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December 25, 2008
KING HIM
One of the world's best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November. Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times, and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume handbook on rules and tactics. Many people now considering the game would be astonished to know that, as in chess, there are masters and grandmasters, and international rankings, that experts actually study historical opening moves and endgames, and that some play, move-by-move, via the U.S. Mail. A New York Times obituary noted that Fortman played as many as 100 games simultaneously, and won games blindfolded. Until the end, according to his daughter, Fortman spent "hours each day" playing checkers online.
IDOL WORSHIP
Serbians, who have previously, bafflingly, constructed large, reverential public statues of martial-arts actor Bruce Lee and movie characters Tarzan and Rocky Balboa, built one of reggae musician Bob Marley in August in the village of Banatski Sokolac. Also planned was a statue of British singer Samantha Fox, but that project fell through. One Serbian artist who helped raise money for the Rocky statue told The New York Times, "My generation can't find role models (at home) so we have to look elsewhere."
MAKING THE CUT
The Gorani, a small group of Muslims scattered through the former Yugoslavia, lead mostly unremarkable lives, except for their singular distinction: Every five years, they gather in southern Kosovo for Sunet, a festival of mass-circumcision of toddlers, with a history tracing back centuries. Last year, 130 boys born since the previous Sunet were circumcised, without anesthetic, by Zylfikar Shishko, 70, for a small fee. Many Gorani are apprehensive about 2012, according to an October dispatch in GermanyDer Spiegel, because Shishko is 70 years old and the only skilled Gorani circumciser.
COME INTO THE FOLD
An administrative court in Sweden overruled a government agency in November, thus requiring that the Madonna of Orgasm Church founded by artist Carlos Bebeacua be registered as a legitimate religious community. "The orgasm is God," he said, and "should be worshipped" as a "metaphor of life." It should not be limited to ejaculation but can be taught "through art or by looking at a landscape and thinking, 'Wow!'" Bebeacua already claims "a few hundred" followers.
CHANTS ENCOUNTER
The streak for the longest continuous chanting (already noted twice in the Guinness Book of World Records) is still active, according to an August Indo-Asian News Service dispatch from Ahmedabad, India. Clerics at the Shri Bala Hanuman temple started intoning "Shri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram" on Aug. 1, 1964 (more than 23 million minutes ago).
STUPIDITY IN VERSE
In November, a judge in Dublin, Ga., sentenced Rico Todriquez Wright, 25, to at least 20 years in prison for the 2006 shooting of Chad Blue, who had told police initially that he didn't know who had shot him. Blue later heard a thug-life song on CD, "Hitting Licks for a Living," in which rap singer Wright brags, "Chad Blue knows how I shoot" and realized Wright was the one who shot him that night. MTW
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