Revolting affluence...

Erez woke up at 1am and we couldn't get him back to sleep. In a male bonding moment, I figured he would benefit from watching SportsCenter.

As we flipped through the channels during the commercials, we came upon the replay of the 4th of July Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest from Coney Island.

It's a 12 minute contest and the objective is clear.

The commentators were talking about it like any other sport, "at 6 minutes, they hit the wall," "these guys are trained athletes," "Joey is like Vijay Singh. Everyone else is at the 19th hole, he's out on the driving range," and on and on.

There are regional "qualifiers" in places like Las Vegas and the Mall of America to earn the right to travel to Coney Island on July 4th.

There are champs of other contests including grilled cheese, corned beef and cabbage, crabcakes, and rice.

On the one hand, as a sports fan, I was intrigued. Here was a contest with strategies, techniques, (e.g. "the double Tokyo stuff"), personalities, contenders, and the like.

On the other hand, what does it say about our culture when we have taken something so basic to our survival, particularly when so many people don't have enough, and celebrated its abundance by gorging ourselves?

The winner (and 6 time champ) Takeru Kobayashi of Japan who set a new world record of 54 hot dogs (and buns) in 12 minutes.