The following article was published in L.A. WEEKLY in the November 16-22, 1979 issue:

Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath read the Guinness Book of World Records - or at least a part of it? The Book contains an assortment of facts and feats that are as irresistible and fascinating to the average, normal ordinary ne'er-do-well book browser as they are useless, often mysterious and sometimes stupid. It appeals to the tawdry, kinky, carnival side-show part of our minds.

At the same time The Book remains possibly the only true portrait of the world as it really is, ("The smallest of mosses is the pygmy moss,") and human nature at its most inventive ("The face-slapping contest duration record was set in Kiev, Russia, in 1931 when a draw was declared between Vasiliy Bezbordny and Goniusch after 30 hours.") The 1963 compendium of facts lists under the heading Human Achievement, a subcategory entitled Lowest Incomes which includes the following item: "The poorest people in the world were the then 42 surviving Pintibu (or Bibdibu) found in the Northern Territory of Australia in July 1957. They subsist with water from soak holes and by eating rats."

They are all there in The Book: the greats and the near-greats. Admiral Perry, who conquered the North Pole, and Roald Amundsen, who conquered the South Pole, are the greats; the near greats are Scott Case, who stuffed one hundred and ten cigarettes into his mouth and smoked them all at once for thirty seconds in Los Angeles in May of 1974, and Lang Martin of Charlotte, North Carolina, who suceeded on July 10, 1977 in balancing six new golf balls vertically without using any adhesive.

It is the near-greats who grab out imaginations the most: the people who set records for walking backwards, for smoke-ring blowing, for needle-threading, for cucumber-slicing, for taking the longest continuous shower (224 hours), for God only knows what - no one has as yet set a record for prune juice drinking on the run or for extended knuckle-cracking or for eating a steel-belted radial tire, but next year someone might appear in The Book for doing any of these things. Who knows? If it's worth doing, it's worth setting a record for doing.

And worth reading about. We have, both of us, been addicted to The Book for years now and we have, both of us, spent countless hours daydreaming and wondering about the heroes and heroines whose epic feats have swelled the pages of this modern day saga.

This week we were able to viist with Mandi Martin of Montebello in the 439th to the 440th hour of her attempt to play pinball for 500 continuous hours, thereby doubling the current Guinnes World Record for continuous pinball playing and this afforded us some insight into what goes into the making of a Guinness Book of World Records champion, and also how it's done.

Mandi is a thirty-four-year-old music business person who has been a session singer, a songwriter and composer, a musician and an independent producer. She has pursued these occupations mainly in Los Angeles, California, where she was born and grew up, and also in Nashville, Tennessee, where she first learned to love pinball.

"I started playing pinball when I was a staff writer for ABC in Nashville back in '73," she says. "I would go up to ABC and write late at night and then come downstairs and three friends of mine, occasionally, Waylon Jennings, Tom Pall Glaser and Captain Midnight, and some of the local crowd would be there when I was done writing and we would all play. I learned on their quarters. And it was wonderful. Then when I came back out here I found a couple of Seven-Elevens in Burbank that had great machines. I'd be in the studio maybe two, three days on a project and then I'd go and play for eighteen or nineteen hours. I really missed it a lot."

This is Mandi's second pinball world record. She set her first world record, 140 hours and 32 minutes of continuous play, in 1978. Someone broke that world record and when that happened Mandi felt it incumbent upon herself to set a new world record and not just any new world record but a new world record that was double the last world record and then some. That is why she committed herself to five hundred hours. That plus the fact that if she set a world record she would get her own pinball machine.

Mandi's second World Event took place at Games Unlimited at 9095 Venice Boulevard, a large barn-like place hung with ferns and other plants, that displays and sells - for home use - juke boxes, pinball machines, slot machines and related paraphernalia such as popcorn wagons, wooden park benches and gum machines. Anyone can go in and try out the machines but you must ask the management for coins or you might, as the signs say, be gambling, which is, of course, illegal.

We found Mandi seriously ensconced before a wonderfully vivid pinball machine featuring as its visual motif the rock group known as KISS. On her right, Mandi had an operating TV set and on her left, cassette equipment for recording the event as well as for playing music through the darkest hours of the night. She sat surrounded by pillows in her wood and canvas director's chair, layered in sweaters against the dankness of the large cinder-block hall. Her hands were on the buttons that controlled the flippers and the machine kept blinking and dinging up the score as the television set kept blinking and sending out a football game which also kept announcing its score.

Profound weariness pervaded her features, although she was keyed on her own adrenal energy - something akin to second wind, but beyond. She appeared small, fragile and weak, but when she rose to greet us she was taller than we expected and, because this was one of her permitted break periods, she excused herself to run a lap around the room for the sake of her circulation. We noticed that her feet were wrapped in ace bandages. Badly swollen feet is one of the prices you pay when you sit for long hours in one place. At that point she had been at it for almost three weeks, and was, in fact, a mere three days short of her goal.

Mandi had not really been awake for an entire three weeks. A Guinness marathon does not make that demand. A Guinness contender is allowed a five-minute break after each 60 minutes of play completed or is allowed to accrue this time and take a longer break. Mandi had been accumulating her five minutes and managing thereby to grab a little sleep in an RV parked outside and loaned to her for the occasion. Still, this is an endurance event of some proportions and Mandi had prepared for it.

Among other things, she fasted. "I cleaned out my system," she said. "I fasted for maybe a month ahead of time. I would eat every third or fourth day, and that was it. And then I would eat what I wanted in my body." Now she was being careful and husbanding her strength and her moods. No red meat. "It uses too much of your energy to digest it." No sugar. "It's a mood elevator." No coffee. "Not because I'm afraid of getting wired, but because I'm afraid I would become depleted of water-soluble vitamins."

A marathon player is like an athlete.

Mandi was not undergoing this ordeal in solitary splendor. The Guinness Book of World Records people don't just take a person's word for it. The Guinness Book of World Records people want documentation. It's in their rules. (Although they do list a feat that they then claim they do not quite believe. "Mensen Ernst (1799-1846) of Norway is reputed to have run from Istanbul, Turkey, to Calcutta in West Bengal, India, and back in 59 days in 1836, so averaging an improbable 94.2 miles per day.) Over at Games Unlimited the rules were posted:

1. There must be two witnesses with Mandi at all times who will sign a witness log after each complete hour of play.
   
   
2. All signatures must be notarized. Two forms of idenification are required. Maybe Mensen could get away with it, but not Mandi. Besides Mandi loved her crew and the support they offered.

Why not pursue the cello, you may ask, instead of pinball? Well, Mandi might answer that she has pursued the cello, so why not pinball? She loves pinball. And who are we to judge? Anyway?

We can read The Guinness Book of World Records and feel superior to people who balance eggs on spoons for long periods of time. We can sit back and be amused at how some people waste their time. But when you think about it, learning a bizarre skill takes time, patience, application and discipline. Other, wiser people may laugh; it is more normal to spend your life when you are not working in front of your TV set. But TV time is not written down for the world to see and wonder at. So who has the last laugh?

Mandi gave us buttons to wear on our lapels. The buttons read: It Takes Balls!