Money-making world-record-breaking group convenes, sets records
History in the making. Betsy Morais
11:35 am Jun. 30, 2010
Three men wore yellow blazers with insignias beside the lapel bearing the initials “URDB.” One sat by his computer, keeping time. The other two emerged from behind a stage curtain and took to their microphones.
"This is not a feel-good, love-everybody evening,” Dan Rollman warned the crowd at Joe’s Pub Tuesday night. His outfit gave him the overstated authority of Max Fischer.
The electric pianist from the band Blast Off—which accompanied the evening’s festivities—provided steady techno beats as fuchsia lights projected the official seal of the Universal Record Database.
It turned out to be a feel-good, love-everybody evening.
"Our belief is that everyone is the world’s best at something," said Laura Yan, a summer intern for URDB. One of her assignments is to figure out what her own special talent is.
The organization—"the definitive site for human achievement," according to its website—provides a forum for anyone to post unique accomplishments that can be quantifiably measured. These feats are posted as videos to the URDB website for verification and archiving, and are then presented as opportunities for other people to come along and set world records by topping them. (This happens often.) Since the database launched in 2008, nearly 5,000 records have been posted from forty countries.
Though the records listed in the URDB are often ones like Most Screws Screwed into a Banana and Most Sips of Eggnog in 30 Seconds While Listening to Neil Diamond, their holders mostly take them seriously. The database has four full-time staff members who manage the website and oversee record-breaking, along with a few advisers and the occasional intern. Database manager Rod Birdsong said they just moved from a small office in Brooklyn to a larger space in Manhattan, "which we are hoping to fill out."
And they make money, Birdsong says. The URDB teams up with companies like Jet Blue and Ford to develop brand-sponsored records. The staff is now working on its first book of records and a television show pilot.
Their event, The World Record Appreciation Society, is a monthly fixture at Joe’s Pub that allows prospective record-breakers (many of whom are professional comedians) to present their talents live. The Society show also has appeared in other cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Tuesday night marked the Society’s "Sweet Sixteen," and all proceeds went to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a charity that raises money to find a cure for childhood cancer.
The record-breakers came to swear in foreign languages; to make a socially conscious documentary very, very quickly; to extinguish cigarettes on the tongue.
First up was Kelly Reeves, who came to clog-dance the same step as many times as she could in thirty seconds. She wore a blue country-girl dress and her hair was braided.
"Go rednecks!" came a shout from the audience.
Reeves brimmed with excitement, curtsied, and said, "This outfit is straight from eighth grade!"
She clogged her step 39 times and created an original record, as did many of the others onstage that night.
Rapper Tots and his "home fry" Mix Master Mash set a record—Most Sexual-Innuendos in One Potato-Themed Rap Song—and set a challenge.
"I only rap about potatoes, period," Tots announced. It started out as a joke, but he says he found success on YouTube and is now releasing his third potato-themed album.
"I got this guy back in Syracuse who thinks he can break it," he said. "So I dare him to. Honestly."
Matt Reynolds broke the existing record for Most Lebowski Catchphrases Recited in One Minute, with 31 dude-isms. He wore a bathrobe.
Such eccentricities are tolerated, if not encouraged, by the keepers of the database.
"We don’t ask about their personal lives," Rollman said. "We’re here to see world history, and that’s it."
