This is the closest annual event to home that is sponsored by the International Federation of Competitive Eating, and seems like a great place to start.

A couple of weeks ago, I was out having dinner with Brandon and Jaime, and they watched me eat an entire pizza by myself.  I was hungry, but they insisted I should enter the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

I figured I should probably start off on an even other than the Super Bowl of eating contests, so I hit up the Major League Eating website to find out what other contests are out there.  Turns out there’s one three hours away in a couple of weeks.  Object: Tamales.

So on Labour Day, we decided to head on over to Pancho’s (all you can eat!) to begin my training.

The girl at the buffet line seemed bemused that I would request “as many tamales as would fit” on my plate.  She needed a number.

“I’ll start with a dozen”

That dozen lasted all of six minutes.

A second batch was on its way as I completed the initial dozen, but that batch was so sub-par (even by Pancho’s standards) that I couldn’t keep them down.  It wasn’t that I was full; I followed up the crushed tamales with a pair of enchiladas and a sopapilla.

It wasn’t record time by anyone’s calculation.  Eater X set the world tamale record last year in Lewsiville at 71 in ten minutes.  The second-place guy was up there at 51.  But since I’d never had a tamale before, setting a twelve-minute pace of 24 isn’t that shabby.  Wasn’t that pretty, either.

I’ll keep working on it.

Last night, in covering a story on a new US tourism ad campaign in the London Underground (whose ads proclaim “South Carolina is so gay”), Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA took a shot at Civil War hero and my Great-great-great uncle, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

While I admire your meticulous pronunciation, Mr. Colbert, I must stand up and ask you, if his nickname, “The Little Creole” is the gayest thing about the Civil War, there’s not a lot of gay to be mined from the whole situation, is there?

This episode was filled with other homophobia-filled taunts directed toward Sir Elton John, which makes me wonder.  Why would you devote so much airtime to how gay everyone else is (or could potentially have been)?  Perhaps to deflect suspision of your own deviance?  Now I know why you want your Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavor so close to the Brawny guy.

Unfortunately, the ’02 Accords are designed such that, in order to get to the headlight assembly (even to change out the headlamp!), you’ve got to rip the entire bumper off.

Lucky for me, as a Honda employee,  I’ve got access to all their service guides on their website.  So I looked up the instructions for removing the front bumper and headlight assembly and we went to work.

Once we got inside and pulled the headlight, we took a hair dryer (which I’d never use on my actual head) and evaporated all the moisture.  We got everything re-assembled and I was back on the road shortly after midnight.  Photo after the jump.