I Am No Longer Looking Forward to the Fourth of July

There used to be two givens for the Fourth of July--fireworks at night and Takeru Kobayashi eating lots of hot dogs during the day.

A few years ago, in my town at least, the firworks were moved to July 2nd or 3rd to save money.

This year, both the fireworks and Kobayashi will be gone.

According to Kobayashi's blog, "My jaw refused to fight anymore," and he will not be competing at Coney Island. We're going to have to trust Deadspin.com on this quote, since Kobayshi's blog is written in question marks. Maybe he should spend a little less time strengthening his arms, and little more time building up his jaw.

For anyone not familiar with the competitive eating scene, Kobayashi actually had a chance of losing this year. American Joey Chestnut ate 59.5 hot dogs in twelve minutes earlier in June, setting a new World Record. The previous record was 53.75 hot dogs, set by Kobayashi in 2006. This year, the Coney Island contest was set to be an Ali v. Frazier, Nadal v. Federer type bout. Instead, we're going to have to watch Chestnut dominate, and the Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas come in a distant second.

A Fourth of July Vegan Dessert eating contest is in the very early planning stages--we'll give you more details as the date approaches. Let us know what you want to eat.