CALL ME SNAKE

You might have missed the following obituary, which originally appeared in the Washington Post. Ed Charon died last Sunday in an Oregon hospital at the age of 71. Charon, for those of you who don’t know, holds the world’s record for tearing apart telephone books. He set his fifth world record last year when he ripped 56 Portland, Oregon phone books in half in three minutes. Given his proclivities, it’s probably just as well Charon lived in the Portland area rather than in Los Angeles or New York City where the directories reach epic proportions. As a test, I just tore the slim Cambridge directory (which I never much liked anyway) but do not plan at this point to challenge Charon’s more impressive feats.