Billy Crystal has always been one of my favorite comedians, and not just because we’re both short, balding Jewish guys from Long Island.
He was hilarious on “Saturday Night Live,” and to this day I can quote some of his legendary “Frankie and Willie” skits with Christopher Guest (“Man, I hate when that happens,” I know what you mean.”
He also, of course, has starred in the funniest movies ever, including two on my Top 10 favorite comedies, “When Harry Met Sally (“Baby Fish Mouth!”) and “City Slickers” (“Hey Curly, kill anyone today?” “Day ain’t over yet.”)
Anyway, I love me some Billy Crystal, and all of a sudden he seems to be everywhere again. He was on “The Daily Show” last night promoting his new Funny or Die Video, which is pretty damn hilarious. Check it out here:
**Here’s something I’ll remember the next time I’m complaining about being tired during a two-hour tennis match.
Two teenagers named Sam Angel and Katie Martens, who live in Missoula, Montana, played the longest match in recorded history last week, competing against each other for 55 hours, 55 minutes and 55 seconds in an attempt to set a new Guinness Book of Records mark (they got it.)
My favorite part of the story, and really I loved all of it, is this sentence: “Ray Angel, Sam’s father, noticed that his son was making no sense verbally and wasn’t responding well physically around dinnertime Sunday.”
This story was so amazing to me, that I called the reporter who wrote it Wednesday, a guy named Jamie Kelly, and he filled me in on even more wacky details.
He said the duo never stopped playing to eat, but that their parents and friends would bring them food out on the court while they continued to play (making a two-handed backhand kinda difficult). Kelly told me that according to Guinesss rules, they were entitled to five-minute breaks every hour, but if they didn’t take them, they could save them up and use 15-minutes all at once, for example.
Kelly also said that nurses were on hand to check Sam and Katie’s vital signs, and during breaks they soaked their feet in crushed ice.
“I tried to interview Sam during one of the breaks,” Kelly told me, “but he couldn’t really respond too well.”
Both Katie and Sam are recovering nicely and didn’t suffer any long-term damage from this insane record.
Me? All I kept thinking about when I first read the story was this “Brady Bunch” episode when Bobby and Cindy set the teeter-totter record. A classic episode, if you ask me:
