Dr. Kuntzman To Deliver Paper At Next Competitive Eating Convention On “The Effect Of Environmental Factors On Competitive Eating Behaviors”

Competitive eating experts suggest that Joey Chestnut’s record-breaking feat this week in Arizona is tainted:

Like Bob Beamon’s wind-aided 1968 Olympic long jump in the thin air of Mexico City, Barry Bonds “clear”- and “cream”-aided 73 homer season in 2001, or Roger Maris’s eight-extra-game home-run season in 1961, Chestnut’s 59-1/2 HDB record should have an asterisk — at least until he repeats the “achievement” under actual game conditions.

Without air conditioning, I mean.

Certainly Chestnut is one of history’s greatest eaters. But the full impact of what he did last Saturday in an air-conditioned shopping mall outside of Tempe, Arizona simply can’t be known until he does it again.

In the heat of an actual competition.

After all, last year at Coney Island, with the temperatures and humidity both well above 80, Chestnut finished 1-3/4 dogs behind his nemesis, Takeru Kobayashi, who ate 53-3/4 and captured his sixth consecutive Mustard Yellow International Belt, the world-renowned symbol of gustatory greatness.

And columnist Gersh Kuntzman knows of what he speaks:

I conducted a completely scientific experiment at an indoor Nathan’s stand. With the air conditioning blowing at full bore, I was able to down two HDBs in just one minute (such a pace, if sustained over 12 minutes, would have won me the Mustard Yellow Belt only a decade ago, by the way).

Then I bought two more dogs and took them outside, into the heat and mugginess of a normal New York summer day.

I struggled to get even one of the dogs down my quivering gullet. My face broke out in a sweat (that’s real garlic satisfaction in there, my friends) and I got woozy from the heat.

The result of my experiment was clear: Air conditioning is to competitive eating what steroids are to baseball or, more accurately, the power nail driver is to Amish barn-raising.

And Here I Was Thinking That The Word “Reputed” Was Falling Out Of Favor . . .

There’s the Dickensian representation of the mafia currently commanding our attention and then there’s the real mob. And as the Sopranos series finale approaches, the real mafia wants you to know that they still exist:

The reputed mobster was found face up in his white striped pajamas, his mouth agape, half hanging off his bed in his Brooklyn home. He had been shot once near his ear, in the back of his head, and late last night investigators were still searching for a motive.

The death of the man, Rudolph Izzi — who the authorities said had been a soldier with the Genovese crime family — was the second mob-related shooting in the borough in three days, and had detectives investigating whether the two attacks were related.

On Tuesday morning, Robert DeCicco, whose father is a captain with the Gambino crime family, was shot in his arm and leg, and another bullet grazed his head, while he was sitting in his parked car less than a mile and a half from Mr. Izzi’s home on Shore Parkway. Mr. DeCicco, who was indicted along with his father and 11 others on federal racketeering and extortion charges in January, survived the attack.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether there was any connection between the shooting of Mr. Izzi, a loan shark, and Mr. DeCicco, 56, who lives on Staten Island and was said to have amassed heavy gambling debts. But both came from powerful crime families and have colorful histories of their own. There have been no arrests in either case.

According to the police, Mr. Izzi’s body was discovered after a friend of his, a doctor, stopped by for a visit and noticed signs of forced entry around the home’s door. The friend, whose name was not released, called the police. (Another investigator said Mr. Izzi was gunned down after answering the door, though that version was not corroborated by the police.)

And when investigators first saw Mr. Izzi, 74, who was declared dead in his bed, they said he seemed like a “beat-up old man,” a far cry from the eccentric, crisply dressed wiseguy whose nickname was “the Cueball,” and whose tangles with the law dated back nearly 40 years.

Law & Order Writers Pump Fists: “Who Needs Fred Thompson Anyway?”

Hey, Post — they’re called “little people” — not “midgets” — even if you are talking about a dice-throwing, beer-guzzling crack-dealing midget whose only concern is that he’s not known as a “dwarf”:

The short, troubled life of a drug-dealing Harlem midget came to a violent end yesterday when he was gunned down while guzzling beer and shooting dice outside a housing project.

Cops found a huge .380-caliber pistol in the waistband of little person Joshua Agard, 18, along with 15 vials of crack that he was peddling while hanging out in a courtyard with pal Manuel Zabater, who was also killed in the attack.

“He was just so big. So [I thought], how much could he get into?” said distraught neighbor Debra Daniels, 61. “He was a good person. I loved him.”

Though Agard was just 3 feet tall, he had a police record a mile long. So far this year, he had been busted twice, once on assault charges for throwing a bottle at a man’s head and once for trespassing when he was caught inside 425 E. 105th St. He also had two other arrests, cops said.

The final, fatal trouble for Agard came at about 4:30 a.m. yesterday while he and Zabater, beers in hand, were in the courtyard of the East River Houses project on East 105th Street.

According to cops, three or four black males approached and, without saying a word, blasted Agard several times.

Witnesses told The Post that the project grounds were clear of the usual cast of thugs at the time of the shooting, indicating that many knew the hit would be going down.

As rounds tore through the tiny target’s head and torso, Zabater committed an act of bravery when he rushed to his friend’s side and tried to pull him to cover, witnesses said. That’s when Zabater — who was on parole for drugs — was hit twice in the torso.

. . .

The bloody end for Agard came after a life in which he struggled to overcome the deaths of his parents, and his size, which sometimes made him the object of mockery.

“When people would taunt him, he would say, ‘I’m a midget, I don’t want to be called a dwarf,'” said one pal. “He did everything normal. He played ball, everything. Everybody knew him. He’s a loving person.”

Things weren’t always so bad for Agard. When he was 9 years old he appeared in a performance of “A Christmas Carol” put on by Harlem’s The Play’s The Thing Theatre Company. Fittingly, he played Tiny Tim.

Preservationists Uneasy As Developers Eye More “Suicides”

The irony of 34 East 62nd Street was that by purposely destroying the house in order to keep it from his ex-wife, Dr. Nicholas Bartha’s ex-wife would earn even more from the land.

Last summer, real estaters thought a new house on the property would fetch $15 million. Now they’re hoping to get $30 million:

A super-luxe eco-friendly townhouse is being planned for the upper East Side lot where suicidal Dr. Nicholas Bartha detonated his brownstone last year.

The built-from-scratch five-story mansion on E. 62nd St. will have a bamboo-fringed garden, underground pool, spiffy all-glass elevator — and an asking price of $30 million.

“Our mission is to preserve the quality of this landmark site while making the house appropriate for today’s lifestyles,” said Janna Bullock of the Russian Investment Group, which hopes to get city approval for the ambitious plan in the next few weeks.

If the modern glass-and-stone townhouse gets built, it would add a spectacular punctuation mark to one of the stranger New York stories of recent years.

The reclusive Bartha, 66, blew up the house last June 10 to avoid handing it over to his ex-wife in a bitter divorce. He touched off a raging explosion and fire by turning on the gas valve and igniting the building.

The so-called Dr. Doom survived the initial blast but died a few days later. Passerby Jennifer Panicali, 23, was injured in the explosion but recovered.

RIG bought the plot for $8 million from Bartha’s estate.

On The Usefulness Of Automatic Checkoffs

And you shouldn’t infer from the news that transit workers are not being forthcoming with their dues now that automatic paycheck deductions have been suspended that workers don’t highly value their union membership:

Transport Workers Union Local 100 can’t afford to represent workers at disciplinary hearings or arbitration sessions except in the most critical cases where workers have been suspended, the local’s top lawyer wrote recently to NYC Transit. The lawyer asked that such hearings be postponed and that no new ones be scheduled.

For months, union officials — and even internal political opponents of local President Roger Toussaint — have been urging the approximately 34,000 members to pay dues directly by personal check or by another method.

But too few have agreed to pony up.

Conductor Ronald Brockington said some workers are unhappy with the contract that was imposed by an arbitrator after the walkout.

Others say they don’t see union representatives enough in the field or have other gripes after a bitter internal election for officers, he said.

“I don’t like the contract,” Brockington said. “I’m undecided, but I don’t think I’m going to pay.”

Up until this month, NYC Transit automatically deducted dues from workers’ paychecks and forwarded about $1.5 million a month to the union.

A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge last year halted the deduction but delayed the move until June 1 to allow the union to first pay off a $2.5 million walkout fine.

The union can petition the court to have the checkoffs reinstated after 90 days — but must assert it doesn’t have the right to strike in the future.

Union officials declined yesterday to say how many workers have signed up for an alternate dues-payment program the union has been promoting. Workers would have to provide bank or credit card information and authorize regular payments to a union fund.