Allow me to run through the night with you, step by step (not stone by stone, don’t worry). It all started at seven thirty AM. Kylie Minogue was all a-gaga for being invited to tab over the first stone. She extended her lovely right index finger and the tiny Australian superstar was jumping for joy. She did it! The first stone went over perfectly and send into motion a great string of many small building blocks.
…But it really all started late September. 20-something teenagers from the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, France and England (and one American, he must’ve been in the neighbourhood or something) build a grand total of 45 “projects”, slabs of domino tied together by a common theme, and linked those with a number of “Aorta’s” or “Lifelines”. They had four million pieces of plastic sprayed in a plethora of colours. The daunting task layed before them was to turn them into a fun-filled evening of family-value entertainment…
After Kylie completed her task, the flow of the first aorta was moving towards the opening projects. among these, a replica of the Colloseum of Rome… Gladiators on tiny vehicles were pushed into the arena by weighed-down domino’s to re-enact a scene from the blockbuster “Gladiator” movie (or a scene from the actual Roman era, who could tell?), while other domino’s set up as spectators would fall down to perform a miniature wave... Would have to fall down… But didn’t…
Cut camera no.2 to focus on “Hilda” immediately, the 16 year old multicoloured German girl (I counted five different colours in her hair alone and at least four more in her make-up) who had build two of the spectator rings. She was looking over her fingers with wattery eyes. She has spend three whole weeks on this project, it was her baby! ...And it didn’t fall… A Dozen hand were comforting Hilda from various angles. “Jennifer”, her Dutch compatriot and understudy (a measly two colors in her hair) was still sitting with her arms around her new friend when the Aorta reached her project, Romeo and Juliette. Three pictures showing us the three stages of love between the two eternal lovers would fall to reveal the dead pair. Jennifer realised her moment of fame and stretched to see the monitors. The suspense was killing her. Would her project fall or fail? The first strip of stones, showing us chunks of hair of both lovers, where tapped by an elongated stone, one custom build to tip large chunks of domino’s simultaneously. They were nudged, they wavered and… they fell! Jennifer clenched her first. The hunt for the Japanese mark of 3.4 million stones was still on.
Commercialism interrupted the Herculean effort of these teens fifteen minutes later. a line of stones fell to tip a sling from it’s resting place. The sling was measured to follow a trajectory of exactly 15 minutes before it would tap a new Aorta and the fun would continue. In doing so, it allowed the broadcaster to start a series of commercials and a chance for the viewers to enter the challenging competition for a brand new car! Just answer one simple question. Complete the domino sequence and win!
I’m not kidding you. Some schmuck actually won a car by guessing that the domino sequence (ending with a 4-2 stone) could only be completed by stone “C”, the only one with a two in it. Brilliant, I love challenging puzzles.
Three well spend hours later and the tension is ripping. Quite a number of stones did not fall because the intellectually challenged bunch of Europeans gathered in the Netherlands were incapable to put one domino next to another so that they would both fall if one was tapped by yet another stone.
Would the record be broken?
As I tore myself from my vastly more interesting cup of coffee, I glanced at the screen to see a grand total of 3.5 million stones! The dutch did it again! We are the internationally acclaimed meisters of Domino! Screw you Japs! We’re number one!!!
I turned off the tv and stumbled to my frontdoor to go celebrate this triumphant event with a drink in the bar mentioned a few posts back. As I walked in the cold night air, this entry’s frustration of the day entered my mind: Why the hell did I waist three perfectly good hours of my life watching that dribble?
I mean, it’s not fair on those hours either. How do they explain this to their friends? “He watched domino stones fall... All the fucking time.”
I apologise, dear hours. It was very insensitive of me.