My latest record applications were met with such callous disregard and apparent disorganization that I began to seriously wonder whether I had been blacklisted, a practice that apparently has not even been used on employees of their biggest rival, Ripley’s Entertainment. Could the notion of me setting records really be that dangerous? I submitted applications for three different records, including an existing one, through the website, and a week or two later was e-mailed the required record agreement forms to fill out and submit by mail or fax (only). I was also given three “claim ID numbers,” sort of social security numbers for record attempts, except they didn’t tell me which number went with which record, a piece of information without which you cannot fill out the forms. I e-mailed them about this oversight and never got a response. A few weeks later I faxed them the same question, and this time I did get a response. I then faxed in all three applications to London in one batch, twenty-four pages in all, watching as they were scanned by my fax machine, eating up many dollars in long-distance phone bills, and got a receipt showing the successful transmission. They later claimed to have received only one of the three, which seems impossible, so I faxed the other two again—having lost over a month. The impossible repeated itself, and they later claimed to have received only one of these two, so I re-faxed the final one for the third time, again having lost more than a month. Nearly five months since I initially applied, using a process that promises to take no more than five weeks, I still had no answers. The one application they admitted receiving was telling me online that I would receive an answer within four weeks—and had been for more than three months. Something seemed wrong.
Was my paranoia justified? Could the notion of me setting records really be that dangerous?
Apparently, yes. After months of waiting, and repeated inquiries, I got a fax from the Director of Records stating that “While Guinness World Records lawyers are investigating serious concerns regarding with the [sic] content of your book and its unauthorized association with Guinness World Records, we will not be in a position to consider any Record applications from you.”
Since my actual conversations about this book had never gone beyond the company’s public relations personnel, which in turn led to letters from their counsel, it appears as if I was internally “flagged” as a forbidden record-setting applicant. I appreciate that Guinness World Records is privately owned, and understand editor Craig Glenday’s sentiment when he told the Wall Street Journal, “We get seen sometimes as a public service, as if the taxpayers expect it from us.” Nonetheless, it strikes me as incongruous to position oneself as the world’s preeminent record-keeping authority, and indeed rely on that reputation to validate your very existence, while at the same time picking and choosing who you think is worthy and unworthy of even being allowed to attempt records. As a casual observer of baseball, it seems obvious to me that the authorities at Major League Baseball, also a for-profit business, do not exactly see eye to eye with players like Barry Bonds, but they do not order the umpires to wave off every home run he hits and label it unofficial. Records are records, and when the self-declared arbiter of such deeds goes beyond apple to apple rule setting and begins discriminating between who can and cannot be a record holder based on their own preferences and prejudices, then it seems clear that their “authority” in such matters becomes nonexistent. So the bottom line of record setting becomes more like the quest of the child to become president: you can do it, as long as you are popular, and the folks at Guinness like you.
Amazingly, after all this hassle and disillusionment, I remain a cautious fan. Why? The first reason is that immediately before this book went to press, Guinness World Records was sold yet again, in early 2008, to longtime rival Ripley’s Entertainment. Based on my conversations with the company’s former president Robert Masterson (now chairman) and the new president, Jim Pattison Jr., I have high hopes for the future. Masterson made clear that he saw the relationship between the record keepers and record setters as flawed, and Pattison noted that unlike previous speculative owners, he intends to actually oversee operations. Hopefully this will mean more recognition of the people who provide the material that is the grist for the Guinnes World Records profit mill.
But my adoration for the book goes deeper than management squabbles, and is born of more than half a century of intriguing history. The records may have gotten wackier, the design sleazier, and the mission less noble, but there is still something compelling on almost every page. The eyebrows still go up, the mind still races to fathom “how could he (or she) do that?” Having gotten in tune with the book, I now see records everywhere, everyday. They are happening all over the world, all the time, all around us. I get countless e-mails from friends and associates with links to news stories of the new oldest woman or the biggest cake. I have not just set records; I have lived them. I have eaten at the world’s oldest restaurant, El Botin in Madrid, where the souvenir postcards are a facsimile of the eatery’s Guinness World Records certificate. Goya worked as a dishwasher at El Botin while trying to get his painting career started, and Hemingway was such a fan that he set a scene in the closing pages of The Sun Also Rises there. I have gone to China to see Mission Hills, the world’s largest golf resort, and visited the top of the world’s tallest structure, the CN Tower. I even rode in the world’s largest organized bike tour, New York’s Five Boro Bike Tour. Records are all around us, and a part of us, and the book is the main reason. It has spawned its own language, and “according to Guinness,” carries the same weight with superlatives that “according to Webster’s” does for spelling.
Now that I have examined the full spectrum of records and record breaking, the history, the evolution, and the future of the Guinness book, I will answer the one question you are chomping at the bit to know the answer to, at least if you have made it this far: Which is faster, the grouse or the golden plover?
According to the British Trust for Ornithology, the top speed of the European golden plover, aka the whistling or hill plover, is now known to be 60 mph, while for the red grouse, the species most commonly hunted in the British Isles, 40 mph is as fast as it gets. Sir Hugh was a true gentleman, and in this spirit, he won his gentleman’s bet: he had wagered on the plover, which was indeed faster. But the original argument was based not just on whether the grouse or plover was speedier, but on which of them was the fastest game bird in Europe. The final answer is neither: The spur-wing goose has a recorded air speed of 88 mph, while the absolute winner, according to the McWhirters, was the wood pigeon.
You now know everything you need to know in order to decide whether you want to be a record breaker yourself, to take your first step down that road toward the absolute, of being the best in the word at something. I hope you do, and in that vein, I will say goodbye the same way I said hello, with the words of Ashrita Furman:
I hope that after reading this you are inspired to attempt some feat of your own. The particular event is unimportant as long as it gives you the opportunity to dance on the edge of your capacity. But be prepared—the benefits could be both illuminating and far reaching.
Appendix 1
THE STORIES OF MY FAVORITE RECORDS
When I first proposed writing this book, I was asked for six examples of especially shocking or entertaining records. That was two years ago, and there was so much to choose from that it was virtually impossible to narrow the field. Now the difficulty of the same task has increased geometrically: in the 2008 book alone, even among just the records designated as brand new, the incomprehensible oddness of many leap off the page. Every time I think I have found the most perverse or bizarre, another catches my eye and outdoes it—just when it seems like records can’t get any crazier, they do just that. Recent additions to the litany include feats of mind-boggling eccentricity, ranging from the most people fake-tanned in an hour by one person using chemical spray (67), most panes of (safety) glass run through, most fish snorted in one minute (meaning sucked into the mouth and ejected through the
nose: the yoga instructor who managed eight also holds the same record for one hour, at 509 fish snorted) to the heaviest weight pulled (a Volkswagen car) with the eyelids—not to be confused with the heaviest vehicle pulled by hooks stuck through the skin (a van, using two hooks impaled into the small of the back). Some are just weird, others disgusting, and while many are made up Guinnessport, some do make you wonder how one ever discovers they even have a talent for sticking hooks through their flesh or attaching chains to their eyelids and pulling things. Ultimately, the nonstop weirdness of it all threatens to make even the most absurd feats seem mundane. Fortunately, the mix still contains some records that are more entertaining than deranged.
Just as the purpose of the tiny sampling of records chosen by the book’s editors is to shock and titillate readers, so was the purpose of my selection of representative records to shock would-be publishers of this work. Now that I have gotten that part out of the way, I have been able to focus more on records that are simply interesting, not because of their gross-out factor, but for other reasons such as the sheer audacity of the achievement or the creativity and good humor behind the record itself. But the Guinness World Records provides little insight into the stories behind these remarkable achievements, simply squeezing them into as few words as possible. So given the increasingly hard-to-imagine things humans have done to get into Guinness—and on rare occasions for other reasons—I would like to take a look behind some of more quixotic things that have been deemed certificate worthy, some of the records that have stood out and become my favorites.
Keeping Up with the Norbergs: I have to assume Norberg is a fairly popular Swedish surname, because in 2004 an impressive 583 Norbergs got together in Sweden and set the record for the largest gathering of people with the same last name. This kind of record does not go unnoticed, and the record was soon shattered when more than 1,200 people with the surname—no surprise here—Jones got together to break the record. Interestingly, organizers were able to add a bona fide celebrity element to this momentous occasion, as singer and former James Bond girl Grace Jones, as well as opera singer Dame Gwyneth Jones, performed for the assembled Joneses. This 2007 gathering raises the obvious question: where are the Smiths in all this? The Smith clan holds a special place in Guinness lore, as the very first edition in 1955 awarded them the title of commonest surname in Great Britain, with over 800,000 Smiths in England and Wales alone. A year later, the first American edition proved that once again the United States was number one, with more than 1.5 million Smiths, also the nation’s most popular name. Half a century later, with a little organization, the Smiths could finally live up to their record potential.
Accidental Hero: Some pursue Guinness greatness, while others have it thrust upon them. The latter was the case of Toby Hoffman, an otherwise unknown member of the stage crew for KTLA, the station that broadcast the U.S. version of the Guinness Records show hosted by Sir David Frost and created by David Boehm. As Boehm recalled in The Fascination of Book Publishing “You never know when a record is going to be set on a TV stage. The plan was to have a man we had brought in from Europe show how he could lift 15 or more bricks from the floor at one time by pressing them all together while they were lined up horizontally. The bricks had arrived the evening before the show, and one of the workers engaged in moving equipment around was Toby Hoffman, whose huge biceps made the girls in the audience gasp. Toby asked me what the bricks were to be used for. I told him. Right away he went over to the bricks, lined them up and lifted them onto a platform. ‘Wait a minute,’ I gasped. ‘How many bricks did you lift?’ We counted them—17. The next day the European tried three times and the most he could lift was 15. The TV announcer proclaimed this was a world record, but I and my assistant who had seen Toby too, knew better. Toby went into the book.”
A Dark Day in the City of Light: Not all of the many elaborate events planned for the last few Guinness World Records Days have gone as smoothly as organizers would like. When asked to think of a location famous for romance, many would immediately say Paris, and this is what the brains behind the attempt to break the record for most people kissing at once must have thought, too. But despite its passionate reputation, a paltry 1,188 Parisians showed up for the 2006 endeavor, while just a few countries to the east, the true romantics—11,570 of them—could be found smooching in Budapest. With a turnout nearly ten times that of the City of Light, it was the capital of Hungary that went into the record book. On the very same day, Nishio, Japan, a city famous for its green tea, managed to get 14,718 people to sip simultaneously while sitting barefoot on almost a mile of red carpet. This easily eclipsed the participants in the kissing record, perhaps demonstrating the priorities of would-be Guinness World Records holders.
An Oldie but a Goodie: In April 2004, stuntman Eric Scott flew 152 feet above London to break the Guinness World Record for highest rocket-belt powered flight. But what is most interesting about this tidbit, reported in Popular Science and evidence that even scientific innovation has its place in the book, is that the purpose of Scott’s flight was to break the record. Break, mind you, not set, suggesting that his was not the first success in the pantheon of rocket-belt rides. This record seems especially vulnerable, given that in this case the sky is indeed the limit. Scott did not even come close to the height of Toronto’s CN Tower, a rocket-belt flight that would be historically worthy of Guinness recognition.
If Only Cards Were Edible: Architect Bryan Berg is to card houses what every chef in the Big Food chapter of the book is to big food. He simply dominates his niche in a way even Ashrita is unable to do. Since Berg set his first record in 1992, while still in high school, the Cardstacker, as the book describes him (Berg calls himself a “card structure specialist”) has never relinquished the title for building the tallest house of cards. His creations are so lofty the only one who can beat them is himself. And to add a bit of theater to the whole thing, he always topples the result himself in a grand gesture of destruction. Just how impressive are Berg’s works? The repeat and multiple record holder built a house of cards 25 feet high in 1999, and then seized a second Guinness World Record for the world’s largest card structure in 2004 when he built a detailed replica of Cinderella’s Castle for Walt Disney World. Berg then put the super in superlative by breaking his new record in 2005, with an homage to New York’s famous skyline, complete with playing card scale re-creations of Yankee Stadium, the Empire State Building, Times Square, and several other Big Apple landmarks. This mini-city required 178,000 cards, more than three thousand decks worth. At the 2007 Texas State Fair, he improved on his 1999 tallest record by constructing a replica skyscraper, more than 25'9" tall, and surrounded by several smaller buildings to form a city skyline. The work took him a month to build adding 70–200 decks worth each day, or about 10–125 pounds of cards. His other works have included elaborate cathedrals and domes, and the three-dimensional structures are so complex it seems impossible that they are made entirely from playing cards with no cutting, folding, gluing, or other means of support. The lack of challengers to the record he has held continuously for sixteen years must have gotten boring for Berg, who helped would-be rivals when he published detailed card-construction tips and techniques in his book Stacking the Deck: Secrets of the World’s Master Card Architect. It is another title he justly deserves.
But Can Your Weird Fingernails Do This? Growing beards, mustaches, fingernails, and even ear hair of immense proportions has long been a classic methodology for entering Guinness’s pages. But that was not enough for Antanas Kontrimas, who had been growing his beard for more than twenty-five years as of 2004. Anyone can stop shaving, but in a true case of pick up or shut up, the Lithuanian strongman let his beard do the talking on September 11, 2004, when he lifted a 136-pound woman with his beard. In addition to setting a Guinness World Record, Kontrimas also earned a spot on the “Strength Feats” list of Joe Weider’s Muscle & Fitness magazine, an annual roundup of the most impressive strongman feats of the year. A
pparently Kontrimas used all the time he saved by not shaving to plan and practice beard-lifting feats, hoisting such things as a sack of grain and a keg of beer with his facial hair while training for his first woman. His beard has also towed a Land Rover and a plane. Despite this distinctive repertoire, Kontrimas was not the magazine’s only Strength Feat winner to set a Guinness World Record. The same list honors Canadian Kevin Fast, a doctor of theology from Toronto, who specializes in pulling very big things (not with his beard). Upon learning that his 100-foot vehicle pulling record had been unofficially broken, Fast wasted no time wresting it back, leaving nothing to chance: he immediately towed three fire trucks linked together and weighing a combined 102,933 pounds, covering 100 feet in just over two minutes. “Afterward,” according to Muscle & Fitness, “feeling very sick, Fast announced his retirement.”
Man’s Record-Setting Best Friend: Dogs are no strangers to the pages of Guinness World Records, a tradition dating all the way back to Jacko, the terrier with an insatiable appetite for rats. Since Jacko, dogs have been recognized as biggest (its owner first came to Guinness thinking he had the world’s smallest horse—really) and smallest, best at balancing glasses on their heads and skipping rope, and a favorite of mine is the golden retriever who can pick up and hold five tennis balls in his mouth at once. But no canine record is as uniquely Guinnessport as that held by the late Josh the Wonder Dog, who in his lifetime became the “most petted dog in America.” Josh was a black and tawny brown stray who in 1984 serendipitously found his way to the Pasadena front lawn of Richard Lynn Stack, an author of children’s books. In a fortuitous act of timing, Stack had just finished writing his first book, The Doggonest Christmas, a week earlier. The coincidence continued: Josh bore a striking resemblance to the illustrated book’s main canine character, drawn by Stack’s uncle. Stack immediately adopted Josh, but three years later their lives changed dramatically when an insane person went on a canine shooting spree and shot three dogs in Stack’s neighborhood. Only Josh survived, but he was left unable to wag his tail because of damage to his spinal cord. After barely surviving, Josh soon became a spokesdog for overcoming adversity. Stack penned two fictional children’s books inspired by Josh, then helped the Wonder Dog cowrite his autobiography, which included inspirational aphorisms like “Josh Says: Go for your dreams!” In 1989 Stack quit his day job as an attorney and began touring the country with Josh in an RV, visiting elementary schools to spread the inspirational message. At each of these sessions, children would line up to pet Josh, and Stack began keeping a log of each petting. Josh ended up living to an estimated age of sixteen, or over 110 in human terms, and he visited more than 2,000 schools. Shortly before he died from cancer, Josh entered the 1997 record book as most petted dog when his owner presented Guinness with signed affidavits documenting the petting sessions. By the end, Josh the Wonder Dog had been petted by more than 408,000 people, a Guinness Record just about any dog would be truly envious of.
Getting into Guinness Page 25
