Eater X Eats at Adams College, Home of the Adams Atoms

There are no rattlesnakes in the two-acre desert lot behind the Hampton Inn near Tucson's international airport, or at least none that Eater X could find. Though tired and hungover from a night of pre-contest partying and clad especially poorly for such an expedition, he spent 90 minutes of Saturday morning wandering through that dusty acreage, overturning tires and discarded sheets of corrugated metal and poking haphazardly at bushes with a giant stick he'd pulled from the branches of a nearby tree. Although I've known Eater X to do this sort of thing every now and then (as a college senior, he packed his car with a hockey stick, a garbage can, a boning knife, and a disposable camera, and drove west to Sweetwater, TX, for the Sweetwater Jaycees' annual Rattlesnake Roundup), I never thought he'd do something so silly a few hours before a contest.

"What if one had bitten you?" I asked him, referring to the rattlesnakes I was glad he hadn't encountered.

"Well, it would have made for a funny story," he said, "missing a contest because of a rattlesnake bite."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked.

"Yeah, I sort of do."

It wasn't the only nonsensical thing that he did this weekend. On Saturday night, when he should have been sulking because he ate like a wuss, he went out and partied again. By 12:00 that night he was mildly buzzed; by 2:00 he was pulling hairs from his chest and encouraging women he didn't know to blow them from his fingertips and "Make a wish!"

Honestly, seeing him in action this weekend, seeing him goof around as if on a vacation, I'm not surprised that he hasn't won a world championship since last June's Shoo Fly Pie Eating Contest. He's seems a little too careless to win.

It's only April, so I'm not too worried yet. But I hope that fucker finds his focus soon 'cause hot dog season's just around the corner.