For severely dysfunctional reasons this guide cannot easily discern, 10 men will attempt to extend the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous pool game from 52 hours to—wait for it—fully 53, yes, 53 hours. It is hoped that this will decide several rounds of shouting over “who the hay is tha’ best in this here shire.”
From Thursday through Sunday, February 26 to 28, when decent folks are variously gainfully employed, shopping or attending church or synagogue, local fellows at the ironically dubbed Malarkey’s Pub in Riverside, Ohio, will waste their time, their bar-and-grill’s chalk and their physical energy playing pool excessively, until their arms fall from their sockets so only their victory cries and not their arms may punch their air, redolent with the sweet smell of victory, the very eau de cologne de Guiness. The five two-man teams should easily represent ten broken marriages by the time they have finished.
“This will be an interesting few days,” claims Bill Erby, one of the would-be record pool shatterers. He added rather obliquely, “Trying to stay up three days is definitely a challenge.”
Hopefully, Erby has mastered not only the challenge of three days and nights without sleep, but the ability to rack and re-rack balls until he sees apoplectic visions assaulting him, count score, games and matches until all 1,000 bottles of beer have fallen, and converted his IRA and other retirement vehicles to pay for staggering amounts of table time.
The Guiness rules and regs will be followed to the letter. To wit:
1) each team may take only a five-minute break during each hour (creating maximal levels of sleepiness and/or induced psychosis in each participant)
2) all games set and points counted must resemble pool, even if the shooters are drooling on themselves and the cloth long before day three of their attempt
3) reporters may not use clichés when capturing the event such as “the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat” or “they came, they saw, they conquered pocket billiards” or “it was the best of pool times, it was the worst of pool times”
4) All five tables in play must be videotaped throughout the session, proving that ten actual people had enough time on their hands to pursue this goofy record pool attempt, because surely no one of intelligence can watch the whole thing unaided
Most pool pros have endured marathon sessions of 20 hours or more, climbing atop hills to win tournaments or gambling for purses of $10,000 - $20,000 or more. And doesn’t what they achieve for those overnight sessions eclipse this record attempt?
Source of this lunacy: Kettering-Oakwood Times
