WEBVTT - George Shea: Hot Dog Villain 0:00:01.639 --> 0:00:10.120 Cho was the dictator of Romania. What I'm Robert Evans. 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:13.640 This is a podcast bad people. Sometimes I shout the 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:15.280 name of a dictator. Well, I didn't want to just 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:20.200 do Hitler again, a lot of episodes of shouting Hitler. 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:27.040 There's so many things that you could have done that. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.000 I mean, it was really going to be that or 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:37.440 a tonal screeching to go with the high effort version. Alright, alright, fine, fine, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.800 you know what if it takes giving you a little 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:52.320 path on the head for that together the yeah loft Loftus. 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:58.600 There's there circling around a really popular nickname, I am Jamie. 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.360 Today we're doing a special REVERSEO episode Behind the Bastards, 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:07.640 where you join the rarefied air of people who get 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:11.480 to read episodes to me. Um, because there's some motherfucker 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.360 called Joey Chestnut and he eats hot dogs and you're 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.680 angry about him. Right, that's basically the pitch. That's not 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.200 the pitch at all. Well, first, I don't know what 0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.399 the pitch is. There's a motherfucker named Joey Chestnut and 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:26.680 I'm in love with him, but that has very little 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.880 to do with what I'm going to be talking about today. Um, 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:36.200 so you've actually gotten the story wrong. Joey Chestnut is 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:42.160 um someone that I love now, the bastard that we're 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:44.840 talking about Joey Chestnut for weeks and I still have 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:47.000 no idea who he actually is. You just say we 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.080 First of all, I'm offending this has been a year 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:55.760 of my life. Weeks is all I ever remember? That 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.600 that's true. So Joey, okay, this is We're off to 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.920 a terrible will start. Is it Jess Joseph Chestnut If 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:07.680 you're being formal, it's Joseph Chesnut If you're nasty. Uh, 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.480 his dad's name. The best thing about Joey Chestnut is 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:16.280 that his dad's name is Merlin. And that's um. So 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.160 there's a motherfucker walking around named Merlin Chestnut. If you 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:23.800 tell me his job as anything foraging from mushrooms in 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.400 the woods, I'm going to call you a liar. It's 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.440 a close second. He's a public school music teacher, which 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:34.480 I feel like fits Merlin Chestnut the profile Merlin Chestnut 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.880 nutt music teacher. So Joey Chessnunt is not the bastard 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.200 we're discussing today, Although he is intimately involved in the 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:46.440 events that I will be describing Joey Chestnut is for 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.840 those of you who don't know, the hot dog eating champion, 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.800 and just in general, I believe the eating champion of 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:56.560 the world at this time, most recently, like the Joe 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:58.840 Frasier of putting a lot of things in his mouth 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.639 and then not puking. Okay, that sounds a little dismissive 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:08.440 of my husband's accomplishments, but go off the Joey. I 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:15.320 saw Joseph this last year on he he competes. He 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.640 competes in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.080 Island on the fourth of July every single year going 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.640 back to two thousand and seven. He's won fourteen times. 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:26.679 He's lost once. I will tell you why. It's a 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:32.200 very funny reason. Um. But at this point he's basically 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.560 just competing with himself. Um. He wins by a good 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:40.040 twenty thirty hot dogs every year. Um. And so that's 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:42.640 that's more hot dogs than a person should be able 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.000 to eat, right there. Just the margin he won by 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.240 is too many hot dogs? Were you just toss out 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:51.160 a number? How many hot dogs do you think? I 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:56.160 saw Joseph Elizabeth Chestnut eight on the fourth of July 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.760 in ten minutes, ten minutes. This last year, I'm gonna 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:06.800 guess sixty. It was seventy six. Christ it was seventy, 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:12.480 narrowly beating his own his former record of seventy five 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:19.440 the previous year. Too many hot dogs? He is, well, okay, yes, 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.880 but what land Joey Chestnut so far from God's light? 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.320 First of all, that is my husband you're talking about. 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.120 But I I do, I do see where you're coming from. 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:35.760 There is um there's so much to talk about when 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.480 it comes to competitive eating. I can't possibly cover it all. 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.640 So I'm narrowing it to American hot dog eating from 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:47.120 the past forty years. And the main bastard to discuss 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:52.839 is a man named George say Uh, closely matched by 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:57.360 his younger brother Richard say So. That is the topic, Dick, 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:02.800 the old Dick chees uh. So, that's the topic of 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.119 today's episode. I've I've titled it George say hot dog Villain. 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.200 I couldn't do better than that. I'm sure that that 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.039 is a good title. That's probably what we'll just put 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.760 out as the title of the episode. That in short, 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.080 who he is? Explain to me quickly? When did we 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.640 start doing this as a species, when did we start 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.680 like having contests to see how many hot dogs a 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:29.400 motherfucker could eat? It goes way, way, way back. There's 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.000 so much, Um, there's so much to discuss in terms 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:38.080 of hot dogs in general, how they relate to American culture. UM. 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.920 And I'll just say right at the top, I'm writing 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:42.560 a book about it, which is why I know so 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:44.680 much about it. This is youve been deep in hot 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.679 dog culture for a while now. Oh, I've been as 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:50.880 deep in hot dog culture for the last eight months. Um. 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:53.839 So if you enjoy this episode, please buy my book 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:56.520 that comes out next year. This is a very tiny 0:05:56.560 --> 0:05:59.760 part of it. Um. It's a good question. There's no 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:07.240 exact um moment where eating contests became mainstream. They definitely, Um, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.840 George Shay would have you believe they became popular at 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.800 first in America, but they didn't. America very very very 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:18.120 much ripped off the current competitive eating craze and kind 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:23.360 of style and broadcasting tendencies from Japan, uh, where it 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:28.200 got very popular starting in the nineties. So it's gone. 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.200 It goes back hundreds of years, as does hot dog culture. 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.240 In gen I mean sausages and ground up meat goes 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:39.880 back to fucking BC. Yes, um, but but yes, as 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:46.200 far as formally um broadcast eating events. Um, they're they're newer, 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.800 newer than sausage at least, and America's very much ripped 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:53.080 off Japan in terms of how we do it. That's 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.479 not an uncommon story. So alright, okay, okay, I'm ready. 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.120 I'm ready to learn, Jamie. I'm ready to learn about 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.560 this wonderful new subculture. I'm very excited to tell you 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.359 about it. Please ask any questions at any time, because 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.960 it doesn't make sense. Um. Yeah, I mean my first 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.360 question which I would ask, that what what What about 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:17.080 the poops? That's got to be a problem for these guys, right, 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.120 they are very cagy about the poops, Robert. I've been 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:22.400 trying to find that out as well. They're very cagy 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.280 about the poops. What I can say is that there 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.440 is there's so much like any athletic event, which I 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:32.920 do believe this is. Um, there's a lot of showmanship involved. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:36.600 And so for example, what Joey Chestnut will do after 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.320 eating seventy six hot dogs, which I have to repeat 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:44.480 he did, I wasn't a significant fraction of of of 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.320 like a cow. Yeah, it's a that's a good chunk, 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.800 good chunk and um and I I was in the 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.040 press pit for that event and then at the end, um, 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:57.240 Joey Chestnut. I can't tell if this is something he's 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.520 made to do or something he does by of his 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.400 own full ship, but he does not leave the stage 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:04.680 right away. All the other hot dog eaters who lose 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:08.080 the contest are allowed to leave, presumably to throw up 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.400 and ship. They will never admit to this, but I'm 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.920 assuming that that's what they do. Um. Joey Chestnut does 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.160 not leave the stage. He stays on the stage for 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:21.080 upwards of an hour right after eating seventy six hot dogs, 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.680 smiles and answers questions for the press. So yeah, so 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.720 he He's said in interviews that he doesn't throw up 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.959 piston ship right away. I am bullshit a little skeptical 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:38.240 of these claims, but I you know, it's his body 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.120 and his choice, and I respect his bodily autonomy to 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.600 hold in however much process meat he wants for as 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:49.560 long as he physically can. Um. And that is true love. 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.720 Joey Chestnut's real girlfriend gave an incredible quote. I think 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:58.240 like in the last couple of years where she was 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:03.599 just like, Joey smells different after like his poor but 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.840 not even just like sweat, but like just like there's meat. 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.880 It's radiating off of him. It's incredible. It's incredible. I 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.760 mean because he's holding an entire refrigerator worth of meat 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.600 inside his body. I joke about being married to Joey 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.840 Chestnut because I am, but I God bless that woman. 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.320 I don't how do you how? I don't know sounds 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:31.760 you have to have a number of plumbers on speed 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.720 dial because you can't take somebody being busy right like, 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:36.640 They've got to get out there right away if there's 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:43.320 a problem. Look, Merlin's son gets the job done. Um, 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:48.240 we're talking about George Say, George Shay UM, which will 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:52.559 be getting very deep into, is the m C and 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:57.840 the kind of the person who made who effectively publicized 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:01.719 the Nathan hot dog eating contest and UM, by extension 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.680 kind of hand selected Joey Chestnut to be the face 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:10.640 of UM of that kind of endeavor. So here are 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.880 some things that George Say has said. Incapacity of the 0:10:15.040 --> 0:10:17.559 m C of the hot dog contest on stage, I'm 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.120 just gonna throw three out He says this on stage 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:26.440 on Coney Island quote while introducing a hot dog eating contestant. Quote, 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.200 His mother held him close and whispered in his ear. 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:32.240 She said, you are of mine flesh, but you are 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.520 not mine own. Fate is your father, and you belong 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:37.600 to the people. And then he'll bring out a hot 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:42.200 dog eating contest Uh contestant. Here's another one. He was 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.360 buried alive under sixty cubic feet of popcorn, and he 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:48.120 ate his way out to survival. That David Blaine of 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:51.280 the Bowel, the Evil kin Evil of the Elementary Canal, 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:56.400 the Houdini of Cuisini. Please welcome Crazy Legs conti. And then, 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:59.880 of course an older man who is white and has dreads. 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.840 I'm on stage and he's forty hot dogs? Right? Are 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:08.280 you getting kind of decayed into Here's a Here's another one. 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.160 He will do whatever it takes to win. Three days ago, 0:11:12.240 --> 0:11:14.920 he broke up with his girlfriend and euthanized his dog 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:17.840 to leave a void of emptiness inside of him so 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.240 he can do today with hot dogs and buns. And 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.760 then he brings out some other guy. And this has 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:26.560 been going on for George. She has been doing this 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:29.559 for thirty years. He has said a lot of things 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:33.240 over the years what I and and it does take 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.760 a turn, but he said a lot of things taken 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:39.800 a couple so far, broke up with his girlfriend and 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.160 euthanize his dog. Uh. George, She has said a lot 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.000 of things, some of them about what makes someone a champion, 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.160 some of them about what makes someone an American, and 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.160 a lot of them about hot dogs, because that is 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:54.920 what his job is. Most of what George Say will 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.080 tell you is complete bullshit, and he will be the 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.000 first to tell you that. Here are two quotes from 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.480 him that I think are the closest to the truth 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.640 as he's ever told. The first is something he said 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.920 to mel magazine last year. He said, you could argue 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:11.600 that people are so inured to everything that there's very 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.280 little downside to causing controversy. The second thing he said 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:19.079 was in en Uh in twenty nine. There was a 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.480 thirty for thirty about hot this hot dog eating contest, 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.920 and George Say is very much the villain. He says this, 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.640 A lot of what I say literally isn't true in 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:34.360 terms of words, but emotionally it is true. Um, and 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.600 that is sort of the entire ethos of what George 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:44.520 Say does. He has said some similar things He's I mean, 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.800 is there an episode in the works? Um no, because 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:53.520 he's a perfect man who lived the ideal human life. Well, 0:12:53.559 --> 0:13:00.280 George Say, he simply hasn't he He's He's a very 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.640 funked up man. George Shea and his brother Richard Say 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:09.400 are a large part of why the Nathans are a 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.000 large part of why the Nathan's famous hot dog eating 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.720 contest is one of America's most disgusting traditions, right up 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:20.040 there with drone strikes. They're not the entire reason which 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.160 would be a bad place for a drone strike. First 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.720 of all, don't say that because I go there. Um, look, 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.160 we're gonna have to sacrifice some good people in order 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.520 to deal with the problem, please me and Joey and 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.480 bad Lands Booker? Have you ever seen bad Lands Booker 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.040 or Matt Stoney. I'm talking about because his champions in 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.560 our culture, Robert, Yeah, I have no idea who those 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:46.080 people are because they do eating contests and that's not 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:48.680 a thing most people know about. You're sick in the head. 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:55.040 You're so alived, Okay, so uh George and Dick Shay Uh, 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.520 made this a very popular cultural thing in the US 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.920 by channel energy, excess and showmanship. Uh. They are the 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:09.280 founders of Major League Eating, which was founded in and 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:13.040 they're also the perpetrators of a bunch of deception, racism, 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:17.960 and misogyny that exists in service of America's great dish, 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.520 the hot dog. Now, Robert, we've discussed hot dogs before, 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:28.560 and I am curious if you have um updated improved 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.080 your views on the hot dog at dog because last 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:31.800 time we talked about it, you said octopus was a 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.000 hot dog, which was just so common. It's delicious. I mean, 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:38.120 it's octopus. It's an octopus on bread, and I'm sure 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:44.560 it's delicious. Hot Um. I think hot dogs are defined 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:47.160 by the fact that you can't possibly limit them to 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:50.120 a specific sort of meat. Anything on a hot dog 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.520 bun is a hot dog, Well, that's a that's a 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.360 that's a gorgeous assumption. I would say that it tends 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.280 to be a meaty paste. It can only be created 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.640 under the least ethical circumstances possible. So if we have 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.960 the octopi in your hot dogs, are are are dying 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:11.080 in the most unsavory ways. I will guarantee you they are. 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:13.920 I mean, as a general rule, if we're getting it 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.840 from the sea, where we're destroying the ocean's ability to 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.160 support life in order to do it, well, no, I 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.040 understand that. But I just have you ever seen video 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.000 footage of a hot dog factory? Because it's it's unique, 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.120 it's uniquely bad. Yeah, I mean what I love. I 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:32.160 will say I prefer hot dogs that are mixes of 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:37.000 unspeakable nightmare meats, of course, because I want when I'm 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.200 eating a hot dog, I want to feel bad about myself. 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.880 Well you should, you should, um, and I have, and uh, 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:47.800 my life is really I've taken years off of my 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.480 own life, uh not out of not out of eating 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.840 hot dogs, which people will say, they'll cite this study 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.160 being like, oh, every hot dog you eat takes thirty 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.040 six minutes off of your life, when it's like, well, 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:01.760 serotonin adds to your life, so it's pretty much evens out. 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.920 But the but the psychic guilt of eating this many 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:08.560 hot dogs is what's removing time from my life. The 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:14.400 Shade brothers uh created so they created major league eating 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:18.320 into a marketable sport in the US, drawing heavily from 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.320 the sports early success in Japan. So today there's over 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.120 two hundred and fifty eaters who are registered with Major 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:29.000 League Eating, and they've expanded to competing outside of hot dogs. 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.320 They started with the Nathan's Contest, but now they compete 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.840 sucking everything. There are wings contest, there's pie eating contest, 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.480 there's Joey Chestnut. Started with asparagus eating. That was his 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.880 that poor woman, that was his breakout, his breakout moment. 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.520 Robert he ate asparagus in San Diego and ascended to 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.280 a great man. Uh. There's calamari, there's raman, there's everything. 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:55.800 There's like hundreds of categories. Um. And now the Joey 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:59.120 Chestnut is currently the face of Major League Eating. But 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:03.400 it wasn't always that way. The Shay brothers grew up 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:07.199 in the nineteen sixties. George Say was born in nineteen 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:10.680 sixty four or five in Boston. Richard Shay is four 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:14.640 years younger. They grew up in Maine, with no particular 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:20.440 interest in UH sports or competitive eating whatsoever. Richards Shay 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:25.720 describes them as being very introverted teens who did amateur 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:30.320 magic and listen to the Smiths and r e m together. Well, 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:33.040 that does make sense because the state sport of Maine 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.480 is slowly waiting for death. I was about to say, 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.200 I mean, I think that as far as teenagers in Maine, 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.439 that's not that bad amateur magic. There's a lot of 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.120 worse ways to go. You stare into the gray skyline 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:48.199 and wait for your life to end. That's that's what 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.080 what all the kids get up to in Maine. I 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:52.920 spent a lot of time in Maine as a kid, 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.879 and um I never made a single friend. No, nobody 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.800 has friends in Maine. It's not allowed. Your only friend 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:02.920 is the echoing emptiness of the woods. But I will 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.240 say the streets are paved with signed Stephen king Bucks 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:11.199 and I do love that. Um so they grew up 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.960 in Maine. George later in rolls in Columbia University in 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.240 New York. He wants to be a fiction writer. This 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:22.080 is a big part of the George. He's a fucking 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:27.280 do weve. He's walking around and listening to the Smiths 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.000 and R. E. M on his little cassette player. He's 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.600 a huge fan of James Joyce and Flannery O'Connor uh 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.439 who he claims to these to this day are his 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:41.520 biggest writing influences. When he's writing the introduction to hotdog contests, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:47.240 which are, to his credit, sometimes very literary. Um. So 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:51.440 he wants to be a fiction writer, but he graduates 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:55.800 in and has to get an adult job while he's 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:58.840 working on a series of failed plays and novels that 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.440 never get off the ground ewhere, but he starts um 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.119 living in New York and working for a series of 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.800 pretty high profile ad men. And so the guy who 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:15.439 gives him his big start and gets him into, um, 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.920 the Nathan's Famous hot Dog Eating Contest is this guy 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:24.800 named Morty Matt's who is extremely fascinating in his own right. 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.800 He also it's like the most admin name I've ever heard. 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:33.560 Um So Morty Matt's uh invented the Nathan's Famous hot 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:38.880 Dog Eating Contest, although he denied this for years and years. Um. Meanwhile, 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.480 Dick Shay, who kind of fades in and out of 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.920 this story. He went to Villanova and uh later kind 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:47.520 of just he's kind of like writing Georgia's coattails throughout 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:53.119 this experience. Um, this this whole story. Um, Oh, no, 0:19:53.359 --> 0:20:03.320 Sophie's Internet. Well, everyone back at home, we lost Sophie. Sophie. 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:08.520 You know we're gonna go to ads. Now might as well, 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:12.120 Oh yeah, do you want a product or a service? Maybe? Yeah, 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:15.800 let's go check out ads while we see if those 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:20.639 fucking assholes at Spectrum UH can get Sophie back on 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:24.359 the internet. They dropped corn cob TV and then they 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:30.560 dropped Sophie motherfucker's We're a bunch of dumb Hicks, Jamie. 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.879 That was a very professional pivot. I loved every second 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:44.399 of it. Oh my god, those ads were great. And 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:48.080 what's even greater is that Sophie's back. Hi, Sophie's back. 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:53.920 The Spectrum gods have taken Um, I don't know of 0:20:54.119 --> 0:21:00.440 my happiness. Yeah, they still haven't brought back Corn TV. 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.000 They still haven't, and I have a bad feeling that 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.399 they won't, even though I've really enjoyed the programming, including 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:11.680 iconically coffin Flop of course, of course, I mean one 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.920 of the greatest shows on television or was, and they didn't. 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.480 I don't care what people say, No they didn't. I've 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:20.879 been there, I've seen it. I wrote, Yeah, you know 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:28.760 what it was. Its great television. We're talking about George say, okay, um, George, 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:33.280 So George say he graduates from Columbia in starts working 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:37.359 for this ad man named Morty Matts. Morty Matts is 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:41.639 an absolute legend in the field. He's still alive. I 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.760 think he's like nineties seven years old. Um, I'm gonna 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:51.080 just kind of skip down to, uh what Morty Matts 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:56.119 has done, because his resume is just extremely wild. Morty 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.320 Matts says when he takes over the Nathan's hot Dog 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:04.080 eating account and begins this contest, he gives a series 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:07.120 of made up legends as to how long this contest 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.919 has existed, all of which are lies. He first says 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:16.440 that there has been a contest since nineteen sixteen, when 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:19.480 Nathan's opened. He says that four immigrants held a hot 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:21.480 dog eating contest on the pier on the fourth of 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:25.200 July to determine who was the most patriotic. That was 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.680 a lie. He then pivoted to say that the contest 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:31.040 began in nineteen forty one as a protest to World 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:33.800 War One, and that was a lot. World War one 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:38.600 in nineteen one, right, World War two? Okay? And uh 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:42.920 then okay, in nineteen forty one. If you're protesting World 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:46.680 War two, you're probably not someone you would want to 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:51.960 associate your sport with either, but look to be fair, 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:55.639 he's lying, and then yeah, of course, of course. And 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:58.880 then Morty pivots this again and says in nineteen seventy 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:01.320 one that it was begun as a protest to the 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:06.160 Vietnam War. He makes up all of these weird lies, Jamie, 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:08.200 what is your lion as to win lying is good 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:09.760 or not? Because I have a thing that I've been 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:11.639 doing for a while now where whenever I have a 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:14.840 close friend or loved one, I tell them one lie, 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:17.800 and it's it's always it's always something very so. The 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.440 first example of this is I I convinced the person 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:22.880 I was with for a number of years, just as 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:25.240 the result of a casual conversation once that the band 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:27.720 Hanson had died in a terrible bus crash. You told 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:30.520 me I was literally last week, And like, I know, well, 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.120 I'm trying to say, what is the line? Because sometimes 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:34.720 it can be fun to do that sort of stuff, 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:37.000 And then someone brings up a lie, the lie you 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.040 told me? And what I never tell anyone? What the 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:41.879 lie I've told? I know the lie? You? I know 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:43.720 the lie Robert told me he didn't tell me when 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:49.119 someone was named Daddy, But that was for an altruistic reason. 0:23:49.160 --> 0:23:52.560 I had to say, Christ told me I never I 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:56.480 never lied to you. That's great. The point is that 0:23:56.600 --> 0:24:00.160 you should never trust anybody, and that's why everyone it's 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:04.320 one lie. I trust you there, I know. That's what 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:11.240 makes it so dangerous. I wanted I only lie. It's 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:17.240 the opposite of gas lighting. I want a god dammit, 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:22.359 so sad. I don't think that these are bad lies. 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:26.520 I think that these are very marketing lies. And Morty 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.440 Matt's because he's still alive and he's literally almost a 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:33.480 hundred years old, he admits in two it's it's too 0:24:33.480 --> 0:24:36.320 old and he's still working, which I'll get. He's currently 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:42.639 he's currently working on rehabilitating the reputations of some mega 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:46.399 church pastors. That's what he's working on in his twilight years, 0:24:46.520 --> 0:24:54.399 meaning he's seven. But he admits in that all of 0:24:54.440 --> 0:24:56.679 these origin stories are lies and that it was Morty 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:00.159 Mattss idea in this early seventies to start whole ding 0:25:00.240 --> 0:25:04.240 this contest to drum up some publicity for um, for 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:07.800 Nathan's hot Dogs, UM. Other things about Morty Matts that 0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:11.040 I would just like you to know is that he's 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:14.880 almost a hundred He fought in World War Two. He's 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:21.520 currently still the press agent for the Durst family, so 0:25:21.560 --> 0:25:27.480 he's been a busy man lately. He's at work. Uh 0:25:27.600 --> 0:25:32.159 there is just like his career is equally fascinating to me. 0:25:32.359 --> 0:25:35.399 He so he is the reason George Say exists. George 0:25:35.400 --> 0:25:40.760 Shay came up working for this guy who did, like 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:43.959 George Say, I think a combination of very funny and 0:25:44.040 --> 0:25:47.760