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Sunday, October 02, 2005
Covington: More Guinness
By Gary Covington
Looking In
NOW I'm certain. And I have proof. Sun.Star scribblers, albeit unknowingly, are somehow, mysteriously, cerebrally linked. How do I know?
Monday last, through some freak of atmospherics, Casa Covington's television antenna picked up the usually unreceivable ABC network and I found myself watching a show called Guinness World Records Primetime.
For ten minutes or so I sat entranced like the victim of a hypnotist's swinging watch, mesmerized by the show's awfulness. Then came the thought--I'm quick about these things--that here was an ideal subject for a Sunday article. For the remainder of the show I jotted down notes and when it concluded took up a fresh sheet of yellow pad and set to.
Tuesday morning--with a couple of hundred words safe and sound--I'd stopped for a break, sipping a mug of tea and leafing through the day's Sun.Star.
"City Hall dangles P5000 for vasectomy" ran a headline on page two. Dangles? Someone on the editorial staff having a bit of fun there. Then, on page B of the Chillout section, there was Jojie writing about Pinoy Guinness records.
What! Great minds had been thinking alike and Witerary had beaten me to it.
I cursed, flung the paper across the room and cursed some more. How could I possibly--in the same week--submit another piece about Guinness world records and that awful show in particular? Well, if you can't beat them to it...
The 1955 edition of the Guinness Book of Records--the very first--is a conservative looking volume. Slim, a mere 200 pages, its cover is an unrelieved emerald green except for the title and an Irish harp, the Guinness trademark, embossed in gold.
The contents are equally sober. For example the world's largest ocean-going oil tanker in 1955 was a paltry 28, 000 tons, a far cry from the half-million-ton monsters of today.
Then there is the perennially world-beating population of China, in 1955 approximately 602 million (fifty years on the figure has more than doubled, China's masses now number around 1. 3 billion). It's a more gasp-worthy fact but still a run-of-the-mill statistic; nowhere in the volume is there a highest Scrabble score or mention of the cucumber slicing championships.
There is no bed pushing record and certainly none of the bizarre stunts they present on Guinness Records Primetime.
First up was an attempt on the keg tossing record. It is, apparently, a favorite on the strongman circuit - how high, over a pole vault-type bar, a guy can heave an empty metal beer keg.
There's not a great deal of finesse. The guy stands with his back to the bar, grasps the keg by its ends, swings it back and forth a couple of times between his legs and then lets fly upward and back and with any luck over the bar.
The studio audience loved it, oohing and aahing on cue while the winning strongman--who had tossed the keg over the bar set at 21 feet--preened and strutted and punched the air.
The final item on the show was an attempt on the world pencil sharpening record using an electric sharpener. The catch? The sharpener was mounted on the roof of a speeding sedan, the pencil on the skids of an equally speeding helicopter. I didn't wait to see if the helicopter driver succeeded or not; I switched off, speculating on what mad caper might possibly qualify for the world's most ridiculous world record.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 2, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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