Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 489 | The American Dream - Joel Strasser is Living His

Episode Date: October 17, 2020

American Dream with Joel Strasser / Guinness World Record Holder Seven World Records Living his American Dream https://www.youtube.com/user/joelnert Twitter @joelnert Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to it. It is Chewing the Fat. Yes, it's a special Saturday edition of the American Dream. And we all know that the American dream is different for everyone. Everyone, that's what makes America great. Everyone is able to live their dream, the way they see fit. And remember that still, I know. for some of you it seems an impossible thought, but even in today's world, you can still live your American dream. So I was sent an email telling me that I needed to talk to this man. And I looked him up and I became so jealous and a fan all in one email. Joel Strasser. Joel, I was told that I needed to talk to you. And the person that told me that is 100% correct because they knew that I am and have been wanting

to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for a long time. Even if it wasn't just for me, I'm not going to grow my fingernails extra long or I'm not going to have, you know, nose hair down to my knees. But even if it's just a, you know, some event that I'm a part of that makes it in the book, I'd be proud. But you, sir, You, sir, are in the Guinness Book of World Records, and you're now in two and three in a row, right? They come out yearly. Two books in a row.

Right. Okay. So now, how many world records in the Guinness Book do you hold? I currently hold seven world records. All of them are related. All of them, what? Beard related. Beard related.

So do you have the world's longest beard? No, not even. I have a decent beard, but it's not one of the world's best or longest beards. Okay, so let's go back prior to your first Guinness record. What were you doing and what made you think, you know, I can set a record doing this. you know it kind of started at work i uh one of the things i do at work is i train classrooms of employees that are new to their job and sometimes these classes go on for you know all day or weeks weeks on end and after lunchtime you might be losing people maybe the content is a little dry

and i'd walk around the host is a little boring just something like that you got to come up with ways to try to keep people's interest. So I would walk around and just quietly stick pencils in my beard just to see who was paying attention. And it kind of caught on. It became like a little tag that I would do. And one of those learners in one of those classes was like totally into it. And he was like, Joel, how many pencils do you think you can put in your beard? And I was like, I don't know.

Let me try. In those days, my beard was much shorter than it is now. but he said, I bet there's a world record for this, and he looked it up, there was no world record for most penises. But there was a record

for most toothpicks in a beard. And I was like, you know what? I think that maybe someday. So I look it up. Unfortunately, it was over 3,100 toothpicks for the record. And that was way beyond what I felt

I could ever do. And the person who held the record had an amazing lion's mane of a beard just all over his body. He was a beard and mustache world champion. And so when I saw that, I immediately just kind of put it out of my mind. I thought, I could never do that.

Right. It stayed with me, you know. It kind of stayed in the back of my mind. And I let my beard get a little longer. And one day, after growing it out quite a bit, I thought, you know what, let's just see. Let's see how close I can get. That's great.

He's not keeping me down. That's son of my. gun. I don't care. I'm not intimidated anymore. I thought, you know, I'm going to give it a try. And on my very first attempt at putting toothpicks in my beard, I broke the record. I put 3,200 toothpicks at first try. And then

that wasn't an official thing because you can't just break a record unofficially. You got to go through all these steps, you know. Well, I mean, you can. I mean, you know that you broke the record, right? But it's just not documented and won't end up in. You don't get the, you don't get the glory that you get by having Guinness documented. That's exactly right.

And by the way, they don't make it easy because they don't want to let just any old record get into their book or into their records without being documented six ways from Sunday. Right. So from the time I broke the record on my own the first time until the time I officially broke the record was about, I think, six or seven months. Wow. But I got everything in order. I figured out what you have to do, how you have to prove it.

And on the day of my official attempt, I put 3,500 toothpicks in my... Nice. I mean, yeah, you left the main beard in the dirt. Nice. So you left him wanting to shave that thing off. He was so embarrassed. So with Gennis, so now you have attempted and broken officially the toothpick one. That was already in the books. What would, it would, and now we're going to go on to obviously other world records that you hold, but with other things in your beard.

And I definitely, you know, will be in a moment. But those didn't exist then, right? The only thing that existed you said was the guy with the toothpicks. So could you have done, could you have done a new one and said, well,

you know, the new record for, uh, pencils is this amount. and been documented in the book without taking on the toothpick guy. It's possible to add new records, but it becomes easier once you have a record. Right.

It can establish kind of a relationship with some people at Guinness who want to work with you. And then it becomes much easier. So, you know, I think half of my records were existing records, and the other half were ones that I talked them into creating. Okay. So it's better, you know,

the best way to go about, getting in the record book is to defeat something that's already there. Then you can move on. Right. So what do they want to know? They want to know your shoe size, your ear size, you know, the color of your eyes. You know, one other guy, he calls it the Guinness Book of Prove You Did It. And I think that that's a pretty good thing.

I mean, you have to have multiple video angles going to video record the whole thing. You have to have sworn testimony forms. You have to have photos. If it's something that is measured, there's multiple ways of measuring that. For a chopstick, for example, I would have to have a picture showing the measurement of it. And just to back up a little bit, I mean, there's two ways to break a record. What I just described was the second method. The method that takes a long time and is difficult, but it's for.

The quick, easier method that is expensive is to get a Guinness World Record adjudicator to come to where you are. You'll see in the videos like the people with the suit and the clipboard, and they can just verify a record on the spot. I think I want to be a Guinness Book of World Record adjudicator. I think I want that job. It is such a cool job. I've talked to some of them. I've had some of them at my house, even. And they have incredible stories.

such a cool job. That's awesome. How do you do that? I don't know how you get into it. Screw set in the records. I've passed that already. I want to be the adjudicator. I like, that's the name of my new movie, Adjudicator. These guys travel the world. They see so much cool stuff.

The crew that came to my house to do the photo shoot for the first book I was in, three of them were from England. one of them was from the U.S. But they went on this tour, like this world tour just documenting things. Yeah. It's incredible. That is really cool. Okay.

So, but do you have to foot the bill for that? No. The interesting thing is not every record makes it into the book. The book, they're trying to sell books, right? So it's got to be something appealing about it to go in the book. And if it's something boring, you'll get a certificate, but no one will ever really know about it. So after I broke that first record, they've got to have it on the website, right?

I mean, in today's world, the Guinness record website, which, by the way, I go to every day, they've got to have it on there, right? I mean, every record that you could possibly think of. Yeah, they're all at, you can search them all. But they contacted me soon after I broke that toothpick record, and I was so excited.

They're like, hey, we want to do a photo shoot. We can come to you. We want to put you in the book. and they scheduled that out for me. I was like, well, this was pretty interesting, and it was cool. No doubt. So, okay, so now you're a record holder,

and you know you're going to be in the book, right? This was for the pencils because they're excited and you broke. They already have a guy that they can put a big X across his face in the book and say, loser. And left in the dust from Joel. And so you decided. decided that you're going to attempt other items, right? Yep.

Where did you go from pencils? I mean from toothpicks, right? From toothpicks, then your next thing had to have been pencils. I don't know the timeline, but I'm guessing. I actually don't hold the pencils record. Oh, my gosh. That's embarrassing. I thought you were living the American dream.

Now I'm embarrassed talking to you. You're talking to a fraud this whole time. I think the second record I broke was the straws, most straws in a beard. Okay. And an interesting note on that one is after I broke that record, because of political pressure about plastic straws, they- record. So my record for plastic straws in a beard will hold forever. It cannot be broken because it's closed.

However, they have opened up a new record called. paper straws. And I hold... Oh, okay, good. That was my seventh and most recent record was the paper straw. So now I hold records for both mediums of straw in my beard.

So you... So now they show the paper straw and... Oh, yeah, by the way, you've got the plastic straw too. They just throw that in there now. That's actually kind of embarrassing for Guinness, but not surprising. They're not surprising, per se.

Yeah, I know. I think it was politically expedient. I think they feel they have to. So, okay, so you did the straws and then, and then what? I'm so bummed that you don't own the pencil one. I'm so, I tell you, right now, I'm hurt. You know, I am too. So after the straws, it was golf teas.

Okay. I broke those on the same day. I was actually at an event for a local radio station where I broke both of those on the same day. Nice. See that? There you go. That guy's that. The man after my own heart. getting here for the station. I'm a fan of that.

We've got to have a chewing the fat record breaking attempt. And that has to be the pencils. Oh, you know what? Let's make it happen. I am a fan of that. We have to make that happen. I would love that. So we'll talk about that another time. I'm excited about that. So you've got, so let's go down the list of record that you own. Okay, so after those first fours, a toothpick, plastic straw, Gauthie, chopstick.

The fifth record was Christmas ornaments, those little miniature beard bibles that people put in their beard sometimes, which by the way, oh yeah. I don't even like this. I don't even like people putting ornaments in their beard. I think it's dumb. But I hold the world record for the most of them.

That was the record that already existed. And, you know, I had a relationship with them. I'd been in contact with them because I'd been in the book and they're talking about the next book and stuff. And they actually asked me to break that record. They said, do you want to do this one or go? And I said, sure. So I broke that record last Christmas, right before last Christmas.

After the bibles or ornaments was plastic forks in my beard, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry, I didn't do spoons. I chose forks. Oh, I know. See, we should do that too. That's a good one. Yeah. That's awesome.

The prongs. So there's so much easier to do. And then the most recent one, the size. seventh one I've done is the paper straws. But I got to the story of the pencils, because there's actually a really interesting story behind the pencils. Okay, we're talking to Joel Strasser,

owner of a Guinness Book of World Records, seven, seven records. He's in a couple of books, and we're going to take a look. I want to, for those watching on YouTube, I want to see what they give you, if they give you anything. I think Guinness has got to throw you a bone about something, right? A little piece of paper that

says, yeah, you got it. You didn't make the book, loser, or you made the book, right? They got to, you got to, they got to be part of that. So I definitely want to see those. But anyway, the pencils. Yeah, so the pencils was, like I told you earlier, was the original thing I was sticking in my beard. Right. And I finally got around to applying for and getting ready to attempt the pencils world record just about three or four months ago. And I had broken that record unofficially, so I knew I could do it. And I was getting. ready for the attempt when they contacted me and they said, Joel, we want to do something we

haven't done before. There's this other guy who holds a beard, a stuff and beard record. And instead of you just breaking the record, we'd like to do a head-to-head. Oh, yeah. We're like Zoom call, we'll edit it all. And at the same time, you guys go head-to-head. They'll be an adjudicator on the call with you and just do the pencils and whoever gets the most wins the record. And the opponent is a guy for a new. Zealand. He's a really cool guy. I actually really like this guy. I don't. Screw him. Yeah, I know.

Don't let him try to be nice to you. No, we went head to head and he put me soundly actually. Oh, really? That was difficult because up to that point, I felt like I was the king of putting stuff in my beard. Right. But he brought a different technique. He took a different approach that I had used. I actually learned a lot from watching him beat me. And I have the pencils. They're ordered more. I am prepared and I will break the record that he holds,

but I don't hold it yet. So it's more to come to this. So what is, like you were talking about the forks. You were talking about the forks and the prongs, right? So I was thinking, you know, the opposite way, right?

The spoons would go in. I mean, the plastic fork, forks and sporks and knives and spoons would all go in the same way with the handle, right? So that would part would be sticking out. But is that not right? So the interesting, every record has rules. In fact, most of them have several rules that you have to follow.

And they set it up and you have to break the record this way. And for the forks, the rule is they must go in prong first. Okay. I can get more forks in my beard if I go hand. first. Yeah. It is not as easy because they, you stick it in there, but then they, they come down. Yeah.

Really, really, really great. Okay, so before we talk about what the future is going to hold, as we know, pencils and spoons are coming up, I mean, duh. And to be honest, now that I know that you have actual competitors out there, I'm even more of a fan. Bring it. Bring it. I'm really bummed that you lost.

And I love the idea of the head-to-head, right? I mean, that's Guinness book. That's a good, that's a good plant. Guinness should, you know, a traveling, traveling Guinness show. You know, and they even said they hadn't tried this before and that it went really well and they want to do it again someday. So it's like a new thing that we kind of started doing that. Yeah. I would love to host that.

I'm going to have to go. I want to be an adjudicator and I want to host their Guinness traveling show. anyway, the when you win and the adjudicator says, hey, congratulations, you're now part of a Guinness Book a world record group.

You're going to win a brand new certificate. That's it? Yeah, but hey, you don't have to pay for it. They send you one free certificate when you break a record. Not even in a frame, though. I mean, they're not going out on a limb and giving you a frame,

are they? They'll sell you a frame, but the frame is on you. That's fantastic. So what does it look like? Do you have one where we can take a look at it? Does they have the hanging up behind you? I'll pick this up and kind of aim it. Okay.

For those of you listening to the podcast, it's a picture of the certificates. For those of you want, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Oh, man, do I want one of those certificates desperately? with my name on it. I tell you that right now. You've really peaked my Guinness Book of World Records, wanted to be part

of it bad. So I believe in you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I don't want your pity. I don't. I don't need your pity, Joel. So if people want to see, I know you sent me a video that, is that just what you sent to Guinness, what you sent me that has

your family talking and everything? Is that available? anywhere? Yeah, you can, you can check out my YouTube channel and there's beard-related videos on there. There's record-related videos, but there's also just lots of other stuff that's not beard-related. If it's awesome, I do it on my YouTube channel. I live my life. You mean like classes that you've taught on new training for employees, stuff like that? No, no, that would be boring things. So, okay, so let's go, let's back up a little bit to Joel Strasser's life a little bit.

So you're doing these classes and you're married, you have children, I assume. I don't know that, but I'm guessing you have a family. And you come home one day and you go, honey, I'm going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. And she says, well, that's great, Joel. I'll pretend. That's great, Joel. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

I'm going to stick things in my beard. And she says, Why am I not surprised? This is totally me. This is the kind of crap I do. So she was not surprised in the least when I started pursuing that. That is great. So the family is behind you 100%.

Dad, stick this in your beard. Yeah. Yeah, they love it. Okay, so what's aside from, you know, pencils and spoons, what are you considering possible to stick in your beard for the future, if you can tell us? I don't want any, you know, trade secrets going out to Mr. New Zealand. I do have an attempt actually scheduled coming up soon. I'm going to put clothespins in my beard. Ooh, the plastic ones or wood?

I'm going to go with plastic. here's a little secret. They weigh less. So I'm going with, but yeah, I'm going with the closed pins for Guinness World Record Day, which is a thing that's coming up

next month in November. So they actually reached out to me and said, hey, record day this year, do you have any records you can break? And I said, yeah,

I'll break the clothespins record. I've been thinking about that one anyway. So I got that coming up next month. So is the close pins, Do you have to stick them in and do they have to take the bite? Or is it just sticking them in? Yes. And it's very painful when you get a bite.

In my practice, I hate practicing for this record. In fact, I've had this record on the back burner for over a year because I hate it. It hurts. But, you know, the price of. Plus, there's, well, yeah, I mean, hello. But you've got to, you're losing ground by. not sticking them in, right? So the number of got to be a lot less.

Yeah, they, what you're doing in this, the technique is completely different from many of the other records. Right. Yeah, yeah. Take hair and just stick it on and then just keep going. Right. So it's been, lion man guy might have an advantage with more hair. Yeah, he could get me back on this one.

Don't, don't trim any of that, man. let it go. It looks like you trimmed the sides a little bit. I'm a little worried for you. Oh, I'm supposed to be, if you ask my wife, I'm supposed to be trimming it a lot and I'm not. It looks pretty gross, especially down toward the bottom.

It gets kind of mangy. But, you know, I'm not a beard model type beard guy. I'm a beard competitor for a certain thing. So I don't care how bad it looks. I'm just, that is fantastic. So are you satisfied with your American dream now, Joel? I mean, are you, is there, I know, I realize obviously there's more glory to be had as a Guinness record holder.

But are you satisfied or is there more to come? Are there other records that you're looking to break aside from your beard? I've actually been thinking about that on and off for a while, whether I want to branch out. I mean, there's so many records out there. I know. People sometimes make fun of the Guinness World Record book because there's records for such weird and obscure things, but I don't subscribe to that.

I think it's really cool that a person can be the best in the world at something, even if it's weird, you know? So I don't know if I have a straight answer for you on whether I'm going to branch out beyond the beard, but I am pretty satisfied with my American dream. I didn't think I would do this. This wasn't in the plans. This was something I dreamed about in elementary school.

I would check these books out all the time and dream about it. Like that would be so cool to break a record. But I didn't have a plan to do it. I just, I kind of developed it over time and eventually it, I made it happen. But yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. Absolutely. We got this new one. This is the 2021 book that just came out.

Nice. And when I got this and I opened it up and went through, I didn't know. They didn't like send me in advance to let me see what the page would look like I was on. So it was a totally exciting thing to get the new book, go through it, find the page I'm on. And like, oh, there I am again. This is so cool. I mean, it's been real. And so are you like Mr. Big Shot in the town?

I'm not sure where you live and you don't have to tell America where you live. that's fine. You don't have to tell the world where you live, people listening to chewing the fat, subscribing all around the globe. But are you like, you're Mr. Big Shot now, are you, Mr. World Record Holder? I'll say I live in a small town in Washington. And occasionally I get recognized because I've broken a few records locally, like at a local restaurant. Yeah. So yeah, on occasion, I've had a few times people that I didn't know that wanted to take a picture with me and I was just so knew who I was.

But yeah, most people around town, though, they have no clue who I am and that's fine. Ah, see. I think they're just treating you right. I don't, I think they do. I think they do. They're like he's a town boy.

We're just going to act like you don't know. Act like you don't know. That's what's going on. So, Joel, what is your YouTube channel that we can go and a visit? It's Joel Nert. J-O-E-L-N-E-E-L-N-E-. N-E-R-T, all one word.

And that's where we can go and see some of the records that you've broken. And you can also, you know, hey, you can purchase the Guinness Book of World Records and see the actual man himself in the book. Is it what? How far, how far in? How far in? Yeah, what's the page number? Oh, it's like right in the middle.

Don't pretend like you don't know the page number that you're on. Stop it. Oh, I don't know. Let me think. I think it's 221. Which one is it? 116. Thank you.

Thank you. So you can get the latest. That's the latest one. That's the 2021. Yeah. I honestly don't remember what page number I am in the 2020. Oh, that's old. That doesn't even count anymore.

Forget it. Yeah. That's got. dust on it back there. I don't even, I don't even look at that thing anymore. I'm looking at the 2021. I can't remember quite what page. Let me, I think it's 116, but I'm not sure. Okay, thanks. Joel, man, I thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And you truly are living the American dream and your own American dream. I love it. And thanks for spending time here on chewing the fat. I really appreciate it. For those of you listening to this right now,

if you have an opportunity to go to Joel's site and cheer him on for more world record, please do so. Remember to subscribe to chewing the fat. Wherever you're at, if you're listening to this and you're not a subscriber, enhance your life and become a subscriber. It's okay to be a free-loading subscriber. It's just not okay to be a freeloader. So we appreciate it.

And you can listen to, and you can see this, of course, on the YouTube channel if you're watching, which is the same as the podcast Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher. stressor, world record holder for Guinness. Thank you so much for being out of the show. Thank you for having me. Pleasure.