A little bribery gets you everywhere!

Well maybe not everywhere, but a couple MoonPie Mini's and free guest passes to Tiki Bobs and Have a Nice Day Cafe did prevent us from having to tear our poster down from an awesome spot. Thank you promises of satiety and young, nubile women. Anyway, things are going pretty well/hectic with setting things up so far. On the good side, we're up to 50+ registered contestants with I think about a dozen who promised to compete, so we'll see what happens with them. My biggest fear is to have a lack of contestants and not be able to properly follow the bracket. While it seems like getting 64 people for the tournament is very approachable now, we need to make sure there's 16 from each class so they can work through their divisions. At worst, maybe we can lump seniors and grad students.. I'll have to do a more specific tally tomorrow.

In other news, our vinyl banner finally came in, a week ahead of schedule (THANK YOU Big Image Graphics, Peter & Bill you rock!) So no more worries about getting that in, and maybe Adam will have one less thing to bug me about. One issue that's emerging is the availability of food other than MoonPies at the event (why people refuse to only eat chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow, I don't know), but we might at least have one vendor available. Depending on of course, if an off-premise lisence is suitable for catering, which it should be, but the campus has weird stipulations about such things. Anyone have an answer to this? I'd love it for people to be able to chow down on some fresh hand rolled sushi at the event.

On a side note, I found out that some people are having a hard time finding MoonPies to train for the event. For the Richmond area you should be able to find them at Food Lion, the Midlothean Walmart, and at the VCU Commons.


TRAINING
Since I'm competing in the exhibition, I've made it a thing to somewhat train over the past week and a half. I'll admit I've been half assing it, but I do make it a point to overeat everytime... which actually sucks. However, I do notice myself being able to eat much more, and I think I might actually take in less calories because I walk around full for the rest of the day. For the sake of my health, I should stop with the junk foods, and stick more to rice and noodles... or anything else not fried.

One misconception I want to clear up is that you have to be fat for an eating contest. That's bull. If you look at the top eaters in the world, Sonya Thomas, Kobayashi, Chestnutt, they're all very much in shape, and probably have significantly less body fat than the average person. Sonya Thomas is the one who continually amazes me for the sheer fact that she's only 5'5", 100lbs, and can eat like 20% of her body weight. That's like me eating 40lbs of food.... which will never happen. Just amazing. For you skinny folks who don't think you have a chance, take this note in perspective. The leaner you are, the more your stomach can expand. Fat restricts your intestines from expanding, therefore limiting how much you can gorge. All you need to do is train to expand your stomach, and will power. Sheer, sheer will power.

COOLNESS NOTE OF THE DAY
Will Fameni (of VCU basketball fame) walked by our table today, and he knew about our event. I don't know if he was all about competing, but he said he'd show up... which is awesome, cause I love our basketball team. Fameni's really cool too... everyone should meet this man. MoonPie Madness just might be your chance!

BTW - special thanks to Brenda Berson for making the Fameni MoonBall pic. You're so awesome, your Awesomenest!!!