Another World Record to Remember

You know, I thought back in July when I wrote about Joey Chestnut and his "record setting" performance of eating 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes that I had officially seen it all. I was wrong. Living in Los Angeles I have been hearing about the LA Angels world record attempt during the second game of the baseball season against the Twins. They never really mentioned what the attempt would be, so I wondered. I thought maybe they were going to take a shot at the attendance record for a single game.

I should've known better. I should've known it was going to be an incredibly stupid and meaningless record. The kind of record that made Bobby and Cindy Brady's attempt at the world teeter totter record seem important. Last night I watched in horror as everybody in the stands at Angels Stadium started putting on a red fleece blanket with arm holes. The Angels set the record for "the largest gathering of people wearing fleece blankets of one color in one place." They "shattered" the old record by nearly 30,000, which was set on March 5th of this year.

SO WHAT ?!?!?!?! Who cares, a bunch of people wore a robe backwards that was the same color when they were in the same location. That's something to be ashamed of, not proud of. The best part is that a Guinness World Records adjudicator was actually on hand to verify the record. Guinness needs to be kicked out of the world record business if they permit such records to be validated by them. Seriously, when is enough? When does Guinness say no to somebody's idea? If eating hot dogs and wearing blankets are now world records, where is the line? Can I walk into a wall for three consecutive hours and make a name for myself? Anybody know what the world record is for consecutive days of clipping at least part of one of your fingernails? I can keep that string going for the rest of my life.

Making a big deal out of absolutely nothing, welcome to new aged journalism. You know why stupid record attempts like these never happened 20 years ago? Because the media wouldn't give it the time of day. If a tree falls in the forrest and nobody is around to hear it, did it make a sound? If nobody writes about a world record, did the record happen? The whole point of these stupid record attempts we see so much of lately is the media now gobbles it up. I miss the good old days, when reporters had integrity and didn't report garbage like this. The record will be short lived, once football season comes along you know some attention hound team is going to make a run at the Angels record, then all the fans who were at Angels Stadium yesterday wearing their stupid red fleece blanket with arm holes will only have the memory of how they did as they were instructed to do and looked like complete fools while doing it.