While the pursuit by record breakers of their fifteen minutes of fame and the pandering to celebrities may have cheapened the content of the book, it is also what keeps the franchise going, both in the sheer numbers of people trying to set records and achieve their slice of immortality, and in the colorful characters who have long made the book popular reading. Without the promise of fame, would John Evans ever have balanced more than two tons of bricks on his head, let alone a Mini Cooper automobile? Evans, having set eleven records for balancing things, usually very heavy and bulky things, on top of his head, recalled feeling that he was talentless after leaving school, a self-esteem issue redeemed through Guinnessport. “Now I am one of the world’s most talented people. I have been in Hello! magazine. I could have been a normal builder, but the records gave me a sniff of being famous. It’s not anybody who gets in the book. I’ve got dedication.” As if proving his self-worth, Evans noted that his feat could be read on “Page 46 of the 2000 book. I got five mentions on page 15 of the 2001 edition and I’m on page 35 of the 2005 one.”
Evans is far from alone. Christopher Darwin was born with a famous name, but since it was his great-great-grandfather who came up with the theory of evolution, he had to make his own mark. This may be what led twenty-eight-year-old Christopher and his friends in 1989 to carry a complete replica Louis XIV dining room set, much of the furniture strapped to their backs, to the top of Peru’s Mount Huascaranin, a staggering 22,205 feet. Their bid to stage the world’s highest formal luncheon also included custom thermal tuxedoes and ball gowns, a four-course gourmet meal, and a butler. “The only thing I’m really any good at is eating,” Mr. Darwin told the Wall Street Journal. “I wanted to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, but you can imagine the number of baked beans that I’d have to eat. I decided to do something much simpler.” To this end, Darwin formed a group called the Social Climbers, whose eclectic members for the expedition included a stock broker, travel agent, ex-commando, stunt woman, and professional triathlete. Like so many other offbeat Guinness World Records attempts, this one was being undertaken for charity, to raise $100,000 for Australia’s National Heart Foundation. “Of course, I’d like to sound altruistic,” Darwin said, “but it’s really the excitement, the ego, the chance to make a record.”
Whether it is balancing a Mini Cooper on your head or mountain climbing in black tie, Norris McWhirter discussed the phenomenon of exploiting a unique talent in the introduction to a spin-off volume from the main record book, Guinness: The Stories Behind the Records, published in 1981 by David Boehm’s Sterling Publishing. “The motivations for mastering certain fields of endeavor are also very different.” In the case of William Hollingsworth, Norris noted that Hollingsworth had “dedicated months to learning the fine art of balancing a full milk bottle on his head specifically for a listing in Guinness.” As a result of seeing such devoted practitioners, McWhirter concluded that “record fever continues to rage as strongly as ever.” In the same edition, Boehm himself interviewed world record stilt walker John Russell, who once strode on a pair of thirty-three-foot-high aluminum stilts, a pair taller than any ever built. When Boehm asked him if he knew that his feat had gotten him into the book, Russell replied, as so many others have before and since, “Of course. It’s my proudest achievement.”
Many Guinness World Record holders have not intentionally set out to get in the book, from Jesse Owens to Neil Armstrong to Tom Cruise. But among all those others, including the 65,000 who log onto the book’s website and fill out applications each year, and then spend their days practicing and perfecting odd pursuits, the goal is purely and simply “getting into Guinness.” In turn, a large portion of this audience is motivated by the promise of glory and immortality. Anyone who doubts this, who discounts the lure of the promise of fame, no matter how slight or fleeting, need look no farther than one of the most unique record holders of all time. By way of comparison to the Australian marathon shower taker Arron Marshall, whose goal was to go “yahooing around the country” once he saw his name in the book, consider the case of a nameless coed in East Lansing, Michigan. In 1971 this intrepid student broke the women’s record for marathon showering, remaining under the running water for ninety-seven hours and one minute, more than four full days. She chose not to have her name printed and became, according to a note in the 1971 record book, what is believed to be the ONLY anonymous record holder in Guinness history, a record-worthy feat in and of itself.
6
Seventy-Two Hours in Hell: Getting Back into Guinness
If it was easy, everyone would do it. Right now there are probably people at the pub down the road making wild plans. But they’ll never do them.
—CHRISTOPHER DARWIN, THE SOCIAL CLIMBERS
There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men: but the austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
—JOHANN VON GOETHE
“Don’t do it.”
Shortly before I left to set my poker record at Foxwoods Casino, I spoke on the phone with one of my closest friends, Jim Martel. Jim is an unbelievable trivia whiz—on par with the likes of Ken Jennings—who remembers everything he reads or hears and who used to clean me out betting on Jeopardy! in college. I proudly told him about my upcoming record attempt. His advice was simple: “Don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“I read about this guy who did one of those radio DJ marathons, where they stay on the air for like 99 or 102 or 106 hours. He did it and suffered permanent brain damage. He couldn’t concentrate, had lasting insomnia, lost his wife, his job, and his house.” Jim may be a good friend and great pub trivia player, but he’d make a lousy coach. His comment was not quite in the same league as “win one for the Gipper” as inspirational speeches go. I tried to forget what he said.
Back in 2004, if you had asked me why I was doing it, I couldn’t have given a good answer. Unlike my golf record, no magazine was paying me to suffer. It was not until years later, when I spoke to Jake Halpern, the author of Fame Junkies, that I could clearly analyze my bizarre motives. Halpern explained to me in vivid detail the process by which something as satisfying as breaking a Guinness World Record, especially one attendant with high-profile publicity, could have an addictive quality. Furthermore, he hypothesized that in addition to wanting to do it again, many people would want to do it on a bigger stage, and in a more dramatic fashion. “It doesn’t surprise me that you would have a situation where someone would break one record, enjoy the satisfaction that brought them, and then quickly kind of say as the attention waned and the rush passed, ‘well one was not bad but what about two.’ I would imagine that it would be slightly less satisfying the second time, so they would be inspired to break a more visible record, a record that is more extraordinary or to break it in a more smashing way.”
Halpern didn’t know about my two experiences with record breaking and record setting when he provided what he thought was a hypothetical analysis, but he described my situation perfectly, as well as that of thousands of other record holders who have been driven by oddly powerful forces. Whether it is Matthew Webb’s swims, Branson’s flights, or something as seemingly silly as my very long day playing golf, there are several common aspects of these kinds of experiences that make them addictive. They comprise an alluring cocktail of the pleasing adrenaline rush during the attempt, the satisfaction afterward at having set or broken the record, and the resulting “fame” in the form of inclusion in the book, coverage in print and broadcast media, and perhaps most important, recognition from friends, neighbors, and peers. The Guinness World Records book does not have an exclusive on such motivations, but it packages them together in an especially attractive and accessible way. Equivalent venues for the kind of feelings the book offers many of its record breakers woul
d be professional sports or success in movies, television, or as a recording star. For most of us, getting into Guinness is easier.
Still, not every Guinness World Record holder becomes an addict, and the true serial record holders are the exceptions, not the norms. Many of the people simply achieve their singular goal of nabbing a record and then happily move on with their lives, never revisiting the urge. My friend and fellow journalist (and novelist) Steve Eubanks told me about setting a Guinness record very similar to my poker feat, by playing pinball for seventy-two hours straight while in college at the University of Georgia in the 1970s. Steve fondly recalls his record but does not care in the least that it has been shattered and reshattered since. His reason for standing in a bar with his hands duct-taped to the flipper buttons was the simplest of all: “When you are in college, the girls don’t care what your world record is for, as long as you have one.” After breaking my first record, I was content and would not have picked up the mantle again and succumbed to the urge Newsweek described as “Guinnessitis” were it not for the intervention of two other powerful forces: pride, and peer pressure. My friends and associates were impressed by and supportive of my record, and never ceased to stroke my ego, telling anyone who would listen about my status as a world record holder. This made me feel good. But in telling and retelling the story, I became aware of the obvious—while it was a fun and funny thing to do, it was not exactly an epic challenge. The short version is I played golf, then drank whisky and napped, then played golf. It took some skill in arranging, and as Christopher Darwin noted about pub patrons making wild plans, having actually done it rather than having just talked about it was something…but not enough. The record was more a technicality than a human triumph, and the weight of its unimpressiveness began to wear on my shoulders. At the same time, almost since the day I returned from Australia in February 2004, these same friends had been incessantly asking me what was next, when was I going to do it again? This implication that I had not done enough seemed like a direct challenge. They were vicariously living the record-breaking experience through me; they wanted me to suffer for them once again. Naturally, I was inclined to oblige.
It was my turn for a little Guinnessport. Having been forced by my editor at Golf Magazine to break an existing record, I was still intrigued by the idea of creating a new one and carving out my own bit of immortality. But while some records are made up as an easy way to get in, I wanted mine to be worthy, something truly difficult, an achievement few others could manage, a record that might resist assault and endure but it could only succeed if it was something I could actually accomplish myself. This, of course, ruled out just about every conventional sport. For example, I could not expect to run or bike or ski faster or farther or longer than professional athletes already had. To find a suitable feat, I did a quick inventory of my personal skills. Writing was a strength but one that did not seem relevant to Guinness. That left me with stamina, in the form of a high pain threshold, an evolved level of stubbornness, and a generally tireless nature. I had that going for me, and whatever I was to do, doing it long term would give me an edge over doing it quickly. What else was I really good at, better than just about anyone I knew? The answer was, unfortunately, not very much. There was one thing, but it did not immediately come to mind. It would take the accidental intervention of a magazine assignment to make me realize my destiny and standout skill: playing poker.
I love poker. I always have. My mother taught me to play gin rummy and 500 rummy at a very young age, and just as Ken Jennings reminisced about reading the Guinness book to his parents on long car trips as a child, I played rummy with my mother and brother on lengthy car trips. This soon grew into a fascination for all card games, but by the time I was in high school, I was playing poker almost exclusively. Poker remained one of my many hobbies through college and long after, but it didn’t become a true passion until my eye-opening first trip to Las Vegas in 1988, at the tender age of twenty-two.
This was before poker on TV, before poker on the Internet (or even the Internet itself). I had never played with strangers, and something about the idea struck me as seedy, a back-room affair full of cheats and con men. That’s why Vegas was such a welcome surprise. The idea of well-run casino card rooms—where you could play for any stakes that suited your budget, low or high, without worrying about cheats, where only the dealer handled the cards, where you played just one game and no one could make up weird rules or add umpteen wild cards—all this struck me as about the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was real poker, played in its purest form. I returned often over the years to Vegas for work, and regularly played all night long in between days of conferences or research, even once playing for about forty hours in a single stint before a bachelor party weekend. These sessions left me more invigorated than exhausted, “evidence,” at least to me, that I had a gift for marathon poker playing.
As a result of my Vegas discovery, I spent several years pitching magazine editors on poker stories. Long before it became a fad, I took it as a personal mission to educate the public. I wrote stories preaching the fun of the game, why it is the best bet in a casino, and how to get started playing. I sold a few poker shorts to Playboy, and then a feature on playing in a tournament to the now defunct P.O.V. I’ve written for the in-house magazines of several casino operators like Harrah’s, and even an unlikely poker story for New York Magazine, eventually building up a bit of a poker-writing portfolio. Then the World Poker Tour was launched, a series of big money tournaments, organized like a professional sports league, that brought the game to TV and changed it forever. Poker suddenly became hot, something to watch in prime time, and interest in the game swept the country like wildfire. The more people watched it, the more people actually went out and played it, not unlike the effect Record Breakers had on setting Guinness World Records three decades earlier. It’s hard to believe but, prior to the World Poker Tour launch in 2002, most casinos, even in Vegas, did not have poker rooms, since the demand was not there, and existing poker rooms were closing at an alarming rate. That turned around quickly, and just as every network suddenly needed its own poker show, every casino needed a poker room. At the same time the World Poker Tour became the highest-rated series in the history of cable’s Travel Channel, I was writing a lot of CEO and company profiles for Inc. magazine, so I pitched a feature on Steve Lipscomb, the colorful attorney, entrepreneur, and filmmaker who had founded the tour and its television show. The magazine agreed, and several months later when the story was done, my editors liked it so much that Inc. made it the cover feature.
During my research I interviewed Lipscomb several times, but to see him in action I needed to attend one of his multimillion dollar tournaments. I chose Foxwoods, in Ledyard, Connecticut, and stayed at the vast casino resort for a couple of nights, spending much of my time in the control room with Lipscomb as he directed the production of an episode at a major multiday live tournament. I got to know the casino staff, the Foxwoods public relations department, and the poker room manager, Kathy Raymond, one of the most important executives in the game (now working in Las Vegas). Like everyone who watched the show, my interest in poker expanded daily. I kept in touch with Lipscomb and the others, and subsequently played in a World Poker Tour event myself, finishing a very respectable sixteenth. (My cockiness lasted only a few months, until I played in a tournament on the World Poker Tour’s short-lived spin-off circuit, the Professional Poker Tour, where I got bounced out by the savvy pros almost immediately.) My passion for poker was now running at an all-time high, and like the golf industry, I had an insider’s perspective. Poker was a red hot fad; the original series spawned numerous other shows, to the point that poker seemed to always be on television on some channel. Several different new poker magazines and websites were launched, and poker books flooded store shelves. This was all happening at the moment when I was pondering a next record attempt, and finally I made the connection. I consulted Guinness to see if there were any poker records, at
least any printed in the book. There were not, but I found an entry for a marathon card game, when eight Italian men and women played “Jass,” whatever that is, in a restaurant in Switzerland for twenty-eight consecutive hours over St. Patrick’s Day—a truly multicultural event. Twenty-eight hours is not very long in the rarefied world of Guinness records, and I had already played poker for longer than this on several occasions, so I immediately considered getting a group of friends together and playing poker for a longer session in one of our homes. The problem with group events, however, is the weak-link effect: if one person gets tired and succumbs to exhaustion, the record attempt is moot. On the other hand, the beauty of casino poker is that, unlike any other card game, at a busy casino like Foxwoods the games are infinite and essentially go on forever. Most games have no start or end, they simply exist, and when one player leaves another takes his or her place, 24/7. While it wasn’t possible to sit down to a prolonged game of Jass, or bridge or rummy or anything else without having cohorts, casino poker gave me the setting for an unlimited individual marathon without having to supply my own posse of players. Given its newfound popularity, I also realized poker should be an easy category in which to get approval for a new record. The Book craves publicity, and would instantly recognize the value of jumping on the poker fad bandwagon while the sport was hot. The limited knowledge of Guinness World Records I had amassed during my golf experience also told me that The Book liked sports where it could defer to established rules and oversight by another authority, whether it was the International Association of Athletic Federations, which governs all track-and-field records, or the casino management at Foxwoods.
Getting into Guinness Page 16