2004-07-05, 3:55 p.m.

Happy National Hot Dog Eating Weekend

I should be doing laundry, because everything is dirty, but I am loath to commit any act that could possibly add to just how incredibly muggy it is today. And the dryer is definitely not going to help AT ALL. There was a brief torrential down pour a little while ago, but we had to keep the windows closed, because the rain comes in the back side of the apartment. So the house is still quite sticky and uncomfortable, and Leon keeps nursing and falling asleep, and then waking up and being too sticky and TOO MISERABLE FOR WORDS. But now Christopher is lying on the couch with him - Leon lying on Christopher's chest - in front of the big fan, and they are reading out loud from the latest American Coaster Enthusiasts newsletter, and Leon seems much happier. He is very interested, for instance, in the fact that Dolly Parton herself was on hand for the opening of a new coaster at Dollywood this spring. The boy has good taste in women.

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The thing about the middle of the night screaming (see previous entry) that's so Jekyl and Hyde is that Leon really is the mellowest of babies, most of the time. Take yesterday, July 4th, Leon's first Independence Day. He rode the subway in his stroller, spent the day at Coney Island, unflinchingly surrounded by screaming people and loud music. He caught the Coney Island Freak Show (Leon especially enjoyed the fire eater and the girl who ate bugs and walked on swords), was fed by his daddy in the shadow of the Cyclone, had his diaper changed next to the aquarium, entertained our friends Becca and Justin with lots of smiles and giggles, and was so darn appealing that a family at the unbelievably crowded seating area for Nathan's Hotdogs offered to share their table with us. All of that, and no crying, all day.

He also caught his first ever international eating contest.

We had in fact decided to go to Coney Island specifically in order to watch the hot dog eating contest. Kobiyashi, the tiny guy from Japan who breaks hot-dog-eating-records by dipping them into a glass of water (you have to eat the buns, too) and putting two in his mouth at once, was once again going to be defending his title from a bunch of other extreme eaters - a corrections officer, a conductor on the 7 train, another guy from Japan, and Sonia, 'The Black Widow', a tiny little Asian American woman who holds the worlds record for eating hard-boiled eggs. We are big Kobiyashi fans, but we had to admit that The Black Widow was darn cool, so we were hoping she'd give 'Tsunami' a run for his money.

We showed up late (of course), but before the event actually started. It was being filmed by ESPN2, and the crowd was ridiculously huge, and there were horse cops all over, leaving big piles of horse poop in the street. I happen to believe that the horse cops actually volunteered to work the event specifically because they knew they would have a much better view than any of the rest of us. Because we could hardly see a thing - only the signs above the contestants heads, big flip-books with numbers for how many hot dogs each contestant had eaten so far. Even so, just watching the signs flip and listening to the announcer was pretty great, and we cheered excitedly every time Kobiyashi's and Sonia's numbers flipped up, and laughed hysterically when the announcer referred to the contestants as 'the four horsemen of the esophagus'.

Hehe. That still makes me laugh.

In the end, Kobiyashi came in way ahead at, 52.5 hotdogs, breaking his own record. The other Japanese guy came in second, and Sonia came in third over all, beating the women's international record, and setting a new American record. Next year, she says, she wants to win the whole thing. When we see stuff like this, we are ridiculously proud to live in Brooklyn.

After the competition was over, and the crowd had started to disperse, my aforementioned friend, Becca, got into a conversation with a woman who was just walking by and talking to everyone, the way some people in NY tend to do. In contemplating just how astounding it was that Sonia had eaten 32 hot dogs (with buns) in 12 minutes, this woman's parting comment was (I kid you not) "she must be a dyke."

Right. Because we all know that lesbians are just so much better at eating hotdogs than straight girls are. Even if you ignore the suggestive inaccuracies of that statement, Yeesh.

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The other really cool thing that Leon got to do last night was watch the Macy's fireworks display, from a roof top in Park Slope. We had an amazing view - all the barges were spread out before us - in front of Jersey, at the South Street Seaport, and at midtown - all going off together, in concert. There were smiley faces and hearts, the kind that exploded, faded, and exploded again, blues and reds and whites and lavenders and oranges. We were all quite impressed - I have lived in NYC for 10 years, and this was actually the first time I have ever actually watched the fireworks.

Afterwards, Christopher told me that the only thing that might have been cooler would have been if we had been right underneath where the fireworks had been set off, so that we could have seen them up close. And so, of course, not too long after that someone in the street below began setting off his own fireworks, and suddenly there were indeed great big exploding lights shooting up past the roof and exploding loudly right above us. Understandably, we were a little freaked out, but Leon, who was nursing, simply looked up at me, smiled, and went back to eating.