Modern Living: Oddball Olympics

Some venturesome souls achieve fame by scaling the world's highest peaks or plumbing the oceans' deepest bottoms. Their feats faithfully find their way into the Guinness Book of World Records, as do the odysseys of marathon smoke-ring blowers, balloonists, goldfish swallowers, grape eaters, yo-yo spinners, Scrabble players, prune devourers, face slappers, Pogo-stick jumpers, leapfroggers, barrel jumpers, needle threaders and record breakers in 10,000 other Record-worthy categories. For the past two weeks, in a guerrilla assault on Guinness, 200 young Californians assembled in Los Angeles to topple records or immortalize themselves and to...

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