TWO CONTESTS IN ONE HOUR (AS AN EMCEE)

Well, my debut as a competitive eating emcee is in the books and I think it went pretty well. My introductions got a few laughs and the crowd seemed entertained, which is all that matters.

I was asked by a local event planner to be the man on the mike for two contests that were held today during the Harrisburg chili cook off. The first was the annual hot sauce drinking contest and the second was one, held just 45 minutes later, featured "put out the fire" foods (10 saltine crackers, one banana, two slices of cheese, one little container of ice cream and one pint of milk, to be eaten in that order).

Six people participated in the first contest and it was over in 13 seconds. No kidding. The guy who won was the returning champ and completely obliterated the competition. That's him on the right. The sauce was called Refiner's Fire Unquenchable. I tried about five drops on a cracker 20 mintes before the contest. At first I thought, "No problem!" Then it hit me. I immediately made a b-line for the water tent and fumbled for four quarters (I'd have given the guy 10 bucks at that point) and started chugging Aquafina to put out the fire. Like I said, I'm a wimp when it comes to hot stuff. That's the reason I volunteered to emcee.

The second contest (pictured at left) took a little longer, thanks to the saltine crackers. It featured five eaters, one of which was a friend of mine named Jeremy (on the left in the pic). Jeremy has an utter disgust for milk which he claims has caused him to not eat cereal in seven years. Thankfully for Jeremy, he didn't have to touch the stuff because the youngest eater, a 16-year-old named Josh, put his milk away pretty quickly to win it. It was Jeremy's first ever eating competition and afterwards he experienced his first bout of "hind appetite" which, of course, is always 20/20. ("Why didn't I eat those damn crackers faster?!" "I shouldn't have chewed that banana so much!")

Overall, the easiest part of emceeing was the eater introductions. I had scripted them out beforehand and had them on a clipboard and I didn't have to feel bad about reading them off the sheet because they were supposedly "written by the eaters" beforehand. Finding things to say during the contest was the most important part because watching five people eat for four minutes gets boring after the first 60 seconds. It was also the most difficult part because I had to keep referring to my notes to remember people's names, but I pulled it off.

Oddly enough, eating contests seem to last forever when you're eating in them (at least they do for me), but they fly by when you're announcing them. Not sure why that is. More pictures can be seen here. I caught both contests on video and will post those as soon as I can.