Kobayashi

In the least surprising victory by a favorite since the Bears trounced the Patriots way back in Super Bowl XX Kobayashi won the Famous Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest for the third year in a row. No actual competition was on hand so Kobayashi competed against his old record. A record he managed to break by three solid dogs and buns. That means the total was an astounding fifty three and 1/2 dogs and buns in a mere twelve minutes. According to one report that’s 17,000 calories (well, those are really kilocalories* but common usage and all). I suppose the bun part ruins it for the Atkins folks. (Add beer to Atkins, and I’m there).

So that’s a pretty incredible accomplishment, of course his mastery of the errrr sport? (if NASCAR is a sport, why not?) isn’t free from controversary. It seems like every time someone dominates a sport/enterprise/anythinganyoneelsewantstodo the people who aren’t on the winning side come up with some reason the winner actually won. Well besides the obvious “They beat the sh!# of me” You see it with Lance Armstrong (I’m loving Beth’s daily coverage), you hear it every football Saturday , every NASCAR race etc. You never hear the obvious reasons “The guy is just better”**, “Jesus wanted me to lose” or “I didn’t work hard enough before the race/fight/eating contest”

So what does Kobyashi stand accused of? One classic and one eating contest specific infraction. The classic is, predictably, doping. If you’re reading this at work and someone asks you why you lost an account, or why the Higgins file isn’t ready when Johnson has had the Tucker file ready for weeks just aver that Johnson is doping. Tell the boss he has been taking massive amounts of pineal gland. Basically whatever it takes short of admitting you’ve been taking it easy. If that excuse is rejected complain like the Kobyashi critics that the competition isn’t following the rules. (The eating contest specific complaint)

Yep Kobyashi is rumored to down muscle relaxers before the matches and if that isn’t damning enough he also been targeted as flaunting the rules. Careful analysis of his 2001 record supposedly shows some “Roman Style” action going on. Read all about it.

To my eyes the Lance complaints and the Kobyashi rants are all a case of sour grapes. In the case of Lance the biggest complaint is juicing. Lance has passed every single drug test and all (not sure how much that’s worth) so even if you assume Lance takes more drugs than a pro wrestler (what? that guy takes steroids? NO WAY!) all it means is that he’s better at beating the tests than his detractors. (Bike racers take drugs like they were Flintstone vitamins). So face facts: Either Lance is juicing as much as the other racers and thus he is just that much better. Or he’s not juicing and even though the other riders are gobbling pills like Pac Man on an amphetamine high he’s still better. Either way Lance is better than everyone he beats. Same with Kobyashi only more so, they guy ate 50 freaking hot dogs, he blew away the competition, a little vomit betwixt the fingers only means he beat them by 23 hot dogs instead of 24.

I realize that someone could extrapolate this argument to Macs and Windows, and I think that argument would have merit. Sure I think Macs are much better but I’m not going to complain about Microsoft’s tactics.

In other matters: Agreed with Tim a little too often lately. Fireworks suck and the new Spiderman flick does kick some serious ass. I think it was better than the first Spiderman movie (though not quite the quality entertainment that was the Spiderman TV show). Plenty of humor (important to me) and some really nice action scenes. It’s no Momento but it is by a long shot the best superhero movie I’ve seen. Except for Superman IV the Quest for peace cause that was right up there with The Next Karate Kid. Seriously Spiderman 2 is well worth the time and money. Ah hell, there’s no point in listening to my take on the movie, you can watch the super secret legos trailer.

Ahh, a new feature. The countdown. See Todd is getting married to a great girl. She must be pretty friggin great to put up with Todd’s inherent oddness. It’s happening July 31st, Which means:

26 Days Ladly
Yep that’s one huge picture. Todd requested a distance shot, Todd requests a lot of things. I’d feel bad but I’m the one who bails him out every time he goes Otis.

cks/BL tridiot rating: the Kaypro II comes through. 91.1%

*Turns out that a calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree celsius. Just so you know. The other calorie is actually a kilocalorie sometimes referred to as a large calorie.

** I think the exception to this may be when Tiger Woods was on his incredible run. Guys were actually saying Tiger would win three majors a year, that no one could touch etc. Of course while they were saying this they were also seeing how much more money Tiger was bringing to the sport. Hey, make me indepently wealthy and I’ll sing your praises.