What persistence!

I was surprised when I walked by Nathan's in Coney Island and saw that the hot dog eating contest has been won by Japanese people for six out of the past seven years. But look at this man:



He is a champion! He has one four contests in a row! He is Japanese, and broke his own world record! 53.5 hot dogs in twelve minutes? Nobody has ever eaten that many hot dogs in so little time, ever. Takeru Kobayashi I think I'm in love with you.

I am reading the nerdiest book ever written. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, contains the following nerd elements:
Fantasy gaming
Math geniuses
Code breaking
Lots of greek letters
Internet start-up companies
Introverted socially awkward men with beards
The inter-library loan office as a central locale for characters meeting each other
Classification as a "cyber-thriller"
"The Society for Creative Anachronism"
The appendix
The author photo on the back
Etc.

It has three intertwined narratives, two of which are rather compelling, set in WWII, and one which is horrible, set in the nineties, people trying to set up a "data haven". I don't know what that means. But it's okay, and in spite of being 900 pages long it moves quickly and actually is sort of dull, brainless reading, the sort you can do in a loud room as long as you're skipping the drawn out mathematical descriptions that happen every once in a while.

John Edwards as VP made me inexplicably happy this morning. I'm such a sucker for southern dumplings.

I saw Saved last night. I like Jena Malone and (obviously) McCauly, but the funny part of the movie was the first ten minutes and then it just got strange, there were blatant displays of horrible acting and it couldn't really make up it's mind. Was it a lark? Was it social criticism? What was going on? Spider Man 2 is fucking great though.