Lunch at Logans

Some work friends and I hauled it down to Logans today. Work friend Jeff took it upon himself to invite this other former co-worker without first consulting former co-worker Patrick and myself if it was ok if this other guy came. Now, this guy is not a bad guy. He has a good sense of humor and is pretty funny. Thing about him is he is a Conversation Hijacker, in fact, I think he got a degree in it. He's notorious for it and it's aggravating.

Sitting there in Logan's, Conversation Hijacker holding court and the boys are discussing audio/visual stuff (that's what they do). I was bored. In my boredom, I noticed songwriter Dennis Morgan came in and sat in the booth behind us.

Dennis is something of Nashville songwriter royalty. He's a member of the Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame and wrote a lot of Ronnie Milsap's hits (my favorite "Smoky Mountain Rain") and he wrote "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool" and a butt load of other songs you would know if I listed all of them here. (Oh yeah...he wrote "Nobody" that Sylvia had a huge hit with back about '82))

I'm pondering the many hits written by Mr. Morgan when I look up at the tv and my attention is caught by ESPN's coverage of Nathan's Famous 4th of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest. I have to tell ya...as All -American and great as this annual event is, it is not the most appetizing to eat by. I don't see how in the world these people don't choke to death stuffing those hot dogs in their mouths like there is no tomorrow. It is not purty.

It was a fairly close race between Joey Chestnut and title defender Takeru Kobayashi. The most interesting thing about this whole thing is the method's these "Competitive Eaters" use to gorge a record number of wieners into their mouths in 12 minutes. Mr. Chestnut has a way of shoving his in that cause him to go into something of a convulsive state and it appears he's demonstrating the proper way to...um...perform oral sex on a feller. This whole thing got me really tickled. I mean, REALLY tickled. When I get really tickled, that's pretty much all she wrote. You just have to wait til it passes. Before long, my A/V lunch companions had abandoned the discussion on sound systems and looked at the tv.

I'm still laughing painfully and getting pretty teary and it appeared Dennis was pretty sucked into the whole thing. Patrick kept saying "Quit looking." Like an accident or a fire, you can't help but look. My laughter continues and Patrick hollered out "DON'T LOOK, ETHEL!!!" Too late....I'm already doubled over. I hope ESPN runs this again. You gotta see Joey do his thing. No wonder he's a world record eater and makes his living shoving crap down his mouth at a high rate of speed.

I think Dennis kept a straight face through the whole thing and probably wished I'd have hushed my laughing so he could eat and ponder his many dollars in his bank account.