This weeks’ record post was a doozy. The video ended up being a highlight reel of failures. I stacked (and toppled) a couple of thousand rolls of toilet paper before the record finally fell.

The challenge to this record isn’t exactly balancing things on my head – which I can do for hours with ridged objects. The trick to this record is that all the toilet paper rolls have to be stacked on a single roll that is placed on the head. The catch is that toilet paper is not rigid – neither is the flimsy cardboard roll at its center. This means that any imbalance in weight distribution or strength of the roll results in the stack tipping. The tip further weakens the structure and quickly leading to a cascade effect. Many times I didn’t even get the stack of toilet paper on my head before it toppled. Other times, I would get the stack balanced on my forehead, but a few seconds into the tower gently swaying, it would collapse one direction or the other. Any correction to the balance had to be made slowly and evenly since the rolls of toilet paper weren’t tightly bonded. If I moved fast to one side, the bottom roll would move with me and the top would just stay in place.

In the end, a stack somewhere between fat and short and skinny and tall worked best: a pyramid stacked atop an inverse pyramid that ended with a single roll of toilet paper upon my head.