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July 14 is National Hot Dog Day

July 14, 2016/0 Comments/in July

Today is National Hot Dog Day, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC), an august body created by the North American Meat Institute, which has declared July to be National Hot Dog Month.

The NHDSC serves as a clearinghouse of information about the preparation and nutritional quality of hot dogs and sausages, funded by contributions from manufacturers and their suppliers.

National Hot Dog Day was established in 1991 to coincide with the Annual Hot Dog Lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. As a result, the holiday’s date is dictated by the congressional calendar and typically occurs in the third or fourth week of July.

Because of the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions, the lunch was rescheduled to today. Many hot dog franchises have chosen to celebrate the holiday on July 23rd, because last year’s National Hot Dog Day fell on that date.

With the support of many holiday calendar websites, July 23rd’s observance may stick around. But hot dog lovers and NHDSC aren’t complaining. In National Hot Dog Month, does it matter?

Ten percent of all hot dogs are purchased in July, according to Janet Riley, NHDSC’s “Queen of Wien.”

Here are a few more stats:

In 2015, nearly 1 billion pounds of hot dogs were sold in retail stores, adding up to more than $2.5 billion in sales.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Americans consume 7 billion hot dogs. That’s 818 hot dogs eaten every second during that period.
The NHDSC predicts that major league ballparks will sell 18.5 million hot dogs during baseball season this year.
Los Angeles was last year’s top hot dog consuming city: Angelenos ate more than 34 million pounds. New York took second place, followed by Phoenix, Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Washington, DC and Tampa.

Have a happy National Hot Dog Day!

International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship

July 2, 2016/0 Comments/in July

international cherry pit spitting festival

July 2, 2016, is the 43rd Annual International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship, held each year in Eau Claire, MI, on the first Saturday of July. Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm hosts this event, calling it a “Spit-tacular Day” where you can “spit your pit in public with only a minimal loss of dignity while gaining fame.”

It’s the only cherry pit spitting contest recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. (In case you’re curious, the world record belongs to Brian “Young Gun” Krause, 37, of Lansing, MI, who spat his pit a whopping 93 feet 6½ inches in 2003.)

There are some interesting ground rules. The spitting range is available for practice spitting from 10:00 a.m. until noon. Those wishing to practice are limited to a maximum of three spits.

No foreign objects may be held in the mouth which would give an advantage in spitting the pit. Denture racks will be provided for those wishing to remove their teeth.

We assume organizers accept no responsibility for lost property due to someone mistakenly taking the wrong dentures after the contest or intentionally grabbing someone else’s because it’s a nicer set of choppers. (Note: The perpetrator will be the person who never smiles when you’re around.)

Contestants must select three cherries from the regulation variety (Montmorency) supplied by the tournament committee. Cherries must be washed and chilled to 55-60°F pit temperature.

When called by the tournament judge, the contestant has 60 seconds to insert the whole cherry, chew and swallow everything but the pit and get to the line. No part of the cherry may be removed after insertion. The spit is forfeited if a pit is swallowed. Hands must stay below the shoulders to prevent popping one’s cheeks.

Spitters must stand flat on the ground — or ground level platform — to spit. Spitters are prohibited from using any kind of mechanical or other device to improve body thrust or spit length (including hydraulic hoists, wall support, etc.)

The contest is serious business. In addition to a distance judge, line judge, timekeeper and scorekeeper, there is an official tournament judge, honorary judges, an emcee and announcer—described as spit-by-spit announcer and color man—and a pit sweeper, which has our vote for least glamorous duty.

The first champion back in 1974 was Dan Kingman of Dowagiac, MI, with a distance of 41 feet. In 2015, Megan Ankrapp of Buchanan, MI, took the prize with a spit of 49 feet ¼ inch. Who will break Guinness Book’s world record? Do you have what it takes? It’s never too late to start practicing, preferably outside, where it’s less messy.

World Championship Rotary Tiller Race

June 25, 2016/1 Comment/in June

June 25, 2016, is the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race, the main event of the PurpleHull Pea Festival in Emerson, Arkansas. In 1990, Emerson native and part-time newspaper columnist Glen Eades decided his hometown needed a little excitement. As he explained, “We were so boring we didn’t even have a cop.”

He approached Mayor Joe Mullins about hosting a festival to honor a southern favorite grown in many local backyards: purple hull peas. Several town meetings were held to discuss the idea and somewhere along the way, Eades suggested a rotary tiller race. Mullins remembers thinking, “Glen, I don’t know what you’ve been drinking, but you need to change brands.” The plan was approved and the PurpleHull Pea Festival became a reality.

Since then, it has grown in size and stature, winning the 2001 Arkansas Festival of the Year Award. Over the years, the World Championship Rotary Tiller Race has evolved, too. Its website proclaims:

There simply is no other event like it. Unique among motor sports, we like to say it is the highlight of the tiller racing season. ‘Course, to the best of our knowledge, our one-day event is the tiller racing season.

Following a brouhaha cryptically referred to as the “Great Tiller Racing Controversy of ’93,” festival organizers created the World Tiller Racing Federation to write and enforce official rules governing all races. One such rule dictates that the racetrack must be exactly 200 feet in length. Another requires that racers, called tiller pilots, wear shoes. (Believe it or not, up until that point, some chose to compete in bare feet.)

The event has become so famous that The Wall Street Journal has sent a reporter to cover today’s race for its column on odd topics. In recent years, the festival’s Antique Tractor Show & Competition has held two races of its own: the Barrel Push, which is pretty self-explanatory, and the Slow Race, in which contestants try to keep the tractor running at the lowest possible speed without stalling.

The PurpleHull Pea Pageant judges age groups from 0-11 months all the way to 16 years and up. According to the signup sheet, “Contestants will be rated on Facial Beauty, Stage Presentation/Personality and overall appearance,” winners of “Side Awards: Most Beautiful, Photogenic, Fashion, Prettiest Hair, Prettiest Smile” will receive a trophy, and “All Queens will receive a Nice Crown, Sash & Trophy.”

Zero months? We’re going to go out on a limb and say that if your daughter’s too young to hold up her own head with or without a crown on it, she’s probably too young to enter in a beauty contest. Your time would be better spent making sure your husband keeps his shoes on for the race.

Admission is free to the Tiller Race, Tractor Show, Pup-Pea Dog Show, Pea Shelling Competition, Big Daddy’s Hot Water Cornbread Great PurpleHull Peas & Cornbread Cook Off, the Million Tiller Parade and “Pea-tacular” Fireworks Show.

To raise money, each year festival organizers choose a group of “Tiller Girls,” teenagers who roam through the crowd watching the race. According to the site,

They’re there for two reasons. First, for visual stimulation. Second, to take up donations. The Tiller Girl who collects the largest total amount of donations earns points toward winning the title of Tiller Goddess.

Oh, thank goodness. We were worried it might be something creepy.

Giggin’ for Grads Night

June 24, 2016/2 Comments/in June

The horror! The horror!

Today is the 4th Annual Giggin’ for Grads Night, created in 2013 by the DeKalb County Young Farmers and Ranchers Club of Smithville, Tennessee, to raise funds for agricultural scholarships. In case you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, “gigging” is the use of a sharpened implement such as a pointed stick, called a “gig,” to spear fish. In this case, it refers to a bullfrog-killing contest.

Participants pay a $15 entry fee and must hunt in teams of two to four people. First prize, for the heaviest bag of 15 frogs, is 25% of the entry fees collected. Second Prize is 15%, and third is 10%. Frogs are kept for a community frog leg dinner the next day.

While animal rights groups and many private citizens are appalled by this practice, it is a legal, regulated sport in Tennessee. Area game wardens supervise the tournament; giggers must have hunting licenses to participate and are allowed to kill no more than 20 frogs.

That first year, activists called club members, went on the news and posted the local school principal’s number on social media in a bid to get Giggin’ for Grads canceled. As anyone who’s lived in a small town could predict, their approach backfired. The community responded to the outsiders’ efforts by digging in their heels and throwing their support behind the event.

People from nearby counties sent donations, bringing the scholarship total to over $1,000. The number of contestants grew from the expected twenty or so to nearly 100. As a result, many more frogs were killed—harvested, in gigging parlance—and fried the next day. The event has gained notoriety since then. Peaceful protestors return every year and are, by all accounts, treated well by the townsfolk.

One online petition making the rounds today has gathered 136,543 signatures. It includes this oft-repeated statement: “Bullfrogs are cold-blooded and have slow metabolisms, so it takes them a long time to die after being stabbed.” Requiring less energy to survive is a useful environmental adaptation that doesn’t factor in how to live through a fatal stabbing. It doesn’t create Frankentoads or an amphibian GITMO in the gigger’s sack. Dead is dead. But this argument should at least prompt game wardens to remind everyone that the frogs they kill must be fully dead, sooner rather than later because otherwise that’s just, you know, mean.

The petition also states that, in the darkness, participants kill other frogs and toads that may be endangered. The flashlights they carry, the incentive to get large bullfrogs and the team aspect help reduce the likelihood of rogue giggers exterminating entire species or spending their time putting frogs in stress positions. Also, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has no record of any endangered frog species in Tennessee. If there are any there, they are likely to be endangered because they took a left turn in Florida and ended up in Tennessee.

Giggin’ for Grads may a terrible idea for a fundraiser. It has resulted in the death of thousands of bullfrogs. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from a mathematical standpoint. Aside from today’s event, there is a legal hunting season in which a licensed gigger can harvest up to 20 bullfrogs per day, every day…and yet they never run out. That’s no excuse for torture but think for a moment of another cold-blooded creature. When was the last time you cared if a cockroach suffered?

Have a happy Giggin’ for Grads Night, unless you don’t want to. No pressure!

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