Much to my undying shame, I recently discovered I was not doing my part in being an American. Oh, I vote. And when I do, whether it’s for dog catcher or governor, I just write in, “moron.” I don’t litter, snitch or park sideways in handicapped spaces. I’ve even been known to hum, “America, the Beautiful.” Alas, it turns out I’m not doing my fair share of eating hot dogs.

Came across an interesting statistic from The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council. They reported that between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans will eat 7 billion hot dogs. That’s roughly 23.3 hot dogs per person and that’s counting babies, who really shouldn’t be eating hot dogs, especially laced with chili and especially Chicago dogs, which have chili, onions, hot peppers and relish. Talk about blowing $350 on disposable diapers in one, ahem, sitting.

Years ago, when I was editing this august periodical weekly and national award-winning entertainment section, Escape, we had this kid who came to me with a great idea for a column. The topic? Fast food. The problem was that the rookie turned in his first essay and it made you look behind the computer to ask: “Where’s the beef?” I recall it consisted either of the one word of, “The” or, “Uh,” and obviously, with such minimalist prose, the intellectual experience is all downhill after that. With such minimalism, you’d think he was writing a vegan think piece. Don’t want to destroy the planet with an adverb.

We’d have heart-to-hearts about adding maybe a second sentence to stretch the thing........

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