Next time, perhaps Mayor Bloomberg will go for the hot dogs without the puns.
In what’s an annual tradition, the mayor yesterday introduced the contestants at a “weigh-in” for today’s Nathan’s hot-dog-eating contest, delivering a prepared speech loaded with corny wiener jokes at City Hall Park.
But it was one pun too many for the mayor, who suddenly paused to ask: “Who wrote this s–t?”
Under other circumstances, a mayoral obscenity in public might have caused a stir.
Here, in a carnival atmosphere and among a friendly crowd, it elicited the loudest laugh of the day.
Louder than the response to his many earlier puns.
“Let’s be perfectly frank,” Bloomberg said, reading from the text written by a junior speechwriter. “This is one of my favorite traditions. I relish it so much.”
He wasn’t finished yet.
Paying homage to the stomach stretchers who’ll be battling today in Coney Island, the mayor wondered if the “dogged pursuers will finally ketchup [to the champs], cut the mustard, and be pronounced the wiener. No question, it’s going to be a dog fight.”