Hotdog heaven

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Five-time reigning champion Joey Chestnut chows down on his way to victory this week. (JOHN MINCHILLO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

Not long ago, I found myself standing in the cool comfort of a local supermarket aisle, alone with my thoughts, staring with laser-like intensity at an impressive display of all things hotdog.

If you are a guy, you've probably done this before. It was, in many ways, a magical moment, a few stolen seconds where I was totally at peace.

To the untrained eye, there is a mind-numbing array of hotdogs from which to choose -- all-beef wieners, Angus wieners, pork wieners, turkey and chicken wieners, barbecue wieners, wieners with 50 per cent less sodium, foot-long wieners, cocktail wieners, to say nothing about smokies and European sausages with their multitude of confusing spellings.

Don't get me wrong. There are few things I love more than a burger, but there are times when a man just needs to go tubular. Let's take a moment here to contemplate the perfection of a simple hotdog -- a bakery-fresh bun, a grilled wiener, a shot of mustard and you're good to go.

And so, as I stood in the store, transfixed, weighing the merits of the myriad wiener options, my mind was a total blank, other than the following thought: "Mmm, hotdogs!"

There are few more masculine thoughts than that. Being a guy, I can't say for certain whether there is an equivalent transcendent moment in the female mind, unless it is something along the lines of "Mmm, chocolate" or "Mmm, cute shoes!"

But that is not for a person of my gender to say. What I can say is there I was, wallowing in wiener worship, when, suddenly and without warning, I became dimly aware of another manly presence standing beside me in the supermarket aisle.

"Do you like hotdogs, Doug?" a familiar voice asked in respectful tones.

A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed the gravelly voice belonged to another writer for this newspaper, a middle-aged, slightly overweight, bespectacled man with fire in his eyes. In other words, a guy just like me.

"Like hotdogs?" I snorted in reply. "No! I love hotdogs! How about you?"

My colleague frowned in thought. There was only room for truth in this moment. "Yes," he finally grunted, "I love them, too. They're one of the few things I know how to cook."

Our hotdog banter lasted a while longer, but, content-wise, I believe you have caught the thrust of my gist.

The memory of that moment came rushing back to me yesterday morning when I cracked open this newspaper and learned that, for the sixth straight year, Joey Chestnut of San Jose, Calif., had gobbled his way to victory in the famed Fourth of July hotdog-eating contest at Coney Island.

Nicknamed (for obvious reasons) "Jaws," Chestnut tied his personal best by scarfing down (dramatic pause) 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes. The guy who came in second managed a mere 52 dogs.

I'm not going to tell you Joey Chestnut is my hero, but his hotdog inhalation inspires a certain amount of manly awe. You'd think Chestnut would be, like me, a guy the size of a recreational vehicle, but you'd be wrong.

He's something like six feet tall and a well-muscled 210 pounds. The thing is, it's never the really hulking guys who win these competitive-eating competitions. Sadly, I know this from experience.

I personally have been humbled in eating contests wherein I had to race the clock and stuff myself with pancakes, cookies and spaghetti. After the pancake debacle, I spent two days flat on my back, my stomach distended by about 50 pounds of congealed batter. I'm not saying I know what it's like to be pregnant, but my sensitivity has certainly been heightened.

As I said earlier, it's never the biggest guy who wins. Or almost never. In the spaghetti battle, the title went to my buddy Big Daddy Tazz, a standup comedian who is built along the lines of a small beer fridge and who sucked down a pound of pasta in the time it would take you or me to brush our teeth.

If I'm making a point today, and I believe I am, it's that I hold the humble hotdog in the highest esteem. I love them, even though, back in journalism school, my gastrointestinal system spent several days in reverse-thruster mode when, after restocking my fridge, I unwisely decided to polish off an ancient package of wieners that had been lurking in the back for countless weeks.

Let me be frank with you: I unabashedly sing the praises of hotdogs, but I'm no Joey Chestnut. I'll never be a champion eater, and I'm OK with that. Because deep down, I'm already a wiener.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 6, 2012 A2