow of the contest (from Liz)

update #2 The Blot Says has a contest report with some pictures

A youtube video is also available.

East Hartford results from IFOCE.com

1. Arturo Rios, 22.75 HDB
2. Russ Keeler 19.5
3. Pete Davekos 16.5

update JournalInquirer.com has a brief article and will have a longer writeup on Monday.

update #2 jcrue11 of bodybuilding.com claims he was the actual runner-up and that Russ Keeler was disqualified.

update #3 Journal Inquirer has the longer article out now. Mike Springer was the fourth place finisher.

results from Sage & Gravy comments

1. Pat Vandam 31
2. Tim “Gravy” Brown 28
3. Mike Fitzgerald 23.5

update The Southtown Star has a contest report. Tim Brown’s next qualifying attempts will take place in Tempe, AZ and Plano, TX.

update #2 Val Bromann has a gallery from the contest and IFOCE.com has the contest report out now.

Erik Denmark has a blog entry about his appearance on the Groz & Gas radio show today, which is available online. Erik talks about the Major League Eating video game and his compensation for it. Like Pat Bertoletti, he is not clear about the terms of the royalty agreement. He will attempt to qualify for Nathan’s in Kansas City, but makes no mention of tomorrow’s gyro contest in Houston.

There is also a press release for the MLE video game with descriptions of four of the game’s characters.

The East Hartford Gazette has a preview of tomorrow’s Nathan’s qualifier. The listed expected entrants are Arturo Rios, Russ Keeler, Pete Davekos and “Hungry” Heather Breslin.

Pat Bertoletti appeared on the Steve Dahl show today. One of the subjects was the upcoming Major League Eating video game and the compensation received:

6:23 Sometime during this week there’s going to be a Nintendo Wii competitive eating game. There’s new software for he Wii where you can download games, including the competitive eating game. It’ll feature Patrick, Joey Chestnut, The Black Widow, Kobayashi and 6 or 7 other eaters.
6:24 Patrick’s character looks freaky because they went with his mohawk and mustache look. All of the eaters got some money and were told there’d be royalties depending on games sold.
6:25 It sounds like it’s about time for Patrick to get representation. He doesn’t like the way he looks in the game and now he’s probably not getting as much money as he should be getting. He should have gotten money up front against the royalties.
6:26 Every eater got $500 up front but there were no specifics about the royalties. It sounds like he got ripped off.
6:27 Patrick signed a contract with the IFOCE and they own his image. That contract is up next year. We might have to go in and Urlacher it.

The press release for the Houston gyro contest lists Joey Chestnut, Pat Bertoletti, Bob Shoudt and Erik Denmark as expected entrants.

• AOL FanHouse responds to Canadian Catholic newspaper’s criticism of the eating contest held on Mike & Mike in the Morning (The first competitive eating post on FanHouse since Sonya Thomas oversaw a contest at a Washington Capitals game)
• Hall Hoover begins selling T shirts
• May 24 Pittsburgh Nathan’s qualifier to take place at Greensburg Sam’s Club
• Something for the 2005 commenter who wanted more posts about female Hollywood celebrities
• Pittsburgh area hot wing contest today (from “Bubba”)
• All you can eat seats at Minnesota Twins games Monday and Tuesday
• 68 year old German man, Heinz Asthoff, eats up to 12,000 calories a day without gaining weight (translated German article)
• Video of Takuya Yamamoto and Tomoko Miyake attempting eating challenges

Kobayashi’s latest blog entry reports that he is currently in Vancouver, British Columbia, apparently to film a commercial for an undisclosed product. Like Kobayashi’s hometown of Nagano, Vancouver is a Winter Olympics site.

In news of other Kobayashis, a Bleacher Report blog entry calls Cleveland Indians reliever Masahide Kobayashi possibly “the steal of the off season”

(From anon comment) An announcement on majorleagueeating.com states that there will be no wild card entrants into the upcoming Nathan’s finals.

Next-Gen.biz has a joint interview with developers of WiiWare games in which Bill Swartz, head of the company that developed the Major League Eating game, participates. He says that while future MLE games might appear on different platforms, they will not be ports of the upcoming game:

Swartz: Well, this game is for WiiWare, that is what it was developed for. In the future would I be open to doing other games using the characters and the settings and the universe? Yeah, of course. I really, really believe in Major League Eating and the franchise, but would I take this particular game and just move it over? No. This game is for WiiWare.

Swartz also says that the development team began work in September and that twelve employees formed its core.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

• 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

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.