Pretend for a minute that you were completely and utterly unaware of the following information and ask yourself if you could possible believe the following:  On Friday, July 4th two guys sat down at a table in Brooklyn and ate 118 hot dogs in 10 minutes- and they both lived!   Huh?

Yup, at 12:42 P.M. (EST) Joey Chestnut and a guy named Takeru Kobayashi started eating hot dogs (with buns).  By 12:48 they had eaten 91 and by 12:52 they had devoured 118.  That's 59 hot dogs each.  Think about that for a second- two guys, ten minutes, 118 hot dogs.  It's not really believable. 

I successfully ate some hot dogs just the other day so I know what I'm talking about.  It was Espo's birthday and some of us jumped at the rare opportunity to enjoy mid-week grogs with no marital strife or ramifications.  In due course we were imbibing ebulliently from a luscious assortment of frothy goodness- there were Bud cans, Cherry Wheats, Blue Moons, tall cans of Young's DCS and other beauties to choose from.  We washed these down with delicious ultra-lights and nodded knowingly to each other while blowing smoke into the night.  At around 11:00 Espo fired up the grill for some late evening dogs (how awesome is summer?).   Anyway, by 11:30 I had eaten two hot dogs, Ted had two, Serkes had two and Espo had two.  We were stuffed.  And I think I speak for the entire group when I say that Bremer's display of polishing off a third was remarkable- technically, the fact that I'm remarking about it makes it remarkable, but nonetheless, it was impressive.   Granted, Espo goes all out so there was kraut, sweet onions and good German mustard, but unless you're an idiotic high school kid (excused the redundancy) with a bong, two hot dogs is a lot of food- and three is ridiculous.  

Chestnut and Kobayashi ate 118 in 10 minutes.  Then to break the tie, they raced to see who could eat five more the fastest.  Chestnut ate hot dogs 60 through 64 in about 26 seconds to hold on to the championship. Good lord.

If my name was Chestnut and I ate 64 hotdogs to win my second consecutive Nathans Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, the first thing I would do is throw an "s" on the end of my name- If you eat 64 hot dogs in less than 11 minutes, your last name should be Chestnuts because you've got a huge set of balls.  In fact, that should have been the only question reporters asked after the competition:  "Hey Chestnuts, where do you get your balls eating 5 dozen hot dogs like that?"

I heard that after the contest his buddies rolled in a huge victory cake, but Chestnuts ate the thing before anyone could tell him that there was a stripper in it.  Too bad I guess.