On June 5 last week, I said that a Canadian company had played "dirty pool" buy paying for costumes to steal the Guinness World Record for "Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Superman" record. Little did I know that on that very same day, an American company bought the title with the very same strategy.

Guinness World Records website reports the story:

In anticipation of the upcoming Warner Bros. movie release, "Man of Steel," Sears invited hundreds of employees to gather at its corporate headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA, to try and break the record for largest gathering of people dressed as Superman on June 5.

And as easy as leaping tall buildings in a single bound, they did it, surpassing the previous mark of 437 with a new GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS number of 566 people dressed as America's most iconic superhero.

Elsewhere, the not-for-profit Superman Celebration managed only 268 people in costume on Sunday. Corporate synergy wins again! Did you notice that the record was achieved exclusively in Man of Steel costumes that were prohibited at the Superman Celebration? I suspect that Lex Luthor must be working for Sears.

While I cannot deny that capitalism is indeed the American Way, I also cannot say that there is much satisfaction to be had in having corporations continue to leverage their work force into achieving a dubious record for the sake of public relations. Certainly, this isn't the way that Superman would shoot for the record. Sears, you can put on Superman's boots, but you clearly cannot fill his shoes.

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This Sunday, June 9, attendees of the annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, will attempt to re-set the world record for "Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Superman." (Yes, this is an actual title.)

I reported on Metropolis' initial successful attempt to set the record in 2008 (read here and here). Metropolis' record of 127 was shattered in 2011 when a company called Nexen Inc ordered costumes for all 437 of of its employees in order to break the record! That's dirty pool! And it only makes matters worse that Nexen is an energy company... in Canada!

For Metropolis to reclaim the record for America, they'll need 438 or more people dressed as Superman this weekend. You'd think that shouldn't be too hard, especially with the hype surrounding Man of Steel coming out next week. But here's the amusing catch: Guinness World Records doesn't recognize the costume worn by Superman in Man of Steel as a Superman costume.

In the movie, as in comics for the past two years, Superman does not wear red shorts over his blue tights. Guinness does not consider costumes without red trunks to be Superman costumes. So any costume that is promoting Warner Brothers' movie or DC Comic properties will not count towards the record!

In my 2008 posts, I commented at length on how mass gatherings of Superman impersonators had to be some sort of evil plot. Now Canadian and Irish corporations are conspiring to keep the Superman records away from Metropolis. I don't see what these villains hope to gain from keeping the record away from Metropolis, but no super villain ever makes his plans too obvious. That we don't know what their goal is just means that we haven't gotten to the penultimate chapter of the story yet.

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From a blog post at DC Comics.com:

On August 25th, the full line of DC Comics dog products by Fetch...for pets! and Warner Bros. Consumer Products will be flying into Petco specialty stores nationwide. If you're looking for super hero toys or apparel for your dog, there's sure to be something in the collection that pleases all DC fans in your household...both human and canine!

I don't want to be the pooper at this party, but how large could the market "looking for super hero toys or apparel for your dog" be? Do I want my dogs to wear Superman's red underwear or Wonder Woman's bustier? I'm sure that my dogs don't want to wear that. Even DC's model doesn't look too happy about this situation:

Keep your chin up, buddy. At least they don't have you dressed like Catwoman. Oh, the humanity.

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Tonight the Georgia Bulldogs will take the field to kick off the season versus the Boise State Broncos. That previous sentence would deserve an exclamation point if Georgia weren't planning to wear this:

Is it the worst thing I've ever seen? No. (Anything worn by Tennessee comes to mind.) But neither is it better IN ANY WAY than the uniforms that Georgia normally wears. Seriously, that's a lot of red, broken up only by all that damn, high-contrast Nike advertising splashed all over it. Am I supposed to be cheering for Georgia or Team Swoosh?

Said Mark Richt to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "I think there are a lot of people that just don't want to get away from [tradition] and I don't blame them. That's the reason we're sticking it out there two weeks in advance, so everybody can get over it." That's just plain disingenuous, Coach. It's not that we are stuck on tradition; it's that we have taste. Change for change's sake, especially when you're changing from a fantastic looking uniform to that... red loony-tard, isn't something that we the fans can endorse. No, Coach, this is a marketing ploy, clear and simple.

Marketing ploy or not, someone must be in favor of them, right? According to that same article linked above, wide receiver Tavarres King said, "I think they're awesome... I love what Nike has done for us. We're blessed to have those uniforms. I'm excited about them." Blessed? I don't think that word means what he thinks it means. I'm no biblical scholar, but I seem to recall from Sunday school that God is opposed to violent men wearing all red.

So the players like this costume. I don't know why DC Comics needed to relaunch their comic books to instill more interest with the general public; clearly football players want to be super heroes. And badly-designed ones at that. Too bad that when we see one of our offensive linemen in that costume tonight, he's not going to look like a superman, he's going to look like an over-sized Nike® brand tomato.

Hopefully we'll lose horribly and these uniforms will be hastily abandoned into the same dusty closet that still holds our all-black unis, unseen since Alabama spanked us in 2008. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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During this year's annual beating courtesy of the University of Florida, the Georgia Bulldogs wore black helmets and black pants. To avoid the public humiliation of losing to Florida at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party again (only 3 wins since 1989), we've taken to disguising ourselves as Division I-AA Grambling State University. Both the football game (final score UGA 17, UF 41) and the uniforms were unwatchable.

Please, never, ever, do that again Georgia. Ever.

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Everyone wears black to funerals.

I've made it no secret that I hate the black Georgia jerseys. I hope that the memory of this week's debacle, a 41-30 loss to Alabama will keep them in the closet for a long time. The final score isn't even close to describing the 31-0 beating that we were taking by halftime.

Even the fans got on my nerve at the game. Though I was quite surprised that the crowd kept trying to rally the Dogs (we're usually so quick to throw in the towel when the chips are down), there seemed to be more jerks around than usual. Within reach or me were the drunk Georgia Tech chick who kept reminding us that she had seen more lopsided defeats at Tech, the asshole behind me who took a break from talking on his cell phone to insist that I sit down because he didn't want to have to stand to see the mess on the field, and the Bama fan dressed like Bear Bryant who kept chanting "overrated" and "blackout." Fun, fun, fun. I travel for hours each way to see UGA play this poorly while surrounded by these strangers? Something must be seriously wrong with me.

Still, I'm not too down on the loss. We started the season with a lot of hype, and if there's anything for which hype prepares me, it's disappointment. There's a long way to go yet this season, and if the Dogs can learn from this fiasco, we might earn a rematch in the SEC Championship game come December.

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In case you were unaware, the year 2008 marks the 70th anniversary of Superman. And this year's birthday celebration will coincide with the 30th annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, which starts tomorrow and runs through the weekend. (It also happens to be the 30th anniversary of the release of Richard Donner's Superman, the Movie.) In tribute, event organizers hope to qualify for the Guinness Word Record of largest assembly of people dressed as Superman on June 15. Is it just me, or does that seem a little fishy to anyone else?

It's an established fact that once an evil mastermind has discovered that he cannot hope to best his arch nemesis in direct combat, the evil genius eventually plans to pit his foe against an equal but opposite force in order to wear the hero down either physically or mentally. And since no hero has proven more indomitable than Superman, it's an inevitability that the foes of the Last Son of Krypton would turn to duplicates of the Superman himself in order to further their twisted schemes.

Clearly, this tactic has been tried before (Lex Luthor's Bizarro naturally springs to mind), but perhaps event organizer Steven Kirk has something new up his sleeve. Like all great comic book origins, a professional impersonator such as Mr. Kirk would seek to best his foe through his superior acting ability as in the classic Adventures of Superman episode "The Face and the Voice." Notably, Mr. Kirk's resume, in addition to his selected acting credits, lists both "Firearms" and "Wax Figure Sculpting" among his Special Talents. Nefarious, indeed!

Shame on the Guinness World Record people for assisting in this mad plot. I checked their website. Not surprisingly, there doesn't appear to be any previous record for "Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Superman." Has everyone already forgotten the lesson from Superman III? Richard Prior, disguised as an Army General, usurps a Smallville celebration for Superman in order to present the Man of Steel with synthetic Kryptonite which ends up splitting Superman into his own impersonator. If there's anything to learn from that disaster (other than to keep your ticket stub so that you can demand a refund), it's to remember that you have to check the credentials of these people before you can allow them to crash your party, Metropolis!

I, for one, know that I'm not fit (either heroically or physically) to wear the familiar red and blue tights of Superman. So I'll just be sticking stick to my Underoos, thank you.

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Now back to football: UGA 45, Auburn 20. (Satisfying. Oh, so satisfying. It was the most points anyone had scored on Auburn since we hung 56 on them over a decade ago. And this is the first time that UGA has scored 40 or more points in a game in 3 consecutive games since the 1940s.)

This was the last UGA game of the season that I will be attending. I'll be missing next week's game so that I can travel to the Dolphins vs. Eagles contest in Philadelphia. Fitting, I suppose, that the fans all wore black to the game this week to mark my passing.

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