A gross idea

Here's a gross idea proposed my friend John and elaborated on by me about the spectacle of excess:

John: What if we staged a contest that pitted Takeru Kobayashi against Annabelle Chong? He would eat hot dogs. She would have sex. Whoever did the most in their respective field would win.

Me: This idea intrigues me as both a mathematical story
problem and an illustration of human consumption. Perhaps we could run the whole gamut of human vices...herewith, gluttony and lust already taken care of. The synch cam on this would be artistically exciting. Kobay stuffing himself full of hot dogs; Chong, um, doing the same. To truly measure the impact of this comparison, there would have to be no time limit. The mandate must be CONSUME. And already I must correct myself. Then we would lose the preciousness of time, the race, the record, those boring human details that put numbers ahead of actions. Could he keep pace with her over the course of a day? Could she be as riveting over the course of five minutes? And where does this satiation become routine? Maybe that's where this execution has its real life? We would monitor those watching this spectacle and see where their breaking points were. It would be, from my perspective, much more fun to bet on the viewers rather than the participants.

Sadly, he didn't get to respond, because he's bounced off to Cali for Thanksgiving week. But, this particular idea made me think of how earlier I had easily watched an hour-and-a-half of two-man bobsledding. This was quite possibly the most boring way I could have spent that time, yet I was entranced. The steady cams never changed. The principle or execution of the sport never changed. Nothing ever changed except for the numbers registering the times. (Oh, and a Swiss team wiped out at close to 120 Km/H, which looked painful, but they got up no worse for wear.) I watched and watched and it was only when Latvia tied for first that I could watch no more. There was some finality to seeing +0.00 pop up at the bottom next to their flag. It was like one night in New York, I watched the countdown/countup clock in Union Square. And when the zeroes hit the center at midnight and began spreading outward again, I knew it was time to go. And even rereading this last sentence, I feel stupidly aphoristic. "At that time, it was time." In many cases, the grossness of an idea is not the idea, but the time spent on it. European basketball is a shorter game compared to the American variety, therefore I will watch more of it. Doing a crossword or mental puzzle is only a success if accomplished in a certain time for me. Sprinter to the end, I don't have the patience for the "big" game. And lately, I've been wondering how this corresponds with my life. Will I continue to tire of long-term projects or will I eventually adopt a Zen mastery of letting time pass unnoticed, like while watching bobsledding?

I always loved Einstein's metaphor for relativity involving the stove and the girl. Maybe both aspects of time can live in the same life. I will make that today's gross idea.