Man who ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days: “I just felt like I was doing this for a very important reason”
The world has rallied around Alexander Tominsky, a man who decided to eat a chicken a day for more than a month
Aux Features Rotisserie
Just over a month ago, Alexander Tominsky was an ordinary man. Now, thanks to nothing more than an iron will (and iron guts), he has transformed himself into a legend, eating 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days and ensuring his place in history as “The Philadelphia Chicken Man.”
Speaking to The New York Times following the completion of his mission yesterday before a throng of cheering spectators, Tominsky said that it wasn’t easy to achieve his goal. Initially, he would annihilate a chicken in 20 minutes and “there was no pain,” but, as he continued his work over the following weeks, Tominsky needed roughly two hours and started to feel “cramped up, bloated from all the sodium, and said that he came to believe that he could ‘feel the pulse of my heart in my stomach.’”
The concept of a rotisserie chicken itself also began to change with time. Tominsky said that he became disgusted with “the slimy sounds” that accompany picking out dark meat (“too salty and greasy”) or white meat (“dry”) from the bird. By the time he was on the home stretch his strategy required him to “chew the chicken into small pieces, mush it in his mouth, and slurp it down with water.”
Nevertheless, he persevered. Tominsky, who’s 31 and works as a restaurant server in Philadelphia, wasn’t driven by making money, settling a bet, or becoming famous. (His Twitter description doesn’t include any links, and reads, simply: “I ate chicken.”) He was driven by something purer. Tominsky told the Times that “much of the world is in pain … so he must do something that brings him pain to make others smile.” He added that it “just felt like I was doing this for a very important reason” and that his personal agony was “microscopic in comparison to what the world lives with and sees everyday.”
Even if he “happened to, for some silly reason, pass away from” eating the 40 chickens, Tominsky said that he “would have been OK with the sacrifice.”
Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case. Tominsky is alive and well. He will go on to eat many more chickens, maybe spaced out a bit better in the future. And, thanks to the sacrifice he made of his body for the last 40 days, all of humanity now understands the incredible feats we’re capable of if we recognize our own strength.
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65 Comments
Humans are dumb.
Sums this up nicely.
Keep fucking that chicken, bro.
Ernie Anastos lives!!!
That plate could’ve easily beeen a red MAGA hat.
The GOP are already putting out feelers to see if he’s interested in a Senate run.
I guess we have to care about something now that the World Series is over.
“chew the chicken into small pieces, mush it in his mouth, and slurp it down with water.”
So he’s eating like a baby bird?
“I just felt like I was doing this for a very important reason”Also the real Chicken Man got blown up years ago:
I heard they blew up his house, too.
Now we’ll see what them racket boys can do.
“Bomb blast kills Testa”Chuck Testa? Nope.
I bet this wouldn’t have been a problem for Elwood Blues.
You mean Jake, right?Elwood never got his dry white toast:(
Damn, you’re right! in my defense, I didn’t forget which one was which, I just forgot which one ordered what.
All good!
It’s OK I was said Ernie was always the reasonable one when I meant Bert. Getting through 2nd grade was rough that year.
Why would someone eat indoors in a restaurant?
AMBIANCE
Imagine how much further along humanity would be if he ate TWO chickens a day…
Coulda just donated those chickens, bud.
PETA should hire this guy. The whole ad campaign would just be him eating rotisserie chicken, making expressions like the ones above. Hell, they wouldn’t even have to put their logo on it.
“You gonna die for some chickens?”
“Someone is.”
*immediately dies of heart attack*
.
I know this isn’t an original observation, and I suppose in the age of social media circuses it’s pointless to even criticize something for being objectively stupid and wasteful, but it is absolutely buck wild to me that we live in an age that celebrates performative over-consumption and even rewards it. We have so much excess that we could very easily simply consume ourselves do death to the adoration of a crowd. And of course this kind of thing is the only way for Capitalism to continue to exist. For people to buy far too much, eat far too much, throw away far too much. While at the same time living in a world with crushing poverty and malnutrition.
It’s a kind of public slow self-immolation with literally nothing to say.So, yay for him, I guess?
It’s extremely fucked up.“He was driven by something purer. Tominsky told the Times that “much of the world is in pain … so he must do something that brings him pain to make others smile.” I hope this guy isn’t a typical 31 year old.
You already know the answer to that.
a single rotisserie chicken is a lot, but it isn’t that much. its fine.
Loving the self-righteous responses, like you’re all fucking warriors for poverty and malnutrition by rolling your eyes at an idiot who ate too much chicken.
I’m very much not above anti-capitalist rhetoric but this shit seems really not worth the outrage.
For what it’s worth, I donate hundreds of dollars a month to things like Oxfam providing clean drinking water and the Fred Hollows foundation to treat curable blindness.Admittedly they’re Australian dollars but still!
They don’t want your filthy marsupial money!Joke aside, good! I don’t mean to suggest that nobody shitting on this story is actually contributing to charity. Just that some of the responses are unduly righteous.
What, we’re supposed to be impressed by the idiot who ate too much chicken? If there’s one person you can definitely roll your eyes at it’s a dude who thinks his mission to eat chicken is important somehow.
I mean… Yeah, rolling your eyes is not in itself the issue. It’s rolling your eyes and polishing your I Make a Difference badge and loading your Philistine Culture War musket. Some people need to get over themselves.(Says someone who not infrequently needs to do the same. I am human, we are hypocrites.)
My take is simple. If you can’t enjoy what you eat then what’s the point?
A very sensible response to this goofiness.And I really wish people didn’t believe that suffering in “solidarity” was a good thing. Nobody should WANT you to suffer. I don’t think it’s solely a Western idea but it does seem very fundamental to Judeo Christian ideology.“Are you miserable? Then I, too, shall be miserable!”*This is also why I’ve always been suspicious of the overly empathetic. Empathy is a good thing BUT it should have limits. If my father died tomorrow, the last thing I would want to hear from anyone is “Hey, my dad died too.” Okay, but YOUR dad is not MY dad. I only want to hear that shit from my brother. Or a variation on it from my mother. All due respect and love to my friends but at least in the immediate moment, back off.*I’m not saying that you should hermit yourself away and avoid human contact. Seek help if you need it! But if you’re NOT the person in distress don’t assume that your own distress will be helpful. It may, in fact, distract the sufferer from their own necessary process, especially if they are natural Helpers. Reaching out is good but make sure you don’t make it About Me.
“They filled up the Chicken Man in Philly last night” – Bruce Wingsteen.
Jim Morrison bragged that he ate “more chicken than any man ever seen, yeah, yeah” and, not that long afterwards: (a) gained a ton of weight, and (b) died of a heart attack. Coincidence?
CHICKENNNNN MAAAAAANNNNN!He’s everywhere. He’s everywhere.
After 20 years in Philly, I love that you can still become famous here for nothing more than being a weirdo on “that abandoned pier near Walmart.”
Random dude does something stupid for 40 days. Why is this even news?
Because we live in the worst timeline.
And I don’t even get a cool eye patch
2002 called and wants its Internet bits back.
The AV Club.
This kind of thing is neat until websites like this make it a thing.
Local Philly news can’t find any evidence that this wasn’t just a viral hoax/stunt. Dude didn’t eat 40 chickens. The gathering at the abandoned Walmart pier was a preplanned gathering to try to go viral on social media. NYT interviews the guy as though, even if this was actually a guy who ate a chicken a day for forty days, this is something anyone should give a fuck about.This is where we are. Not to mention, we all the know Philly chicken man got blown up in ‘82, and his house too.
What?! I wasn’t happy about living in a world with a man who ate 40 chickens in 40 days, but I at least thought I could count on one thing, that he wasn’t lying about having eaten 40 chicken in 40 days.
Who can you even trust these days? That’s it, I’m voting Libertarian from now on.
Fucking racket boys…
Exactly. Was waiting for this lol.
About the only great thing the internet has done in this case is make realize I haven’t listened to Nebraska in far too long and just booted it up. Amazing album.
The dumbest bit of this (other than him thinking this was very important) is that there are tons of ways to sexy up chicken so that it’s not just choking down plain chicken every day. It’s true that the dark meat on these can be greasy and the white meat is always dry, which is one reason you need to mix them.Then you can make them into burritos. Soups! Salads! Casseroles. Add various sauces. Yes, you have to be careful about the total amount of extra food you’re adding, so don’t make tacos because they add more body than a thin wrap, but lettuce is basically ‘free’, and the liquid in soup isn’t too filling if you don’t use too much. And you can do this all with already cooked chicken like these are – you just have to be aware that the white meat is already dry and work with it.
But then the guy wouldn’t be a meme if it was just “guy eats forty delicious chicken meals in forty days”! He’d just be a guy who likes chicken! Think of the meme!
What’re you, Rachael Ray?
But then you’re adding a bunch of other stuff that fills up your stomach so there’s no room for just the chicken.
I think you still might end up taking less time than spending two hours choking down chicken (ahem) you hate.
Sure, sure. Especially if you’re doing it for absolutely no reason. I never understand how people will willingly turn one of life’s truest pleasures–eating delicious food–into a competition or a chore.
Are you really not tired?
I grew up in Philly. It’s a seriously weird town. This is me and my old man on Broad Street around 88 or 87:
I’m glad The New York Times was able to cover this.
Fuck you for covering this and giving this idiot any more attention.