Friday, December 21, 2007

I am simply not sufficiently unbalanced to devote every waking moment, every firing synapse, every calorie burned to be the best in the world at anything. My only real chance would be to invent a sport, say, set the world record before it became popular enough to have competitions, and hope it catches on.

I tried this in 1986 in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (France) where I invented the sport of Glacier Bowling. And in fact, I set an unrecorded world’s record there in its first (and only) international competition beating out a competitor from the US and another from Singapore. However, Glacier Bowling never caught on so my accomplishment sank swiftly to the depths of sports obscurity. Fewer than a dozen people even know of the sport, let alone my accomplishment.

Illustration: Andrew Zbihyj

With all this as backdrop, imagine my excitement learning of the invention of a truly obscure sport … Text Messaging (or Texting for short). This year’s championship was won by 13 year old Morgan Pozgar who flawlessly tapped into his LG mobile phone the first lines of the Mary Poppins crowd-pleaser, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Neil Janowitz competed and authored an article in Wired Magazine’s issue 15.12. He knew to be wary of the 15-year-olds in the competition, but he never saw the 13-year-old coming.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Out and About
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