Remembering Scott

It came as a shock to me two nights ago, when I read Scott Bickel's updated facebook status. I read it moments after he put it up. My eyes scanned the text carefully, but I knew well before I reached the end what was on his mind.

The first comments trickled in, people connected to him who couldn't believe the worst, who couldn't believe that the end of the road had come for such an energetic young man. Scott was known for hyperbole. Nevertheless, I felt inside me that it was serious. It wasn't poetic license.

My connection to Scott is tenuous at best. He rose to prominence in competitive eating circles last year, seemingly out of nowhere in such a short space of time. You couldn't miss his exploits. The guy was over the top, which I certainly admired. If people are going to criticize you anyway, it makes a certain amount of sense to give them the ammunition.

You gotta admire the bravado of someone who predicted he would defeat Patrick Bertoletti (one of the eating world's best) in a hot dog eating contest. The man influenced me much more than I realized. We shared only one conversation but I never forgot it. I will never forget him.

It seemed unreal, how much his death really affected me. Maybe it's because he was my brother's age, and it reminded me that you really can die any day. Maybe I'm not so young anymore myself.

Hog Attack

The Route 62 Diner in Yucca Valley, CA is home to one monstrous eating challenge: The Hogzilla Burger. In years past, the challenge was one huge 2 lb  patty. In 2011, the diner decided to switch the challenge into a "King of the Hill" patty tower. Devour a bigger tower than the previous champ and you're the winner.

Matt "Sweet Tooth" Cohen was the second champion under this format. He polished off a 9-patty burger and fries in 18 minutes, earning himself a t-shirt and a champion's poster on the wall. There's no time limit on this challenge but "Sweet Tooth" didn't dawdle.

Each patty weighs a quarter pound, thus Matt put down a 2.25 lb burger. I became the next champion (2.5 lbs) until I was dethroned by local eater John Rivera of Joshua Tree. We traded the title back and forth a few times, leading to a dramatic photo in the local newspaper.

Not sure why the Hi Desert Star News put this photo in the business section (I'm kidding - it was pretty far back), but it works. The photo was taken in October 2011, mere minutes before I tore into the burger, taking down a 15-patty burger to reclaim my spot at the top for the third time. John looked on as I finished my 3.75 lb burger with a side of fruit. No doubt he's hungry for another title. I'll be ready.

The diner is literally down the street from the school I work for. The posters of the first two challenge wins adorn my classroom walls, always leading to interesting comments from students and parents. For the most part, they want to know how I got into this and why I don't weigh 400 lbs.

So far I don't have a good answer. Maybe I should have studied biology instead of history.

Emptying the Garden of 15 Olives

What does an endless bowl of pasta look like? To be honest, I'd never seen one before. Neither had my friend. That brought us to Olive Garden last September. We needed to find out if such a thing existed. We were suspicious, because we'd heard that everything must come to an end at some time.

We dined for about two hours, running through a considerable gamut of conversation. My friend got through 6 plates and I cleared 15, to the amazement of the server.

Honestly, there's no way I can remember the names of all the different combinations I ordered. For fairness I tried to get a bit of everything. It seemed like a great deal all around.. how do you beat $9 for 15 bowls of restaurant-grade pasta?

So, why did I stop at 15? It's not an even number, or a lucky number. I wasn't stretched to the limit. But, I was facing a 2-hour drive home from Orange County and wanted to make it home comfortably. If I didn't relish the ability to drink water on the way home, I might have finished 4 or 5 more bowls.

Endless is a fancy term, but it still refers to a limited number. It's all relative. My endless capped off at 15, and it's nothing I'm going to complain about now. At least I didn't have to cook all those combinations of pasta!

7+ lb Bundle of Joy

It looks like a cake. That is, if you're familiar with cakes stuffed with rice and meat and wrapped in seaweed. The oversized musubi pictured above is known as the Stan-Musubi, named after the owner of Ola's Hawaiian BBQ in Fullerton.

The disclaimer I signed before taking the challenge in November 2011 listed the big musubi at over 7 lbs. It's got a ton of rice, which I usually don't handle well. Inside the rice you'll find chicken and beef. You get 35 minutes to eat your way to a free meal.

A group of us went together (names withheld to protect the guilty). It took the kitchen awhile to prepare all the food, but it was honestly delicious. This is a challenge that I'd do over if I could. Free food rocks, but awesome food is a step above.

From musubis, the night led us to a very non-food based situation complete with laughter and arm wrestling.

It's not clear to me how to follow up a story like arm wrestling. At least no one was seriously hurt.. a classmate from high school refused to arm wrestle me because of all the horror stories he heard associated with the activity. 

If you liked that video, watch out! Competitive Eaters Gone Wild Part II is in development.

Rolling Out 2012

It's 2012. With a great year behind me, it's time to start looking at what I'm going to do with competitive eating in the next 12 months.

There's much fewer available restaurant challenges in Southern California. My focus will shift toward raising the bar. There's a few extremely large challenges on the horizon (Fat Sal's in Westwood), as well as some places where I'd like to try double-challenge portions.

On the contest horizon, I plan to help Chick Fil-A of La Habra promote their nugget eating contests and participate selectively in a few other local events. I'm also looking into the possibility of tying charity work to competitive eating.

I'll be doing more work with Wreckless Eating as well. I'm joining their cast as a regular member. Matt Zion and company have a few ideas for raising the bar on mass consumption, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. There will also be more videos produced for my own YouTube channel, mostly challenge documentation and other short concept clips.



As far as this blog goes, there's plenty of old (and new) challenges to write about. In this New Year, a trip down to San Diego has yielded four wins and I'll write about them shortly.