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Roger Rabbits with |
Just when you think you have seen and heard it all, life springs another doozy. Not doozy as in spectacularly good, or extraordinary, but doozy as in mind-numbingly banal or silly.
And I am old enough to have seen a few real doozies of a doozy. You know ... as in whacko competitions.
I’ve seen gurning, where contestants distort their faces into grotesque and bizarre shapes. Generally won by those not exactly blessed to start with. Snail racing. And all the gooey trails.
Before you apply the facial hydration, it might help to know that the snail goo, or mucin, is used in cosmetics.
I’ve seen cheese rolling. Cheese rolls yes, cheese rolling, no! Why would you roll cheeses? I’ve seen paramedics resuscitating the fearless and feckless on the brink of death from polar plunge-induced hyperthermia. Dunking in the surf on the shortest day? The point being ... ?
‘Steadfast Urine’
Heard of “The Great Pie and Puke”? Uni students ran the length of a rugby field to eat a cold pie and drink a pint. Then again and again, with the winner being the last person to vomit. What gamesmanship, what style. “Hey Mum and Dad, I flunked med school but I won The Great Pie and Puke ... ”
Toilet-seat tossing and the classic Japanese Bladder Experiment – men gargle gallons of water and the winner is the last to pee. The guy with the strongest bladder is crowned King of Steadfast Urine. That would look good on the CV.
In Germany, the 100-hour running shower contest. You only leave the shower for bathroom breaks. Why would you need to? Did you know 60-70% of people admit to peeing in the shower? The squeaky clean winner got $5000.
‘One-handed unclasp’
And in China’s Gungzhou city, the great one-handed, unclasping, Bra Removing Competition.
What great mind thought of this a-boobination? Abomination? Was there really an audience? Why do we care?
The contest for men was won by a woman – unclasped eight bras in 21 seconds. She won 1000 yuen ($250.84). But the world record is held by Irishman Sean, of course. Ninety-one bras in 60 seconds. His mum broke out in a 34D smile when her boy “done well”.
Where’s all this nonsense headed? To a remote corner of Lake Hāwea in Central Otago to be precise, where “hundreds” turned out to make a splash. A series of splashes, with a stone, in the water. Stone-skimming. They’ve given it respectability, acceptability and a name. Not just chucking stones in the water. But “stone skimming”. It’s a “sport” because they say it is. I suppose if darts, underwater hockey and ear-pulling can be “sports”, so can stone-skimming.
Boys bitching
It all feels like rediscovering one’s childhood. Let me paint a picture. Kingston, 1960-ish, at the foot of Lake Wakatipu. The pall of smoke from the stack of the TSS Earnslaw has disappeared up the lake, the Kingston Flyer steam train has chugged out of town towards Lumsden, the sun’s headed for bed beyond the Blue Mountains, the pub across the railyard’s quietly humming, Dad’s in bliss, parked on the lake front listening to the skirl of bagpipes wafting from somewhere across the lake. “Glorious! Touches my core,” he would say. Bagpipes? Really? And we’re chucking flat pebbles into the lake – four boys, four fiercely competitive brothers, bitching mercilessly about how far they can make a stone dance.
The number of stones we heaved into that lake in three weeks. How did we not concuss a few rainbow trout, or empty the beach of pebbles? Or create a shingle-bank shipping hazard for the Earnslaw? We skimmed stones until they started disappearing into darkness. Plop, plop, splosh. Gone! And there would be calm until four boys found something else to bitch about. Momentary calm.
Funsies become nasties
I’d like to have claimed we started a trend, but skimming’s been around for centuries. In 1583, they called it “ducks and drakes” – why? But funsies became nasties when they bounced cannonballs off the water in naval battles and the RAF famously bounced round bombs at German dams. With great effect.
Rock skimming the water. Photo / Getty Images
Not as hostile, but certainly edgy and competitive at Lake Hāwea – a buoyed-off alleyway down which 130 competitors tossed their favourite rocks. Seemed like a nonsense when I first heard it, but I may have changed my mind. And while skimming may seem a blokey kind of thing, a woman skimmed 72 metres, then 42 metres, to win it.
She was going to uni until she decided skimming got in the way. What the hell? Now she’s off to the world championships in Scotland. What’s with skimming?
Interesting unanswered questions: do you have a pet stone, a nice flat pebble that’s a perfect hand fit? Do you flick, sling or toss? Is your pet stone recovered from the lake bed? What do they talk about at the post-match function?