It was a difficult decision I had to make. A couple of weeks ago, I could either complete my scheduled Weird Oklahoma research trip as I had planned, or I could cancel the whole thing and participate in a revelation of the World's Largest Beach Ball in downtown Dallas. Unfortunately, I had work to do.
The event, which has earned an official Guinness World Record, was hosted by Carnival Cruise Lines as part of their "Fun for All. All for Fun" campaign. Unleashing not one, but two, 35-foot-wide beach balls onto Elm Street on October 26, Carnival got themselves a TV commercial and Dallasites got the risk of being crushed to death by multicolored vinyl.
Carnival then took the celebration to Philadelphia, where today they unleashed the World's Largest Piñata, a donkey 62 feet tall and 55 feet long. In their effort, Carnival successfully bitch-slapped Microsoft, who held the previous record of 48 feet by 53 feet.
The piñata was to be hoisted into the air using a crane, at which point organizers had planned to whack it open with a wrecking ball, unleashing 4 tons of candy onto the crowd. The big smash had to be postponed — or canceled entirely, I'm not sure — due reportedly to some kind of unspecified technical difficulty.
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