Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Enthusiast Looks to Set Record This Weekend

Coaster enthusiast Kirk James, 31, is hard at work training to set a new world record, he tells ARN&R. Already the holder of the IBF, WBF, and WWF World Titles in Getting Pissed Off Enough to Hate Every Single Person at an Amusement Park, James has stated that he intends to better his own impressive record by a full three minutes this coming weekend.

"My fastball has great velocity, and the curve is really poppin'," James told ARN&R in between intense training sessions. "I'm watching my diet, working out twelve hours a day, reading and watching game tape, and exposing myself to irritating people as much as possible in order to maximize how angry I'll already be when I enter the park. I'll be driving in my car in Northern Virginia and near New York, visiting a number of restaurants, and spending as much time as possible with my boss, and then maybe I’ll call up all my ex-girlfriends for a chat. When I hit the front gate and the clock starts ticking, I'll already be ready to strangle some jackass. Then the revolting behavior of people at the park will set me off quickly enough that I can absolutely crush my own amazing world mark." James then made a muscle pose and grabbed the pom-poms from a nearby cheerleader to create an impromptu dance "inspired by Warren Sapp and Beyonce."

The World Title in Getting Pissed Off Enough to Hate Every Single Person at an Amusement Park was long considered the most venerable and storied in the history of the amusement park, perhaps only eclipsed in reverence by the 56-day park visiting streak record set by the great Joe DiMaggio. The impressive mark of being irritated enough to hate every single person at an amusement park stood at two hours, seventeen minutes, and fourteen seconds for decades, until August 22nd, 2003. On that date, the hallowed record was obliterated by an unheralded enthusiast named Bill Chipotle, who officially felt a strong need to maim and crush every human inhabiting Six Flags New England after spending only one hour and six minutes there.

Many pundits felt this was a one-time super-record set by a man playing beyond his ability during perfect conditions, and perhaps with the benefit of steroids, creatine, or even one of those "Gelati" they serve that is not remotely close to an actual Gelati, but instead consists of layers of soft vanilla ice cream and Italian ice. "Chipotle was on top of his game, no doubt," said expert Peter Gammons. "It seemed like everything he did turned to gold. It was the perfect game. Of course, luck is always involved, too. Would Chipotle have had such success if any ride at Six Flags New England had used more than one train, or if the toilets hadn't showered his party with explosively propelled feces, or if every single person in line wasn't smoking, or if the park had bothered to hire a single security guard that day? Doubtful."

The experts were proven wrong in short order, however. The record fell six times in a span of only a few months, as a new challenger, the brash young James, rose to combat Chipotle's mastery at Being Quickly Pissed Off. Much as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire brought out the best in each other's games, Chipotle and James battled like centurions over the late summer, leapfrogging each other with ever more incredible record-setting performances. Chipotle brought the record down to 34 minutes at Morey's Piers on the day of the Monster Truck Rally, before James managed last weekend to jump that mark on his way to a nearly unfathomable six minutes and three seconds at Lake Compounce.

"I was surprised I was so dominating at that park," said James. "I mean, of course I rule and no one can have any hope of stopping me in my quest for world domination, but this is such a nice park that I figured it would be more of a warm-up. But no, I realized after two minutes that I had a shot at that record."

Spectators noted that, after suffering through a very trying day where he had gotten no sleep after driving all night through construction and fog the night before, working at an unbelievably crappy job that morning, having an argument with a friend, having his computer freeze up, and then having his fantasy football team get a foot shoved right up its ass, James was already pretty much poised to kill someone with his bare hands before even shoving through a crowd of morons standing around blocking the one entrance to Lake Compounce for no good reason. Then, after entering the park proper, he was confronted by "mega-hordes of white trash scum from the Valley. You know, those people who yell all the time and say 'New Brit'n' and 'mit'n' instead of pronouncing stuff right." Apparently this crowd of loud dumbasses followed him everywhere and filled the stations with their brain-deadening caterwauling, and about thirty of them managed to step on his foot, back into him, shove someone else into him, fire up a cigarette while riding Boulderdash, or yell to someone while standing mere nanometers from his head.

The coup-de-grace came with three incidents that came in rapid succession at about the five-minute mark of James’s evening out: a pair of rubes engaging in a yelling and slap-fighting match on a pathway crashed into James despite his trying to move away from them, one guy in a Slayer shirt bragged to his unwashed friend about how his buddies had had "awesome cool fun" spraying pepper spray at people on a coaster in New Jersey last year and they all had to go to the hospital, and eight preteen girls decided to have a screaming contest on Boulderdash right behind his already splitting tension headache.

"I was right on the edge," said James. "I had it, I knew the record was in my reach, but I wasn’t quite there. I thought maybe everyone there needed to die, but I wasn't wholly convinced of it enough to pass official muster. I mean, all the employees were really nice, as usual, and this one little girl asked me for the time and called me ‘Sir’ and said ‘Thank you’ when I told her, which threw my game off a little bit. But then, right as I passed six minutes, I saw a frickin' coaster tool who was boasting to some other little girls that he was about to take his 996th ride on Boulderdash, and there was only one person who’d been on it more ever. And that was it. I officially hated everyone, and the record was mine. YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!" James then made a Heisman pose.

James will attempt to break his record this weekend at Six Flags New England, the location where Chipotle set the initial mark this summer. "I know it's gonna be there," he told us. "If I can get pissed off enough by people at Lake Compounce enough to want them all to suffer for all eternity in the fires of Hell after six minutes, just think what I can accomplish at the worst amusement park in the free world. Officially, I'm aiming for three minutes. But just between you and me, I already placed a call to Bill Chipotle and told him he'd have to be gunning for 45 seconds next time he hits a park."

Chipotle told ARN&R that he respects James and his current record, but that he will demolish it, whatever it stands at, the instant he sets foot inside the gates of Kentucky Kingdom for the first time.

--JCK