Is this a great country or what?

Tomorrow our nation celebrates its 232nd "birthday" and what a country this is! Think about it...we live freely, brothers and sisters. We really do. On our nation's birthday, there is no such thing as compulsory attendance at dictatorial-inspired parades (see Cuba and North Korea as examples - good job with those parades, Papa Fidel and Dear Leader Kim Jong Il) where soldiers goose-step and those in attendance cheer wildly at the display of military might (you'd cheer too if you knew you were going to be summarily shot if you didn't).

No, we don't face that. Instead, we are free to do what we want to honor our nation. So in the true American spirit of going big or going home, we have competitive eating challenges and the 4th of July seems to be a pinnacle of competitive eating. It's capped by the throwdown of hot dog ingesting that goes on at Nathan's Famous in New York. It's reached such a frenzy that ESPN covers the event. Scores of hot dogs are consumed by the competitors and then projectile vomited - that part of the spectacle usually does not make it on ESPN, although I'm sure you could find it on YouTube. Take a look at the expression on the face of last year's winner, Joey Chestnut (I'm not lying about the name either) of Nathan's ride on the vomit comet:


Seriously, he looks like he's having a stroke.

Believe it or not, books have been written about this genius and competitive eating. I've read one of them and highly recommend it. Read "Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit." The author is a guy called Ryan Nerz and it's a hysterical take on what, only in America, is becoming a real sport.

Now I am no fan of the hot dog in any circumstance and I can't even imagine eating them competitively. Living here in the land o'encased meats, saying you don't like the Dog is borderline sacrilege. Take a look at what they've done to the Dog in Chicagoland:


That enough is to turn me for good on the thought of eating a hot dog, so I won't. Not tomorrow, not at Wrigley Field, not with my dad having his favorite meal of hot dogs, onions, and beans (thanks, Great Depression, for that contribution to the American diet). So if that makes me unpatriotic, so be it.

The 4th brings a 5K up in Mundelein (a little town that is basically Wisconsin-adjacent) and then we head over to Indiana until Saturday night. We'll be jet-skiing and camping with friends at the nuclear power plant beach. Eating butter burgers on the 4th from Culvers and watching fireworks along Lake Michigan. It's going to be a great weekend.

Celebrate well!