CONEY ISLAND MASSACRE

Another great qualifiying weekend is in the books. Hall Hunt, whose Axis of Eaters squad is solidly in first place in our fantasy competitive eating league, edged Juliet Lee by three-quarters of a hot dog to earn a spot at the table on Coney Island this year. Of course, that's IF there's a table at Coney Island. I'm really starting to worry about whether the July 4th showdown will even happen. It's STILL not listed on any of the IFOCE's five websites. There's a graphic of the Mustard Yellow Belt on ifoce.com, but that just takes you to the Nathan's Famous home page.

Contest or no contest, I'll be there either way. (Actually if there's no hot dog contest, I won't go to Coney Island on July 4th, so I'm not really sure why I said that.) For a second I considered doing something manly like sleeping on the beach or crashing on a bench the night before (Heather isn't going with me), but then I remembered: IT'S CONEY ISLAND. I felt marginally safe there last year in broad daylight, so I'm thinking spending the night on the "beach" would be a bad idea. Although it can't be much worse than the Econo Lodge Heather and I stayed at in New Jersey during last year's contest.