I Can't Make This Up

Just read that a guy named Suresh Joachim, who lives in Toronto but hails from Sri Lanka, has broken the Guinness World Record for most consecutive hours watching television. How many did he watch? Try 69 hours and 48 minutes, all of which he did with the TV tuned to ABC in New York. He finished up Friday morning at around 7 a.m. According to Guinness, the rules allow for a 5-minute break every hour and a 15-minute break every 8 hours. The viewer must otherwise be constantly looking at the screen. The previous record was 50 hours and 7 minutes.

Now, considering it’s still rerun season, he couldn’t have watched much that was interesting or new (not including the news programs and talk shows), and I guess he had to watch W's thrilling press conference — maybe that's when he took one of his 15-minute breaks. And considering he did this largely on a Thursday, that means he missed out on watching a brand new episode of The O.C., which I thought was pretty good. I mean, it’s back (generally) to how things were first season when Summer was catty and funny (mmm ... I likes me some Summer), and it’s not overly serious like last year was.

But anyway, back to Suresh.

According to the guy's web site, sureshjoachim.org, Suresh has some kind of fetish for breaking Guinness World Records. Apparently, he spent 100 hours bowling not too long ago. He also broke the record for the longest duration balancing on one foot (76 hours, 40 minutes).

And why does he do it? To raise awareness of suffering children. That's right. His couch potato-ing was all for the children.

I can’t make this stuff up, people.