Flatliner

Today Kristen, Mike, Danielle, Joe, Becka and I went to the Buffalo Wing Factory.  If you haven't been there before, it's because you avoid places where Pabst Blue Ribbon is a way of life.  If you have been there before, you know about the Flatliner.

The Flatliner is a wing that will kick your butt.  It's not flavorful.  It's not good.  It's just hot for the sake of hot, and then very spicy on top of that.  It once caused someone I know to eat napkins.

However, I did not write this to tell you about someone who eats napkins.  I wrote this to tell you about someone who eats Flatliners like Chuck Norris would eat Flatliners.  No, scratch that.  Like how Chuck Norris combined with Jack Bauer and Scarface would eat an alive chicken.

I wrote this to tell you that Joe ate one and managed it like a pro.

Sure, as the wing was initially consumed, he gave some verbal insights that heat and spice sensations were ratcheting up.  And yeah, maybe his face turned pink for a few seconds.

But he just downed it.  He drank some water, and just handled it.  I've never seen someone eat one of those and act like a man so consistently from the initial point of consumption until the end of the meal.  Oh, I've seen people get up from the table to leave; but it is usually with ranch dressing cascading from their mouth as they beeline for the bathroom stall.

Some of you might be thinking, oh, well if you really knew about the Flatliner you would know that the real Flatliner challenge involves paying a $10 entry fee and eating 10 wings to get a t-shirt and your name on the wall.  And I would tell you that you can pay your mom a $10 entry fee and that Joe didn't need to eat 10.

You know why?  Cause Corey from the wall of fame ate 38.  There is just something wrong with that, and we don't have time to discuss those matters here.  But he ate 38.  Your name on the wall would just look so lame.  It would look as lame as the name of the lead singer of Foster the People when added this list:

- Jimi Hendrix
- Ronald Reagan
- Clint Eastwood
-

By eating just 1 with such grace and composure, Joe proved to us that he could probably have eaten 10, gotten the t-shirt and his name on the wall anyways, gotten his $10 entry fee back, punched Corey in the face and left the restaurant a hero.

So here's to Joe, consumer of somewhere between 10 and 39 Flatliners and, in my mind, king of the chicken.