Well there's something I wasn't intending to get excited about today – I was just having a quick skim over my website stats, and it turns out that I am the number 1 Google match for “Save Ferris t-shirt” ! OK, it only seems to be in Australian Google, but still, I'm impressed !
OK, now what I *actually* came in here to write about was a book I've just finished reading – It's called “Are You Dave Gorman ?“, by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace. I'd been aware of this whole concept for a while, but only recently got stuck into the book, and I found I could barely put it down (I think I finished it in 3 sittings). It was a bittersweet rollercoaster for me really… I guess on the face of it, there is NOTHING cooler than the ridiculous endeavour that those men undertook. For those unfamiliar, after Dave received an email saying there was another person called Dave Gorman living up in Scotland, and then after a few pints, Danny bet Dave that he couldn't meet loads of Dave Gormans. And so the bet was on.
As it happened, in order to satisfy the bet (i.e. make it measureable/achieveable) they decided “loads” was 54 – one for every card in the deck, including the jokers. And with a lot of tenacity, a few trips overseas, and the aid of some people willing to change their name by deed poll, they got there.
I tell you thrillseekers, I was so caught up in this book – for to me it was exactly the type of harebrained scheme that I could see myself getting caught up in.
The bit which irked me ever so slightly was that – and I'm not trying to say I thought of it first! – back in… ooh god knows when really ? I was living with my parents at the time, so it must have been around 1998 or so… I decided that there must be more than one Jason Standing on the face of this planet – armed with the knowledge that there were about 11 Standings in the Adelaide phone book, and if Adelaide had about a million people then that meant 0.00011% of people were Standings, and therefore in somewhere in say, London, there would be about 500 (ish). For supporting evidence, see this post. Mmm, so anyway, at that time I commenced fairly rudimentary operations to make contact with some – I think I just looked in the Hotmail Member Directory at the time… but even with that limited search, I uncovered 3 other Jason Standings ! 2 in the US (one was in Wisconsin I think) and one in Canada !! We quickly threw around the idea of getting t-shirts or something, but of course the killer back then was my almost total lack of budget. When I read about Gorman's adventures I found myself spitefully thinking “It's not fair – you were in London, it's heaps easier to get places from there”. If I'd really been keen I suppose I could have started scouring other Australian cities first… all a bit of a moot point now I suppose.
Still, it would be nice to meet just one other. I'll keep my ear to the ground.