The thing that strikes me is how deep the pathos about Cleveland runs as the newscasters hype the event ("Cleveland is no longer the mistake by the lake!" as the balloons fly). And that everyone seemed so entirely sure that dumping a million balloons into the sky would somehow make everyone stop laughing at the city. And then of course they all landed in the lake anyway.
The "newscasters" are Big Chuck and Little John which were a local TV comedy duo (similar to Almost Live! in Seattle). Its probably one of the more Cleveland things to happen in Cleveland though.
Random aside - local shows like that are pretty sorely missing now.
Funny to see this on here. I believe Clemson and UGA actually started this trend.
In 1983 Clemson announced it was going to set the record with a release of 250,000 balloons. Georgia, being competitive announced that the next week it would release 300,000.
Both releases happened and after Georgia's attempt to steal the record, Clemson released official numbers that were about 360,000, allowing them to hold the balloon release record and making UGA's attempt to 1-up the release a wasted effort. Clemson and UGA was a big football rivalry at this point with both schools having won titles in 1981 and 1980 respectively, while being located only 90 miles apart.
Shortly afterward, Disney decided to take the record with a launch of 1 million balloons which I believe preceded this Cleveland event.
Nowadays, I can't look at any helium balloon release and not think it's littering. “Pretty” and out of sight, but still littering. You're throwing plastic into the nature and environment.
If it was pure natural latex it would be not much different than a natural rubber tree dying in a forest. I'm sure they add some synthetic stuff to it though.
10 cent beer night at the ballgame. 8 innings of increasing shenanigans and then a riot broke out in the 9th inning. The refs called a forfeit and the Cleveland SWAT team had to be called.
After this video, I finally got the joke involving Great Ohio Desert (artificial desert that was intended to be landmark of Ohio) from Wallace's 1987 "Broom of The System". Maybe it even inspired his idea with catapulting trash to Canada in his "Inifinte Jest".
I wasn't aware of this. So they launched 1.5 million balloons to set a Guinness World Record only to have Guinness not recognize the record and have 60% of the balloons fall into the river and eventually make their way to Canada. Crazy times back then.
I wonder if this contributed to the "Don't Litter" movement in American culture. It looks like a lot of people had no concern for the aftermath or the environment.
In hindsight it seems people didn't think about the future as much... maybe this changed that.
in these tense times, Prime Minister Trudeau should look back with an open heart to the days when a great American city gave the Canadian people thousands of free children's toys.
Jokes are mostly not welcome here. It's possible to make a humorous remark that gets upvoted (or ignored), but the element of politics in this specific remark doesn't help. Politics is also mostly not welcome here and political humor is nigh impossible to do without being offensive to somebody.
