Conan O’Brien’s World’s Shortest Freefall & More Easy Record Breakers
This week Conan O’Brien brought us the World’s Shortest Freefall on his late night TBS talk show Conan. Conan was inspired by Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner breaking the world record for skydiving, freefalling from the edge of space. Baumgartner reached speeds of 834 miles per hour and fell for 24 miles when he completed his Red Bull sponsored jump on October 14th. Conan decided to do some record breaking of his own and rigged up Alex Brenner (whose roommate and dog were watching from the audience). “Suspended four inches from the ground,” Conan said, “That’s almost 102 millimeters.” Conan kept his daredevil precariously balancing on wires for a moment before counting down and letting him thump onto the floor, airborne for .006 seconds, his parachute deploying a few moments after impact. Unfortunately, however, when Conan checked back up on Alex he had died. And of course all of this was “brought to you by the good people at Slim Jim.”
All this talk of Felix Baumgartner (who actually broke five World Records with his jump) and Conan breaking the record for World’s Shortest Freefall has got me thinking about breaking some records myself. So here’s a few records I plan to break in the comfort of my own home.
Easy Record Breakers
- World’s Shortest Bungee Jump: I’m going to tie one end of a piece of floss around my waist and the other to my ceiling fan and the jump off of the fourth Harry Potter book.
- World’s Longest Cross Country Race: I will be start the clock for this race (for which I am the only contestant) tomorrow, go about my business, and turn it off when I’m forty. The course is TBA.
- Least Amount of Veal Ever Consumed: I’ve never had veal before so I think I’m just going to keep this pace up for the rest of my life and the title will be all mine. My vegetarian friends are not going to be pleased when I have to start slipping them bits of baby cow meat…
- Fastest Mile Being Pushed In A Shopping Cart: I actually need a partner for this one, so if you are a ridiculously fast runner, enjoy pushing heavy loads in inefficiently built carts, and want to break a world record, please contact me. I’ll be having tryouts in a few weeks once I steal a shopping cart from Wal-Mart and figure out how to secure a bean bag chair in there.
